I found Bernd when I was in need of some emergency treatment for a lower back issue. Luckily I found this highly skilled massage therapist trained in orthopedic massage. Within a couple visits in the first week, my back was significantly improved and I realized that the injury was most likely from my relatively poor physical condition combined with attempting to do some overly ambitious gardening. My poor physical fitness was due to 20+ years of little or no exercise on a regular basis. This injury and the ensuing rehabilitation led to a renewed commitment to maintaining better physical fitness. After a couple weeks of very light rehab exercises and massage therapy treatments I decided to set some concrete goals to achieve a higher level of fitness comparable to when I was a world-class competitive swimmer. This required setting goals of competing in an open-water race and a pool competition. At that time I had approximately 3 months until the open water race and 4 ½ months until the pool race. For each race I established goal times and a training schedule. The goals were ambitious but I felt they be achieved through an intelligent combination of training, nutrition and, importantly, recovery. At my age, I felt like recovery was more important than ever. Each aspect of my effort was extremely interdependent. The recovery aspect of my training involved weekly deep-tissue massage and some structural therapy. Bernd is one of the few licensed massage therapists who is trained in both aspects along with orthopedic massage. His combined set of skills was exactly what I needed to maximize my recovery and enhance my training efforts. Because of his experience in working with other elite level athletes, Bernd fully understood my specific needs and used all of his resources and creativity to respond astutely to my unique situation. Overall, I had excellent results. I won the open water race becoming the USMS 5K National Champion and swam one of the top times in the world for the 200 yard freestyle for my age group (45-49). By working with Bernd, I believe I was able to train at a consistently higher level every day and avoid injury, which ultimately allowed me to achieve my athletic goals as well as my overriding goal of excellent physical fitness. I would highly recommend Bernd to anyone seeking athletic improvement regardless of their age, experience or talent level.
David Sims
USMS Open Water 5k National Champion, 2009
Member, USA Olympic Swimming Team, 1980
NCAA All-American, Swimming, 1981-1984
Member, USA National Swimming Team, 1980-1986
Member, Stanford University Swimming Team, 1980-1984