PEDAL TO THE MEDAL—Richard Diaz, owner of DHP Elite Training, offers state-of-the-art sports training to Camarillo and Southern California athletes from his facility on Ventura Boulevard in Old Town. To better show what he does inside his state-of-the-art sports training facility just off Ventura Boulevard in Old Town Camarillo, Richard Diaz boots up the video clip and hits play.

The flat-screen television bolted to a wall inside the $250,000 workout room at DHP Elite Training facility shows Lee Mondol, a 21-year-old Ventura resident, poised to jump onto Diaz’s high-speed treadmill.

In the video taken two years ago, the hum of the treadmill’s belt begins to whir as Diaz nudges it faster. Mondol, wearing a specially designed harness to decrease his body weight, jumps on the treadmill and begins to run incredibly fast.

As Diaz chirps commands, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound quarterback responds by first running straight ahead, then sideways—left then right—and finally backwards before he does the rotation all over again—faster than most people run forward.

Mondol, who in 2006 had left the University of Michigan, where he spent a redshirt season warming the bench, returned to Ventura the following year and took the starting quarterback job at Ventura College.

J.K. Mondol, his father, said his son began working out with Diaz to trim weight and improve his agility.

“The training made a huge difference in his game,” said the dad, who was introduced to Diaz when he sought the personal trainer a few years back to correct the gait of his younger son, Max.

“It’s not just his machines,” Mondol said. “It’s the knowledge of what Richard does.”

Mondol said he saw tremendous growth in his son’s mobility on the football field.

“It gave him huge cutting capability,” Mondol said. “He was running lightning fast.”

Lee Mondol made an immediate impact at Ventura College. He would go on to lead the team to a conference championship and a win at the Southern California Bowl in 2008.

The quarterback was given a full scholarship at South Dakota State University, where he is battling it out with three other players for the starting quarterback slot at the Division I school.

As for younger brother Max, his gait has long since been corrected. He was recently named the starting quarterback at Pacifica High School.

“Every person that comes in here comes in with a problem,” said Diaz, a Camarillo resident. “I have to come up with a solution.”

He said working with athletes has been a passion of his for nearly 30 years, and it’s the different challenges each client faces that makes it worth getting to work at 5 a.m. for a training session.

“The thing that is interesting for me now is that every day is a whole unique set of challenges,” said Diaz, who opened his facility three years ago after working for 26 years with competitive athletes in California and much of the Southwest.

His clients have included the Los Angeles Kings hockey team and, most recently, Chris John, an Indonesian-born professional boxer who will step into the ring Sept. 19 to defend his WBA featherweight title against Rocky Juarez. The bout will be televised on HBO.

Diaz said that with the treadmill he can train an athlete’s nervous system to trigger the muscles to react quicker than in training sessions held outdoors on a track.

“It’s a function of training the central nervous system,” Diaz said.

Diaz said it’s not so much the muscles as it is the central nervous system that makes a hand move quickly away from an open flame. By forcing the legs and feet to move quickly on a fastmoving treadmill, he can train the muscle fibers to fire quicker.

Diaz also uses slow-motion video to help athletes improve their foot positioning to improve their balance and agility. For older clients, Diaz said, he can help correct a misaligned gait, often relieving pain for joggers and distance walkers.

Diaz employs an array of tools to help athletes improve strength, speed and conditioning. From the basic pull-up bar to a vibrating foot pad in his weight room used to build muscle faster, Diaz offers a variety of services for sports training and weight loss.

A proponent of both exercise and eating properly, Diaz said his personal workout programs include metabolism assessments and one-on-one training sessions. His clients range in age from early teens to late 70s; sessions include everything from corrective training to speed work.

During September his business will provide free to Camarillo residents resting metabolic assessments, body fat testing and other health-related measurements.

Diaz said although he never intended to work with young athletes, a growing number of his clients are high school students looking to improve in their sports.

He said the most successful athletes he’s worked with were talented but also had a desire to win and the discipline to train.

Diaz’s wife of 10 years, Lori, runs the day-to-day operations and is also the onsite nutritionist.

Business has dropped about 20 percent in the past year, Diaz said, which he attributes to a lack of marketing, not a soft economy, especially in a sportsminded region like Ventura County.

“It’s the nature of Southern Californians to invest more where sports are concerned,” he said, adding that the services he offers are rare in Camarillo and the rest of the county. “You’d be hardpressed to find another place like this in the area,” he said.

J.K. Mondol remains a fan of Diaz.

“If you have a kid who has the size for a scholarship but not the quickness, and you send them to Richard in the ninth grade, forget about it,” Mondol said. “They’ll be head and shoulders above the other kids.”

For more information about DHP, call (805) 484-1347 or visit www.diazhumanperformance.com.