Alan Thomas and APT ProWristWraps
Many months ago, two things were happening simmultaneously here: a friend of mine was desperate for references on the “biomechanical foundations of support shirts’ influence in the Bench Press and, at the same time, Gilson and I were starting to design what would become the Parais³polis Powerlifting Program, now being legalized as a Non-Governmental Organization (www.paraisopolispower.org ). I was looking for information on equipment like crazy … at forums, at BIOMECH-L, articles at the NSCA, everywhere. Finally, I decided to contact manufacturers. I contacted Titan, with no success. They even have a forum, where I posted the question and got no reply. I got plenty of high quality feedback from folks at Fortified Iron and: Alan Thomas himself, from APT Pro WristWraps replied to me, explaining a few issues and referring me to some of his own articles.
The fact is that Alan is not just a corporate CEO: he knows everything about the sports he supports with his equipment from experience and theory. On our correspondence, I happened to show him the social program website (at that point, still located at my own website). I was astonished when he SPONTANEOUSLY decided to support us, sending equipment to our athletes. I had sent dozens of e-mails to supplement companies asking for sponsorship and all I got were negatives. I even wrote an article about the relevance of social responsibility in sports sponsorship, which seems to be very small. Study after study demonstrated that the sponsorship business is pure marketing.
I tried to use that in our favor, and attempted to create a “social relevance seal, just like the “sustainable development seal became important in the nineties during the environmental debate. Up to now, I have had very little positive response from companies. Alan Thomas is a great exception and this is one reason I wanted to write about him and his company here. He was not contacted for sponsorship: he took the initiative to offer it to us. Socially responsible businesses should be praised and somehow rewarded.
However, I have a second reason to write about APTProWristWraps: even before I contacted Alan, which I actually did because of this, I used his equipment in training and competition. My friends love my APT ww because it is softer and firm at the same time, the material clearly superior to the ones they were acquainted with. And my knee wrap is just the best … hope to start with 130kg and go up to 150kg this year with it on my squat!
