Gibbie Duval has been a strength and conditioning coach with the Xplosive Edge since the fall of 2004, and has become the Director of Athletic Performance since then. For many years, Gibbie and his brother Zach, now head strength coach and director of athletic performance at Buffalo University, have had and maintain a close relationship with Boyd Epley who had so much success with the "Husker Power" program for many years at Nebraska. All of the programs offered at Xplosive Edge mimic many valuable principles that stem out of the "10 Husker Power Principles established by Boyd many years ago. Gibbie is a member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association and participates in several strength and fitness symposiums across the country. Gibbie is also the founder of Tri-Planar Performance, a consultation company devised to educate strength and conditioning professionals around the country on the importance of Postural Restoration and Integration into strength and conditioning and programming. Gibbie has consulted for many high schools, colleges, and universities around the nation already and worked with IMG Sports Academies in 2011. Gibbie is certified by the United States of America Weightlifting Association and holds a Sports Performance Coach Certification. Gibbie also holds a certification through the Tudor Bompa Institute as a "Strength and Conditioning Expert." Gibbie also contributes and writes articles and research for Ken Kontor's Performance Conditioning Inc. as well as Stack Magazine and also contributes to the Postural Restoration Institute with research and development on the Integration of Postural Restoration into Strength and Conditioning programs.

Gibbie also has an extensive background training several clubs (soccer, football, baseball, volleyball) in the Omaha area as well as several professional and collegiate athletes. Gibbie attended the University of Nebraska Omaha where he received his Bachelors Degree in Exercise Science and was a collegiate baseball player. While living in Kansas City, Gibbie was fortunate enough to be able to study under the legendary Romanian Olympic coach Istvan Javorek. Istvan was the original creator of the "dumbbell complex" and Gibbie was able to work with several Olympic athletes on sports performance enhancement and injury prevention programs. Gibbie also serves as a strength and conditioning consultant and travels the country teaching Postural Restoration integration. Gibbie also serves as a consultant to several editorials and magazines on athletic performance and injury prevention. To date, Gibbie has worked with 10 NFL athletes and 6 NHL athletes and was also the head strength coach for the Omaha Vipers. Gibbie has also trained an Olympic Gold Medalist in the bobsled winter Olympics. During his time at the Xplosive Edge, in close conjunction with his brother Zach and Director Alex Mason of the Omaha FC, Gibbie has consulted for Manchester United, Fulham, Crystal Palace, and Celtic and has also worked with and trained many athletes for Sporting KC.

The baseline testing gave them and their parents something measurable by which to compare their son's current capabilities against others at their age and those at the next level. I fully expect many of the players that participated, and some that were not able to the first time around, to sign-up for up-coming sessions.

Also, thank you for being flexible with us on the scheduling. It helped us to incorporate X-Factor into our soccer training sessions that were already scheduled and to minimize the impact on their parents and time.

Jason Black
OFC 99/00 Boys

---

I might have a little more experience with Xplosive Edge than most of the parents since Aidan is my second child to go through the program. I am a big believer in Xplosive Edge for a couple of reasons. First, my son Bryan will be a senior at Creighton this year and plays on the soccer team. The summer before his senior year in high school he began the 4 day/week program with Xplosive Edge. When he came to Creighton the Strength and Conditioning coach employed many of the same drills that Xplosive Edge uses.

In the spring of his freshman year he weighed 229 pounds, had a 31 inch vertical leap and ran a 4.1 pro-agility. The S&C coach left and the soccer coaches took over much of the training. They were concerned that Bryan was overweight and they started him on a program that included a lot of distance running and no lifting. This past spring he weighed 210 pounds and had a 26 inch vertical leap, they didn’t do a pro-agility but it would have been slower as indicated by his decreased vertical leap.

What they succeeded in doing was taking 19 pounds of muscle off of him while decreasing his athleticism. Secondly, I try to find as many scientific articles as possible about strength and conditioning for athletes and what I have found is that the techniques employed by Xplosive Edge (weight lifting and high intensity running drills) have been shown to produce the greatest increases in explosiveness and endurance. Lower intensity training (distance running) actually decreases explosiveness because it causes increased growth of slow twitch muscle fibers. Some of the articles have gone so far as to say low-intensity training should be eliminated from a power athletes training. Soccer, like most of the sports our kids play, are power sports. Think back to State Cup 2007. The 3-0 game against CSA was one of the most dominant performances I have ever seen. I think over the last couple of years our girls have lost some of the physicality they used to have since they stopped doing Xedge.

Concerned Parent,
Eric