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Saturday, July 26, 2008

Pilates Class Is No Piece of Cake

By Greg Archuleta
Journal Staff Writer
      Freshman quarterback B.R. Holbrook expected his life to change when he left his home in California to attend summer school at the University of New Mexico on a football scholarship.
    He never, in his wildest dreams, expected to be sitting inside Carlisle Gym on the UNM campus taking a Pilates class from a dance instructor.
    "This was the farthest thing from my mind," Holbrook says, sitting on a fitness ball and clapping his hands while mimicking Jennifer Predock-Linnell, the instructor for the course called Dance 204 — Stretch and Strength.
    "I wasn't even thinking about class when I came," says Holbrook, who arrived from Stevenson Ranch, Calif. "I was just thinking football the whole time. I was a little skeptical, to be honest."
    About 35 UNM students — more than half of them Lobo football players, including former Lobo Tyson Ditmore, and a handful other student-athletes — took the three-week course that ended Friday. The weekday sessions lasted 2 1/2 hours each.
    "It's all about building your core muscles (the abdominals and surrounding muscles)," says Predock-Linnell, a theater and dance instructor who began the class 10 years ago for UNM dance students. "It's based on Joseph Pilates, who developed all these exercises and this philosophy. Your core is your center, which supports the rest of your body, and then you work outward with lengthening out the muscles."
    No problem for a Division I-A athlete, right?
    "The first week, halfway through an exercise, I'd start cramping up," junior tight end Mitch Straub says. "I'd be like, `I can't bend this way!'
    "But it's great because with your core, that's how you transfer all your strength from your lower body to your upper body. It's great in preventing cramps, injuries and muscle pulls."
    That's part of the reason senior basketball player Tony Danridge is taking the class. Danridge, representing the basketball side along with incoming freshman Curtis Dennis and women's member Geronika Jackson, said he's been bothered by a sore ankle since recovering from a broken leg in October.
    "It's helping my injury, helping get my ankle more flexible," he says. "I had the option to choose the class among several others, and I thought it would help me. I have problems with my flexibility in general, and I wanted to work on that."
    Predock-Linnell understands that the influx of student-athletes might give the impression that her course simply is an easy way for them to get an "A" to help their grades.
    "They don't get an easy `A.' They're graded on participation, they're graded on focus, they're graded on their improvement during that period of time and they're graded on just being in the class," she says. "I almost threw a bunch of them out last time, midway through. I said if they didn't shape up that I was going to drop them from the class."
    If the players shape up anywhere close to that of Predock-Linnell, they'll be in fantastic condition.
    "The hardest thing is trying to follow her," sophomore safety Mike Love says, pointing to the instructor.
    Predock-Linnell says the football coaches have approached her about leading the team in stretching during preseason fall practice sessions. She submitted a proposal but hasn't heard back.
    She says student-athletes began enrolling for her class three or four years ago. Several football players already have taken her class, but their experiences didn't help sophomore linebacker Terel Anyaibe, who thought he was actually taking a dance class.
    "When I first came out here, I didn't know what I was doing," he said. "(Running back) Paul Baker took this class last year, and he told me it works out your abs; so the only thing I could think of was that it was a salsa class or something like that.
    "When I found out it was Pilates, I'd seen people on TV doing that all the time on morning exercise shows. I thought, `This is gonna be cake.' I got in here and got a reality check."
    The class has allowed several incoming football freshmen to get to know some of the veterans, but it's also made a sports fan of Predock-Linnell.
    "J.R. Giddens was in my class, twice," she says. " So I followed his path and I was pleased that het got on such a good team (Boston, in the NBA draft). I've gotten to know a lot of (the players). I appreciate them. I'm sorry they have so many injuries. I worry about them because of their injuries, and I hope the information they get and these exercises are beneficial to them."
   

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