Skating Circles Around the Competition

In July of 2001, I was intrigued to see the name Jamie Sale listed in my appointment book. Although the name was familiar, I didn’t know much beyond the fact that she was a figure skater.

During the following weeks and months, I treated both Jamie Sale and her skating partner David Pelletier with ART and became familiar with their remarkable achievements to that date. In their short time together as pairs skaters, they have nine first-place finishes in Grand Prix pairs competitions, a first place finish at the World Championships in 2001 and an Olympic gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City Jamie and David had received Active Release treatments from various providers over a three-year period while training in Montreal.

They then made the decision to move to Edmonton to train with Jamie’s old coach, Jan Ullmark. Jamie and David were first referred to my clinic by Joe Pelino, DC, an ART instructor who has had the privilege of working with the Toronto Raptors and many other professional athletes.

At our clinic, we were able to use ART to take care of the strains, sprains, and subluxations that resulted from their grueling training schedule, which included ballet, weight and aerobic training, and of course endless hours
breaking up cross-fibre adhesions and restoring normal function to the soft tissue.

This process substantially decreases healing time, treats the root cause of the injury, and improves performance. Over time, many methods have been developed to remove these adhesions. As clinicians, we have tested and used many of these techniques. Unfortunately, most of these techniques fail in the critical area of identifying the exact location and direction of these adhesions.

ART addresses these issues, providing effective means for identifying, locating, and removing adhesions across soft tissue. More than once they hobbled into my office on weekends, or met me at my home on a Sunday, so they would be able to continue training the next day; I was quite excited during the week leading up to their long program at Salt Lake City.

That night my family gathered around the television and we all gasped in horror as Jamie collided with the Russian skater who was twice her size, during the warm-up. I could almost visualize damage done to previously injured regions of her body. We were all relieved and amazed to watch them skate flawlessly. On their return she told me that, two days after the fact, she felt like she had been hit by a truck.

We continue to work with them as they enter the professional ranks. This fall they will be touring with Stars on Ice..