Alexander and I

Several days ago I watched a girl three years old or so literally running circles around a mother who pushed a baby carriage ahead of her, the child scuffing up the fall leaves and waving arms about. Around and around she ran until, with a delighted cry, she spotted my dog and ran to him instead. Kaz, himself bounding towards this whirling dervish of energy to investigate, suddenly found himself stopped dead in his tracks cautiously wagging his tail, uncertain whether to greet the child or flee to safety.

So young, so much zeal. When I see scenes such as this my first thought is of George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote “youth is wasted on the young”, and then I always go to a memory of a quantum physics text illustrating the concept of particle randomness by showing the heavily used paths taken by adults surrounded by the aimless wanderings to and fro by children and pets. It never fails to bring a smile to my face watching real life play out textbook theory. Life may be complex with varied and conflicting goals but our common desire for physical health is straight forward. We all want to capture youth’s bountiful energy and keep it for as long as possible into our autumn years. The intelligent will put in the effort to maintain their fitness; the ignorant will take it for granted and will not. This past week the American Heart Association published the results of research on adolescent obesity where they found some obese teenagers tested had arteries with a ‘vascular age’ nearly three decades older than their chronological age. That’s not good. Another joint study by Princeton and the University of Munich last year found American males, after leading the world in height for two hundred years, are now shorter on average than every country in Western and Northern Europe. The Netherlands, with an average height of 187 cm. (6’1”) holds the title today, with Americans trailing well behind at 179 cm. (5’10”). A population’s height tells a lot about a country’s relative well being: the adequacy of their diet and overall health care. We Americans shrinking relative to the world? Not good at all.

I made the mistake of forgetting this truth about fitness for a few years and paid the price. Hopefully I don’t make the same mistake again. It’s taken me two years to return to full health and the effort necessary to do so comes as a shock to me. I still vividly remember as if it were yesterday only taking a couple of months to get into game shape as a teenager.

I can count three positives coming from of this experience. During my search to end my pain everything from acupuncture, chiropractics, heavy duty drugs, rolfing, massage and physical therapy, all the way up to contemplating surgery was tried. The first positive was getting back into the pool for overall fitness, something which never would have happened without the driving incentive of a crippled back for motivation. The second positive was discovering Bikram’s yoga, a rehabilitative form of Hatha yoga, for improving flexibility and core strength. And the third positive was my eventual experiment with Alexander Technique for my posture problems. I'd like here to write a little about Alexander Technique for those unfamiliar with it.

The premise of Alexander Technique is pretty simple. If we’re lucky enough not to be born with any abnormalities to begin with time will always ensure we'll accumulate enough of them to force change on our bodies anyways. Many of these adjustments, such as relying on adjacent muscles to relieve the stain on the damaged part, or by avoiding use altogether, are temporary but some last longer. Long enough to alter the habitual way our body holds itself upright. In time these compromised habits become more and more entrenched and, because the body begins to depend on muscles not originally intended for the role they're performing, they fatigue and force recruitment of other additional, even less related muscles. And so on and so on. Not just injuries. We’re talking here about damage and impairment caused from repetition injuries and neglect as well. From the child who plays too many video games to a stock trader who spends his day looking up at trading boards we have almost infinite ways to harm ourselves carrying out routine and mundane activities. No wonder almost everyone ends up with more than a few muscles working at cross-purposes, showing up in both posture and the way we move. It’s bad enough for the average person, but for an athlete it can spell disaster. A case in point is Jodie Henry, a former world record holder and multiple Olympic gold medalist from Athens, who had to withdraw from the Australian 2008 Olympic Trials and consequently from the Beijing Olympics because of a late diagnosed imbalance in her pelvic muscles. That should never happen with the medical supervision she should be receiving. I’m convinced if she or her coach had known about Alexander Technique it wouldn’t have.


The process which the Alexander Technique uses to teach the necessary corrections, however, is somewhat unorthodox. It is grounded in very simple activities: you work with movements like getting in and out of a chair, walking, and bending down; you look at how you breathe and speak. The teacher observes your habits of posture and movement primarily through touch by gently placing his or her hands on the neck, shoulders, back, and so on while asking the student to perform a prescribed movement – and then uses those same hands to guide the student into a position which encourages the release of unnecessary muscular tension¹. You can definitely tell when long established bad habits are broken: there’s a strong sense of ‘floating’ as tired, overworked muscles finally get to rest. For many years other than the belief improvements in posture, performance² and the reduction of pain was real there’s been little to support the Technique’s claims beyond anecdotal evidence. Finally a major scientific study just published this past August in the British Medical Journal Randomised Controlled Trial of Alexander Technique Lessons, Exercise, and Massage (ATEAM) for Chronic and Recurrent Back Pain concludes Alexander lessons can be as effective for controlling long term back pain as regular long term exercise. I'm sure given enough time and money science will eventually come to understand what F.M. Alexander intuitively knew must be true.

Personally most of my own problems can be traced back to a collapsed rugby scrum at twenty six. I didn’t realize how much my back was still out of kilter until I saw the pictures taken at the start of this adventure. If there was definite disappointment with my physical improvement after a year’s effort I was flat out distressed there hadn’t been one iota of progress on the posture front. A desperate willingness to do anything led me to try some Alexander Technique lessons. The first exhibit of their effectiveness: my before and after pictures below coming after one year of lessons. I think they show a marked improvement.


In my 'before' picture the left side is considerably lower than the right, which in turn is severely compressed against my body; and if you look closely, you can see my head is tilted back with my chin out. After one year the left and right shoulders have leveled out considerably, the right shoulder has decompressed slightly, and my neck is now held so that the weight of my head sits directly over the spine without my chin jutting out.

Interestingly I believe the impact these lessons have had on my swimming performance actually confirms the validity of the technique’s underlying premises. My teacher Gaby often talks against “end gaining”, meaning not trying to address the most visible problems in a direct manner. I see a droopy shoulder and crooked back and naturally that’s what I want to correct. By the time I started lessons, however, the actual problems causing my skewed body were buried under several compensating layers which needed correction before we could address the source problems. The therapy succeeds as the problems are 'unwound' starting from the most recent and working back towards the original injury. For me progress has come in stages: three times I’ve made significant breakthroughs and each time I’ve had to retrain newly reintegrated but feeble core, hip and leg muscles which set back my training plans. The good part is I'm continuing to make real progress and the changes definitely will make for faster swimming in the future. The bad part is my latest picture shows I still have some way to go before my back is 100% rehabilitated – and that means ...

¹ There may be some who will ask the question if the student has to disrobe as with massage therapy. For the shy the answer will come as a relief – students are taught fully clothed.
² The technique is popular with professions such as musicians, dancers, and singers in dealing with the particular problems overuse brings to their performances.

Discovering Yet Another Technique I Need to Learn

Not a swimming technique but rather a method of teaching proper posture and movement, the Alexander Technique has been around for over a hundred years. Named after the technique’s innovator F. Mathias Alexander, who developed it from purely empirical observations of his own body and his own problems, the technique is aimed at allowing an individual to recognize and change habits which interfere with well integrated skeletal and muscular functioning. It was Alexander’s belief the daily stress and repetition inherent in modern daily life causes the body to compensate in ways which create still further problems. Eventually the body begins to work against itself, pitting muscle group against muscle group, until free flowing and efficient movement becomes in varying degrees impaired or, under certain conditions, impossible. It’s a difficult concept to grasp but you can try this simple posture to gain a better understanding of the problem. First attempt to stand on one leg with both your arms held outstretched from your sides for fifteen seconds. Most readers of this blog should be able to do this – it’s a basic test for inadequate musculature given to senior citizens. It might take two or three tries but no real problem right? Now try to do the same posture but with eyes closed. I’m betting 99% of my readers won’t be able to stand more than a couple of seconds, much less the full fifteen. Welcome to the teeming masses. The reason why we fail is our dependency on visual inputs to provide the constant stream of corrections we need to remain standing. Without them our non symmetrical and conflicting muscles overwhelm our sense of balance and we fall out of the posture.

If you’re an athlete this clearly isn’t a good thing, but for many these problems can develop into actual physical deformity. Alas this has been the result for me. I exhibit an observable curve in my lower back, a significantly higher left shoulder than my right, a backward canted head, and hips which for all intents and purposes could be considered completely fused. For the morbidly inclined you can view my pictures from November here. When I started rehabilitation only the need to eliminate my back pain preceded the desire to correct my crookedness. Yet despite three years of extensive physiotherapy, chiropractics, yoga, stretching, some weight lifting, and two years swimming I’ve seen no apparent change in my posture. I’ve lost weight, gained muscle, and now enjoy better overall conditioning; but still no improvement in the way I hold my back. So late November I finally decided to go ahead and see if Alexander Technique could solve my problems.

Now Alexander Technique works by providing the body with new references for holding itself rather than continuing along the well trodden path established by the harmful habits and demands of everyday life: and it relies heavily upon a teacher’s efforts to guide the student through touch and words. Sometimes knowing I’m in the proper position is easy – because I feel a definite floating sensation as muscles which have been working for years finally get a few seconds of relaxation. Then there's the times she's effusive in her praise when I hadn't realized I'd even moved. And at still other moments the position I’ve been guided into requires considerable concentration and effort. The process is unlike any other physiotherapy I have known. Overall the training works on simple movement to begin with, such as sitting in a chair or walking up and down stairs, and progresses as the teacher determines he or she has seen enough progress to move on to other areas. I’ve spent much of the past two months limited to learning how to properly stand up and sit down but there have been lessons which were directly applicable to my swimming. In one lesson my teacher commented on the significant difference in the way I hold my shoulders and asked me to demonstrate how I use my arms and shoulders swimming freestyle. A couple of simulated strokes later she was apologizing for criticizing something she knew little about but then proceeded to explain why my stroke was all wrong from an Alexander viewpoint. Instead of initiating my stroke from the shoulder (i.e. starting my overhead recovery from my deltoids) and then by still more shoulder rotation propelling my arm reach forward she explained how my recovery stroke should only incidentally impact the shoulder. What she recommended to increase my stroke's efficiency was instead to allow my arms to follow my elbows up and then extend through the finger tips in an effortless manner rather than trying to muscle my arms from the shoulders. Does any of this sound familiar? We never did get to discuss the reasons for my shoulder differences but at that point I didn’t care, so pleased was I that the Alexander Technique could correctly point out defects in my stroke.

Even better, and to my agreeable surprise as I had little real expectations from these lessons, I believe I can see improvements in my back and shoulders after only a couple months. I’m looking forward to the end of season in March when I’ll retake my pictures and actually can compare the changes over the past few months. I’m also sure my hip flexibility has significantly increased for another encouraging development. As a counter point, however, all these structural changes going on have affected the way I use many of my muscles - necessitating not only the retraining of several key muscle groups but also demanding further stroke changes. I can take solace, however, that all this seems to be leading eventually to a new and better foundation for my swimming. Things are looking up.