One of the top Strength and Conditioning gurus Ramji Srinivasan, one who has always stepped up to assist India’s athletes, has installed Xeroburst, designed to help athletes develop their neuro-muscular skills and improve their reaction times, in the Sports Dynamix high-performance centre in Chennai. What’s more its designed and made in India.
The excitement is palpable in Ramji Srinivasan’s voice when he speaks about the new piece of equipment in Sports Dynamics. “The idea is to rise from the barbells and dumbbells and the cross aspect of fitness and sports. The five-station Xeroburst, designed by The Mover Lab in Bengaluru, will help the athlete train the mind and body at the same time,” he said.
“At the end of the day, that matters in high level competition. For, it is not just a question of how strong or fast or agile an athlete is, it is also about mind and body connect. It is about how the athlete’s body reacts to the stimulus in high pressure situations. Xeroburst can empower an athlete’s decision-making abilities even when the athlete is fatigued,” Ramji Srinivasan said.
“The more you train, you create more neuromuscular pathways. You can no longer bank only on being physically fit. You need to have great hand-eye coordination, your neuro-muscular responses have to be sharp. Such equipment will help athletes garner, train and record progression over a period of 12 weeks,” he says.
Back in 2013, Sports Dynamix was the first high performance centre in India to install Dynavision to aid athletes enhance their peripheral awareness and decision-making under time constraints. Xeroburst appears a natural progression since it incorporates a whole body workout.
Over a year and a half, a team that includes neuroscientists, sports coaches, psychologists, software experts as well as the strength and conditioning trainers has been working on this innovation. It can only be hoped that developing and elite athletes from a range of sports can benefit from the use of such home grown equipment and gain a cutting edge.
“Xeroburst addresses five key systems – reaction speed, movement accuracy, decision-making, motor control and coordination as well as game time focus and resilience. It encompasses performance readiness through training under real-game intensity, performance enhancement through attention regulation, motor control and focus as well as neural endurance,” he said.
Ramji Srinivasan said extensive trials were conducted before unveiling Xeroburst. “We have changed a few things over time before making it available to public at large. For instance, we have worked on enhancing the pressure sensitive pads because the pressure applied by a youngster will be different to a professional athlete. We have worked on such issues,” he said.
He is taking care to ensure that only a trained set of professionals working with Xeroburst to collect. and analyse data. “By itself, data is of no use. Inferences have to be drawn and percolated in the right manner to the right people. We are on a learning curve but we are trying to harness the data, process it and give the right information to the athlete,” he said.
His interdisciplinary approach stems from his unending quest for knowledge and a deep desire to contribute to India’s growth story in sports. “Yes, I’m into Strength and Conditioning but, beyond a point, you reach a plateau whichever way you cut the cake. There are only certain number of bones and muscles in the human body and certain range of motion,” he explains.
“The mind, nobody has comprehended its expanse. A lot of people have incorporated mind and body in sync for peak performance. With fitness being equal, the mind is the performance multiplier and differentiates a good athlete from an iconic athlete,” Ramji Srinivasan said, offering an insight into his thinking,“I have always been interested in incorporating mind training with the fitness regime because reading the opponent, reading movement patterns and reacting to it helps an athlete make the best decisions under pressure, reducing reaction time. We keep talking about these parameters but have not been training for that. It is one of the missing links in Indian sport,” he said.
Photo: Courtesy Sports Dynamix
