If your idea of lateral movement constitutes shuffling your office chair across the room to refresh your cup of coffee or retrieve a fax then you may not be that familiar with the environment in which Tampa’s Mark Gochenour works.
But imagine you’re a 22 year old college football player entering the NFL draft. You’re projected to go in the late third, maybe fourth round. If you can move up to the second round, the potential to make millions of more dollars looms great. And when it comes to NFL combines, getting from point “A” to point “B” a tenth of a second faster can be that difference.
That is where Gochenour steps in. What Zig Ziglar does for salesmen, Gochenour does for athletes. In fact, he’s had a hand in helping more than 300 young men improve their standing in the NFL.
The company he founded seven years ago, Speed Source Athletics, is a state of the art operation which, in simple terms, makes good athletes into great athletes, or at the least, helps them to reach their ultimate potential. Blending high tech science and good, old fashioned, nose-to-the-grind work ethic, Gochenour has some high profile names in the world of sports knocking on his door.
In June, he moved Speed Source from Brandon to a state of the art facility inside Powerhouse Gym in Downtown Tampa. There, you’ll find a host of both amateur and professional athletes, not just football players, participating in a gauntlet of physical challenges aimed at improving sport specific athleticism.
Whether it’s a female high school basketball player or a veteran NFL quarterback, his job is this, to squeeze the most out of every body that steps into his office.
“Every person who comes to me is different,” Gochenour said. “Most people don’t understand, we’re born with an “X” amount of fast and slow twitch muscles and while you can’t change that, you can train those slow-twitch muscles to act like fast- twitch muscle. And that’s where my training can help. I help athletes improve their speed and explosiveness.”
PIGSKIN AND HORSEPOWER
Two guys who spent a great deal of their summer with Gochenour were former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Ryan Nece and Indianapolis 500 Champ Dan Wheldon. Despite being quite possibly the Ying and Yang of professional athletes, Nece is 6-foot-3, 225 pounds while Wheldon is 5-foot-7, 157 pounds, their goals are the same, to perform to the best of their physical abilities in their given sport.
As a 30-year-old free agent linebacker, Nece is looking to extend his career a few more years. Considering the average NFL career is three years, and with six to his credit, the extra work in the gym during the off-season can be the difference between retirement and a seventh.
“I wish I would’ve met Mark as a rookie because training with him these past couple of years has truly made me a better all around football player,” Nece said. “I love to work hard and that’s what Mark does, he gets the best out of me.”
Interestingly though it’s not all about squats and sprints, Gochenour looks at each athlete on an individual basis and gets into the nuances of physical preparation. That attention to detail is what separates him from the average trainer. And his work with Nece is a perfect example.
In order to stay comfortable with the speed and mental intensity of the game, in a typical workout session Gochenour will show Nece a sequence of numbers, then have him perform some intense reaction drills. As soon as the drills are completed, Nece must repeat the sequence back, in order. This, Gochenour says, is done to simulate the correlation between the mind and physical activity, replicating as closely as possible the act of making a tackle then getting prepared to regroup, read the defense and call another coverage.
Although he knows game simulation is impossible to duplicate, it’s mimicking the intensity and movements that make the difference.
“Ryan loves the game and always keeps himself in great shape,” Gochenour said. “We concentrate a lot of effort on doing exercises to keep his legs and neck strong and then present physical challenges that he’d see at linebacker, like how quickly he can get up after being knocked down.”
On occasion, there is even some homework involved.
“There are times, at the end of the day, where I’d make Ryan put on a weighted vest to wear home,” Gochenour said. “Moving on the field in full gear is much more difficult than simply moving in the gym in workout clothes, so by wearing the vest his body stays used to the extra weight of the pads being on.”
While Nece has perhaps the most physically demanding job in all of sports, the training is just as intense for Wheldon. The 2005 Indy Racing League Champion doesn’t have to stare down the eyes of a 300-pound pulling guard, but if you don’t think being behind the wheel of a 1,300-pound car for three hours at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour is physically demanding, think again. A significant improvement in physical reaction time at that speed can mean the difference between first and second place or crashing into the wall like a bullet.
Working with Gochenour for nearly a year, Wheldon says increases in the strength of his arms and neck have made a significant improvement in how he handles the wheel of his car. In addition, his diet and cardiovascular endurance have also undergone major changes for the good.
“Training with Mark is something I do to get an advantage,” Wheldon said. “It’s given me discipline and helped me to improve my physical and mental abilities over the duration of a race. He pushes me to my limits, at times to a point where I’m literally almost sick to my stomach. But I feel it’s that kind of intensity which has made a dramatic improvement in my driving.”
WORLD CLASS RESUME
It’s safe to say that athletes respect other athletes and that certainly appears to be part of Gochenour’s appeal. Looking at him though, he may be best described by the “boy next door” cliché. Of rather slender stature, 6-foot and 180 pounds, you may never suspect it, but he is what you could classify as a world-class athlete.
A 9-Time All-Southern Conference runner at Marshall, Gochenour was a beast on the track in both the 100 and 200 meters. One testament to that is the fact that he was named Marshall University Athlete of the Year in 1993, the same time current NFL-players Chad Pennington and Randy Moss were on campus. And although he likes to downplay the label “world class speed”, he does in fact fall into that category. His personal record of 10.28 in the 100 meters and 20.52 in the 200 puts him among a small percentage of elite runners.
Those are the kind of times that get you invited to the Olympic Trials. And had it not been for an untimely car accident weeks before the 2008 trials in which he suffered a broken leg, he would have had an opportunity to compete among the best in the United States.
“Yeah, I was pretty fast,” Gochenour said. “Could I have made the team? I doubt it. But I did qualify to try out and that was about as exciting as it gets. Not bad for a kid who didn’t even start running sprint events until I was a sophomore in college.”
Although his career as a sprinter ended on a down note, it was track and field which helped to lay a foundation for which the now 34-year-old makes a living, and a good one at that. In addition to professional athletes, his days are heavily booked with high school athletes looking to earn scholarships and make it to the next level. Clocking nearly 60 hours a week, it isn’t uncommon for Gochenour to train 15 to 20 people a day. Sure the work can be exhausting at times, but he wouldn’t have it any other way, wearing shorts and sneakers to the office every day and he’s doing exactly what he loves.
THE SCIENCE OF SPEED
A student is only as good as his mentor and in this case, Gochenour has learned from some of the best. The science of speed was taught to him by nationally renowned exercise physiologist Dr. Terry Shepherd, whom he mentored under while at Marshall University both as a decorated sprinter as well as a student.
He earned a degree in Exercise Physiology while at Marshall and continued his post-graduate studies at the University of Florida under the tutelage of another great professor of speed, Gators track and field coach Mike Halloway.
“There is so much that goes into it, as far as the scientific end,” Gochenour said. “Speed is a function of the central nervous system and impulses sent from the brain through your body determine speed. The faster you send those impulses the faster you become.
Dr. Shepherd taught me to over-speed the athlete, or to make them go beyond their normal capabilities. I accomplish this by using things like high-speed treadmills to make them run faster or bungee cords to add resistance. Essentially, over time, muscle memory reproduces the speed and explosiveness which these things create.”
All the science however does not come without a hefty price tag. Building Speed Source has been quite an investment. Consider $25,000 in turf flooring, $25,000 for the industry’s most accurate body fat assessment pod, which looks like a giant egg, and another $35,000 for what you could describe as the Mercedes Benz of treadmills, a German Woodway Treadmill which reaches speeds of 25 miles per hour. Throw in a sand pit, those bungee cords and a host of other toys and it’s easy to see that his facility goes far beyond what you might find at your neighbor gym.
In addition to all the bells and whistles, Gochenour knows the ABCs of advanced conditioning. He does the plyometic training, Olympic style lifting, stretching, box jumps, resistance sprinting and super sets.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
Combined training and sports specific conditioning has become big business. With more and more dollars being pumped into the economy through sports, there is no foreseeing where the niche training like Gochenour provides might lead. And while performance centers such as Speed Source Athletics are popping up all over the country, there are only a handful of names that have the experience and credibility to attract the who’s who of professional athletes.
With a rapidly increasing resume, Gochenour is certainly on his way to being considered among the elite.
“My goal is to be named in the same sentence with the two most recognizable and respected names in the business, Tom Shaw and Chip Smith,” Gochenour said. “I’ve learned a lot so far and every day the players teach me even more through feedback. And I love Tampa and don’t ever plan to leave here so hopefully we’ll be seeing more and more athletes coming here in their off seasons.”
For further information on Speed Source Athletics go to www.source4speed.com or call 813-612-9721. Speed Source Athletics is located inside Powerhouse Gym, Downtown Tampa, 1120 E Kennedy Blvd.
