I’ll expand on this in the near future, but for now — here’s an executive summary and some links:
2001 Model TredSledBack in my senior year of college, Randy Harney and I along with my team of students created a football training device for our engineering senior project. It was a blocking sled on rails that was attached to a disk brake for resistance.
After college, Randy and I developed the idea into a blocking sled on a treadmill. The TredSled was born. Randy’s football experience as a former player and coach along with his education in kinesiology provided the ideas that drove this project forward. I provided the mechanical know how and machine shop to make it real.
After creating a company, obtaining a small amount of investors and building our first prototype, we starting the process of negotiating with sports manufacturers for production. We forged a relationship with Roger’s Athletics and they began producing the first 100 units.
Randy and I continued to improve the design and kept ourselves busy working nearly 80 hour weeks producing the electronic boxes that ran the machine. I literally hand soldered the ~150 components in each PCB board for the first 200 Tredsleds. We also spent a good deal of time traveling to football shows and promoting the TredSled to local high schools.
An early relationship was formed with Wayzata High School’s football team and they provided us with great feedback and field experience. The boys from that year are still featured in Roger’s Athletics videos.
2008 Model TredSledEventually the stress of handling this business along with our full time careers proved too much. We parted ways and dissolved our business giving control of the TredSled to Roger’s Athletics.
Today the TredSled continues to sell. Some NFL teams, many college teams and even more high school teams have a TredSled in their weight room for off season training. Todays design is a sleeker, further evolved machine compared to the initial prototypes.
