Jim Wharton - The Whartons’ Stretch Book: Featuring the Breakthrough Method of Active-Isolated Stretching

To Aaron Mattes

Healer, Teacher, Mentor, and Friend

Copyright 1996, 2018 by Jim & Phil Wharton and Maximum Performance International, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

crownpublishing.com

Harmony Books is a registered trademark, and the Circle colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Times Books in 1996, and subsequently published in paperback by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1996.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN9780812926231

Ebook ISBN9781984822680

v5.3.1

a

Imagine the following: competing with the worlds best athletes in your sport after your doctors warned you that you would never return to competition; living pain-free after years of chronic pain; assisting athletes to win Olympic medals; and helping thousands of people find relief from painful muscular conditions. It sounds too good to be true, and I too would consider these stories hyperbole if I hadnt lived them.

As I look in the rearview mirror of my life, I see a clear picture: the opportunity to witness so many people heal from muscular pain and realize their dreams. My work was born from the quest to actualize my own dreams. My dream of completing my running career was derailed. As a young student athlete, attending the University of Florida, my body began to unravel. The transition from high school athletics to collegewith the accompanying increase in training volume and intensityas well as poor posture, lack of muscular balance, flat feet, and the cumulative repetitive stresses of distance running had finally taken their toll. I was suffering from chronic back pain. Team doctors identified a 33-degree scoliosis or curvature of the spine. They said that the only treatment option was a Harrington rod surgery and back fusion and there was no guarantee of pain relief. I was emphatically told my running career was over.

I had lived such a healthy life that it was hard for me to believe back surgery was the best option for me to live without pain. My search for alternative solutions was relentless; I tried every known treatment and healing modality. Initially my search only left me with temporary results, but finally I discovered these highly effective, time-tested flexibility and strength exercises. After several years of this range-of-motion and strength exercise program my spine was completely straight, and I was pain free. I began to run, then train, then compete, becoming a national class runner racing and training with the worlds best. Fast-forward thirty yearsthere are no words to express the gratitude I feel for following my heart and inner voice. Fulfilling my own athletic aspirations, while at the same time helping others to realize their dreamswhat could be more rewarding? My father, Jim, a former architect and exercise physiologist assisted me in my search for answers. We witnessed countless people with muscular conditions and pain and we both noticed a huge void in the field of injury prevention and rehabilitation and musculoskeletal health. Our passion for the work forged a great bond and we became more than father and son, steadfast in our resolve to transform my diagnosis and unified in our focus to help others live without pain.

Its now been over two decades since The Whartons Stretch Book became a catalyst in shifting the way the world approaches musculoskeletal health. Active Isolated Stretching, or AIS, has become the benchmark flexibility process to achieve joint range of motion. We remain both humbled by and in awe of the human bodys miraculous ability to recover, regenerate, and heal. This sophisticated yet easy-to-follow method can be used for musculoskeletal injury prevention, recovery, performance, and longevity.

We are honored to be your guide on your health journey; we hope you enjoy this work.

In Health,

Phil and Jim WhartonOctober 2017

Special thanks and love to Michael Browning for lending Bev to us for a year and making us members of the family.

Thanks to Reid Boates, the worlds greatest agent, and Elizabeth Rapoport, the worlds greatest editor. Thanks so much for the generous efforts and talents of Ron Boyle, Ginna Frantz, Mike Weinstein, Terry Simes, Judith Laferriere, Diana Tonnessen, Sarah Bewley, Shannon Silcox, Vicki Poth, Angela St. Pierre, Randy Brower, and the athletes, clients and healthcare professionals who share our lives and our work every day.

JW

PW

The Whartons stretching program changed my life. Jim and Phil Wharton have reinvented what stretching is and what it can do for you.

When I ran the Lake Placid Sports Medicine Center, which was visited by top Olympians from around the world, I was always struck by how few athletes bothered to stretch. When I wrote my last book, Turning Back the Clock, I was tempted not to write a stretching chapter at all, because I couldnt find a program that really worked. Even though Ive been a lifelong aerobic animal, competing in skiing, cycling, Iron Man contests, and marathons, neither I nor any of my friends ever stretched. Sure, we bought the books and tried a few of the exercises, but soon gave them up for lack of effect.

And then the Whartons introduced me to the next generation of stretching, called Active-Isolated Stretching (AI). Although scientists have been researching this for over twenty-five years and Olympians have been employing this technique for about eight years, AI stretching has only recently been brought to the publics attention, largely through the efforts of Jim and Phil Wharton. I had come to the Whartons believing that my hips were shot and that I needed major hip surgery. Then Jim took me through the hip flexion exercises. To my delight, he showed me that my hips were locked and could easily be unchained with AI stretching. This salvaged my flagging skiing, tennis, and blading career. I was astounded to realize increases of 40 degrees in my hip range of motion.

But the greatest strength of AI stretching is its ability to make a better athlete out of you. As we age, our muscles become increasingly inelastic. AI stretching can make substantial improvements in muscle elasticity, adding renewed life and spring to tired out old muscles. Im faster and quicker now at 48 than Ive ever been thanks to renewed muscle elasticity. But dont take my word for it. The real proof is in the Whartons track record. The Whartons have trained thirty-three Olympians, eleven of whom have medaled. After Wharton worked with Dennis Mitchell, the 1992 bronze medalist in the 100 meter, for just a year, his time dropped from 10.03 seconds to 9.91. Phil Wharton told me, In specific athletes, weve gotten an extra foot on the long jump and triple jump. Deep muscle stretching has allowed Olympic skier Alberto Tomba to transform his incredible strength into explosive power.