Injuries: When trying to raise fitness levels, many people misuse their bodies, resulting in pain or injuries.

Physical Stress: Over-exertion can cause players to deplete their bodies' capabilities.

Emotional Tension: In competition, excessive focus on winning can cause fear and anxiety, reducing performance.

Efficient Coordination: By not attending to both mind and body, full coordination is reduced and tension is increased.

Intelligent Play: A disproportional focus on "hard" practice rather than "intelligent" practice can result in back, neck or other common sports injuries.

Benefits in Sports and Fitness

Overall Sports Benefits:

Optimize your strength, endurance, muscle tone, balance and flexibility.

Prevent pain and injuries caused by improper or overuse of the body.

Improve physical fitness and mental attitude to improve performance and reach your individual goals.

"His (speaking about a golfer) habit is to work directly for his ends on the 'trial and error' plan without giving due consideration to the means whereby those ends should be gained."

F. M. Alexander

Swimmers:

Loosen up your muscles for greater flexibility and stamina.

Improve your focus on breathing rhythm for greater efficiency.

Learn to keep your head and neck in proper alignment to reduce pain and injury.

Increase stamina and enjoyment of the sport.

Understand how to properly extend the body to achieve better performance.

Skiers:

Ski attentively, continuously assessing and reducing muscle tension to help achieve better, more effortless balance.

Become mentally aware of the fear that can cause a tightening of the body, reducing the flexibility needed to turn, brake, and continuously adjust to the terrain.

Lengthen the spine upward, to reduce the "heaviness" that produces a fear of falling.

Learn to use your body better, for greater confidence and enjoyment of the sport.

Runners:

Learn to extend your body properly to increase stride length.

Develop a rhythmic movement and breathing pattern that increases stamina and efficiency.

Create a tendency to move the torso and hips "upwards" to reduce tension and strain on the legs.

Align the head and neck properly to encourage balance and reduce strain on the neck and shoulders.

Tone the motions of your fingers, hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders to reduce pain in the shoulder, back, and lower neck.

Tennis Players:

Prevent overusing your upper body to avoid tennis elbow or repetitive strain injuries.

Correctly extend your body, and increase balance and flexibility for better performance.

Learn to move your back upward, to reduce calf pain and injuries to the knee and leg.

Use your neck, shoulders, and arms properly to avoid rotator cuff injuries and biceps tendonitis.

Listen to your body to prevent "overload" injuries to your pelvic, groin, or leg muscles.

Bicyclists:

Achieve better coordination and balance to reduce collisions or falls.

Prevent overuse injuries that result in chronic aches and pains throughout the body.

Learn to enjoy bicycling in the moment, rather than doing "too much, too soon."

Reduce wrist compression to avoid the risk of "cyclist's palsy" or carpal tunnel syndrome.

Position the hand correctly to reduce tingling, numbness or other pain.

Keep the knee in proper alignment to avoid painful injuries including patellar and quadriceps tendonitis.

Golfers:

Avoid rotator cuff injury caused by repetitive movements of the arms and shoulders.

Learn efficient movement to avoid tendonitis and back injuries caused by excessive force.

Use the calf muscle properly to avoid pain in the muscle and Achilles tendon.

Improve leg and foot movement to improve your backswing and avoid knee stiffness.

Improve your stance for a powerful, consistent swing and avoid foot, ankle, and heel pain.

Align the vertebrae in the neck and upper back to avoid stiff necks and headache after play.

Improve overall body mechanics to lessen impact and avoid "tennis elbow."

Improve flexibility to prevent lower back, spinal injuries, bone spurs, and joint enlargement.