Hi - I’m Eric Kaye, Founder of Kayezen and I would like to take a moment of your time to share my personal journey with you.

I’m 58, played lacrosse in high school and college and am a lifelong athlete.  While I hung up my lacrosse cleats after college, I’ve been a corporate athlete for decades and love to ski aggressively, mountain bike and play golf competitively.

Over the years I’ve found that getting in an early morning workout with my trainer prepared me for the day.   If I miss a workout my day is a slog.  On the other hand, a great training session wakes me up.  It clears my head and gives me an early feeling of accomplishment and STRENGTH that carries me through the day with increased CONFIDENCE  and mental RESILIENCE. I’ll come back to this in a bit, but that is Kayezen’s purpose, to help people at all stages of life build their STRENGTH, CONFIDENCE and RESILIENCE.

But one winter day, when I was in my mid 40s, I pushed too hard.  I was training the same way I did in college; chest, back and biceps one day - shoulders, legs and triceps the next day.   I did not know how much the training world had evolved.  I was just doing what I knew and ended up putting too much weight on a leg press machine and herniating a disc in my L4/L5. 

Unfortunately the injury was severe and ultimately resulted in a fragment breaking away and what my neurosurgeon informed me was a “dropped foot”.  In an instant I went from a corporate athlete and weekend warrior to not being able to get off the floor.  It took six months before I could really workout again, but the damage is permanent and I will forever need to do exercises that strengthen the support areas for my lower back. 

But that didn’t stop me and it never will.   This was a major set-back, but also an opportunity to get better, to get smarter. That’s my mindset and it’s the mindset of our team and partners.  I started physical therapy and learned a ton. And the lessons were straightforward.  Why was I training individual muscles with movements that most of the time did not translate into athletic or functional performance, and compromising my results with bad form and posture that was counterproductive because I was always looking to take my lifts to the next “weight level”?   Did I really need bigger biceps, chest, quads at this stage of life?  

My physical therapy led me to understand that for me, and any lifelong athlete, while strength is  important, range of motion, mobility, endurance and longevity are also critical elements for an athlete’s performance.   What was truly exciting, the top athletes and teams around the world had been placing a greater emphasis on training this way for a while.  They use terms like fascia, hypertrophy, multiplanar training, time under tension - but essentially the traditional “strength and conditioning” I did in college had come a long way to incorporate more of a performance focus instead of the “lift capacity” I had continued to train with until my injury.

A key part of my physical therapy was incorporating resistance bands and tubes.   And I loved them!   First because I could “train” while recovering with very light resistance levels.  But as my strength returned, I also understood that they are some of the best tools for building the other critical elements for athletic performance - range of motion, mobility, endurance and longevity.  And I also found they placed much less strain on my tendons and joints.  And I could take them anywhere and use them anytime.

But I also saw tubes and bands could use a massive upgrade and that the applications, if we got it right, could help almost everyone at some time in their lives.  And that’s what led to Kayezen retaining some of the best industrial designers and engineers in the fitness industry to build a system that solved many of the friction points I saw and we confirmed were widely experienced.  The need for faster set-up times, instant resistance level changes, more comfortable accessories and reduced snap-back risk.

We spent 5 years developing and testing prototypes and during this process I had the chance to meet Seth “Formanator” Forman, a local strength and conditioning and performance coach who had previously worked at IMG.  Formanator has a great reputation for coaching athletes and working with orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists to get their clients back on the field after an injury.  Most importantly, we had the same mindset.

Seth saw what we were doing, loved it and two days later we had a full system in his training center.  And then he took what VECTOR was capable of delivering to a whole new level with multiplanar single and multiple VECTOR training and confirmed the increased activation we were feeling with EMG sensors linked to a 3D motion capture system.   Thanks to Seth, within 2 years we were working with some of the top professional teams and athletes, major universities, physical therapy clinics and teaching hospitals.   

Seth’s a very technical guy, and that’s why we love him.  But to me, and likely your clients as well, it’s all about feel, motivation and results.  While he loves to talk about multiplanar and time under tension, in reality the concepts are very simple.  Multiplanar training means doing exercises that challenge me from so many different angles or “vectors” that I’m better prepared to absorb, accept, and redirect force when I’m swinging a golf club, skiing, mountain biking, or quickly reacting if something unexpected happens.   Time under tension, even easier.  I don’t need to blow out tons of reps for results.  In fact, in many ways it can be counter-productive.  The other big win - these two concepts can accelerate my workouts when I’m pressed for time. 

As Seth and I like to joke, we have a great group of people that invented the hardware, but it’s really the software that’s now key to the system.  And Seth and our community of top minds in sports performance, physical therapy and clinical applications continue to build our “software”.  They are always adding to the ever growing library of options we share so like-minded professionals can advance how we train or help people recover.  As part of our community we will share what we are learning and will ask you to do the same so we can help more people build their STRENGTH, CONFIDENCE and RESILIENCE.

Now I’m not alone, it’s likely you have clients like me and there are millions of us out there looking for better solutions all the time.  As a company, we find our systems really resonate with clients that are lifelong athletes at any age level.  They have performance, functional fitness or injury recovery goals and are willing and often love to do the work.  From single sport middle and high school athletes, to an NFL wide receiver looking to gain a step, to a golfer looking to shoot their age, a grandparent looking to play pickleball with their grandchild or one of the tens of millions of people battling back from back, knee, shoulder, hip and or ankle injuries - it's part of who we are, it’s our mindset, it’s what gives us energy.  We are comfortable being uncomfortable. We find joy in continuously improving.   We live “Kayezen”.  Giving up is never an option   

I was warned to keep this short, that attention spans continue to shorten, so I thank you for learning more about Kayezen and why we exist.  We know our systems can significantly add to the training options you offer with exercises that will help your clients at all levels.  We hope you will give us a chance to prove it to you.   If you share our mindset and purpose and have an interest in learning more, please set up a no pressure session with Seth.  The worst that will happen is you meet and get to know a very good dude.

Now if I could just get Seth to up his music choices…

Please set up a no pressure virtual session with Seth by clicking here.