Paragon’s latest metabolic testing & nutrition programs, MSR training equipment, and MSR training programs are transforming power & speed training. They allow any level of athlete in any sport to get into superior shape with 75% less training — with 50% less training on a given day, and in 50% fewer days.
Since 1992, Paragon’s consistent success with Pro & Olympic Athletes has been due to a wide range of innovative research and development projects. These included the design, development, and testing of:
Due to these projects, various Paragon programs and technologies became world leaders in certain fields, and include:
These technologies were initially the product of R&D programs to improve Canadian athletic performance and to reduce & rehabilitate athletic injury.
Our success would not have been possible without the dedication and intuition of our talented athletes & other supportive partners who collaborated on research projects with Paragon Director of Research, Sam Bock. Paragon’s Pro & Olympic Athletes provided valuable training data and detailed oral feedback necessary to determine the effectiveness of new ideas, equipment, nutrition, and other technology being tested.
Paragon’s consistent ability to develop transformational innovation is due to the unique “research & engineering interface” between our high level athletes and the designers & researchers developing new training programs and equipment to improve their performance. This was possible due to Bock’s combined role of researcher/designer and athlete/coach. He effectively explains his athlete’s needs to the other designers & engineers, bio-mechanists, bio-chemists, and doctors working with Paragon and its athletes.
Prior to becoming a fulltime athlete, a major focus of Bock’s research work since 1979 has been the study and research of theoretical physics, nuclear chemistry, and environmental & health sciences. Bock earned his BA in Environmental Studies / Economics in 1982 from Middlebury College in Vermont, where his thesis was an economic / scientific analysis and forecast of North America’s energy needs and technology use — focusing on fossil fuels, nuclear power and alternative sources. It accurately forecast the decline of the American nuclear power industry due to excess ionizing radiation and associated metal fatigue in reactor cores and heat exchangers. After college, Bock worked on Wall Street and in Denver in energy related project finance, before returning to Canada to become a fulltime bobsled athlete in 1986, and an athlete/coach in 1989.
In 1987, to further improve his and his teammate’s chances of success, Bock began intensive research into nutrition chemistry, sport related bio-chemistry & mechanics, and engineering to help develop new coaching methods, training programs, and equipment. Paragon was subsequently founded in 1989 to research, develop and manufacture new sports equipment for competition and training. Paragon’s superior athletic results came quickly, and within 3 years Paragon’s athletes began leaving their mark on the world stage. See Milestones in Medicine and Sport.
Paragon’s innovations and patented sports equipment designs have produced numerous world records and many unprecedented & surprising performance levels in many sports.
Athletes trained directly under Bock’s coaching and with various Paragon’s technologies have produced 25+ world bests/records, 35+ World Cup medals, Olympic Gold, several world championship medals, as well as All-star performances in the NHL. See Pro & Olympic Athletes.
Other athletes & coaches using Paragon designed nutrition technologies, metabolic testing, custom training equipment & apparel, and/or racing equipment have won dozens of Olympic & World medals and many awards at professional levels either in hockey, football, track & field, bobsleigh, swimming, and other sports.
In addition to ongoing research and community work, the company continues to provide training, nutrition, and customized equipment consulting to top professional and amateur athletes, as well as design and manufacturing consulting to major sports equipment manufacturers. See Sport Manufacturing Clients.
Paragon worked with NIKE and adidas to design revolutionary sports product, including Michael Johnson’s 1996 NIKE gold shoes; the ultra-light adidas sprint shoes worn by Donovan Bailey in the June 1997 “World Fastest Man” race held between Bailey and Johnson; and the adidas Sydney 2000 line of track and field shoes. We designed skates for Gary Roberts with Graf. We also provided analysis of bio-mechanical research and designed technical marketing materials for Mondo, official supplier of track surfaces to the IAAF and Summer Olympics.
Paragon continues to develop various sport-related technologies and is also working to develop new medical technologies with McGill and our other research partners. That ongoing research, which was initially begun to naturally improve physical and mental performance in sport, is now being successfully applied to research and development of new medicines and metabolic diagnostic technologies to reverse many types of degenerative disease now affecting our modern world. See Medical Case Studies.
Paragon’s nutrition chemistry research and targeted nutrition programs helped “clean” Canadian and international athletes compete in sports rife with steroid use. Those athletes surprised their competitors, set many world records/bests, and won Olympic and World Championship medals.
Paragon’s bio-chemical analysis & nutrition chemistry research began in 1987 to help athletes find alternatives to steroid use in high-level power training (one year prior to the Ben Johnson steroid scandal at the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics). During the 1980’s & 90’s anabolic steroid use in sport in targeted one basic aspect of human biochemistry — increased RNA synthesis at the cellular level.
At that time, many in sport believed that the use of such drugs was the only way to further improve human performance beyond the perceived natural boundaries of performance. In fact, the records set at the 1988 Winter and Summer Olympics were so superior, many thought that with the advent of sophisticated drug testing those levels might not be achieved again for decades. Initially that sentiment appeared correct, as for the next few years athletic performances began to fall off in most power sports.
However, Bock and Paragon took a different approach to improving human performance. Whereas steroids target one aspect of human biochemistry, Bock’s early research showed that:
He hypothesized that most western athletes were probably malnourished, and lacking important nutrients for health and superior athletic performance. If this could be corrected, athletes might approach levels of athletic performance previously only considered possible with drugs.
Bock researched the most important nutrients for athletes, determined which ones needed to be enhanced for athletics, and made further adjustments for mineral depletion, environmental contamination, and other factors affecting the modern food chain. With compounding pharmacists, he prepared and tested supplements and nutrition regimens for himself and the athletes he was training.
The athletic results achieved with Paragon’s biochemical analysis and targeted nutrition regimens were rapid and unprecedented. Paragon athletes set the first of many world records 4 years later in 1992. They (and others using them) went on to set world records in their sports, in many cases far surpassing those set in 1988 using steroids.
With the food supply becoming increasingly processed, demineralised, and contaminated with toxins, in 2002 Paragon began researching methods for the testing of testing metabolism and toxins to further help athletes avoid hidden health problems impacting full health & performance. We began working with world leading Research and Testing Laboratories and quickly uncovered hidden metabolic imbalances and mercury & heavy metal toxicities that were impacting the performance of most athletes tested. Moreover, our metabolic rebalancing and body cleansing programs were quickly shown to be effective in the follow-up testing done with those athletes.
These latest innovations in metabolic testing have continued to generate more unprecedented sport performances. For more information see Paragon Milestones in Sport.
In order to compete at a the highest levels in bobsleigh, track & field, and football, beginning in 1987 Bock and his Paragon athletes began to intensively study the training programs and mechanics of the world’s leading athletes and coaches. Two things become quickly apparent:
To address these problems, over a 3 year period Bock and Paragon’s Olympic team athletes conducted various experiments in hundreds of electronically timed sprint practices and weight lifting sessions to initially determine how to best modify the training programs and diets for Paragon’s clean, drug-free athletes.
By 1989 Paragon was developing Canada’s fastest and most powerful bobsled athletes. Its teams broke all previous national summer push-training records. Then in 1992 Pierre Leuders and Paragon’s Jack Pyc tied the world 2-man bobsled pushing record on Calgary’s Olympic track, winning Canada’s first ever 2-man bobsled World Cup gold medal. By 1994 Dave MacEachern and Jack Pyc become the number 1 & 2 top bobsled pushing athletes in the world, setting an unmatched 18 straight world push track records, one in every race of the long 5 month season, including both the 2 and 4 man events at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics. MacEachern became the first and only 2- man brakeman in Olympic history to push faster than every other nation’s 4- man Team. Paragon developed athletes were the world’s fastest bobsled pushers for 3 consecutive Olympics, in 1994, 1998, and 2002.
Ever since then, athletes benefiting from Paragon’s ongoing training research and innovation have consistently achieved unprecedented performances, set records, and/or won medals & championships in wide range of sports from the NHL hockey to Olympic Track & Field.
While many prospective coaches and athletes might be disappointed to read this, most literature and coaching certification programs on high level training are lacking critical training, periodization, and nutrition information necessary for an athlete to develop quickly and properly.
The best places to learn about the most effective and advanced training programs for sport are from the world’s most successful coaches who can be found in various parts of the world training their top athletes. However their knowledge is often a closely guarded secret.
For more than two decades Paragon has conducted thousands of hours of research & testing on the ultimate affects of training techniques & equipment, bio-mechanical factors, dietary factors, rest & recovery, and a wide range of therapies on an athlete’s physical and mental performance.
To do this effectively required extensive in-depth study of the body’s function as a whole, bio-chemistry, agri-business and food production & processing, and the history of modern sport training since the early 1900’s.
The unprecedented athletic performance results of Paragon’s athletes demonstrate that this research process has shattered much conventional theory on advanced athletic training, particularly as relates to the:
For more on Paragon’s athletic training research please see Why Paragon Athletes Succeed: An Introduction to Paragon Training Methods.
Paragon Motor-Specific Resistance (MSR) Training can provide any athlete with the most advanced strength & speed training available. It was quietly developed to give top Canadian amateur and professional athletes an edge on the world stage.
Here’s why: Most conventional power training done in the gym is done in an up and down vertical motion against gravity. However most sport involves sport-specific forward, backward, or lateral horizontal movement. Paragon’s training methods and equipment are designed to make you stronger in the horizontal and other sport-specific motions as well. And because we have pioneered modern horizontal & sports-specific power training, our athletes are seeing huge gains in any sport that requires horizontal speed, power, and endurance.
No one else has developed such training methods. For this reason, unless an athlete is using our new training technologies, no matter how good they already are, that athlete will not have been able to fully develop horizontally related strength. For this reason, every athlete who has used these new systems and programs has seen the similar huge gains in speed and endurance, regardless of previous athletic ability. This included world record holders in sport who have helped develop and test our equipment.
Paragon began development & testing of its patented motor specific training technologies In 1999. It is designed for use in any sport and allows exceptional gains in athletic speed, strength, endurance, and flexibility. A few examples: