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University Daily Kansan, April 22, 1983
Athletes use Laban analysis to improve body motion
By LANE GREEN Staff Reporter
In 1982 Tudie McKnight, long jumper on the KU women's track team, had a junior year that most athletes would envy.
But many hours of practice in long jumping are not the only reasons for it.
McKnight set a KU record for women with a jump of 20-6 in her first outdoor meet of the season, a jump that qualified her for the NCAA outdoor championships and was the third best in the United States at that time.
At the Kansas Relays she broke her own record with a jump of 21·10$^{\mathrm{s}}$. Later that spring she placed fourth in the NCAA outdoor championships.
MCKNIGHT ATTRIBUTES her achievements in track and field to natural ability, much hard work and a willingness to explore different ways to play. Her ability is优美. Other difficult technique she has explored is Laban movement analysis.
McKnight and several other members of the track team have been working with Janet Hamburg, associate professor of health, physical education, and recreation, and fitted Leban movement analyst, to enhance their athletic abilities.
HAMBURG SAID A lion that was running was an illustration of the body parts' working together beautifully. The goal of Laban is to help the athlete have, every body part working in perfect harmony with the others.
'Laban movement provides a crucial 'how to' missing link to make the transition from inefficient or inappropriate movement behavior to well-connected and spatially clear movement that improves the individual's level of performance,' she said.
"The aim of Laban movement analysis is to have people move effortlessly, and this is the high for an athlete. LMA can take those who are not natural athletes and fine tune their bodies, help them maximize their abilities and minimize their limitations, allowing them to fulfill their
performance potential while minimizing injuries."
The analysis includes evaluation of a person's body movement and suggestion of exercises designed to improve body movement.
CARLA COFFEY, KU WOMEN'S track coach, said she was satisfied with the impact that Laban had had on her athletes.
Janet, through LMA, has really enhanced our athletes' performances," she said.
"The girls are getting comfortable with LMA."
Scott Calder, women's graduate assistant coach, has also had some instruction in the subject.
"IMA looks at three levels of performance: the body, effort, and how efficiently a person uses the space around him." Calder said.
With this information, he said, a coach can help an athlete modify his movement behavior.
Hamburg said she was pleased with the acceptance of Laban by the coaches.
"Acceptance of something new is gradual, and coaches Timmons and Coffey have been more than helpful," she said.
KIM JONES. A LONG jumper who is out this season because of a pulled hamstering, admitted she was a little embarrassed when she was first introduced to it.
"I was not open-minded to it at first,
but when it started correcting specific
variables, I could see how smart."
Jones placed third in the Big Eight last year and advanced to the NCAA outdoor championships.
Members of the men's track team also reported some success with Laban.
OWEN BUCKLEY, A KU decathlete, said he woke up with the impact of a bomb in his performance.
"I always lifted weights, ran and stretched, but I never really became aware of my body and how it functions
until I was introduced to Laban," he said.
Hamburg said the athletes had learned Laban on their own time for no cost.
"ILMA is not a regimented system,
and it is very individualized," she said.
"People can use LMA exercises to help them perform their everyday
Laban can also be used to help the handicapped and the physically impaired move more efficiently and with less effort, she said.
HANDOUT
Laban movement analysts in the world, said she hoped that Laban would become a household word in a few years. It is taught in elementary schools in England.
Calder said he thought that Laban might be a factor in the success of British middle-distance runners in recent years.
Hamburg took her first Laban course in 1976. After attending many workshops across the country, she received a faculty development grant from KU in spring 1981. She received certification at the Laban-Bartenieu Institute of Movement Studies in New York City.
Hamburg said she hoped to develop videotabs and manuals so that non-certified people could apply Laban principles in their coaching.
Laban movement analysis is named after the late Rudolf Laban, a dance theorist and teacher whose studies of human motion provided the intellectual foundations for the development of Laban principles.
AS FOR MCKNIGHT, in the 1983 indoor season she placed second in the Big Eight Championships. She jumped 20-4½ at the Olympic Invitational in New Jersey, a week later she took fifth place at the indoor nationals.
McKnight she hoped to be the first person to win in the long jump in both the Big Eight and the Kansas Relays four consecutive years. She is also looking forward to competing in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
McKnight said that Laplan had played a significant role in the development of her athletic ability and that she was sure it would continue to in the future.
Buddy Mangine/KANSAN
Janet Hamburg, an associate professor of health, physical education and recreation has helped KU jumpers improve their performances by training them in Laban Movement Analysis, which helps them to become more aware of muscle movement, and able to take better advantage of their natural talent.
Relays altered to help more qualify for national meet
By PHIL ELLENBECKER Staff Reporter
The format of the Kansas Relays, the middle stop on the Midwest relays circuit, has been changed in the last two years and has taken a somewhat different look from its two counterparts, the Texas Relays and the Drake Relays.
10th Timmons, KU track coach and director of the Kansas Relays, has dropped all open competition from the schedule, thus closing the meet to all non-collegiate competitors, except for the Soviet athletes. Texas and Drake both still have collegiate and open competition.
"What we're trying to do, in contrast with other relays, is give a team an opportunity to stack relays if they want and also qualify their athletes in individual events for nationals," Timmons said.
TIMMONS SAID that this year's Relays would offer all the track and field events in the NCAA Championships along with five additional relays to the women's division. That way, the Relays offers a chance to contest the various
relay championships associated with the Midwest circuit and also gives collegiate athletes an extra chance to qualify for the NCAA Championships
win the NCAA championships
up in late May and early June,
Timmons said, the opportunities for
athletes to qualify had become scarce
as the national event weather
teams have experienced this year's outdoor season.
Timmons said the Texas and Drake Relays did not always offer all NCAA events. Kansas can afford to offer all the NCAA events while the other two cannot, he said, because the Relays were streamlined last year by excluding open and unattached athletes from the competition. He also reduced the levels of competition to one men's and one women's collegiate division, along with a boy's and girl's high-school division.
IN AN EFFORT TO last year to generate enthusiasm for the Relays, Timmons decided to try to have team scoring for the first time in meet history. But after numerous scorekeeping problems last year, as well as a year of reconsideration, Timmons has decided to drop team scoring.
sion of team scoring put added pressure on teams.
Timmons said that a school could have great two-mile and four-mile relay teams and decide to send only those two groups to the Relays.
Timmons said that the extra dimen-
"They could finish first in both events, the best they could possibly do, and still go back and have people asking them 'What happened at the Kamsa Relays' because their school was under attack by a bottom of the team standings," he said.
sanktages hae by NOT HAVING TEAM scoring, he said, coaches are given more flexibility.
"It gives a coach an opportunity to place his people where he feels it is most important." Timmons said. "Not everybody has good relapse because they might not have the depth, but they might have good individuals."
Another reason for dropping the team scoring, Timmons said, was, "we couldn't add." There was confusion in declaring a winner in the men's division of last year's Infalition because the officials' final scoring had to be made.
Originally the KU team was given the team championship trophy for outscoring Southern Illinois, 101-91. After
some protests from SIU coach Lou Hertzig and changed made in the final scoring tallies after the meet, SIU was declared the winner 100-99.
BUT AFTER A THOROUGH two-day review of the final results, Timmons said that the original results in the pole vault, which had KU's Jeff Buckingham and SIU's John Sayre tied for third place, were actually correct and shouldn't have been changed. In the end, Kansas and Southern Illinois were declared co-winners with 100 points each.
"All those results came in right at the end of the meet and we were so pressed for time we couldn't keep up with it." Timmons said.
As if all that wasn't enough, some coaches were disgruntled because the marathon had been included in the team scoring, even though it was an open event and none of the other schools had entered athletes in it.
KANSAS HAD THREE runners who had been training for the Relays marathon. Dan Owens, Kenn Daily and Hank Crawford finished first, fourth and fifth in the race, but because the runners ahead of Daily and Crawford were not running for a team, Daily and Crawford were given second and
third-place points for the purposes of team scoring
Without the points in the marathon, Kansas would have finished third in the team scoring, both in the original and revised standings.
Timmons said after the meet that the information about the marathon being scored was given to meet officials in advance and printed on the entry sheet, so the coaches should have known all about it.
TIMMONS SAID HE did not see much of a chance for open competition returning to the Relays simply because of a declining budget. He said that the Relays budget this year was $24,000. By 2015, he said, it would be Drake Raukes' $170,000. He said he didn't think it was worth the effort to spend the majority of the allotted
budget just to bring in a few big-name athletes.
The only non-collegiate athletes competing in this year's Relays will be the Soviet athletes and high school athletes.
TIMMONS SAID TEAT many of the changes in the Relays the last few years stem from having to stage the 1978 Relays away from Memorial Stadium. While Memorial Stadium was being renovated that year, the Relays were scattered among various locations that year, including Haskell Indian Junior College, Emporia State and Norman, Okla.
Timmons had originally considered canceeling that year's Relays.
"We salvaged the meet, but we lost some teams," Timmons said. "Some of those teams have not returned."
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