May 18th

Today was a long day, beginning at 5:45 when we got up to go down and watch Igor Burdenko, who is the creator of the method I am studying.  He is currently working out of Bosse Sports and Health Club in Sudbury, Ma.  Laurie and I observed while he worked with four different people, mostly with all different problems.  The first client was an 8th grade boy, who was a very talented tennis player.  The boy has recently been growing a lot, and he is now extremely tall with little muscle to support it.  He had so much stress on his joints causing back and knee pain that he was unable to play tennis.  Now after working with Igor he is back on the courts, and as Igor explained to us he is able to regain his strength without pain or interfering with the healing process.  His next client was a doctor and tennis player, with bad back pain.  He too was unable to play temporarily because of his pain, but now since working with Igor has made a lot of progress.  The next client of Igor's required the most patience and attention then what we had seen with the previous two people.  He was a 19 year old boy who had a stroke when he was 15, and he now is very hard of hearing and has slow processing because of swelling of his brain.  His symptoms are similar to that of someone with Multiple Sclerosis or Parkinson's.  Unlike the other clients which worked 50% on land, 50% in water, this person worked all water.  While in the water, he worked on mostly coordination exercises, and ones that will help him regain the control of his body he lost from the stroke.  The fourth client, was an engineer who had a knee and an ankle problem.  He was told he needed surgery for his knee, but since working with Igor has successfully avoided it.  This man had poor coordination issues, which could be a possible source of all his injuries.  The exercises Igor was having him do looked very simple, but they were hard for him to gain control  and have his brain follow along and detect patterns.

After the observation in Sudbury, we went back to Hopkinton and I observed one of Laurie's classes.  The rain again made the session limited to just the garage, but everyone made it work just like the last time.  Laurie took a lot of exercises Igor did, and showed them to her class.  In doing this, she highlighted the fact that one Burdenko exercise can be modified for a person of any age,  and can be used to rehabilitate an injury or problem, or also be a difficult workout for a high level athlete.