Sport needs the body. Sport also needs the mind.
he athletic gesture is elegant, beautiful, and harmonious, as evidenced by sculptures from
ancient Greece. The athlete’s body expresses strength and energy; our mirror neurons resonate when we observe the lightness of a jump or the groundedness and solidity of a stance.
Mythology from every culture tells stories of heroes and demigods – courageous, clever individuals accomplishing extraordinary feats.
Humans have always played by moving their bodies; it’s through play that children learn to control and refine their movements. Sport is a form of play that becomes structured and regulated.
Sport provides an opportunity to bring together peoples and cultures. The Olympic Games were born in ancient Greece as both athletic and religious events in honor of Zeus. During the Games, all wars were suspended. Winners were awarded a crown of olive leaves, a tree sacred to Zeus and symbol of glory, peace, and brotherhood.
From ancient Greece to modern times, in Olympic performances and cultural demonstrations, the athletic gesture is elegant, beautiful, and harmonious. (Photos by Cebas, anton5146, Jackob Wackerhausen, and GeorgeRudy, respectively, on istockphoto.com.)
Competition is part of the sporting endeavor. We compete with ourselves to surpass our own limits, and with others to be the best. Victory is exhilarating. In common usage, competition implies winners and losers. But the origin of the word competition (from Latin com-petere) includes “com” – meaning with – and “petere,” meaning to strive together, to pursue a shared goal.
To compete, one must train.
What fascinates me about athletes is their tenacity, their ability to remain consistent and committed to training programs to improve their performance. Athletes shape their lives around the demands of performance – nutrition, social life, and private life must all follow strict, precise rules, adhered to with consistency, determination, and motivation. The higher the level, the stricter the rules. Slipping up can be risky.
Where does this drive come from? How do they source it? And what kind of fuel do they need?
Certainly, physical energy is needed to sustain muscular effort. Athletes follow specific nutrition plans and maintain well- tuned metabolic, cardiac, vascular, and respiratory systems to ensure their bodies function optimally – bodies that maximize their potential. Sometimes, the line between use and abuse of one’s body is very thin.
Supporting physical effort requires mental balance. Emotions play a crucial role. Staying focused and clear-headed is essential to push through fatigue or overcome the frustration of a poor result.
Take the Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner for example. He is ranked No. 1 in men’s singles (as of September 9, 2025) in the world. I’ve heard him
interviewed about his positive mindset, the techniques he uses, and whether he works with a psychologist, or does he just have a natural athletic drive? And he talked about, for his sport, how nothing is natural – there’s a lot of work behind the accomplishments. He talked about accepting his flaws and his struggle with strength. Going into the sport, he thought he was strong, and as he progressed, he realized he wasn’t strong in the way he needed to be. He’s worked with elite trainers for years to help him challenge what he can do in tennis. It’s up to the athlete to make the difference, to do the work behind the scenes.
The interviewer focused on the emotional component that helps achieve goals and success. Sinner affirmed that the athletic result, driven by physical abilities, is visible during competition. But the quality of performance and the journey to reach it requires a stable and clear mind.
Years ago, during a Rolfing session with a client who had been on the Italian rhythmic gymnastics team as a child, a memory came up. She had a very strict coach who humiliated the girls when they made mistakes. After retiring from competition, my client became a coach herself. I asked her whether the coach’s strategy has been effective in improving performance and achieving results – and to my surprise, she said yes. When she became a coach, she used the same strategy: scolding and humiliating athletes to push them beyond their limits.
I felt great sadness.
And yet, we know that dog trainers have learned that rewarding, not punishing, is more effective when teaching obedience or skills.
Training is exhausting – how do athletes overcome fatigue?
It takes discipline to structure your days, weeks, and months around training. More victories lead to higher rankings, and to climb the rankings, you must win. Life becomes a timeline of milestones in the pursuit of victory.
Athletic trainers know how to improve: endurance, strength, and explosiveness. They’re like alchemists working to transform raw matter. And like true alchemists, they aim for inner and spiritual transformation. They weave this all together by studying the body, the movement patterns governed by muscle memory, and focus on achieving efficiency in motion, keeping the mind stable and focused.
Top athletes know the mind must be sharp. Negative thoughts waste energy and distract from goals.
This is the language used by coaches, emphasizing the need to not waste energy and to use it effectively. These concepts are aligned with Rolfing® Structural Integration: using energy efficiently, minimizing wasteful movements, seeking structural alignment so gravity can flow freely and act as a unifying force. The Rolfing Ten Series® and athletes is a winning combination!
Matteo is an Italian Rolfer, friend, and triathlete who became passionate about Ironman after reading about John Dunbar, a United States Navy SEAL who finished second in the first two Ironman races in 1978 and 1979, which was among the most notorious competitive groups of athletes. Ironman is a triathlon that involves 3.8 kilometers of open-water swimming, 180 kilometers of cycling, and a 42.2-kilometer marathon.
Matteo’s dream was to first compete in Hawaii, where the Ironman is an ultimate endurance test, where the swim is completed in the ocean, and the cycling and running segments are over the volcanic landscape. And his second dream was to become a Rolfer. He moved to Hawaii to train for the Ironman. He focused on daily workouts for ten months and entered ten other Ironman
Photograph of a photograph of Matteo training for the cycling section of the Ironman, in Maui, 1994.
Permission to publish granted by both Matteo Semprini Cesear and Pierpaola Volpones.
races in preparation, completing three of them. His last Ironman was in 2008, and his most recent successful completion of the course was in Zurich in 2000 – a cool, rainy day helped him endure the strenuous effort. When it came time, running in the Hawaiian heat, he recalled to me, was incredibly demanding.
Matteo told me, “The limit can be in the body or in the mind. I was always a hyperactive child. I don’t have great mental strength, but I do have strong discipline. Seeing and feeling how my body responded to consistent training (without doping), and knowing it was functioning at its best, gave me such good sensations that my mind would follow. I constantly pushed through fatigue but paid attention not to get injured. When the pain was too much, I slowed down or stopped. But when everything was working perfectly, I experienced moments of ecstasy! To get in shape, I received sports massages and Rolfing sessions. Working on the fascia gave my body the optimal conditions to express its full potential.”
Professional motorcycle racer, Marco Mioncelli, on August 14th, 2011, after he got 3rd place in the MotoGP race in the world championship in Brno, Czech Republic. (Photo by haak78 on shutterstock.com.)
When Marco first came to my studio for Rolfing work, he was just a boy riding mini-motos. His mother had heard of Rolfing Structural Integration and noticed he couldn’t stretch out properly on the bike to improve aerodynamics, especially being so tall for his age.
We completed the Ten Series, adapted for his age, and that year Marco won the Italian championship – his body had learned to adapt to the bike, becoming one with it. He competed in the MotoGP World Championships for ten years from 2002 to 2011. He continued receiving sessions during that time. The last time I saw him, he had earned his nickname “Sic” and “Super Sic,” just before a MotoGP race in Valencia. Marco died in a crash at the young age of twenty-four on October 23, 2011, at the Malaysian Grand Prix on the Sepang International Circuit, Malaysia.
Adriana was the first Italian woman to reach the quarterfinals at the Australian Open in 2002. Her highest career ranking was thirty-eighth on February 11th, 2002. She came to my Rolfing studio after rotator cuff surgery around that same time, just as she was returning to play.
At the beginning of the 2000s, during a difficult moment in her career, she decided to change her technical staff and move to Romanga, Italy. It was there, thanks to her homeopath, that she says she remembers meeting me and experiencing Rolfing sessions. At the time, she reminded me she had never heard of this method of work, but out of curiosity, she began her series of sessions.
She told me later that based on her experience with the work, she found benefits both physically and mentally, and as a result, her athletic performance improved. She knew this because, on the field, she felt more fluidic in her movements and more balanced.
When I asked Monica about her thoughts about her Rolfing sessions, she said, “Rolfing brought me back to athletics after two years of pain.” For Monica, long jump was simply too important – and Rolfing sessions got her back on the track.
When I interviewed Monica about the injury that brought her to my Rolfing studio and the work we did together, here is what she said:
“It happened two years ago, I was competing in an athletics event when one long jump turned into a leap into darkness. I took off – and my knee shattered. Excruciating pain. My ACL
was gone, along with the inner meniscus
and the hamstring tendon. Then came six months of daily physiotherapy.
“By the end of that ordeal, I was back on my feet, but completely out of alignment. The most obvious problem was in my hips. One day, I put on a pair of low-rise jeans and, looking in the mirror, I saw that my hips were no longer at the same height.
“I consulted two or three specialists. The diagnosis was unanimous: one leg was shorter than the other. Impossible! My legs had always been the same length – what had happened?
“I was devastated. Not only had my sports career gone up in smoke, I couldn’t even go for a short jog without pain all over. Then a friend told me about Rolfing [sic]. Six months ago, I began treatment. Already after the second session, I regained mobility in my knee. After two years, I finally felt good again. I could run. I felt free to move my body.
“Every session felt like shedding a layer of skin, like my body was being reprogrammed. People say Rolfing [sic] is painful because it works deeply. Personally, I never felt much pain, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered, because the benefits were priceless.
“I even started competing again, and my hip is slowly returning to normal. I put my low-rise jeans on, and now my legs are the same length again.
“In short – I was reborn.”
As a teenager, I played sports but never competitively. Then I discovered, through fencing, that competition scared me. Whether it was fear of winning or fear of losing, I still don’t know.
I practiced fencing for several years – foil – to be precise. I was quite good in training; I learned quickly and improved steadily. So, my coach registered me for a tournament. But the moment I stepped onto the piste, I felt completely lost, and confused. Next to mine were several other pistes, filling a large exhibition hall with a background noise I wasn’t used to. In our training gym, we only had two pistes and fewer than ten students. At the competitive event, everything was different, too different!
I faced my opponent, almost unable to react. She scored five points in five bouts
(that’s what they’re called), and victory was hers. I think the round consisted of four matches. I won the last one because I faced an opponent even more confused and paralyzed with fear than I was. Five easy points for me, but not enough to continue in the competition. My tournament ended there.
What a relief!
Stress, performance anxiety – to continue with fencing, I would have needed to look deep into my soul, maybe with help and guidance, because I truly loved the sport. But instead, I quit.
What remains is a photo taken at the start of that match, during weapon check.
A photo of Pierpaola Volpones fencing, courtesy of Pierpaola.
I’ve worked with many professional and amateur athletes, and all of them benefitted from the sessions. They learned to understand – and respect – their bodies. They discovered their limits and how to overcome them by improving coordination, breathing, and their ability to respond to environmental stimuli.
Pierpaola Volpones discovered Rolfing® Structural Integration through her bodywork endeavors and research into well-being and somatic expression. She studied in Munich, Germany, with Stacey Mills and Michael Salveson in her Basic Training and with Michael Salveson and Jeffrey Maitland, PhD, in her Rolfing Advanced Training. Her Rolf Movement® training took place in Italy with Janie French and Annie Duggan. She began her training to be an instructor with the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute® (DIRI) almost twenty years ago, and she has been teaching with DIRI since 2006 with the school in Boulder, Colorado, and the European Rolfing® Association e.V.. She runs a practice in Rimini, Italy. For more information, see www.volpones.it.
sport; body; mind; movement; performance; training; competition; play; strength; determination; Rolfing Structural Integration; coaching; mental training; Jannik Sinner; Matteo Semprini Cesari; Marco Simoncelli; overcoming limits. ■
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