Kieser Training certainly has a way of taking you further, and beyond.

I’m no Kieser junkie but I am already enjoying the benefits after six thirty-minute sessions of training; isolating and targeting specific muscles through therapeutic back strength training to increase my overall ‘Range of Motion’ (ROM) with the aim of playing competition tennis again, pain free.

How do I explain that notion to a non-‘Kieseroid?’ Perhaps I am a junkie! But at least I’m not alone. The universe, particularly in South Melbourne, is fast becoming full of superior musculoskeletal beings full of core strength and endurance, and I am proud to have stepped aboard the Kieser ship.
Permission to step aboard captain?

With six sessions completed and reduced back pain, I had a hit of tennis before undertaking further treatment. Perhaps I was a little over-confident, I donned my out-dated tennis gear for an intended three-set match that lasted all of one. At first I was disappointed that even the John McEnroe within remained tight-lipped and refused to make any sort of racket or go ball-istic over throwing in the towel. Then I realised that I had actually lasted one full set with little to no back pain and some endurance.

At Kieser, I have been rebuilding strength in all the important back muscles, as well as muscles used when playing tennis – leg muscles to run and jump and every core muscle including my abdominals, back, chest and neck muscles that all work together to stabilise my body to help me serve. Shoulder muscles in particular, which include my deltoids and rotator cuff, are used every time with every stroke. The Kieser medical therapy machines had targeted all these muscles, and evidently strengthened them.
That’s one small step (Sessions 7 – 12)

One hundred seconds on any given Kieser muscle therapy machine can, at times, seem like a mountain to climb. The faster you work out, the less effective any machine will be for strengthening any isolated muscle. Kieser Training requires super-slow weight training, ideally lifting the nominated weight to the specific ROM over four seconds (remembering to breathe), holding for two seconds and before returning to the weight stack point. The super-slow method demands and encourages discipline and is better at isolating the muscles being worked on by avoiding exertion peaks, and further protects joints, tendons and ligaments.

With my training wheels off, ‘green training chart’ in hand, I undertook a further six sessions slightly increasing the weights either by 2lb, 4lb or 20lb (depending on which muscles are being strengthened).

A green card also visually alerts the Kieser instructors to keep an eye on me during my training sessions.

On my 12th and final ‘green training chart’ session, the time had arrived for an updated computerised MTS back strength test to graphically determine if all the benefits of Kieser Training had paid off. Belted and locked firmly into position to ensure no other part of my body could intervene and assist my back during the test, I pushed back over several degrees of motion. My overall back strength had increased by an impressive 183% since undertaking Kieser Training.

I was truly amazed by the results, yet with the recent benefits in my overall lifestyle I had been experiencing including dancing, mowing lawns, playing football and backyard cricket with my son, perhaps it all already made complete sense. Kieser Training is out of this world, revolutionary in therapeutic back strength training and I am proud that with‘Kieseroid’ I will go further and beyond with confidence and enthusiasm to enjoy a quality life, return to tennis and perhaps even dance at my 65th birthday, pain free.

Game Set Match
A Smashing 183% Victory

Kieser Head Physiotherapist
Paul Percy:

Flexibility: Mark’s dynamic flexibility has improved 10% since he
first started.

Strength: At comparable positions in his range of movement , Mark’s percentage improvements in strength were; 218% (6˚), 251% (12˚), 183% (24˚), 161% (36˚), 92% (54˚). Overall, he improved his strength by 183%
Normative Score: Mark went from being ranked in the bottom percentile ( -4 standard deviations, “extremely weak”) to being ranked on or slightly above the healthy strength percentile.