A man in constant motion brought his Fast Feet Performance Camp to St. Aloysius High School this week. Former Vicksburg standout Art “Bobo” Harris, a member of the 1980’s “Team of the Decade,” has become an athletic training guru in the Atlanta metro area.

For three hours each morning this week starting on Monday, St. Al football players have seen what his regimen is all about.

“I’ve learned a lot of stuff,” said 12-year-old Hastings Ragland, a rising seventh grader at St. Al. “From the start, he talked about gaining strength in your muscles by getting more oxygen to them.”

Barrett Teller, a quarterback for St. Al, says he’s seen results.

“I’ve gotten faster this week. He showed us how ease our arm movement when you run. It’s really been a fun week,” Barrett said.

St, Al coach B.J. Smithhart has heard the stories of Harris’ exploits on the football field at Vicksburg and knows about his career as four-year letter winner as a defensive back at Southern Miss, but it’s his teaching of physical development and stamina that has done wonders for Smithhart’s team.

“He brings a lot energy out here. He doesn’t stop. He won’t let the kids lope and he’s sharp on his techniques,” Smithhart said.

Rising Flashes’ senior quarterback Regan Nosser agrees.

“We did a lot of agility work the first two days, and I got to say, it left me pretty dead tired. But he’s showed us things that are going to help us later on in the season,” Nosser said. “He showed us a lot on how the elite athletes move their arms in order to save air. And as a quarterback, he’s definitely gotten me thinking about what a defensive back is thinking, being that he was a former cornerback himself. His passing drills are built around finding throwing windows.”

After his playing career with the Golden Eagles was done, Harris spent the better part of the late 1980s and 1990s in law enforcement.

“I was a undercover drug enforcement officer, and then for 18 months, I was the head of the drug enforcement department in Jefferson and Claiborne Counties,” Harris said. “Then I went to Georgia as a state probation officer. For seven years, I dealt with violent offenders and juveniles who had committed serious crimes. These were the bad, bad boys.”

Always a physical fitness prodigy, Harris didn’t start training athletes until 2000.

“It was always something I liked doing for myself. All the way back to when I was a freshman at Vicksburg High, I would run from the Military Park all the way to the Mississippi River Bridge and I was able to make the track team as a freshman, running relays with Sylvester Stamps and running the 400 meters.”

It was a track athlete in Atlanta, Michael Daniels, who got Harris into athletic training.

“I had this kid who was track fast, but not a skilled athlete. In six months, he was one of the top five sprinters in the nation.

“By 2002, I began thinking of doing this full-time. I was producing MVPs at the Nike Camps. The kids bought into the mind set of improving their motor skills. Plus, I was in Gwinnett County which has 180,000 kids in its school system, so the market was there. Within a few years, I had four of the top five sprinters in the county and most of these guys were football players.”

Harris dealt with some of Gwinnett’s elite athletes, like Georgia running back Caleb King, running back Beau Johnson and Georgia linebacker Rennie Curran.

Harris said his training regimen is based on improving performance speed.

“All athletes have motor skills, but they don’t how to use to its fullest potential… Only about 10 to 20 percent of straight-line speed is used in performance. Most of the better players use what is called the pro glide, which is going 70 to 80 percent,” Harris said. “What I do is bring that up to 90 to 100 percent. I work a lot on balance, which increases performance speed. And then there is attack speed, which is something Rennie has really benefitted from.

“When you can combine performance speed and attack speed, you have now developed an elite athlete, who can go for days. It takes a lot of work ethic and good fundamentals. A kid with not much athletic ability, can be improved if his fundamentals are exceptional.”

Harris does this through a myriad of drills. Most football coaches have six or seven drills they use for agility. Harris has 300.

“Take the 20-yard shuttle. I can show you 25 different ways to do it.”

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Contact Jeff Byrd at jbyrd@vicksburgpost.com