Tool Box
Issue No. 11 - June/July 2003
Exercise in Success
IsoSport
Begun in a backyard 20 years ago, IsoSport International is making the running in the field of sports training equipment. About 10 years ago trade grew sufficiently to require a small factory, but it’s unlikely to have grown much more had it not been taken over by new investors, including a very experienced ‘Asia hand’.
Jing Lee, the managing director of IsoSport, is deeply experienced in doing business in Asia.
Prior to joining IsoSport International, she was highly placed in the SA Department of Industry and Trade, Asia Pacific Plaza Business Centre and the SA Tourism Commission. During her government service she helped IsoSport develop export trade, and was hired as a consultant when she founded Octopus 88, an export consulting firm specialising in Australia-Asia trade, after leaving the public sector.
"We produce equipment for training, testing and rehabilitation," she says, noting how far IsoSport has come since the backyard days.
Some aspects of what IsoSport makes is familiar—the pin-and-plate weight training systems and other gym circuit elements—but these machines are not home gyms and IsoSport gear has more in common with medical equipment.
IsoSport Kinetic is a high-speed exercise and testing system that gives professional sports people measurable means to optimise their body performance. The design uses a hydraulic resistance method that is safer to train with and more accurately simulates the way the body develops effort.
Isokinetic exercise allows the handlers of elite athletes to target parts of the body, to develop strength or rehabilitate injury. The equipment measures user performance in real time and reports exactly what work has been done.
"It measures the weakest point," Jing says. "With an injured ankle, for instance, it can pick up the weakest muscles in the joint system."
The IsoKinetic system was developed in collaboration with sports scientists at the Australian Institute of Sp...
