Dr James Stoxen DC., FSSEMM (hon) is honored that photos of Dr Stoxen and Dr Yuri Verkhoshansky, are published in the preface of Dr Verkhoshansky’s last publication, “A compendium of Prof. Verkhoshansky’s answers with a preface on the related topics”

In 1987 and 1988 Dr Stoxen toured with the Unites States Powerlifting teams via the American Powerlifting Federation as their team doctor during the historic first and second powerlifting competitions with the Russians. During this time there was an incredible display of strengthen, power and a spirited competition. Some of the competitors were legend Ed Coan, Fred Hatfield, Ernie Frantz, and many others.

In the sports medicine there was a significant interchange between Dr Stoxen and the doctors of the State Committee for Sports and Physical Education of the USSR attending to the athletes at the meets.

Dr Stoxen knew the Soviet Union doctors were very highly trained so he asked Dr Ed Enos of the Institute of Comparative Physical Education in Montreal Canada to organize the first sports medicine course with the expert doctors and scientists from the State Committee for Sports and Physical Education of the USSR. The State Committee for Sports and Physical Education of the USSR agreed to organize the first sports medicine course with Dr Stoxen and Dr Ed Enos as course directors.

Both Dr Enos and Dr Stoxen worked together with the State Committee for Sports and Physical Education of the USSR and the State Central Order of Lennin Institute for Physical Culture Moscow USSR organized the two week long course, REHAB 670, Soviet Sports at the National Institute of Physical Culture and Sports Sciences, at the National Institute of Physical Culture and Sports Sciences. San Francisco State University offered one college credit to all doctors and scientists who attended.

The State Committee for Sports and Physical Education of the USSR asked Dr Stoxen made a list of the top 20 Soviet Union sports experts and Dr Ed Enos submitted it for the Russians to consider. The Russians were shocked that Dr Stoxen knew so many of the Russian experts and their body of work and asked how he knew so much about these top experts of their secret country behind the iron curtain.

Dr Stoxen had acquired over 400 Soviet Union sports medicine and training journals from the Soviet Union that were smuggled into the United States and translated into English. Dr Stoxen had read every journal from cover to cover, took notes and was implementing these Soviet secrets in the care of the USA Powerlifting Team members and select private clients who were breaking the national and world records.

To sum it up, Dr Stoxen knew the elite training and sports medicine secrets the Russian experts did not want anyone to know.

This is what prompted the Russian State committee to assign colonel Raginsky, a colonel in the KGB, to watch Dr Stoxen and his 70 sports medicine experts during their 2-week stay studying in Russia.

The bodyguards assigned to Dr Stoxen during these two weeks were weightlifting legends David Rigert and Sultan Rakhmanov.

Sultan Rakhmanov won the gold medal in the super heavyweight class of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow when his legendary teammate Vasily Alekseyev was eliminated after he failed three times to snatch 180 kg.

David Rigert was a legendary Olympic weightlifter from the Soviet Union who became one of the greatest weightlifters in history an extraordinary series of 68 World records including a gold medal in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal Canada.

At the conference he organized was interested in all of the Soviet lecturers. The one he was interested in particular was Doctor Professor Yuri Verhkoshansky. Yuri Verkhoshansky perhaps the most famous sports scientist of the century.

Professor Verkhoshansky was the father of modern plyometrics. It was at this time Dr Stoxen and Doctor Professor Verhkoshansky hit it off right away as Dr Stoxen had innovations Verkhoshansky was interested in and Dr Stoxen wanted to learn the secrets to plyometrics from Dr professor Verhkoshansky.

Later Dr Stoxen was honored when photos of Dr Stoxen and Dr Verkhoshansky, taken in 1989 were published in the preface of Dr Verkhoshansky’s last publication, “A compendium of Prof. Verkhoshansky’s answers with a preface on the related topics”

THE BIRTH OF THE HUMAN SPRING APPROACH

It was this this two week interchange of sports secrets where Dr Stoxen decided that there was a huge flaw in the established model of biomechanics named the inverted pendulum and the examination and treatment approaches that were based on this model of movement.

Dr Stoxen felt there was a huge flaw in this model as it stated the body moved with levers and a lever series. Doctors kept saying that levers could not absorb impacts and that is why the human body wasn’t designed to walk for too long and not run without the advent of shock absorbing shoes.

Dr Stoxen decided after his meeting with Dr Verhkoshansky in 1989 that the human body was both a lever and a giant integrated spring and it was this spring that better explained how the body moves, resists impacts, recycles energy and provides spaces for the safe passage of blood vessels and nerves.

Dr Stoxen was honored with an honorary fellowship presented by a member of the royal family, The Sultan of Pahang at the World Congress of Sports and Exercise Medicine in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia in 2015 for his development of the Integrated Spring-Mass Model and the Human Spring Approach to examining and treating patients as an integrated spring mechanism.