Gyration Nation

By Elizabeth Marglin

If ever there is a walking testimonial for the Gyrotonic, the new darling of machine-enhanced exercises for athletes and celebrities, it will be retired triathlete Kerstin Weule. Weule has used the exercises, designed to lengthen muscles, stimulate circulation and increase joint mobility, twice. Once after knee surgery—she was 19 at the time and was told then she would never run again—and again after a head-on car accident in 2004 left her with whiplash and inflammation. Both times “gyro” was a critical component of her recovery, she says.

Weule knew that as a triathlete, pushing her body was the nature of the beast. She had knee surgery at the age of 19 because of improper alignment and was told she would never run again. With the help of flowing Gyrotonic exercises that are designed to lengthen muscles, stimulate circulation and increase joint mobility, along with the core strengthening of Pilates, she learned a different way of using her muscles, enabling an illustrious decade-long career that included winning the XTERRA 2000 World Championship (an off-road triathlon). After the car accident she turned to Gyrotonic again, this time for rehabilitation. Within a year, the 38-year-old, who lives in Evergreen, Colo., and retired from competitive sports in 2002, had regained her full range of movement, something she says wouldn’t have been possible without the exercises.

“As an athlete, my range of motion was limited and one-sided, so the full range of joint movement you get through Gyrotonic is very beneficial,” Weule says.

Juliu Horvath, a former ballet dancer with the New York City Opera, developed Gyrotonic in the mid 1980s as a machine-assisted version of his therapeutic movement system Gyrokinesis, formerly known as “Yoga for Dancers.” Horvath’s dancing career had come to an abrupt halt when he ruptured an Achilles tendon and damaged a spinal disc. Retiring to the Virgin Islands to regroup, he began delving into yoga, acupuncture and meditation. His forays into these healing modalities became his inspiration for Gyrokinesis, which bills itself as “The Art of Exercising and Beyond.”

While the “beyond” aspect refers to something akin to the seven energy centers of the body, called chakras, the exercises themselves are relatively easy to grasp. Designed to be accessible to people of all ages and abilities, a Gyrokinesis class starts with circular movements done while seated on a stool. The exercises progress into deeper spinal arches and curls throughout floor and standing sequences. While the moves bear a certain similarity to yoga, the poses flow from one to another without pause, creating a sense of dance-like fluidity. It’s a total-body workout that builds flexibility and core strength while encouraging gracefulness.

The principles of Gyrokinesis—counterbalancing opposing forces, creating space in the joints, coordinating breath with movement and visualizing the flow of energy that accompanies each exercise—led Horvath to invent a machine that could support his approach. His homegrown devices evolved into what he calls the Gyrotonic Expansion System, essentially a machine-based Gyrokinesis that combines spiraling movements with weighted resistance.

Because it is machine dependent, comparisons with Pilates inevitably arise. But the archaic-looking Pulley Tower Combination Unit, the main staple of the Gyrotonic, which features a pair of revolving wheels with handles, works in fundamentally different ways from Pilates’ equipment. While Pilates can be said to adhere to the logic that the shortest distance between two points is a line, Gyrotonic embodies the idea, famous among artists, that there are no straight lines in nature.

How it works
Angela Crowley, a Colorado-based Gyrotonic master trainer, believes Gyrotonic takes the advances of Pilates and Feldenkrais, which she also teaches, to a new level. “It gives the body so many options and combinations of movement. On a holistic level, it looks at how the body moves as a whole—the amount of spinal articulation in multiple planes and dimensions,” she says.

The adjustable design of the Gyrotonic favors rotations rather than the linear, back-and-forth movements that Pilates excels in. The levers, pulleys and handles provide continuous resistance, developing muscles that often get ignored in more standard approaches. There is none of the jerky starts and stops so common with most conventional exercise equipment. And because there is no endpoint, movement can be sustained without disruption, adding the pump of an aerobic workout.

While it’s tempting to view Gyrotonic as a more sophisticated system than Pilates, for many fitness experts it’s more a question of the individual’s purpose and personality that determines which modality is more appropriate. For example, when Weule has knee problems, she begins with Pilates to strengthen the joints, and then slowly segues ways into Gyrotonic.

“Normally the first thing to do with an injury is to stabilize the area by making sure the surrounding, stabilizing muscles are firing properly, and then mobilize, which is where Gyrotonic comes in,” Weule says. “Gyro has movements where you do stabilize, but it seems less stable overall than Pilates. I think Gyrotonic is harder for the average person who has low body awareness because they have to coordinate the movements with so many different things.”

But for Crowley, there is no set protocol for which training comes first. “Although Gyrotonic is often approached as if it is more advanced, it’s actually quite accessible for people who have more rehabilitative needs,” she says. “A time when Gyrotonic is especially nice is when people need to regain a relationship to feeling good while moving. There’s a freedom and ease in the motions that helps people rediscover their confidence and release holding patterns—it’s very soothing to someone in pain.”

Crowley notes that the effectiveness of either system also can depend on someone’s psychological makeup. “I think of it as the personality of the nervous system—some people need more freedom, but others need more stability to get better,” she says.

A total body workout
For Elizabeth Larkam, director of Pilates & Beyond for Western Athletic Clubs, in San Francisco, Calif., the chosen training method also depends on a person’s learning style. “Someone who is comfortable with the refined attention and focus of a yoga class would be a good candidate for Gyrotonic,” she says. “Someone who finds that yoga demands too much concentration is often better off in a Pilates environment.”

There is no question that Gyrotonic is catching on. A host of celebrities and athletes are hooked on it, including Liv Tyler, Julianne Moore and pro golfer Mark Wilson. In Germany, orthopedic clinics regularly prescribe Gyrotonic as a physical therapy treatment.

Although it’s not a common rehab method here yet, practitioners in the United States are beginning to recognize its therapeutic soundness. In January 2000 the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies ran a detailed assessment of Gyrotonic’s value for treating shoulder injuries, stating that “Structured movement systems such as GXS [Gyrotonic] are beneficial within the rehabilitation setting because they promote stimulation of the affected area while maintaining a complete relationship to the body as a whole.”

And it’s precisely Gyrotonic’s ability to treat the body in its entirety that makes it relevant for both training and therapy. As Weule says, “It seems like it’s more lifelike.” The movements replicate how the body actually moves, whether in swimming, golfing, tennis, dance or even ice-skating.

Getting started
But Gyrotonic’s growth has been hindered by the expense, $5,500, and the bulk of the Gyrotonic Expansion System. While there are two less-expensive home models available for $799 and $1,799, another factor that limits Gyrotonic’s presence in the fitness market is the complexity of the system. Horvath maintains high standards for practitioners and requires them to undergo extensive training.

Still, its popularity is rising steadily. Instruction is priced similarly to other forms of personal training, at roughly $45 to $75 per hour. There are more than 800 studios worldwide and more than 500 in the United States alone.

Of course, if you’re recovering from an injury, it is best to consult with your supervising physician to determine a movement modality that would be most appropriate. But if you have an insatiable curiosity about fitness, are in an exercise rut, or just want to find a way of being more comfortable in your body, you might just give Gyrotonic a whirl. “You will be able to feel, in a really satisfying way, a movement relationship between spine and limbs that you had never thought possible,” Larkam says. “It brings about the ‘aha’ moment, awakening you to the blind spots that previous systems might not have revealed.”

A great introduction to the Gyrotonic system is through Gyrokinesis. You can order Gyrokinesis exercise videos for $25 to $35 through the website www.gyrotonic.com or by calling (570) 828-0003. The website also helps you find a Gyrotonic or Gyrokinesis studio in your area.

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