The Body Elastic.(resistance stretching)

Byline: editor: Abigail Walch

Equal parts yoga, massage, and circus act, the latest fitness fixation promises to stretch your workout to the limit. Elizabeth Weil adds a new twist to her exercise routine.

I've never been one to try novel exercises. No kickboxing, no hip-hop aerobics. Why risk failure, the humiliation? Starting in my late teens, I ran for ten years, then switched to yoga for ten years; last year I started running again. In this latest go-round as a runner, with my fortieth birthday looming, I decided to try a vaguely cultish flexibility program called resistance stretching. It's not for those who value their personal space or are afraid of looking ridiculous, or those who feel squeamish about a 180-pound body standing on their ass. Yet it's considered an absolutely vital part of the exercise regimens of a handful of medal-laden Olympians and professional athletes. It also seemed to be exactly what I needed this past summer, when, instead of checking into an ashram in honor of the aforementioned birthday, I decided I wanted to be able to run as fast as, if not faster than, I did when I was 25 years old.

At the outset, I must tell you: The claims people make about stretching are slippery and strange. Yoga teachers talk incessantly (annoyingly, in my opinion) about the amorphous benefits. Bob Cooley, the man who invented resistance stretching, will tell you that a perfectly limber set of hamstrings will heal you emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, and sexually, not just enable you to touch your toes. Lots of researchers have spent lots of time and money in labs studying what changes in our bodies when we stretch, and they haven't come up with much. They've experimented on mice and even biopsied muscles, and still no one's produced data to explain why stretching works. We all know stretching can improve our range of motion, but what good does that do?

Still, desperate (read: old) times called for potentially dubious measures. I needed to rejuvenate my body, quickly, so I called Anne Tierney and Steve Sierra, two of the best resistance stretchers in the country, whose business, Innovative Body Solutions, is based in Florida. Tierney and Sierra had stretched the swimmer Dara Torres up to five times a day at the Beijing Olympics, where, in case you were the only one on the planet who missed it, she won three silver medals at age 41. Innovative Body Solutions is one of a few resistance-stretching outfits nationwide offering workshops, classes, and individual sessions. What won me over about Tierney and Sierra was their confidence that they could optimize, and perhaps even restore to its prior condition, my almost-40-something physique (as I am two years younger than Torres was during her shining Olympic moment, I figured that even if they couldn't deliver her twelve-pack, maybe they could get me a six).

"We're troubleshooters," Tierney explained to me, matter-of-factly, over the phone. "We'll look you over and figure out where the trouble spots are. It's usually a chain of small imbalances that are holding you back. Once we figure those out, everything will open up."

Resistance stretching is based on the idea that muscles gain strength and flexibility if they are contracted and stretched at the same time. This sounds like a physiological catch-22, but it's not. Think about it this way: Resistance stretching is the opposite motion of strength training. Say you're holding a weight in your hand with your arm extended straight. If you bend your elbow, you're strength training your biceps. If your elbow is already bent and you try to keep it that way while someone pushes your hand down, you're resistance stretching.