Rolfing bij sportblessures

Rolfing is een bijzondere vorm van lichaamswerk. We citeren hier een boeiende ervaring van een topsporter met Rolfing. Natuurlijk is het lastig om onderzoek te doen naar de waarde van deze bijzondere vorm van lichaamswerk bij sporters met sportblessures. Daarom dit verhaal.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  February 2007 

Contact: Sue Seecof, Rolf Institute, marketing@rolf.org, 800-530-8875 

  

Alternative Sports Medicine What’s New And How You Can Get Back On 

Your Feet In No Time 

Boulder, CO…"Alternative approaches can be helpful for just about any soft tissue injury 

an athlete’s likely to incur, whether it’s a less-serious acute problem, such as a sprain or 

pulled hamstring, or a chronic condition such as tendonitis or knee pain." Women’s 

Outside, Fall ‘99. 

Kristen Ulmer, former World Champion Extreme skier and U.S. Freestyle Ski team, 

mogul specialist, who had a series of knee surgeries as a result of injuries and tendonitis, 

in the past few years says, "After the surgery I had excruciating pain and could not drive 

or walk." Revered as the "best female Extreme skier" for the past 8-9 years, Ulmer tried 

Rolfing® bodywork for soft tissue injuries and says it brought her hips and ankles back 

into alignment, and the pain disappeared. "It healed so fast I can’t believe it!" says 

Kristen. "The expected 6 month recovery time was cut in half, and three months after 

surgery I was trekking to Cho Oyu on a Himalayan ski expedition." 

"Ulmer was desperate to find relief from her chronic knee pain. So after her most recent 

surgery, she rested her knee and signed up for 10 Rolfing treatments. By the time she’d 

been Rolfed from head to toe, she was pain-free for the first time in years and is back on 

the slopes." Women’s Sports and Fitness, July ‘99. 

"Ulmer was desperate to find relief from her chronic knee pain. So after her most recent 

surgery, she rested her knee and signed up for 10 Rolfing treatments. By the time she’d 

been Rolfed from head to toe, she was pain-free for the first time in years and is back on 

the slopes." Women’s Sports and Fitness, July ‘99. 

 

Recent Advances In Rolfing: 

Rolfing Structural Integration now addresses physical problems more specifically. 

Rolfing incorporates the science of bio-mechanics to work effectively with lower back 

pain, knee problems, repetitive stress injury, athletic performance and recovery. 

"Contrary to popular belief, Rolfing isn’t just vigorous "deep-tissue" massage. A massage 

therapist is concerned primarily with the relief of tension. A Rolfer wants to change the 

structure of your body to correct the sources of tension, so that the tension is unnecessary. 

Thanks to a small but growing number of officially-sanctioned research studies, a 

liberalization of the public’s attitude toward alternative healing, and much favorable 

word-of-mouth testimony, Rolfing is acquiring mainstream acceptance." 

Climbing magazine, 9/98 

Some Olympic athletes who have chosen to become Certified Rolfers provide bodywork 

to other athletes. ‘98 and ‘92 Olympian, John Bauer, an elite world class ski racer, and 

member of the U.S. Nordic Ski Team had knee and runner’s ankle injuries that forced him 

to miss the ‘94 Olympics. He sought out Rolfing for recovery, and to improve his 

Olympic scores. Bauer credits Rolfing for helping him make it back to the Olympics in 

‘98. 

"Rolfing helped me get back my career," says Bauer. "In ‘94, I began Rolfing bodywork 

to tackle my petala tendonitis and an I-T band syndrome that had restricted me from 

running for half a year. Not many athletes know that Rolfing is a way to treat injuries. 

You can ice and rest but no matter how slow you train until you lengthen out the 

tightness and scaring, it will come back. Rolfing can also lengthen an athletic career 

because the therapy addresses the key problem areas all athletes face, like overuse of 

muscles and injuries." 

Bauer says that Rolfing has had a great impact on keeping him healthy and injury free 

even after the 1st session. "Skiers fall alot and Rolfing helped me to stop having soft 

tissue injuries. It reduced the soreness in my petalla tendon and the tearing when my 

ankles rolled out. I have quicker recovery from training, day in and out, yearly," says 

Bauer, who is a Certified Rolfer. 

Bio-mechanics and peak athletic performance – 

Brian Fahey, Certified Advanced Rolfer is an expert on the Rolfing approach to enhanced 

athletic performance, injury prevention and recovery. Fahey says, "I recommend the 

benefits of cross training, to athletes seeking maximum efficiency from the body. The 

repetitive strain that comes from athletic exercise has a great impact on the body. Rolfing 

applies the biomechanics of movement for injury prevention and increased efficiency, it 

investigates how the body works and uses energy. Our structural alignment techniques 

promote injury prevention by decreasing the likelihood of trauma to the joints." 

Fahey, a Certified Rolfing Instructor says, "New understandings in both quantum physics 

and biology, underscore the intelligence, complexity, and adaptive capacity of all living 

things. We can no longer think of the body as a finite machine subjected solely to the 

"fix-it" mentality of western medical approaches. Instead the body is a pliable, open 

system in constant relationship to everything around it. 

The communication systems of the body all "listen-in" to what is going on. The fascial 

network which is the medium of Rolfing is the interconnecting system which penetrates 

our physiology down to the microscopic levels of the cells and out to the edges of our 

skin boundary and beyond. We are at a frontier in applying and understanding this 

research to our living bodies." 

Dr. Jim Mongomery, an Olympic MD and Orthopedic surgeon at Dallas’ Orthopedic 

Specialists, says, "I send people with all kinds of problems to Rolfers. People with 

shoulder problems, with scar tissue after injury, low back problems, cervical spine, and 

shoulder and elbows problems. People that have had chronic problems that have not been 

helped by anything else. I think Rolfing is something that should be entertained by any of 

these people. If they had chronic hamstring problems, chronic shoulder problems for a 

long period time. All those people can be helped." 

Rolfing is an established leader in the field of alternative medicine and somatics 

education. Research reports that the public is spending over $14 billion in alternative 

medicine. Insurance companies, hospitals and medical schools are taking notice and 

preparing to change the way they do business. "Based on peer reviewed scientific studies, 

as many as 60 million adults in the United States are using alternative medicine therapies 

in conjunction with conventional medical treatments for various health related conditions. 

" (Journal of the American Medical Assoc., May ‘98). 

 

Fifty years ago, Dr. Ida Rolf, a biochemist at Rockefeller University, recognized that the 

traditional approach in medicine was effective, but some cases of unsolved health 

problems were not being solved by established treatments/ existing medical practices, so 

she applied her knowledge of the human tissue and discovered the fundamental Rolfing 

principles of connective tissue release and structural integration. This led her to formulate 

and perfect, after years of research, experience and use by her clients, the first structural 

integration techniques. Rolf specifically designed both Rolfing® and Rolfing Movement 

instruction — a system that re-educates the body’s movement patterns — as wholistic 

approaches to healing.