This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Weightlifting (Working Out), is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create the weightlifting technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
INHIBITION is one of the most powerful tools in the Alexander Technique. It gives the weightlifter a tool to change any aspect of her lifting techniques and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the weightlifter identify what is interfering with the weightlifter lifting with the most user friendly lifting techniques and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.
INHIBITION ALLOWS THE WEIGHTLIFTER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN HIS OR HER LIFTING TECHNIQUES.
Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your weightlifting techniques. Let me explain. By the time a weightlifter has discovered, after years of lifting, that there are aspects of the weightlifter’s techniques and posture that are interfering with the lifter’s ability to do the various lifts without wear and tear, these destructive habits are as central to the weightlifter’s lifting habits as the productive ones are.
So, how do you throw out the bath water, without throwing out the baby? You identify and list what is compromising your weightlifting, and you also make a second list of what it is that works as you lift, and you only keep the good list.
There are the typical big postural problems – a slumped or over-arched back, obvious tension throughout the body, from hands to legs. Then there are the much more subtle problems, which may be a matter of degree. What I mean, is there may be postural and technique things that you do that are not obvious to anyone but an Alexander Technique teacher.
Ex: If right before the weightlifter squats, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the weightlifter squats, she locks her hips, this can be almost undetectable. If the lifter locks and narrows her shoulders as she does an overhead press, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she bench presses, this can put pressure on the nerves that originate at the spinal cord, and this can be hard to see.
So, what is the act of inhibition or inhibiting? If right before you do what you have always done when you weightlift, just before you start, you stop and choose to do something new, then you have just inhibited what isn’t serving you.
Ex: Just as the weightlifter is about to squat, she notices she locks her neck. The lifter stops – doesn’t begin squatting yet. She now chooses not to lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then begins her squat.
What I have just described is inhibition or inhibiting a habit. It very subtle and very powerful, because for the first time, the weightlifter has chosen not to squat starting with an unconscious bad habit.
She has chosen to weightlift without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the lifter’s awareness is moving weightlifting away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have lifted with. Now you have the tool, INHIBITION, that will allow you to perceive and choose which habits you want to keep or release.
THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE DOES TWO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS. IT TRULY RAISES YOUR AWARENESS OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING WHEN YOU WEIGHTLIFT TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR LIFTING TECHNIQUES, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.
