Interest growing in our G-trainer.

The G-trainer has demanded the attention of everyone who has come to Balance over the last couple of weeks. The beast is impossible to ignore but once our clients have had a run on it they have seen the potential and the opportunity to do some serious training on the Alter-Gs unweighting treadmill. The team has worked out exactly where its strengths lay and cant wait to begin in earnest when we go completely live in the next 7-10 days.

Interval Training as it has never been possible before:

• speed,
• strength,
• anaerobic conditioning
• quality running drills
• heightened volume at increasing speed or load was previously impossible.
• body spared from the jarring and accumulative effects of impact.
• EDT (escalating density training.) means increasing amount of work done in the same period of time.
  

Interval training is the most rapid method of achieving performance gains and the ability to tailor and optimize the interval profiles determines the ultimate limit of performance.

Interval Overload Training at Higher Running Speed

Control of body weight also provides a means for interval overload training (interval training) in which you achieve a fast speed while at reduced weight and then introduce body weight briefly to overload the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems.

Marathon training will be phenomenal on this treadmill. With your running performance improving week by week due to the increased effectiveness of interval training, quality pace and strength work and alternate long runs on the G-trainer to spare your joints from the trauma of long distance running the chances of overuse problems developing are greatly reduced. You do need some knowledge and support behind you to achieve your goals so Balance's highly experienced team is there with the skills in coaching, running analysis, injury prevention, strength and conditioning to make the G-trainer more than just a fancy toy. It is a highly effective training tool.

Sound confusing?
Difficult to believe?

Come and try the G-trainer for yourself - contact me at jonathan @ balancephysio.com
or call 020 7627 2308 to register your interest and i shall get back to you.

Los Angeles Lakers: Behind the Alter-G Treadmill

The LA Lakers NBA basketball team posted this article about the G-trainer on their website back in March and one of the players, Chris Miym (Center), tells us what he thinks of it. These guys are so big they have a treadmill made specifically to accomodate 6'6 to 7'6!!

Thats the only difference though and the benefits are exactly the same - sparing the joints and recovering muscles from excessive load and stress, heightening the strength and conditioning effectiveness of a treadmill.

LAKERS: Behind the Alter-G Treadmill:
courtesy of www.nba.com/lakers/

"Behind the Alter-G Treadmill
April 1, 2008

When deflated the Alter-G anti-gravity treadmill looks like any normal treadmill you'd see at your local gym--wrapped in a hefty bag.

Once the machine is turned on the user looks like they're standing up through the sunroof of a car.

The Alter-G treadmill creates a seal around the user's waist and then inflates to create a pressurized environment that can take away up to 80% of the users body weight, lessening the pounding to the joints.

'Essentially you become like a cork in a champagne bottle and you can modify just exactly how much pressure is in there,' said Chip Schaeffer, the Lakers Director of Athletic Performance/Player Development.

'It's a great rehab tool as well as a conditioning tool. If a guy comes off a couple games in a row and wants to blow his lungs out a little bit, but doesn't want to take the full breadth of his body weight and exhaust himself he can get in there for 15-20 minutes and not fatigue his legs too much.'

Andrew Bynum and Chris Mihm have been the main beneficiaries of the new treadmill as they recover from knee and ankle injuries respectively.

After a lengthy recover from multiple ankle surgeries Mihm has a great appreciation for the new piece of equipment.

'This is pretty amazing. It doesn't restrict your movement at all and it allows me to really get some training without all the pounding on my ankle right away."

To see Chris Mihm using the treadmill you will have to go via the article link above.

See Andrew Bynum (below) who used the G-trainer to increase his fitness whilst undergoing rehabilitation for a knee injury.


Here is what the Lakers Director of Athletic Performance had to say...

"The addition of the Alter -G treadmill has allowed us to initiate running with Andrew much earlier than otherwise would have possible. Andrew has been combining aerobic based running (10 minute bouts at moderate intensity) as well as more basketball specific anaerobic bouts (30 to 45 seconds at a high intensity followed by a 1 minute recovery) with a gradual systematic increase in the % body weight that he runs at. The most important thing for Andrew will be the ability to control the ground force reactions in the highly unpredictable environment that basketball demands. His progress to this point has been excellent."

Now we can play on our treadmill

After a frustrating wait, thanks to the inefficiencies of UPS, we are able to start experimenting with our G-trainer.

Ato (strength & conditioning physio) runs, Mick (podiatrist) observes, Tom Allen (Alter-G) explains

The shorts were missing! The shorts are integral to this thing working. They support you and create a virtual seal of the bag your legs are within. Its this that allows the blower to push air into the bag without it all leaking immediately.

Anyway we have the shorts now.

Graham Anderson the clinical Director at Balance had his first run on it last night....

"I had a workout on the G Trainer - wow I was impressed. 15 minutes quality run....I was knackered."

I havent spoken to him about the parameters he used but it will be interesting to hear. Graham is a recreational marathon runner with a PB of 3hrs26min. He also loves to be outdoors in the elements so for him to have enjoyed a treadmill run is very interesting.

Admittedly we are in a honeymoon period of keen excitement but we all feel that this really is a great tool to have at our disposal and presents us all with previously unavailable opportunities.

Radcliffe reflects on NY victory

BBC SPORT | Athletics | Radcliffe reflects on NY victory: "Radcliffe reflects on NY victory

Paula Radcliffe cursed her luck despite romping to her third victory in the New York marathon. Radcliffe has only run 10 marathons and won eight of them - the exceptions being the Athens and Beijing Olympics. She said: 'It does make it frustrating because you think 'Why can I get it right all the time in New York and I can't get it right there?' 'But sometimes you have to take what life gives you. The most important thing was to win this race.'"

Just before this weekends New York Marathon triumph Paula Radcliffe described the significance of the Alter-G treadmill to her training when she said it was "instrumental in my transition back to running before Beijing because we pushed the envelope on that and tried to move it as far forward as possible".

See photos of Paula Radcliffe in action from the Universal Sports feed on the right.

Many elite runners (in particular the Nike Runners under the guidance of Alberto Salazar) and other sports professionals in the United States have been using the G-trainer to push their performance training to new levels in terms of volume and speed. The treadmills unique ability to unweight runners, whilst allowing them to maintain their natural style (as opposed to using water or a harness), allows an increase in weekly mileage and rate of turnover (leg speed) whilst minimising the stress and strain of high impact.

Many of the NBA basketball clubs have brought in the Alter-G treadmill to allow their stars to run faster and lighter. With such large jumping athletes the benefit of reducing impact whilst increasing their metabolic and neural abilities is obvious. At Balance the prospect of matching it's experienced and innovative strength and conditioning coaches and physiotherapists with such sophisticated technology is incredibly exciting. The Balance team of professionals are way beyond the norm when it comes to the collective experience and knowledge they offer to clients. We have developed and will continue developing further protocols to elevate the effectiveness of an athletes, sports persons, adventurers, recreational and aspiring runners. To see, hear, feel and experience what its all about contact Jonathan Lewis on jonathan@balancephysio.com or call 020.7627.2308 to register your interest.

G-trainer arrives at Balance Performance Physiotherapy

An exciting day at Balance...

after a few logistical challenges the G-trainer treadmill has now entered the facility!!!


The G-trainer Pro treadmill reaches Europe, and London's largest team of sports injury, back pain, movement, strength and conditioning professionals.

Balance is very excited to announce the arrival of the G-trainer to London, UK.

With its applications for:

* orthopaedic and medical rehabilitation,

*sports injury recovery

* back pain

* strength, conditioning and running specific athletic performance

the G-trainer presents amazing opportunities to our clients.

Balance is at the forefront of a first wave of facilities in Europe that has recognised the opportunities offered by this "anti-gravity" treadmill.

At present there are only 6 other organisations who have invested in this ground breaking technology including:

AC Milan and Manchester United

Paula Radcliffe has her own personal G-trainer somewhere in Spain.

For more detail and until our new website goes live visit
www.g-trainerUK.blogspot.com and see how it will fit into Balance Performance Physiotherapy and Balance Health and Fitness services.

Balance is all about offering opportunities to all so everyone on the Balance team is particularly excited at the opportunities this is going to offer.

The obvious benefit with any "unweighting" equipment is in orthopaedic rehabilitation, sports injury recovery and back pain where reducing the effect of gravity unloads the joints and reduces stress to the soft tissues. It manages this without impeding normal running gait.

Less obvious is in the benefit to strength and conditioning training, running and other athletic performance. People are confused because "how can there be any benefit if my weight is reduced? Doesn't that make everthing much easier?".

Its actually because you can reduce the effect of one parameter (gravity) that you can increase others, namely:
*volume/distance
*speed

If you are a tech head the link at the foot of the page will explain how it all works.

And it does work! We have done considerable research on who is using it, for what applications, and the results they have achieved. The people using it include athletes of the highest calibre, including 2 of European footballs elite teams, and also NBA, NFL and Nike professional runners.

Once we tried it out in New York at the Special Hospital for Rehabilitation we were absolutely convinced we had to get one to London.

Keep posted to learn how you can get to benefit from this piece of kit.

www.Alter-G.com/alterg/bd.aspx

Review Of The Alter-G “G-Trainer” by the GadgetKing.com

These Gadget experts took the opportunity to look at the G-trainer from a techno perspective. They still managed to see through the impressive technology and see the potential for rehabilitation and performance:

"To make a short story long, Phil and Russ finally got around to running. Both had a blast, Phil preferred the 80% weight loss and Russ the 50% weight loss. According to Russ, he felt like he was 10 years younger, the G-Trainer removed all feelings of impact on joints, and he was able to run to his fullest. Phil got up to 12 miles per hour (queue in The Six Million Dollar Man sound effects). Both of our testers said they definitely felt the burn, and got a great cardio workout to boot."

For the full review click below...

Review Of The Alter-G “G-Trainer” | GadgetKing.com

Beating Running World Records

Its a little bit of a gimmick but good fun. The ability to manipulate effective bodyweight allows an increase in turnover and speed so that amongst other things records can be broken....