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Tom Longo is the most experienced Resistance Stretching trainer in the western United States. A certified Resistance Stretching Instructor for over 15 years, he is co-founder of StretchWorks, located near San Francisco, where he offers group classes and private sessions. From 1992 to 1999, Tom trained and taught at The Meridian Stretching ` in Boston with Bob Cooley, developer of Resistance Stretching. Tom was flexibility trainer to Dara Torres for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, where Dara won two Gold and three Bronze medals for swimming. Tom mainly works with individual private clients, creating custom Resistance Stretching programs for them while providing advice on diet, physical and mental well-being, and cross-training. His clients cover a broad spectrum of age and physical ability and they likewise come seeking help on a wide variety of needs and goals.

I work with all sorts of people on all sorts of issues. My clients have ranged from ten years of age to over eighty, and they vary just as widely in their levels of physical fitness. I help them become pain-free, more agile and strong, and better able to perform in any physical activity or sport. Some are recovering from hip and knee replacement surgery or simpler ones like ACL replacement, and I help them first to regain stability and strength in critical tasks like climbing stairs, then soon get them back to hiking and other more serious physical activities. Busy professionals come to relieve the physical and mental stresses from long hours and frequent travel, which often includes lower back, neck and shoulder pain. Other people come wanting to feel younger and more limber, and to be more physically active without pain and injury, and we typically focus on flexibility, alignment, balance and even diet. I help athletes of all ages and ranks find relief from chronic pain, increase performance and stamina, and ultimately to be pain and injury free. This includes young competitive swimmers or soccer players, older golfers looking to improve their game and reduce back pain, skiers looking for a better edge, or ardent marathon runners and Ironman triathletes. Professional ballroom and ballet dancers come also to improve their form and control.

The human body is a magnificent living machine, able to heal from injury, achieve a more stable balance and alignment, and perform at increasing levels of complexity, strength and stamina. My love of physics and masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT live on in my current passion for the human body, where I have gone on to study structural kinesiology, motor learning, anatomy, physiology and nutrition. I have spent hundreds of hours exploring the complex interaction between muscles, bones and joints, and analyzing how this brilliant biological machine can orchestrate all of these into intricate movements and feats of athletic prowess. And commonly the body must perform under less than optimal conditions, compensating for overly tight muscles, stiff joints, old injuries, and chronic pain.

Pain in your muscles and joints is really only an extreme manifestation of musculoskeletal imbalances that are robbing you of your potential for peak physical performance and agility. And so, simply stated, I work with clients to release any overly tight areas in the body and strengthen any overly weak areas, which then allows the body to do what it does naturally: move towards balance and alignment, heal from injury, maintain well being, and adapt to physical training demands by becoming stronger and more able to accomplish complex, strenuous activities. I initially help clients to reduce and eliminate their pain and discomfort, but only as the first step on a path to aligning their bodies, improving joint and muscle function, and helping them become more powerful and capable of performing their favorite physical activities. For some people being pain free is the most important goal, while for others it is merely the starting point on the road to fine tuning and super charging their bodies. And so my work with each client is quite unique, sometimes soothing and healing their body from trauma and injury, continually bringing them into a more upright, balanced posture, repeatedly helping them to experience and recapture the flexibility and strength that is innate to their body, and always seeking both physical and emotional excellence.

we are the west coast center for Resistance Stretching and the Meridian Flexibility System