Game - Set - Match!

For Connie Harnick, 58, a competitive tennis player, her Pilates and GYROTONIC ®

workouts keeps her game as fresh as when she was in her 20s.

  “I’m playing as good a tennis game now as I’ve ever played,” she says. “In tennis, if you don’t have a stable base, you’re never going to have a good stroke. Because of the core training with Pilates, I have stability for my forehand and my backhand.”
 
  Harnick turned to Pilates because she couldn’t play her customary two games without suffering “miserable” back pain and often numbness on her right side. Since starting Pilates more than two years ago, Harnick has practiced it for several hours a week. After six months of conditioning, “I could go out and play tennis, even singles, and my back wasn’t hurting anymore because of the core strengthening,” she says.
 
Although Harnick had always cross-trained on the treadmill or stationary bicycle on days she didn’t play tennis, she knew that as she grew older she had to “work out more and work out differently to avoid injury.” Between tennis and other exercise, she says she is intentionally actively engaged about 15 hours a week.
 
Aline Alexander, who owns Momentum Studio in Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights with her husband, Bryan Alexander, trains Harnick in Pilates and

methods weekly.

Balancing the body’s asymmetry is a key component of the Pilates method, Alexander says.  Sports like tennis or golf are called “unilateral” because they develop one side of the body, usually the dominant side, more than the other. “We are all asymmetrical. That’s normal. But for athletes the asymmetry can get out of control,” she explains. “In Pilates we’re looking for balanced musculature and strength through a range of motion.”

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