News Pull Yourself Back Together
February 22, 2006 The Sunday Times January 29, 2006
Pull yourself back together
Gyrotonics is the latest celebrity fitness craze to hit these shores, writes Anna Burnside, but its real value is for people suffering from more chronic conditions than mere fame
I am sitting astride a padded bench. My thighs are gripping the bench so tightly that they have started to shake. My feet are glued flat on the ground, my abs are pulling my bellybutton towards the window, my chest is high. And it all has to stay that way as I hold onto two handles and manoeuvre my arms in giant circles while scooping my back. It is like swimming through a Pilates class while learning to drive. I have so many different muscles and limbs to think about that my head, which has received no specific instructions to grip, scoop or circle, feels as if it is about to explode.
This is Gyrotonics, also known as yoga for dancers, the latest American fitness import to catch the eye of celebrities whose form is their fortune. Madonna is said to have scooped and pulled as part of her punishing pre-Confessions on a Dance Floor regime and Gwyneth Paltrow gripped and circled to recover from the birth of baby Apple.
Penny Withers, who is pushing my thighs, pulling my lower back, showing me whooshing breathing patterns and praising my articulation, whatever that is, is responsible for bringing Gyrotonics to Scotland. Dancers have used the system since the Hungarian dancer Juliu Horvath invented it to cure a damaged achilles tendon in the 1980s.
By the time Scottish Ballet invested in its first Gyrotonic equipment five years ago, Withers was already a dance teacher. She qualified as a Gyrotonic instructor in 2003 — it is no job for an amateur, and all teachers train with Horvath and his hand-picked associates. She started her own business the same year.
The idea behind the system is a simple one: to stretch and strengthen the muscles using fluid movements. This is the key difference from Pilates or yoga: exercises are based on circles, spirals and rotational movements rather than holding static poses or isolating individual muscles.
It is performed on a £3,300 wooden bench and a pulley tower with an instructor on hand at all times. It adds up to the dream combination of a low-impact workout that targets the deep muscle groups.
Although Gyrotonics has started to pop up in fashion magazines and celebrity interviews, most of Withers’s clients come because they have chronic back pain or some other unglamorous condition.
“I can think of a couple of people who read about it in Elle and fancied giving it a try,” she says. “But most of them come because they have a sore neck, or it’s a real chore to exercise, or they have tried everything else. Then they find they can fit into their trousers, but that’s a by-product.”
Withers makes it clear that she’s not a doctor and can’t make a medical diagnosis. What she can do is look critically at a body, see how it is working, or not working, and supervise the pulling and stretching that could well help to get it moving again.
“You are collapsing on the left hand side,” she says to me with a frown. “And your ribcage needs to soften. Gyrotonics would definitely help with that. And we could work on that shoulder.”
While Withers is happy to help counteract the wear and tear caused by 21st-century living — in my case typing, driving and carrying a 20lb baby — she enjoys the challenge of tackling more chronic conditions. “I think it would be very different working in London, seeing a lot of ladies who lunch,” she says. “And I never read Hello! magazine — I wouldn’t recognise a celebrity if they fell out of a tree. I much prefer seeing a mixture of clients.”
And it is a real mixture: golfers, musicians, singers, 35% male, and ranging in age from dancers in their early teens to one regular who is 76. “I always warn people that it’s not an immediate panacea,” she says. But it is clear that she takes great delight in her more spectacular successes.
After three sessions in Withers’s basement, a woman who had spent 11 miserable years wearing a neck collar and suffering from spondylitis (inflammation of the joints and spine) recovered enough to throw her collar away. “Now that,” she says, “is what I call job satisfaction.”
Another client in his sixties with peripheral neuropathy was alarmed that his leg muscles were wasting away and nobody could offer any solutions. His wife persuaded him to see Withers and he now finds his posture, back pain and a persistent frozen shoulder have improved and he feels better than he did in his fifties.
It’s hard to think of anyone who would not feel better after an hour of intensive stretching and scooping. Like many therapies, the simple act of doing something positive gives a glow of achievement.
Then there is the pleasant sensation of spending an hour with someone whose primary care in the world is your sore head and aching back. The constant supervision means that not a pull is wasted — every movement has to be present and correct. And then there is the blissful peace: the basement studio is completely distraction-free. Nobody calls, texts or bawls for mashed banana and a bottle of milk.
But even after my first one-hour session, I can see that the benefits go deeper than a break from the usual grind. It may look as if the machines and the instructor do a lot of the work, but it requires a huge mental effort to co-ordinate all that pushing, squeezing and scooping into a fluid movement. That is without doing the prescribed breathing pattern, which Withers reckons is a whoosh too far for a beginner like myself. I am, however, told off — in a gentle, Gyrotonic way of course — for frowning and gritting my teeth.
Despite my freestyle panting and refusal to smile, we circle my grumbling shoulders, scissor my legs, and persuade my crunchy back to shift. Withers is with me every scoop of the way, adjusting my alignment, checking my heels have not crept up, pressing down the offending ribcage. There is encouragement and correction in equal measures. At the end, she looks me up and down with her critical eye. “Your left side is better and your pelvis has moved down.”
There is no mirror in the studio, so I can’t see what she is talking about. However, I do feel pleasantly long and limber. My shoulders, which normally tell me they hate me in Morse code, have no desire to click. Withers smiles. “Most people end a session feeling they want to float. They feel light, but grounded. Often they have to adjust the rear-view mirror of their car.”
When Withers first started Gyrotonics, she was her own best client. “I had been standing at the piano for decades, demonstrating everything with my right leg. I had not moved my left leg in years. Not only has my physical shape changed completely, but I have become less of a perfectionist, more easy-going.” Ballet, she says, is all about getting it absolutely right, whereas Gyrotonics is about working with how it feels today.
She has even persuaded her long-term partner, a biker, to strap up to the pulley tower. “He ricked his back and couldn’t even put his socks on. After one session of arch and curl and a bit of legwork, he was just fine.”
More details at www.pennywithers.co.uk
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