The key insight? Skill must be trained specifically within your sport—but the rest can be developed generally and applied across sports. From this we get the ATHLETE FIRST mentality. This means outside of your sport, you just train to be a great athlete in general. You directly target the key physical abilities using simple methods, things like sprinting, jumping as high as possible, and doing fundamental strength exercises. This is how you become a physical force of nature. Then you develop the specific skills and IQ for your sport by actually playing and practicing.

This philosophy cuts out the fluff. It eliminates “cross breed” training that looks halfway like sport skill and halfway like physical development. It eliminates fancy nonsense exercises and random skills like balancing on exercise balls. The focus is on targeted, proven methods that help athletes move better, sprint faster, and perform at a higher level.

There is certainly much more to athletic development than just identifying effective exercises. For further knowledge, please explore the rest of the site. The ultimate goal of 2X Athlete is to develop incredible athletes and help educate people on how to train for their sport intelligently. There is a lot of great information here, so please take advantage. Thanks for visiting.

ORIGINS

2X Athlete was created by athletic development coach, Daniel Back, most widely known as the founder of Jump Science. Since his coaching and educational material have never been limited to jump training and have expanded into speed development in particular, he sought to create a brand to encompass the two realms (thus the name 2X).

The name also refers to the myosin 2X isoform, the type of protein molecule with the fastest twitch capabilities found in muscle fibers.

In the 2X logo you can see the vertical force vs time waveform from a notable study on the physics of maximum velocity.

About Coach Back

As a young kid in Milwaukee, WI, I participated in lots of sports but developed an obsession with basketball. This naturally led to wanting to dunk. At age 13 I began training my vertical with low rim dunking in the driveway and lifting weights with an old weight set that I had crammed into my small basement bedroom. I quickly began to see real results, which got me hooked on the process. Consistent training along with puberty and a growth spurt led to adding 12 inches to my vertical jump within a year and throwing down my first dunk at 14 years old. This experience sparked my passion for athletic development. I continued to work hard and learn. As a high school sophomore, I was touching the top of the box on the backboard and already knew I wanted to make a career out of training.

I started coaching others in college in 2009, helping a few friends who wanted to dunk. They achieved some notable results, and this led to opportunities to work with university athletes, a local D1 recruit, and even leading preseason training for the college basketball team, all while I was still an undergraduate student. That hands-on experience, combined with a degree in Exercise Science from a great program at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, allowed me to learn and gain coaching skills that laid the foundation for my career.

Since 2014 I have served as an athletic development coach at Xceleration Sports Performance Lab in Austin, TX. I work with athletes in a wide variety of sports but have a particular affinity for track and field (and dunking, of course).

At the same time, Jump Science and now 2X Athlete, have allowed me to have impact on athletes across the globe through educational material, consultation, and training programs. My mission is to combine science, practical experience, and hard work to help athletes reach their full potential.