Sports specific strengthening is, at times, a dilemma. For any particular sport an athlete excels at, in most cases, the specificity of the sport strengthens specific areas that are unique to that sport. When attempting to strengthen those particular areas for increased performance, it would, in effect, put the body at risk for an over use injury, because of the increase of repetitious ranges of motion related to that sport. Within any sport the highest risk of injury is overuse or over training one particular area of the body. When we, Pilates of the Rockies, begin a program for strengthening an athlete for better sport performance, may it be golf, tennis, running, biking, alpine downhill or cross country skiing, our goal is to strengthen the supportive stability of the body. As physics proves, a strong solid fulcrum point allows the greatest amount of leverage or thrust to be applied to that motion when we choose to engage. So we consider the body’s needs for the chosen sport and evaluate its ability to stabilize and balance against gravity and force to develop the coordination, awareness and strength that will enable an athlete to create greater stability at any given moment of load and/or thrust. Therefore, our strengthening goals are to develop the greatest stability and balance of strength between the upper and lower torso. When we then apply load at the extremity, we can capitalize on the existing inner strength of the body that previously the athlete was not utilizing to its fullest extent and apply greater load and thrust limits to the athlete’s performance.
