Achieving prime athletic performance is a commitment to a journey towards hard work, improved skills, and efficiency of movement. Training and conditioning are formulated to build strength, endurance, proprioception, agility and ease of movement. Developing and enhancing sport specific skills improves with proper alignment and balance (form and function).
Training, conditioning and competition makes exceptional demands on the human body. These demands may be experienced as an injury, muscular or joint soreness, diminished performance and fatigue. For some athletes depression and a loss of the competitive spirit are experienced. Many times these are the results of over training and incomplete rehabilitation and recovery.
Rolfing Structural Integration, because of its multilayered approach to working with connective tissue, form and posture, as well as functional enhancement; gives the athlete a set of interventions to alleviate excessive tension within the connective tissue (fascia).
Rolfing works to improve posture and form, and educate the athlete about choices in movement and engagement of muscles and joints.
Athletic injuries create a pattern formation in the fascial net that must be corrected to allow for complete healing. It is through specific manipulations of fascial tissue an injury-pattern can be released and normal function can take place. In addition to the hands-on work it is important to educate the athlete in preventive measures such as new choices in how to move. For example, helping a runner modify his/her gate to enhance performance and prevent a reoccurrence of an injury.
Over training is whereby the body does not have sufficient time to recover from training and competition. Over training sometimes creates both physical and emotional fatigue. When this occurs the athlete is susceptible to a loss of focus and athletic performance. The desire to compete lessens and may result in lowered moods and a loss of motivation to excel. An over trained body needs rest and sleep. It also needs soft tissue rehabilitation to help bring life back into the musculature and the connective tissue. Rolfing works to help regenerate healthy soft tissue by releasing restrictive connective tissue patterns, enhancing hydration and circulation to the musculature. It also helps to free up joints to regain full range of motion and make overall movement more efficient. As joints become unrestricted the wisdom of the body is to move into a balanced alignment with more flexibility and ease of movement. With these changes comes improved posture and better athletic form.