Prensa
A pain in the neck?
02.02.07
Financial Times
By Miranda Green, FT.com site
Published: Feb 02, 2007
When the team at the Kieser Centre say they are serious about strength training, they are definitely not joking.
Unlike other gyms, the exercise hall is hushed, its plain white walls are unmarked by video screens or posters of Lycra-clad lovelies, and there is an atmosphere of focused calm among the middle-aged clients padding quietly around the machines. Devotees of the Kieser method, which uses resistance exercise for rehabilitation after injury or to build strength and protect the back, also have to do without music, a sauna, steam room or café.
"Here there is no entertainment. Entertainment will not get you strong, " says Marcel Haasters, who runs the London outpost of Kieser Training, a Swiss company with a loyal core of clients in central Europe and its eyes on further international expansion.
"We want you to enjoy your life outside the hall - here you should concentrate and prepare for it. " He adds sternly: "If someone likes to have a chat or socialise in a gym, maybe this is not for them - London is full of very interesting restaurants and other socialising areas. "
I am both cowed and reassured, since I have come to find out what the Kieser method can do to help my chronic neck pain. The idea of a programme that can strengthen weaker muscles, correct imbalances and take the pressure off the area under strain is very appealing.
Previous treatments - physiotherapy, osteopathy, massage, acupuncture, Pilates - have provided some temporary relief but failed to tackle the root cause of the problem. And some of my own attempts at a fitness regime - several years of yoga, for example - may even have made the problem worse by overstretching too-mobile joints.