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Back basics

Paul E. Anna
Aspen, CO Colorado

We live in a community that is chock full of world-class stuff.

World-class skiing, world-class music, a world-class food and wine festival. In fact, there is so much great stuff in this town that it is easy to overlook much of it.

For example, I had heard of the Aspen Back Institute at the St. Regis Hotel, but had never given it a lot of thought. Like many of us, I am an overly ambitious athlete who, through day-to-day activity like skiing, hiking and biking, has a tendency towards occasional back pain. But still, I thought, it will just work itself out.



Ah, but no more. After a visit to what is now called Aspen Back and Body Institute I have discovered that the best cure for a bad back is prevention. And if pain is present the right course of action is to seek treatment to alleviate it immediately. These things do not go away by themselves people. If you hurt, treat yourself right and go to the Institute.

Aspen Back and Body Institute is the brainchild of South African rugger Clint Phillips. His chiropractic training in South Africa, along with the studies of the spine, convinced him that it was possible to create a place where people could go to treat the back and either eliminate pain or improve the odds that pain will not be an ongoing factor in people’s lives.




That place now occupies a space in the St. Regis that doubles as a luxurious lounge and a high-tech, high-touch treatment and workout facility. Enter the group floor and you’ll find a bright, light studio with large windows, wood floors and a myriad of the latest in exercise and diagnostic machines. There are vibration units originally designed for use by Soviet cosmonauts to ease the bodies return from space, and there are gyro-tonic machines, Pilates machines, a treadmill in a tank of water that allows runners to train stress free. There are machines so exotic as to be unexplainable.

But Clint and his staff of trained therapists know how to use all of them to help us everyday players play better and stronger. A course of treatment generally begins with an evaluation by Clint of the alignment and strength of a body. A course of treatment is recommended, and the process of healing is under way.

While much of the Aspen Back and Body Institute’s clientele is made up of people who fly into Aspen and stay at the St. Regis for anywhere from one to three weeks of intensive treatment, there is also a cadre of dedicated locals who use the facility to get personal training, do yoga or Pilates, or participate in the various wellness programs offered.

So if world-class turns you on, check out the Aspen Back and Body Institute in the St. Regis.

It will help you stay on the straight and narrow.