Many of us do some kind of regular exercise, whether for general health and wellbeing, enjoyment, strength, flexibility and range of movement, or for all of these reasons. Sadly, exercise can also occasionally lead to injury, pain and discomfort. Whether it’s running, gym, swimming, or exercises from a physiotherapist – when we do anything repetitively with force, it’s easy to put unnecessary stress and strain on ourselves.
What might come as a surprise is that in pretty well every activity, not only exercise, we tend to ‘over-do’ with most of our muscles, or at least all those whose primary job is ‘moving and doing’ (as opposed to supporting us). In other words, we tend to ‘throw the kitchen sink’ at everything. How much effort does it actually take to turn a key in a lock, or to type on a keyboard? Most people will use considerably more than needed. This may be partly because if you do more than needed, then you’re guaranteed to get the job done – you don’t need to think about how you’re doing it. This tendency reflects a general attitude in life, we’re always doing or ready to do the next thing. The constant state of readiness can mean that our muscles don’t ‘switch off’ between actions (i.e. return to resting tone) and, of course, muscles don’t act in isolation – they reflect the state of our whole mind-body self. With time, we may experience this state of over-readiness as muscular tension, stiffness, stress or pain. If we’re constantly tensing ourselves up more than is needed, it’s going to be putting unnecessary stress and strain on our joints, spine and tissues.
From an Alexander Technique perspective, we’re interested in finding out how to achieve a more appropriate amount of muscular activity and tone throughout our whole self for whatever the task in hand is – from lifting your teacup, to strength or resistance training. Importantly, this involves coordinating our underlying postural tone (our postural support) with whatever muscle activity is required for any particular movement. You can find out more about this here. With a course of Alexander lessons we can improve our postural muscle tone, and learn not to leave the main ‘moving and doing’ muscles in a permanent state of over-doing. In my experience, even small steps towards restoring this balance can make a big difference in terms of our strength, resilience and injury prevention.
How does this better balance of muscle tone and activity come about through Alexander lessons? Not through some futile attempt to micro-manage to achieve this goal but through gaining practical, lived experience with the guidance of an Alexander teacher. Through a course of Alexander lessons we discover, through the gentle hands-on work combined with our own thinking, how we can better coordinate ourselves, enlivening our postural support and letting go of unnecessary muscle tension elsewhere. It is this unique combination of practical experience during an Alexander lesson, with new thinking skills that enables us to begin to own it for ourselves, translating what happens in a lesson into our daily lives, including when we exercise.
It is usually a surprising and intriguing experience for someone in an Alexander lesson when they find they can carry out an activity with less effort than they would usually put into it. In fact, this is one of the reasons that learning the Alexander Technique requires quite a mind-shift. We are used to ‘working hard’, so if we don’t feel like we’re making effort it’s difficult to believe that we’re exercising properly. If it feels easy then we’re clearly not trying hard enough! But ‘trying hard’ really just means creating excess muscular tension. Once you start applying the Alexander Technique to exercise, it’s not that it makes it effortless, it can just feel that way because you’re noticing the difference from the old way of doing it. So, for the same amount of work put in, you’ll get more out – you can exercise more effectively.
The focus that we have in the Alexander Technique on placing emphasis on how we carry out an activity requires another mind-shift – we’re used to putting all our attention on the task itself but not so much on what we’re doing with ourselves in the process. Through Alexander lessons, we learn how to look after ourselves better in whatever we’re doing, whether it’s lifting weights at the gym, walking up the stairs or sitting at your desk. Although this is not our usual way of thinking, it does make sense – the better our general state of coordination and balance, the better the outcome tends to be, and this can be especially obvious in sports and exercise.
As an Alexander teacher, I often help people discover how to do their exercises more effectively and more safely. With the Alexander Technique we can stay fit and enjoy our exercise even more!