MEET THE WHARTONS

Athletes all want the same thing. EDGE. It makes no difference whether you are a weekend warrior or an Olympic medalist. There is something in you that burns. Something that quests endlessly. You want to be the best and you hope with all your heart that being the best is good enough to win.

It’s the dream of every athlete to have a trainer – a wise and knowing mentor who will recognize your talent, organize your training, and take you from “good” to “great.” And, if your personal trainer has Olympic credentials in his pocket, then you join the company of champions.

Father and son team, Jim and Phil Wharton are an athlete’s dream come true.

Nicknamed “The Mechanics” by USA Today, Jim and Phil Wharton are internationally known trainers, therapists, and authors who established their practice in 1989 and changed the face of human performance. They have worked with luminaries in the sports world from professional football players to Olympic gold medal winners. This famous father and son team can be found in their clinics in New York City, Mexico City, and Flagstaff, Arizona, on campuses and in sports venues all over the world, at the podiums of seminars and workshops, in fitness centers all over New York, on Broadway stages, and in the spotlight of the press.

Athletes. It takes one to know one. And no one understands the heart, soul and body of an athlete better than the Whartons, who are both competitive runners. They bring that special understanding to their craft and combine it with years of experience in helping athletes reach their maximum performance levels. In fact, the name of their company is Wharton Performance. And the name says it all.

LET’S TALK ABOUT EDGE.

You want it. You’re willing to work hard for it. We can help.

Your body is high performance and needs to be trained and tuned aggressively and intelligently to get you into top form and keep you there. We know where the edge is. Let us take you there.

• Full musculoskeletal evaluation

• Active-Isolated flexibility therapy

• Strengthening and stabilizing joints

• Re-patterning the biomechanics of gait

• Recovering from injury

• Quick release of muscles that are tight, out of balance, or in spasm or pain

• Consulting on performance fuels specific to your needs

• Laser therapy

• Guided visualizations for mental preparation

• Realigning posture

• Customizing training and exercise programs

• Balancing muscles

• Fine-tuning athletic performance, no matter what your sport

• Personal coaching

People of all ages and stages of fitness benefit from programs that reenergize, rebalance, and realign muscles.

Now in their fifth cycle for summer Olympic Games, the Whartons continue to assist athletes in maximizing performance. Today, Phil Wharton is working in the Wharton Performance Clinic in Flagstaff, Arizona, partnering with the Northern Arizona University Center for High Altitude training to prepare athletes for the August, 2008 Games in Beijing, China. (Speaking of Olympics, someone created a fun statistical report during the Seoul Games and concluded that if the two Whartons had been a country, they would have placed 13^th in the world in medalists!)

Jim and Phil Wharton have authored four books on fitness: The Whartons’ Stretch Book, The Whartons’ Strength Book, The Whartons’ Cardio-Fitness Book, and The Whartons’ Back Book. Their first book Stretch has sold nearly half a million copies.

They write a popular monthly column for Rodale’s Runners World: “Body Shop” where they answer athletes’ questions.

They have appeared on the CBS’s The Early Show, Dateline NBC, and National Public Radio, and are regular contributors in national print media such as USA Today and The New York Times.

The Whartons are teachers: They have taught workshops and clinics worldwide, with special connections with clients in Tokyo, Sweden, Milan, and Kenya. They have traveled with an injury-plagued Series A Soccer Team in Naples, Italy, taking them from last place to second in the world within the same season. Last year they participated in the Cornell University Symposium on Joint Pain in Youth Athletics. They have presented in national conferences for the American College of Sports Medicine and the World Fitness Expo in Barcelona. They and their courses are accredited through the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Council on Exercise. They offer Wharton Flexibility Certification training for flexibility therapists.

WHARTON PERFORMANCE STARTED WITH SOLVING PHIL’S PROBLEM.

Jim says, “In the 1980s I was an architect and city planner in Gainesville, Florida. I coached track in my spare time. My son Phil was an up and coming high school runner who averaged thirty-five miles of running a week, and took his summers off to rest and recover from the poundings during the school year.

“All was well until Phil went to University of Florida, joined the track team, and ramped up his running to eighty miles a week. And suddenly things started going wrong. Very wrong. He suffered severe back pain that nothing relieved. Not massage. Not rest. Not Rolfing. Not chiropractors. Not medications. (He tried them all and more.) The team physicians at the University of Florida diagnosed Phil with scoliosis – curvature of the spine – and suggested surgically implanting rods in his spine to straighten it. They also informed him that if he didn’t stop running, he could suffer even more debilitating symptoms, including nerve damage and paralysis.

“Phil was scared. He was facing his life without running. Worse, he was facing his life in a wheelchair. Fear drove him to look for a solution, but he was committed to finding something that didn’t involve surgery. On the recommendation of one of the UF trainer’s he found Aaron Mattes in Sarasota, Florida and traveled four hours down the coast to meet with him.

“Aaron did a muscle-by-muscle evaluation of Phil’s body, pointing out areas that were weak and imbalanced. He also told Phil that he thought the scoliosis had nothing to do with the spine. It had everything to do with Phil’s being out of balance on one side and drawing his spine into curvature. Aaron told him that he thought he could help. And he did.

“After one session with Aaron, Phil felt relief. Phil worked with Active-Isolated Stretching and strengthening exercises five hours a day for a full year. During the week he worked on his own. Once a week, he traveled to Sarasota to Aaron’s clinic. Slowly, his spine straightened and his pain disappeared. He returned to running a hundred miles a week.

“Not only did Phil find a solution to his problem, but we both eventually became students of Aaron Mattes. Studying with Aaron was only the beginning. I was an architect at the time, so the physics of balance and movement made perfect sense to me. Changing professions in the middle of my life was a matter of taking all that I knew about structural integrity in bricks and mortar, and getting a second education to be able to apply it to bones and muscles.

“Phil and I both took our education in a different direction and expanded our concept of classroom to explore rehab and training protocols all over the world, studying with the best. The rest is history.”

Phil adds, “We have taken this work in flexibility to unimaginable levels by adding components of nutrition, strength, endurance, balance, finesse, discipline, meditation, and sports-specific skills. My quest to return to running in the face of a catastrophic diagnosis had a happy ending that we have replicated many times since. We do it every day.”

Jim says, “Our quest led us to New York City, where we opened our first clinic in 1989. We never stop studying and learning … BGB …

[More than twenty years later, we’re glad to report that Phil is not only still running, but is a competitive Masters marathon-runner who crosses finish lines with the top finishers in fields of runners half his age.]