What have British Olympic marathon runners,
hammer thrower Howard Paine, many elite equestrians including Australian
Olympian Mary Hannah and the entire British team, multi-disciplinarian
Daley Thomson and many others in common? They have all used the
Alexander Technique to improve some aspect of the way that they
function - breathing, freedom or efficiency of movement, balance,
dealing with stress, aches and pains or injuries.
"Alexander is a "must" for all competing
athletes.
In the early l950s, Percy Cerutty, the celebrated
and sometimes controversial athletics coach, wrote in a letter to
his Alexander teacher, "Alexander is a "must" for all competing
athletes. You have taught me a lot of interesting material about
the correct use of the body which I have passed on in my training
with marked results eliminating bad use." Until recently there have
been few Alexander Technique teachers in Australia.
The Alexander Technique is being increasingly
adopted by recreational and competitive Sports people. Athletes
involved in sports as diverse as long-distance running, dressage,
swimming, X-C skiing and hammer-throwing recognise the benefits
that come with a training in the Alexander Technique. For Sports
people these can be divided in to three categories:
- General fitness (how to avoid wasting energy);
- Technique (ensuring that you're actually
doing what you think you're doing); and
- Avoidance of or recovery from injury (not
using yourself in a way which imposes unnecessary stresses on
joints or other tissue).
Economy of effort
The Technique is particularly relevant because
it is directly concerned with the working of the "postural reflexes",
i.e. the mechanisms that enable us to support and balance our bodies
against the ever present pull of gravity while we go about our daily
activities. It addresses how to move with an economy of effort and
maximise poise and balance.
How hard are you making it?
The tensions and distortions that most of us,
over the years, build into our habitual way of being and which have
thus slipped below the level of our conscious awareness, provide
an on-going restriction to the working of these natural postural
mechanisms. This restriction renders movement more effortful and
less efficient than necessary and can predispose us to injury. In
our sporting activities, we are coping not only with these on-going
interferences, which give us our "base line" of tension, but also
often with further interferences engendered by the situation, e.g.
the challenges involved in learning a new skill or the pressure
of competition.
In other words, we're making hard work out
of simply standing upright, before complicating things with moving.
"My brain
knows what to do but my body won't do it"
In training or competition this is often more
so, at exactly the time when economy of action and an absence of
tension would be most desirable. This interferes not only with our
poise and coordination, but also with our perception both of our
inner environment, for example failing to notice that we are tensing
our shoulders or holding our breath, and of our outer circumstances,
so that for example, distances seem greater, or it feels as if we
have insufficient time.
Enhancing kinaesthetic awareness (awareness
of one's inner environment), and learning greater control of one's
mechanisms of balance and coordination are an enormous help in any
activity.
It is not just the elite who can learn to optimise
their way of working with themselves to gain that competitive edge.
Sports people who have trouble improving beyond a certain level
can also gain. Technical imperfections can easily be unwittingly
established as part of one's basic modus operandi, limiting further
improvement. Who at some time has not said to themselves, "My brain
knows what to do but my body won't do it"?
Discovering that not trying so hard can mean
moving further, faster and with less effort, often comes as a pleasant
surprise to many people.
The Alexander Technique gives us some simple
ground rules through which we can observe ourselves, in order to
achieve a gradual general improvement in poise and coordination,
as well as simultaneously supplying ourselves with conditions most
conducive to the development of a skill and reducing the risk of
injury.
"The Alexander Technique
gives us all the things we have been looking for
in a system of physical education; relief from strain due to maladjustment,
and
constant improvement in physical and mental health."
Aldous Huxley
