Rolfing Therapy

Unlock Your Strength Potential: The Importance of Strength and Conditioning for Optimal Health and Performance

Strength and conditioning is extremely important for everyone, whether you’re running, climbing, boxing, or being a bodybuilder. It’s beneficial for the body to do strength and conditioning training in many different ways.

Please click on the link to read my article Strength and Conditioning for Team GB Athlete – meet Kevin a dragon boat paddler.

When we’re young and in our prime, this kind of training will help us to build the best foundation for a strong body to last a lifetime. And then as we get older, strength and conditioning is important to take care of our hormones.

For men, strength training stimulates testosterone, which has a multitude of health benefits, including being more resistant to depression.

For ladies, when they do strength training, they look different (better!) as they age. For both sexes, strength training helps build strong bones, which are a lifetime asset, and improves lots of biological markers for ageing, including the length of our telomeres, a major genetic marker for life quality and length.

When we train together, I make sure that strength exercises are done according to the principles of Pilates with correct core stabilisation, and the principles of Rolfing, of proper alignment with gravity. As it’s said: “You cannot fire a cannon from a canoe“. So it’s not just about blasting the same exercise and tiring out the muscles. You need a proper platform of stability in order to develop real strength.

I’m a big fan of natural food, lots of vegetables, fish, less red meat, as much organic as possible. Especially fermented foods are very under-utilised.

Some people do need supplementation, or a special mix of macro-nutrients, if you’re doing heavy training.

If you’re ready to get stronger, get in touch.

Empowering Posture: Transforming Pain, Balance, and Well-being through Rolfing Principles

In Rolfing, we believe and experience that by looking at someone’s posture, we can tell a lot about the story of the life of this person. Our posture is like a mask we wear that reveals what we think, where we are in our life, and how we want to be perceived in the eyes of other people. We express our feelings through our posture. You can very often tell if someone has some musculoskeletal issues, physical pain or emotional times through their posture.

The important thing is that it works the other way round, too. By realigning the posture with Rolfing techniques, we can reduce or get rid of pain and improve the bio-mechanical function of the body. People may also notice some emotional change, as if they’ve got more balance not just literally but also figuratively, in all areas of life. Closer to expressing who they feel they really are.

I use Rolfing principles to help train my clients to hold their body in proper alignment with gravity. When we move our own weight or an external weight, we need to be aware of the quality of our contact with the ground, and of the “plumb line” that goes down through our own centre of gravity towards the centre of the Earth. When we work with this line, our body needs less effort to accomplish the movement. When we’re aware of our body’s anatomy, we put less stress on the joints and spine. The movement is safer and joint-friendly, more ergonomical.

For example, when squatting, to load the bar correctly, the bar must be directly above our centre of gravity. If you draw a line from the front of the ankle up through the bar this is the “plumb line”.

When you lift, the bar needs to move up and down on the plumb line, then the movement will be ergonomical. If the bar moves forward or backward of the plumb line, you’ll need to stabilise the body, and you will be fighting against gravity. The same thing applies to running. You could say that if your feet hit the ground in front of the optimum gravity line, it’s like driving a car and pushing the brakes at the same time.

I also do advanced muscle testing, based on the Traditional Chinese Medicine concept of meridians. Basically, you can check the flow of energy within the body by testing the group of muscles associated with a particular meridian. If certain muscles are weak, it might indicate something wrong with that meridian.

By fixing the nutritional imbalance, injury, or psychological block that is interfering with the meridian, you can strengthen the muscles. I like to stimulate the associated muscles through movement.

If you’re interested in improving your posture, just contact me.

Rehabilitating Injuries: Restoring Movement and Functionality through Personalised Rehabilitation Programs

I’ve had clients with shoulder problems, back problems, neck issues, knee problems… I’ve helped people with all these injuries. Improvement depends on many factors, such as whether the injury was caused by musculoskeletal issues, wrong use of muscles and body, damage to the bone, ligament, or cartilage, or by disease. Some problems we see too late to be improved. But many problems can be eased or fixed through better movement.

If you injure yourself through a car accident, a fall or a sporting accident, this can cause broken bones, torn muscles, or ligament damage. You can also get injured from day-to-day activities that build up stress in the body until suddenly you hurt yourself. Any of these causes will result in a sub-optimal movement pattern afterward.

o rehabilitate this injury, we need to change how the body moves. We need to start using the correct muscles. To give the body the idea of how to fire these muscles, and how to do the movement in a different way. To be more aware of gravity, core stabilisation, and alignment.

If we can find what is wrong, we can change it for a new pattern. The new pattern is then related to a different movement, different muscle engagement, and even different breathing.

If you have an injury you want to rehab, just get in touch.

Enhance Your Training with Integrated Pilates Principles: Strengthening Core Stability and Preventing Injuries

n our training together we will integrate Pilates principles, such as those of neutral spine and pelvic positioning into our personal training sessions. We’ll learn where the muscles lie and where they are attached, how to use the correct muscles for a specific exercise, and to get the core stabilisers fired up before doing bigger movements.

You might approach the squat, for example, as a leg exercise, but one key to this movement is to engage the core muscles properly. Rather than doing 1,000 situps per session, we get a really good core workout by using the core in every session. We challenge the core in many different planes and angles – lying down, standing, sitting. You could call it Functional Pilates training.

Once the body has stability in the middle, the limbs work more safely, and we’re less likely to get injured.

Good core training even relates to injury prevention and rehabilitation. For example, if someone has a neck injury, their neck might actually be overworking trying to stabilise the body. When we ensure that the core is stabilising the body instead, that injury can resolve itself.

If you’re interested in personal training with me, just contact me.

Elevate Your Fitness with Boxing Training: Cardiovascular Conditioning, Strength Development, and Mental Agility

Boxing training improves cardiovascular fitness and requires you to use all-round strength. You’ll get more coordinated physically, but also mentally. You need to think, to have a strategy, to be aware of your strong points and weak points, and to assess your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. When you spar, you need to stop your opponent from using his strengths and try to use your own strengths.

Boxing training is suitable for most people, except for pregnant women, people with arthritis or bone diseases.

We use drills on the pads, strength and conditioning exercises, and, if you want, sparring. It’s great for fat loss – you can burn lots of calories! You’ll also get more confident and hopefully be better able to defend yourself should you need.

If you want to try boxing training, strength and conditioning, fat loss, injury rehab, or any other kind of personal training with me, just contact me.