Imagine your son or daughter having access to the best speed coaches in the world.

No, not the Power Source staff, but thank you if that was your first thought :)

I'm referring to a new organization, the Speed Science Institute (SSI), run by three leading experts in the field of athletic development.

The first member is Ken Clark, the most acclaimed speed researcher on the planet. He knows better than anyone what makes athletes faster, and what doesn't.

Next is Peter Ruppe, creator of the Nike SPARQ system, which, at its peak in the early 2010's, was testing over 200,000 athletes annually.

Peter understands which measurements correlate best with elite performance in a range of sports.

Finally, there's our guy Les Spellman, founder of Universal Speed Rating.

Les' superpower is putting research into practice. Best known for training most of the top players in the NFL draft, he's also the performance director of Surf City soccer in San Diego, widely known for having one of the best player development programs in the nation.

Ken, Peter, and Les have joined forces, using their combined knowledge to create a system they hope will revolutionize the way youth athletes develop.

Their system, like many technological advances, follows a traditional feedback loop:

Train --> Test --> Analyze --> Improve

Athletes train to enhance speed and power, then are tested to measure progress.

In one little gym like ours, trends can be hard to spot.

But in a national organization, inputting hundreds of thousands of data points annually, clear patterns emerge.

Good ideas are kept, poor ones replaced, with programming becoming more effective each time through the process.

And if Peter Ruppe's prediction is correct, we are just getting started in helping people train to improve for their sport.

He believes, due to advances in video and timing technology which weren't available during the Nike SPARQ era, today's athlete can make profound leaps in their speed and power.

Not just brute strength, or muscle size, but actual athletic performance which helps players dominate their sport.

So why does all this matter for you, and your family?

If your son or daughter is part of our Power Source program, they now have access to this cutting edge training, as we are a part of their network.

The results so far in 2026 have been eye opening, as our Speed School athletes can attest.

Multiple male athletes running 21 MPH or higher.

A female athlete nearly hitting 20 MPH.

And a whole host of younger athletes hitting personal best speeds every week.

SSI's influence is making an impact in our group personal training classes, too, where we now have better methods to increase strength and power that transfers back to the sport.

Training is the first step, but its the testing which shows whether the exercises are actually helping.

SSI's testing model includes 4 key areas:

• Max velocity

• Acceleration

• Change of direction

• Power

Athletes can use their scores to identify areas of need, which they can use their off-season to improve on.

To match the SSI model, we've adapted our testing at the gym to score athletes more often, in each of the above categories.

It is an exciting time to be an athlete!

More opportunity to improve, for the same time and effort commitment, than any past generation had access to.

We may not be the smartest coaches in the world here at Power Source, but we are extremely fortunate to have a direct link to those who are.

Which means you do, too.