This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Using the Elliptical Trainer, 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 an effortless elliptical technique.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
Let’s look at going from standing to using the trainer without doing so on the trainer yet. As you’re standing, bend your knee and go onto the ball of your right leg in anticipation of using the trainer. What happened in your body? I’m guessing you sank into your left hip joint, tensing it and the whole leg to keep from falling over. You probably pulled your head down by shortening your neck. You probably tensed and raised your shoulders. You may have leaned forwards in space in anticipation of using the trainer, since this habit is probably second nature.
You may have curved your torso over and pushed your head forwards, because so many elliptical users take their bodies off balance with their heads pushed forwards horizontally to lead the body. In taking the head forwards you essentially started falling down and had to lock up in your whole body to keep from falling to the ground. Everything you probably did made you shorter – head closer to your feet.
I’m guessing now if you were to do the same thing again after reading the above paragraph, you’d make sure you stayed upright when you went onto the ball of your right foot. There are two ways for you to be upright when you go onto the ball of a foot and be fully vertically upright. The first requires a lot of tension and muscle and the second is almost effortless.
The first, the one most people use that is not effortless, is to use more of the musculature of the left leg and make sure you hold yourself vertical as you go onto the ball of the right foot. The second way is what we teach in the Alexander Technique. That is to use less muscle, as you order your head to lead you upwards, as you let the right leg on the ball of the foot still support its half of the body weight.
When you hold yourself up, you are muscling your body to not fall down. When you use an Alexander Technique order to remain fully upright as you raise your heel in preparation for using the trainer, you use an order of allowance. A good example is: “My neck is free and my head is leading my spine upwards, as I send my knee forwards and my heel up.” What does this mean?
First it means that you are preparing to use the trainer by going up rather than falling down into using the trainer. In the Alexander Technique we do NOT see using the trainer as a controlled falling down. We see using the trainer as experiencing your head leading you upwards, as your legs carry you forwards. So, using the trainer is a vertical stationary glide, not an interrupted fall down.
Here is what happens in detail when you bend your knee and raise your heel to use the trainer, using the above order of allowance. As your neck releases you turn up the volume in the spine by asking it to lengthen upwards in anticipation of bending your knee, raising your heel, and sending your leg forwards on the trainer. When you send the knee forwards and heel up, still weight bearing on the ball of the foot with the head leading the spine upwards, you don’t collapse into your left hip.
