World's Fastest Treadmill
World's Fastest Treadmill
Locations | World's Fastest Treadmill | Vibration Plate | Dartfish® Video Analysis
The Noramco PT50
You read right, RRSMI owns the world's fastest treadmill with a top speed of 32 mph. Only five other locations on east coast have one. You may ask: Who needs a treadmill that goes 32 mph? We have the answer: you do!
Consider this: When Usain Bolt amazed the world at the 2008 Beijing Olympics by breaking the world record for the 100M and 200M dash, his top speed reached 27.28 mph. Even he can’t keep up with our treadmill! However, by using our compressed air Unweighting system, Bolt would be able to train at even faster speeds than he recorded at the Olympics. The Pneu-Gait system can actually remove an exact amount of body weight to the pound. The harness shown will lift the athlete the desired amount, effectively removing weight by reversing gravity on the body.
Now imagine Usain Bolt running that same 100M dash with the same muscle power and speed, if he were 30, 50, even 100 pounds lighter. He could break that world record again, running speeds up to 30+ mph. You can run faster, too, using our cutting-edge technology.
Although it’s easy to see how our treadmill works for sprinters, you may be wondering how it would help team sport athletes become quicker, faster, and more athletic. Clearly you can’t play any sport strapped into a harness over a treadmill! This training works so effectively because it’s rooted in what physical therapists love so much: science. If we examine running speed in its simplest form, straight ahead speed, there are only three ways to increase it:
- Increase stride length
- Increase turnover (the speed that the feet move)
- Increase both 1 and 2
This is not a major scientific breakthrough. The Greeks at the first Olympiad likely understood this principle. Since that time though, there have been many advances in how to train in order to increase both 1 and 2.
One specific type of training is called overspeed training. Most athletes are somewhat familiar with this type of speed training. It involves using an outside variable to in essence "trick" the body to run faster than normal. For example, imagine you are running down a grassy hill. In order to keep up with the increased momentum caused by gravity, you must move your feet faster, take longer strides, or both. If you don’t, you will soon be pulling grass out of your teeth! Used properly, this type of overspeed training is effective for increasing stride length and turnover, leading to overall increased speed on a level surface. NFL legend Jerry Rice trained running downhills with some success.
Another type of overspeed training popular in the 1990's used an elastic band. "Bungee chord" training improved on Rice’s overspeed method because you could perform it on a flat surface, which more closely matched your sport’s surface. The chord is pulled taught in front of an athlete by another person or just attached to a stationary structure. The athlete then begins to sprint and is pulled forward by the band. Once again the athlete must increase stride length, turnover, or both to avoid eating grass.
So, how is training on our treadmill different from these two options? As you can see, with both of these training methods you could get seriously injured. No athlete wants to succumb to a season-ending injury even before the first whistle blows. Our treadmills, equipped with the Pneu-Gait Unweighting system, eliminate the possibility of falling. If you lose your footing, the system simply catches you, you put your feet down on the side of the treadmill, and resume your workout.
Great! You will never get injured by a fall, but how does this system make you faster? The real secret is in your neurological system. Don’t get nervous, we won’t overwhelm you with medical terms. Your neurological system is simply the hardwiring of your body. Your brain tells your body what to do. And your body has one commandment it will follow above all others: Take care of #1. It has an amazing defense system designed to keep you safe. What does this have to do with overspeed training?
If you run down hills or with a bungee chord, at some predetermined speed your body will put on the brakes for fear of falling over and hurting itself. Therefore, you will never hit your peak due to your neurological system and its ability to stop you from hurting yourself. By putting your body in a harness, we are insuring that you can’t get injured from a fall. When your body is confident it cannot be hurt, your neurological system frees you to attempt running at higher speeds. This allows us to increase the speed of the treadmill, forcing you to increase stride length, turnover, and your overall speed.
Once your body knows it can run at a higher speed, that speed becomes stored on your internal hard drive, aka, your brain. When you play your sport, your body draws on these past experiences to get your muscles to fire faster and more powerfully in order to get you moving faster!
Check out http://www.pneumex.com/id32.html to see a video tutorial on the many uses of our Unweighting treadmill.
