Sports Performance
Move like a pro. Go to the next level in your performance
To proficiently perform athletic movements the brain must coordinate with the necessary muscle groups to produce the action. Whether the athlete is throwing a baseball, kicking a football, or even sprinting, these all require complex muscular coordination which starts from the brains motor cortex.
Many people practice for hours on their technique in a particular sport. Fine tuning the skills needed to develop that extra gain in performance, and these hours of dedication are essential in achieving that higher level in any sport. This is acceptable if you are already starting from a good base level in movement coordination, however many of us are not so fortunate. Its worth remembering “Movement skill” and “technique” are two different things. When you improve and refine your movement skill, achieving the correct technique in your chosen sport will become easier and more readily available. We have all seen people who appear to move without effort, runners who glide, dancers who flow and sports people who seem to defy gravity in their actions. However for most of us mere mortals we have to apply ourselves to achieve efficient, elegant movement.
When we were younger movement was often much easier, but as we progress through life we accumulate “baggage” because of pain, injury, poor training techniques, social environment and emotional aspects. We know how adaptive our brain is in dealing with situations and events, however our nervous system sometimes produces "maladaptive strategies” to compensate for the “baggage” leaving us with inadequate movement strategies that can cause pain, injury and loss of performance.
All skilled movement is based on basic fundamental cardinal movements that most of us learn from birth. As such these movements are ingrained deep within our nervous system. Flexion, extension, rotation, shifting weight, stability/support and orientation are all basic functions. However, quite often these movements become affected with our “baggage” and “parasitic movement patterns” take over and interfere with our refined coordinated patterns we once possessed.
Feldenkrais has been used at an elite level in numerous sports for decades now, and I believe it can be an essential and powerful tool in your training regime. The new finely tuned and coordinated movements that you develop can be incorporated into your specific skilled actions, achieving greater skill with less effort.
Having successfully worked full-time in the elite sports environment for over 30 years in movement and function, I believe I am ideally positioned to help you go to the next level in your performance and achieve your potential.