Your Body, Your Responsibility: Featuring, the Alignment Resistance Training Method of Stretching and Strengthening

Debra M. Corbo, BS, PT, CPT Debra has been a life-long participant of sports, having trained as a long-distance runner and track and field participant since her preteens. Her understanding on both the endurance aspect of long-distance running and the strength burst of the shot put assisted her in a life-changing event. One day while stretching before the start of a track meet, she felt an unusual feeling in her right leg. Within seconds, there was numbness, tingling, and eventually no feeling at all. There were no MRIs at that time, so from the X-rays taken the doctors concluded that she had injured discs in her lower back. Surgery was strongly recommended. Fortunately for Debra, this was a surgery that she and her parents felt was not an option. It was at this point that Debra s education began. After leaving the hospital, she began to read and study everything she could get her hands on about her injury and what she could do to help her body heal. Over the next two and a half years, she taught herself to walk again and to use her right leg. All this was accomplished without the surgery that the doctors insisted she needed. And she ran again, competing in the Boston Marathon at the age of fifteen. Realizing that continuing to run would prove detrimental to her back over time, she soon retired from running. Debra attended Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Physical Therapy. Over the past twenty-five years, she has worked as a licensed physical therapist in Pennsylvania and Florida. After graduation, Debra worked at numerous facilities to gain experience while working in all aspects of physical therapy and rehabilitation. Debra has taken dozens of courses to increase her skill level as well as to enhance her knowledge base. The confines and requirements of conventional facilities hindered the skills and abilities that Debra displayed. She began working in the field of home health care, where her diagnostic skills could be honed and perfected. For the past ten years, Debra has been in private practice, specializing in manual orthopedics, flexibility, and strengthening. The diagnostic skills that Debra has developed are unique within her profession. Since her association with Doug, these skills, as well as new and unique modalities for stretching and strengthening all parts of the body, have developed into the Alignment Resistance Training Method that you are reading about. Douglas J. Splittgerber, CPT Doug s early years growing up were like most kids, playing football, basketball, and baseball. Due to his tall, skinny stature, he never excelled in any of these sports. After graduating from high school, Doug worked a summer job at a foundry. Unbeknownst to him, he suffered a serious back injury that would change his life forever. Doug attended the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh for a year and decided to work until the draft board came calling. It was 1969; Viet-Nam was escalating, and most nineteen-year-olds were being drafted. Doug applied for a job at the Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee and was hired. During the weeklong orientation period, he had a mandatory back X-ray taken and was told that he could not be hired due to a severe back problem. This back problem was a grade 3 spondolythesis, incurred while he had worked as a squeezer molder during his summer work at the foundry. The doctors told him to not lift anything over thirty pounds and that he would have a spinal fusion by the time he was thirty-five. Period. Like Debra, Doug sensed that there must be something that he could do to minimize the effects of this injury. He stopped at a bookstore and bought a book on Kinesiology and a copy of Gray s Anatomy. At the age of nineteen, Doug s education really began. He devoured both books, studying them voraciously over the next ten years. He also began an activity that he had been warned not to do for fear of his back injury weight lifting and bodybuilding. His competitive career, spanning over a twenty-year period, included powerlifting competitions. At the 1984 Junior Wisconsin Championships, Doug won the state title in the 275-pound weight class with lifts of 700 pounds in the squat, 435 pounds in the bench press, and 655 pounds in the dead lift. All of this accomplished at the age of thirty-four with a grade 3 spondolythesis and a 30-pound lifting restriction. Doug has been a professional trainer since opening up his first gym in 1982. In 1988, he became certified by the American College of Sports Medicine as a health/fitness instructor after a rigorous training period at Memphis State University in Tennessee. In 1989, Doug became a certified MedX technician after studying at the University of Florida in Gainesville under Dr. Michael Pollack and inventor of MedX, Arthur Jones. After that, Doug worked for a short period at St. Elizabeth s hospital for Dr. James Gmeiner as a MedX technician and head of the Muscle Testing and Strengthening Department. In 1991, Doug became a certified personal trainer with the National Academy of Sports Medicine, then located in Chicago, IL. He was immediately offered a position on the teaching staff, under the direction of Dr. Robert Goldman and Dr. Ronald Klatz, both world-renowned anti-aging experts. He continued teaching until 1996, having taught over six hundred students during that time. Doug also holds a certificate as a certified personal trainer with the International Sports Science Association. Doug is currently finishing up his Bachelor of Science degree at this time. Doug s association with Debra began professionally in 1993. For the past fourteen years, they have been honing their understanding of human function and developing the methods and techniques that make up the Alignment Resistance Training Method of body function. Debra and Doug s association has brought about a level of understanding of human function that is desperately needed by everyone, professional and layman alike. This now-husband-and-wife duo is on the doorstep to bring their understanding to the masses. Doug, fifty-six, and Debra, forty-eight, belie their years with the strength and vitality that they exhibit on a daily basis. Both continually work on their individual problems, just as each of you should be working on your issues as well. They are shining examples of what anyone is capable of and of the strength and vitality that we all should enjoy as we gracefully age.