Mobilizing Awareness and Somatic Conditioning for Athletes
Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation
Increasing Coordination, Strength & Flexibility
Increasing Peak Performance

Mobilizing Awareness and Somatic Conditioning

for Athletes

The trick of performance is to move your body through time and space with organic natural movement patterns that are as efficient that can be.  Most athletes train hard on strength and length, but what is missing is the ability to connect with their movement patterns from the inside out. The results are often non-detected unconscious low-grade patterns of tension that slowly sabotage your performance, inhibiting you from peak performance and setting you up for injuries.  Previous injuries, stress, performance fear, habituated exercise that is numbing for your neurophysiology, etc can all lead to this experience of not fully being connected to what you are doing. 

The hands-on individual Mobilizing Awareness work or a group training like Somatic Conditioning only has one purpose: to disengage any pattern of tightness in your body so organic movement patterns can return to bring you back to peak performance.

As an athlete, recreational or professional, you spend many hours of your life working with your own body. Depending on the type of sport you are involved in, practicing many hours per week can be very hard on your system. Many athletes look for methods that will improve their performance, while others might be looking for an answer to the question why they are prone to injury. No matter what type of sports you play and no matter at which level you compete, you need to move with organic agility and not exercise in patterns of tightness.  To learn how to disengage (overly) tense muscles so they can contribute to your overall performance often becomes a turning point for your enjoyment of the sport as well as your level of performance, upgrading your potential and increasing coordination, strength & flexibility.

Movement is the key to successful human functioning. When your system embodies more control (physical and mental/emotional), easier and more successful movements will occur. To reach this level of performance it is fundamental to be able ‘to sense’ and to understand movement patterns within your own system. Besides working-out you have to be in touch with your working-in!  Incorporating the somatic concepts in their training schedules has changed the experience of many athletes. Agility and limberness increased, diminishing the chance of injury and bringing you as an athlete to the next level of performance. Basic human movement patterns that are ‘disturbed’ and inhibit the way you currently move will almost instantly be upgraded to a more functional level, relieving injuries and bringing freedom to your system.

Somatics can contribute to your performance by incorporating and learning concepts and training methods, such as:

• the difference between a ‘pandiculation’ and a ‘stretch’.
  Almost all athletes understand the importance of a proper ‘warm-up’ and a proper ‘cool-down’. A very important component of the warming-up and the cooling-down is ‘stretching’. Stretching is a great concept that increases length, strength and flexibility within your muscles.

A muscle needs to be soft to recuperate! Unfortunately most athletes are exercising with muscles that are too tense to begin with.  Knowing that muscles don’t just tighten up individually but always in total body patterns, it is fundamental to develop the lowest possible muscular tension (read: most efficient tension) at rest within your body. It is the ‘Pandiculation’, the actively controlled concentric movement followed by the actively controlled eccentric release, that increases muscular control immediately. The tension within a muscle or within a movement pattern will decrease instantly by performing a few somatic movements, creating a higher level of conscious and subconscious control over your movement patterns. This process of increasing your own awareness will give you the skill to connect better with the muscles within your own body. When you will become able to sense your own body, your movement patterns will become easier and more effortless.

After you will be able to fully control, isolate and balance your own muscles and movements, ‘Core Strengthening Programs’, ‘Pilates’ or ‘Yoga’- programs can be integrated as well. Unfortunately these programs are often used too early and inappropriately.

Somatic movement patterns are fundamental for human movement. They represent the core understanding for activities like running, jumping, throwing or reaching. Embodying these concepts is essential for athletes who take their sport seriously, would like to prevent injuries and want to move forwards to the next level.

‘Somatics for Athletes’ – Workshops can be organized in your area. Please contact The Somatic Health Center for further information.

Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation

Incorporating the somatic concepts into your process of rehabilitation will not only give you the skill and understanding how to recuperate and regain your maximum potential, but it will also give you the tools to prevent injury in the future. When you have become injured traumatically, your body will have reacted with a reflex of withdrawal throughout your system. This pattern of tightness, which is often not recognized within the existing world of rehabilitation, is often the cause of a slow and sometimes not satisfactory recovery. This tightness originates from a subconscious level in the brain, meaning that you are not able to sense this yourself either. The result is a movement pattern that is a little bit off, sabotaging the ability for energetic and free movement.  It will not be until you will regain control over your organic movement patterns that your process of rehabilitation can truly begin.

Mobilizing Awareness recognizes these patterns of tightness and reverses its damaging effects within only a few sessions.

‘Core Strengthening Programs’, ‘Pilates’ or ‘Yoga’ programs will not benefit the athletes to their full potential until the athletes understand and embody the concepts of the somatic reflexes of stress, creating core intelligence instead!

Mobilizing Awareness has significantly reduced the ‘estimated time for rehabilitation’ for many athletes. Not only did the injury heal better and faster, but the quality of the athlete’s movement patterns sharpened up as well. After their process of rehabilitation, many athletes actually perform at a higher level than before injury, due to the increased awareness of their own movements and potential. A continuation of the Somatics program ‘post-rehabilitation’ will significantly reduce the risk for future injury: back pain, muscle tears, ankle- or knee sprains, tendinitis etc. might become obsolete in your athletic career.

‘Injury Prevention’ - Workshops (very important in team sports) or ‘Somatic Rehabilitation’ -Workshops can be organized in your area. Workshops for your Rehabilitation Department or workshops for athletes and coaching staff can be specifically focussed on areas or sports of your needs. Rehabilitation sessions or programs for individual athletes can be organized as well. Please contact The Somatic Health Center for further information.

Increasing Coordination, Strength & Flexibility

By developing the skill within your system to be able to consciously sense & experience your own muscles, you will instantly regain more control over the feedback-loop from your brain to your muscles and back. Based on sound neuro-physiological principles, this will instantly translate in a higher level of muscular control. When this is achieved not just locally but in total body movement patterns, your whole system will change and move up to a higher potential. Your back will be more flexible, your breathing more efficient, your shoulders and legs more flexible etc.. Because of the increase in neurological control of your muscles, the muscles will be able to relax better when you don’t need them and your muscles will be stronger and longer when you do need them. What this means as well is that your body will recuperate better and faster, giving you the potential to peak perform more often or to increase your training schedule with more ease.

‘Somatics for Increasing Coordination, Strength & Flexibility’ - Workshops can be organized in your area. Please contact The Somatic Health Center for further details.

Increasing Peak Performance

Mobilizing Awareness and Somatic Conditioning have increased the performance of many athletes. Even though you as an athlete or your coach will think that you are at your peak performance, it is not until you will have experienced a somatic training program that you will truly achieve your maximum potential. Understanding and embodying the fundamental movement patterns for human existence will create ease within your system that until now has been unknown to you. If you are at the top in your sport, you will have the potential to reset the standards of achievements. Personal records, olympic records or world records will become targets sooner than you think. For you, Somatics can easily be the difference between winning and almost winning…Are you interested in performing with strong muscles or with intelligent muscles?

‘Athletes – The Next Generation’ – Workshops can be organized in your area for you and your athletes. Individual sessions or programs for athletes on a one-on-one basis can be organized as well. Please contact The Somatic Health Center for further details.