Monday, September 14, 2009

THE FUTURE OF FITNESS...

or where I want it to go anyway!!!!

Check out this article from the pages of Men's Health 2009

...It's horrifying. Right in front of me, a gorgeous young woman named Andria has slipped out of her clothes and is transforming herself into...me. She's removed her shirt and her black capris. Now she shakes out her blonde bob and stands in her sports bra and panties, a hand on her slender hip, looking like Brandi Chastain about to hit the showers after practice. Until...

"Head, anterior shift," a woman nearby calls out. She checks her clipboard. "With a posterior tilt."

Andria juts her neck like a tortoise, and then lifts her chin.

"Shoulder girdle -- anterior tilt," adds James Ready, a trainer for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Obediently, Andria hunches her back, as if she's been punched in the gut.

Four people surround Andria. They're holding clipboards with anatomical sketches and hand-scrawled notes snapped to them. We're in a sports training studio in Tempe, Arizona, for a seminar on the new science of strength, an event focusing almost entirely on human connective tissue. Until recently, very little was understood about these elastic wrappings that surround your muscles and bones. But a series of research breakthroughs now reveals that they might be your body's greatest untapped resource for improving the efficiency of your muscles and preventing injuries.

At this moment I'm receiving a firsthand lesson in elastic power, as the four members of my working group continue to feed instructions to Andria. Suddenly, they order her to freeze.

"Perfect!" one of the women says. Then she turns to me. "That's you."

"You to a T," Ready agrees.

Before the session with Andria, they'd assessed my posture. I'd come in with nagging heel pain, but as they eyed me up and down, that was the one part of my body they ignored. Pain and power, they believe, are all about posture. Unfortunately, so is pride. During my assessment, I'd done my cheating best to throw my shoulders back and stand tall. But now as I look at my reflection in Andria's body, I can see that my muscles had no chance against the steady pull of my elastic tissue. One of her shoulders is caved, her head juts like a Neanderthal's, her hips are crooked. I'm still not sure what that has to do with my heel, but even though she's the one in her underwear, I've never felt more naked in my life.

What's so special about muscles, anyway?

2 comments:

  1. Great article, Stacey! Hey, why is that the articles in Men's Health are so much better than the ones in Women's Health ("These shoes make your ass look smaller!")??
    Krista

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stacey:

    Your mailbox is full. I tried to send you something, but it got returned.

    ReplyDelete

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