By JOANN KLIMKIEWICZ | Courant Staff Writer | August 10, 2008

DARA TORRES warms up with the help of Anne Tierney and Steve Sierra before a 100-meter freestyle final in 2007 in Berlin.

(FRIEDEMANN VOGEL / BONGARTS / GETTY IMAGES / November 18, 2007)

…deep massage and stretching against resistance elongates muscles, and speeds post-competition recovery. In sessions, they push this and pull that, at times even using the force of their feet to prod and ply muscles.

All eyes have been fixed on Dara Torres’ strong, sinewy frame since her record-setting performance in the U.S. swim team trials, a remarkable feat that makes her the first American swimmer to compete in five Olympic Games, including this one.

Her chiseled body is admired not just for its flawlessness and strength, but for the fact that its owner also happens to be the 41-year-old mother of a toddler.

Damn, seems to be the universal verdict.

Torres’ physique might be the product of her obsessive training and fierce competitive streak. But she’s also got an entire team of trainers, coaches and masseuses behind that body.

Count among them Torres’ self-proclaimed “secret weapons” — two professional “stretchers” who left their personal training business in Stamford last year to join the swimmer on the Olympic road, tweaking and contorting her muscles and limbs as many as five times on a competition day.

A four-handed stretch and massage might sound indulgent, but this is no feathery body rubdown. It’s a physically demanding resistance stretching technique that Torres credits, in part, with taking her strength and flexibility to a new level, and propelling her into a stunning comeback.

“She has done everything this past year to leave no stone unturned to accomplish her goal of competing in the Olympics. She’s found the best trainers, the best supplements, the best massage therapists. Whatever it took, she found it and she got it and she went for it,” says Anne Tierney, one half of Torres’ stretching team. She and trainer Steve Sierra operated their Innovative Body Solutions in Connecticut from 2005 to 2007, using the technique on a range of bodies — from clients suffering with chronic physical ailments to star athletes such as former New York Knicks player Allan Houston.

“It’s still a pretty unique technique,” says Sierra, estimating about 300 people across the globe have been trained in the method developed by fitness expert Bob Cooley, whom Torres started working with in 1999.

“The athletes who have sought us out are the ones that are looking for an edge,” Sierra says. “We can say hands down, Dara is the only U.S. Olympics swimmer that’s doing this.”

The this that Sierra is referring to is a combination of deep massage and stretching against resistance that they say elongates muscles, training them to produce more power through their entire range of motion. They also credit the method for speeding her post-competition recovery. In two-hour sessions three days a week, Sierra and Tierney work in tandem on Torres’ 6-foot frame, pushing this and pulling that, at times even using the force of their feet to prod and ply her muscles. On competition days, they stretch her as many as five times in half-hour sessions.

“I don’t think painful is the right word,” says Sierra. “But it can be intense because we’re getting in there deep.”

It’s quite a sight, says Yale assistant swimming coach Tim Wise, who has seen Torres’ stretching routine in action during competition.

“She’s got her own rubdown table — three, four people around her at all times and they’re pulling and they’re pushing and they’re rubbing. It’s enough to make anyone jealous,” Wise says. “Every swimmer would want it.”

But a team like Torres’ is a luxury most athletes, especially at the collegiate level, don’t have, says Wise. It all comes down to money, which a star athlete like Torres has because of her various endorsement deals.

“But I think what you’re seeing in general is more specializing by the athletes. They are more catered to, almost like professional athletes. And that’s where swimming is headed — professionalizing itself,” says Wise. “So you see more physical therapists, more yoga. And everyone has a masseuse these days. So I think the stretching component [that Torres is using] is the next logical step in terms of, how far can we push the body?”

The technique, Wise says, likely has its biggest advantage in recovery.

“She’s probably fresher the next day,” after a competition, he says. “And at 41, maybe she needs a little bit more TLC to get her body to perform. … But she’s also very genetically gifted and very motivated. So when you put all those things together, she’s pushing the envelope and redefining what her body is able to accomplish at this stage in her career.”

There are, of course, skeptics who wonder if the technique can deliver the kind of results Torres and her team claim. Like with any overachiever athlete, there have been whispers that performance-enhancing drugs might be Torres’ real silver bullet. She and her team members have consistently denied any drug use.

“She is one of the hardest workers you’ll ever meet,” says Tierney. “She’s a competitor, nonstop. Even if we’re stretching her, and we say someone’s more flexible than her, she gets all riled up.”

Sierra discovered resistance training as a former bodybuilder and gym owner in Pennsylvania, finding it alleviated his knee and shoulder pain, and eventually helped him shed 30 pounds. He later met Tierney at the Lehigh University gym, where she played on the basketball team. He offered up a stretching session. She was hesitant at first, but gave it a shot.

“I thought it was incredible. It was the best workout I had had,” recalls Tierney. “I was resisting hard, I was dripping sweat. … And then I went and played a game of pickup basketball, and I played the best game of my life.”

They eventually teamed up, moving to Stamford in 2005 to work with Houston on his chronic knee injury, and amassing clients in both Connecticut and New York. Then, last August, came the call from Torres. She was taking a serious stab at the Olympics and putting together her team of trainers. She had worked with Sierra through Cooley, and wanted him aboard. And so Sierra and Tierney moved to Florida in January 2007.

“I don’t think I talked to her the first two or three times [working] with her,” Tierney laughs. “I was just so in awe of her.”

When it came time for the Olympic trials last month in Nebraska, Tierney says, she and Torres were both nervous wrecks. It was Sierra, ever calm and grounded, who had to help them keep their cool.

“Yeah, I really don’t get nervous,” says Sierra. “I knew she was going to be first in everything she did. And I have no doubt she’d going to go faster.

“Just as long as we keep our hands on her and keep her flexible, she’s going to shatter more records.”

Contact Joann Klimkiewicz at jklimkiewicz@courant.com.

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