Sports and Sports Injuries

What have many Olympic marathon runners, elite equestrians (including the entire British team), and many others in common? They have all used the Alexander Technique to improve some aspect of the way that they function such as breathing, freedom or efficiency of movement, balance, dealing with stress, aches and pains or injuries.

The Alexander Technique is taught by highly qualified teachers in one-on-one sessions, and covers both everyday activities and specific activities such as sports. It addresses how to move with an economy of effort and maximize poise and balance. We learn how to become aware or 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. These often create an on-going restriction which renders movement more effortful and less efficient than necessary and can predispose us to injury.

In training or competition this is often more so, while this is exactly the time when economy of action and an absence of tension would be most desirable. Enhancing kinesthetic 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 optimize their way of working with themselves to gain that competitive edge. Sports people who have trouble improving beyond a certain level will also gain. A pleasant surprise for many people is the discovery that not trying so hard can mean moving further, faster and with less effort. 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.