Articles

Evolution Revolution in Olympic Performance
by Ritchie Mintz, Certified Advanced Rolfer

For over a year, I have had the pleasure of Rolfing® Olympic level swimmers. They originally came to me for the usual reasons that athletes seek Therapeutic Bodywork--muscle soreness, flexibility, recovery following competition, etc. I chose to give those reasons a sideways glance and took the rare opportunity to literally create a new form of athletic body structure that rarely occurs in nature. It also presents alternatives to the current paradigm of athletic training.

The current paradigm of athletic training features resistance workouts on the premise that strength translates into more performance (speed, in the case of swimmers). So, these athletes spend almost as much time in the weight room as they do in the pool. This works to the extent that the paradigm is correct. But I was seeking nothing less than a complete paradigm shift.

In the current paradigm, the hip and shoulder girdles are seen to connect to the body trunk at the hip and shoulder joints. Seen this way, the hip and shoulder joints and the attaching musculature are the attach points of the legs and arms into the body trunk. Powerful muscles such as the glutei and the deltoids drive the girdles to propel water backward (or whatever athletic task is being performed). Therefore, it makes perfect sense that strengthening these muscles will translate into more speed.

Unfortunately, in my world, the word "strengthen" also means, shorten. This operates on every body level-locally, regionally, globally, andd universally. All that weight lifting tends to stick the girdles to the trunk and shorten the whole body in a way that prevents a deeper system of muscles from working properly or at all. Imagine an egg with a head, arms and legs attached to it. In the current model, this egg-athlete is swimming entirely from its shell, using an external muscle system that wraps around the body but does not work through the body. Furthermore, the legs and arms act from their attach points at the joints. In Rolfing® Structural Integration jargon, we say that Eggy is "swimming from his sleeve".

Ah, but another model is possible. Rolfing is about a lot of things, but its primary mission is body alignment with gravity. One of the many ways we align bodies with gravity is to release the sleeve from the deeper underlying musculature we Rolfers call the core. In the hip girdle, these are the iliopsoas and other associated structures. In the shoulder girdle, it's the rhomboids and other associates. Here is the essence of the new paradigm athlete: By releasing the sleeve from the core, you allow the legs and arms to attach not from the hip and shoulder joints but from the spine. Let's look at each girdle.

The sleeve muscles of the hip are the glutei, quadriceps, hamstrings, abductors and adductors. Tightening and shortening these muscles actually restricts the free movement that athletes seek. Individual muscles grab onto one another and act like one big muscle. Muscles and their groups lose the specificity of recruitment required of demanding performance. All the power starts at the hip joint and the moment arm of propulsion is measured from the hip socket to the foot.

In a balanced Structurally Integrated body, the muscle attachments at the hip are released from their fixations in a way that allows the legs to attach to, and swing from, the lumbar spine all the way up to the respiratory diaphragm. The trick is to free and engage the iliopsoas tract to be part of the power train. Now, the movements begin at the center of the body and the legs hang from, and are powered by core muscles as well as from the sleeve. For the first time, our athlete can swim from the core. Now, the moment arm of propulsion is measured from the diaphragm to the foot; a distance approximately 1/2 again longer. This is a huge factor that cannot be overlooked.

The shoulder girdle works exactly the same way. The sleeve muscles of the shoulder are the deltoids, biceps and triceps. Weight training tightens and shortens these muscle groups into one big undifferentiated muscle that resists specific recruitment and prevents core muscles from participating in the movements. The moment arm of propulsion is measured from the shoulder socket to the hand. I strove to release the shoulder sleeve from the core structures and from each other in a way that connected the movement through to the thoracic spine and engaged the rhomboids to be part of the power train. In this model of swimming, there are not two separate arms pumping from the shoulders. Instead, both arms wrap around the back and attach to the spine like a continuous V-belt. Thus, movement runs uninterrupted from fingertip to fingertip and the moment arm of propulsion is increased by over 1/3. For a swimmer, this is enormous.

These descriptions are super simplistic compared to the complex realities of human movement. For example, we not only connect the girdles to the spine but also to each other. In this model, the arms and legs relate to each other like a fan system you see in some older restaurants where there are multiple ceiling fans run by one motor. The motor and the fans are connected by one long serpentine belt that integrates and relates the movement of all the components. Now expand that vision to include every structure of the body. This paradigm paints the picture of a smooth, fully integrated movement propulsion system instead of individual unrelated parts struggling with each other in their restrictions.

This new paradigm of the Structurally Integrated athlete is completely under the radar of the current athletic training model. There is not one shred of scientific evidence that anything I just wrote is true or correct. In fact, the first page into this new paradigm has yet to be written. The kind of scientific research that needs to be done bears a daunting price tag that few could afford. Until science validates these ideas, the demand for this type of Therapeutic Bodywork will come not from the universities or teams but from the individual athletes themselves. If they are convinced that this new evolution of body structure betters their performance, they will come for the Work even if they pay for it themselves, which many do. Perhaps we will see some early results this summer in Athens.

A caveat, if you please. Increased athletic performance itself is not the sole goal of Rolfing® Structural Integration and it is hard not to feel congratulated when it happens. The real goal is to accelerate our evolution towards upright carriage. We create a sturdier, more effective human being, which aligns and works with the gravity field of the earth instead of fighting the inevitable losing battle with it. It makes sense that such a human body structure will operate better at the limits of performance.

The funny part of it all is that these competitive, hard working athletes came to me for the benefits of a good massage-stress relief, sorenesss, flexibility, recovery from competition and training, etc. Interestingly, all of those goals got met by directly addressing none of them. What they really got is something they didn't expect or even know existed. They got a whole new way of relating to their body, their sport and their expectations of what is now possible in their athletic performance.

Reprinted with permission from Ritchie Mintz, Certified Rolfer. Originally published by Massage Today, July 2005, at www.MassageToday.com.

More About Rolfing:
Request a Press Kit/Images/Logos | Rolfing in the News | Press Releases | Links & Resources | Facts at a Glance | Endorsements | Story Ideas