2
HE PICKED UP HIS
MANAGERIAL STYLE AT UPS.
Sadiv knew he wanted to work for
UPS from the moment he met recruiters at
a job fair his senior year of high school.
Hired the summer after graduation, he
started at the bottom on a midnight shift
and worked his way up 17 levels over 27
years, becoming a quality control manager
at different locations on the east coast.
UPS’s management style helped form “a
lot of who I am,” he says. “There’s maxi-
mum accountability, and everything is
important. It’s all about services. The
pillars of success are always the same.”
3
HE LEARNED ABOUT PARISI
SPEED SCHOOL FROM HIS
FAMILY. In 2006, when Sadiv’s
youngest daughter, Samantha, was in sixth
grade, his wife suggested that she go there
to enhance her softball skills. Sadiv was so
impressed by the program director’s
assessment of Samantha that he decided to
train there himself.
4
SADIV CAUGHT
MANAGEMENT’S ATTENTION
WHEN HE PUT DOWN HIS
WEIGHTS AND THE BUILDING
SHOOK. Martin Rooney, Parisi’s chief
operating officer, was working on the
second floor when Sadiv put down heavy
weights, and the building literally quaked.
“In the fitness business, he’s our Jack
LaLanne, he’s that influential and
famous,” says Sadiv. “He comes down,
says, ‘Do you know who’s lifting this
weight?’, and we started talking. He’s
running the biggest NFL Combine program
in the country, and he asked if I wanted to
help, but I was working at UPS.”
5
TRANSFERRING TO THE
NIGHT SHIFT ALLOWED
SADIV TO SPEND HIS DAYS AT
PARISI SPEED SCHOOL, WHICH HE
BOUGHT IN 2015. Once his days were
free, Sadiv could train and help run the
NFL Combine program for a couple years.
The change also made him examine what
he wanted to do for the rest of his working
life; it was rewarding to work with sports
greats like Ray Rice, Howie Long and Phil
Simms. When he announced to his wife,
Nanci, that he wanted to leave UPS and
work full time at Parisi, she said, “It’s
TUFF ENOUGH Sadiv works with Training for Warriors coach Danielle Lawlor on a Tuff Tread high speed treadmill.
about time.” He started working there full
time in 2010, and in 2015 became its
owner.
6
HIS CONNECTIONS TO
SPORTS AGENTS PROPELLED
THE SCHOOL’S NFL COMBINE
PROGRAM. Through Sadiv’s working
relationship with Alan Herman, owner of
the athletic management company
Sportstars in New York, Parisi Speed
School has prepared players such as Josh
Norman, Mario Davis, Chris Long, Osi
Umenyiora, Greg Olsen and many others
for the NFL draft. “Agencies will [tell play-
ers] ‘If you want to get the best guys, you
go to Fair Lawn,” he says, though he notes
that the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.,
has been successful at luring players with
the state’s year-round warm weather.
7
HE BELIEVES THAT HE CAN
MAKE PEOPLE FASTER. With its
six-lane Mondo track (the kind used
for indoor sprinting at the Olympics),
indoor cycling center, 5,000-square-foot
turf area and state of the art weight room,
Sadiv says that his facility has built a repu-
tation for increasing clients’ speed. “People
say ‘You can’t make people faster,’ but
that’s wrong,” he says. Though headliners
such as Olympic figure skater Brian
Boitano have trained at Parisi Speed
School, most of the gym’s business comes
from parents of 6-14-year-olds who want
to run track.
8 HE’S GETTING INVOLVED IN
THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS AND
SPORTS RECOVERY. Sadiv’s
9 HIS FACILITY’S REPUTATION
HAS TRAVELED AS FAR AS
BERLIN. “[A well-known] sports
wife, Nanci, who has worked in special
education all her adult life, has partnered
with her husband to champion the
non-profit Best Buddies, a program that
fosters opportunities for people with intel-
lectual and developmental disabilities.
They started a Glen Rock chapter, and
Rich Sadiv was a judge at the recent
Special Olympics competition in West
Point, N.Y. He also hopes to get more
involved in the recovery aspect of sports
performance, potentially offering onsite
compression therapy and cryotherapy.
coach in Germany was on Route 4 in Fair
Lawn, asking people where Parisi Speed
School was,” says Sadiv. “He said he came
from 8,000 miles away, and he knew of us
in Berlin.” ❖
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