“At the Olympic Games, the gymnast’s body must be brought to the top of Everest”

Natalie Bertler was a member of Israel’s first artistic gymnastics team in 1999, under Ella Samoflov, one of the team’s coaches even today. But an injury interrupted her career and her dream of appearing in the European Championship. Twenty-five years later Bertler closed an exciting circle, when she was the physiotherapist of the gymnastics team that won the historic silver medal in Paris.

This was the third Olympics for Bertler, who began her work during the rehabilitation process of Neta Rivkin in preparation for Rio 2016. “After working with Neta, I continued with Linoy Ashram and Nicole Zelikman, until the Olympic gold in Tokyo, and of course in the current campaign with Daria Atmanov and the team.”

The medical team of the team works around the clock, to give the best envelope to the athletes. “At the end of the day, the body is their tool and like a Formula 1 car, it needs to be primed and ready for the next day in the best possible way,” says Bertler. “Because female athletes push their bodies to the limit. So you have to constantly maintain their bodies at the highest possible level.”

Bertler is an international expert and lecturer, who works with the ‘facial manipulation’ method, treats a wide population – from children to adults, and owns a clinic in Herzliya. “This is one of the most advanced treatment methods in the world, designed to treat a wide variety of skeletal, muscle and internal problems,” explains Bertler.

“The method deals with the connective tissue, which is found everywhere in the body and is the one that connects the muscles. It actually allows each person to really use the potential of their strength to bring up to 100% and give the X factor. With athletes it is critical, because that is what we want, To bring their body to the limit, and take it a little higher.”

“Injury at these levels is not a bug, it’s a feature of the system”

Where is this method required in training and competitions, for Olympic athletes?
“Olympic athletes need to maintain their bodies on a daily basis. They need to prepare the body for the next day, recover the body as quickly as possible and of course prevent injuries or treat the injury. In competitions the body works at 300 percent of its capacity. So there are female athletes who need maintenance treatments of Day by day recovery. They are very wrapped up and taken care of. During the Olympics, we treated them every day, with some even several times a day.”

Fortunately, the Israeli delegation that included the artistic gymnastics team and the individual gymnast Daria Atmanov, did not suffer serious injuries during the competition. On the other hand, the Brazilian team that arrived as one of the candidates for a medal, crashed during the Olympics following an injury to one of the gymnasts in the team competition.

The Brazilian team opened the competition with a good exercise in hoops, for which they received a score of 35.950 points, which placed them in fourth place at the end of the first exercise in the qualifiers. Unfortunately, everything changed a few minutes before they went up to the combined exercise (tapes and balls).

“On the Brazilian team, the gymnast tore the muscle 5 minutes before she went up to the competition,” says Bertler about the drama that unfolded behind the scenes. “Then the group can’t fully perform the exercise and they haven’t done all the elements.” The Brazilians crashed in the combined exercise with the 14th result in Tiba, 24.950 points and finished the competition in the surprising ninth place, outside the Olympic final.

“Unfortunately, there is no prevention of injuries. An injury at these levels is not a bug, it is a feature of the system,” admits Bertler. “But we do need to allow the athlete to recover from it as quickly as possible first, and if there is an injury that needs to be worked with.”

The daily work with the gymnasts and her deep familiarity with the industry helps her to refine the treatment methods and adapt them to the needs of the athletes even in the most important moments of their careers. “I know the girls’ bodies in detail. So I already know exactly at a given moment, what is needed to release her as quickly as possible, so that she can function as quickly as possible. At the Olympic Games, the girls are very, very excited, and so is the team. That’s why the body is caught more.” .

Bertler tells about one of the gymnasts who suffers from back pain and the unique way of treating her according to the ‘fascial manipulation’ method. “When her back is caught, you have to release the inside of the adductors of the legs. So we know that. So we are in such a wrapped communication, that when she comes to me and says to me, Nathalie, my back started to hurt, I immediately know where I have to release her”.

“Throughout the Olympic campaign we work with them around the clock, but in the Olympic Games it’s already knowing how to bring the gymnast’s body to its peak, to the top of Everest, on exactly the right day and at the right second.”

“Sitting in the stands with an injured leg and knowing that I can’t fulfill my dream”

Bertler is 39 years old, married and the mother of two children, ages 10 and 7. She was born in Uzbekistan and immigrated to Israel with her family. She took her first steps in artistic gymnastics at the age of eight, which is considered relatively old in the industry. “I was a very weak and sickly girl. During my immigration to Israel, they took me straight to the hospital, and my parents said that I had to do sports to strengthen my body. When I arrived, they saw that I was very, very flexible, so they immediately took me to the Haifa team. I was like spaghetti, very weak, But very flexible and that’s what caught the coach’s eye.”

Bertler continued to develop and advance in an industry that was almost unknown to the Israeli public. When they formed an artistic gymnastics team for the first time in Israel, Bertler was chosen to be one of the five members of the team. “We lived in Nesher, so my father had to drive me every day, from Nesher to Hadar Yosef and Petah Tikva. We would leave at 12:00 noon, arrive at 2:00 p.m. My father, who was a lecturer at the Technion, would sit there, wait for me and write lectures “.

Bertler’s big dream was to reach the European Championships, she trained day and night to make her dream come true. Unfortunately three weeks before the competition she was injured and as a result of the injury she had to retire from the industry. “We were at a competition abroad, I jumped between two films, and I just landed badly on my leg and tore the ligament. They tried to rehabilitate me, but it was a very poor rehabilitation. So I went as a spectator to the European Championship and my heart broke. On the one hand, I was happy for the girls and encouraged them with all my might. On the other hand, it was very difficult to sit in the stands with an injured leg and know that I cannot fulfill my dream.”

In the last twenty-five years, the gymnastics industry has gone through a revolution of professionalization and is unlike what it was in the late nineties. “If we look at an exercise I did in 1999 and an exercise they do today, it looks as if you run the exercise 10 times faster. The levels of difficulty have increased a lot. When I was training, of course, there was no such investment in the industry. When I was training in my house association, we didn’t have Carpet, we would practice on the floor.”

Today Israel is considered one of the powerhouses of the industry and has the best conditions in terms of facilities and training staff and the envelope for growing Olympic medalists in the individual and team competition. “Today there is the amazing tent in which they train in Wingate. It has treatment rooms, showers and lots of surfaces. This is a very significant difference. As they say, ‘it takes a whole village to raise a child,’ so it takes a whole team to raise Olympic athletes.”

At the end of her sports career, following the treatment of the injury, Bertler began to show interest in the world of physical therapy. Ahead of the Olympic Games in Rio, gymnast Neta Rivkin suffered a stress fracture in her leg. At the same time, Bertler was working at the ‘Medic’ medical center located in Hadar Yosef, when the gymnasts would train two floors below her.

The quick and successful rehabilitation impressed the medical team of the Russian national team, who came to learn from her in the training conducted by Bartler in Moscow. “Two months after the games in Rio, the Russian physiotherapists came to study with me in Moscow. They knew how injured Rivkin was and saw how good the rehabilitation was.”

“We continue to train during the rehabilitation, in very creative ways”

Linoy Ashram, Daria Atmanov and Adi Katz suffered serious injuries during the Olympic campaign. How do you work with them during the rehabilitation process?
We have one motto that we work with, which is called, “do everything possible except what is impossible”. This means that if the trainee currently has a stress fracture in her leg and is not allowed to stand on it, she will do the elements she needs or part of what she can do in the exercise, lying down, sitting or hanging on a ladder.”

Gymnast Daria Atmanov is a wonderful example of how the medical team works. Following a severe injury, Atmanov was out of competition for nine months out of a three-year Olympic campaign. Atmanov missed a significant part of the current campaign, but despite this she managed to improve and finish in fifth place in Paris. The second best result ever by an Israeli gymnast, after Linoi Ashram’s win in the individual gold in Tokyo 2020.

“What made this possible is that during the rehabilitation, the treatments and the injury. We don’t shut down completely, she actually continues to train in what she can do and of course what she is allowed to do,” says Bertler. “If she can’t do a spaghetti jump on her feet, then we’ll hang her on a ladder and she’ll actually do the leg jump on a ladder. She’ll keep the ability and we’ll slowly build up her movement.”

“Because I know what is required from gymnastics, I can break down the elements of the movement, what they need to do into elements, and then actually get to what they need in a creative way, when they are unable to do something.”

Bertler presents a different approach from the modern doctor. “If you’re injured, what’s the first thing the doctor will tell you? Rest, stop running until it hurts less. Maybe a week, maybe two weeks, maybe a month. We don’t have that time. Therefore, we actually continue, while rehabilitating, all the time the gymnast does Whatever she can, in very creative ways.”

She continues to shed light on the unique treatment methods of the medical team during the rehabilitation of the gymnasts. “The rehabilitations have to be very creative, whether it’s small things to release muscles like cucumber vinegar water. When there are more significant injuries, a pressure chamber is used. We will do everything necessary to rehabilitate a gymnast and take care of her physically to reach the goal she sets for herself.”

She derives her inner motivation from her personal experience as a gymnast who, due to less advanced treatment methods in her time, denied her the ability to fulfill her sporting dream. “I remember the frustration so hard, when you train towards something and then you get injured and can’t reach your goal. I have a very great inner hunger to assure the gymnast that she will reach her goal, the goal she set for herself. It doesn’t matter what needs to be done for it.”

“I was so happy. I know exactly what each of them went through, to reach this achievement”

What was it like to accompany them in Paris, when they won the Olympic silver medal?
“Wow, their competition was very tense. In the first exercise, there were some things that they did not perform completely, it lowered their levels of difficulty and the overall score. We knew that they had to do the combined exercise perfectly and it is an exercise that they always have difficulty with in competitions.”

“They don’t know where they are ranked during the competition. But they know that they didn’t do all the levels of difficulty. During the exercise, Natasha Asmolov and I stood in the back near a special dedicated screen where the team can see you in the competition and we’re really talking to the girls: ‘Catch, calm, until the end'”.

“They managed to do the exercise in such an amazing way and we saw that they did everything. When we saw the score, a scream of happiness came out of our hearts. I am so proud of them, I know how much each of them invested there,” adds Bertler.

“With Linoy, we broke the glass ceiling of the first individual Olympic medal. In Paris, they managed to break another glass ceiling and I believe that this will actually enable the achievements of future generations. I am so proud of them, I was so happy. I know exactly what each of them went through , to reach this achievement”.