University of New England

Making the Brutal Look Beautiful: Larissa Calka, UNECOM Class of '09

[Editor's Note: This profile originally appeared in the November 2006 COMmunicator]

In a china shop, sometimes Larissa Calka is the bull, and sometimes she’s the teacup.

“When I had to choose between ballet and gymnastics, I chose gymnastics because I looked like a gymnast,” the diminutive medical student says. Twenty years of training packed her with specialized muscles and a surprising resilience to pain; she won the all-around competition at Cornell University after doing a face-plant the previous meet.

Today, Larissa wears ribbons in her hair as she performs intricate pirouettes with a professional Ukrainian dance company. “It is difficult to describe the feeling of bliss I get when I am performing,” she says. Larissa herself is easy to misjudge. Tough as nails yet tiny, fiercely competitive and winsomely shy, you look for her on a saucer but instead find her balanced on a beam. She makes the brutal look beautiful.   

Ice and Steel

“I can’t ever remember not doing it,” Larissa says, searching the ceiling in vain for some small fragment of pre-gymnastic memory pasted there. She began lessons when she was two - after her parents noticed that she never stopped climbing on things – and did not stop until she graduated from Cornell University twenty years later.

It may seem incongruous that a girl who stands five-foot-maybe could take the heavy beating of gymnastics, but strength and grace run like two rivers in the Calka clan. Larissa’s dad ran marathons; her mom loved Ukrainian folk dance. Her older brother, Stefan, is a professional ballet dancer with the Sacramento Ballet Company. The combination is not unusual for a family with a pronounced Slavic heritage: as a product of its geography, much of eastern European art involves making the painful look pleasant.

Ukraine, for example, has always been a land of ice and steel. Made up mostly of steppes and plateaus, the region provided easy access for invading armies who wanted to avoid the Black Sea and treacherous Crimean mountains to the south. Gripped for part of the year in an arctic freeze, the land lies bundled in woods and covered with snow. When its people were not at war with foreign armies, they battled the elements. From their fierce fighting spirit and rugged labor, the Slavic people developed an appreciation for various kinesthetic forms of art that made excruciating activities look graceful. Gymnastics and ballet both capture the Slavic conception of stylized warfare. 
 
To Spare the Lamp

Stylized warfare or not, Larissa’s upbringing could hardly have been more docile. She grew up in suburban Clifton Park, New York, ten miles north of Albany. Nestled comfortably in a bend of the old Erie Canal, the town slumbers amidst quiet houses and loud maples that torch themselves in the fall. More than 90% of the population traces their roots to European ancestry. The Calkas are Polish and Ukrainian.

When it became clear that their little girl was going to topple the living room lamp if another outlet for her restless energy could not be found, Larissa’s parents signed her up for gymnastics. The fit was perfect as Larissa combined her love for beauty with an insatiable desire to move. Even today, Larissa slowly executes a small circle in her chair as she sits for an interview. “I have a hard time sitting still,” she admits, “I’m used to moving for hours a day, so it is tough to sit in one place.”

Well-Concealed Torture

Almost everything about gymnastics hurts. Danger and pain are always present, and that’s why a graceful performance is so remarkable. It is a constant fight against gravity, the laws of physics, and the biological constraints of the human body. When a gymnast arches her back, points her toes, and salutes the crowd with a smile, she has just won a tremendous battle. It is well-concealed torture.

An observer may wonder at the small size of the best female gymnasts. Larissa is a fine example of the law of gymnastics that seeks “maximum strength from minimum size.” Larissa learned that increasing the cross-sectional area of a muscle, known as muscle hypertrophy, is key to increasing strength, and hence, performance. Yet greater bulk also increased the amount of body weight she would need to swing around the uneven bars or twist over the vault. Too much muscle became a confounding impediment to peak performance. To produce the perfect gymnast seemed to defy the laws of biology.

Science came to the rescue. Researchers learned that only 70-90% of an athlete’s muscle fibers are voluntarily activated and applied to athletic movements (Strojnik, 1995.) This gap between the absolute strength of a muscle and the maximal strength produced by voluntary contraction of the muscle is called the “strength deficit.” The larger the muscle, the greater the “strength deficit” produced. This means that an athlete with huge muscles (like a power lifter) may have greater physical strength than an athlete with leaner muscles, but they also have a much higher strength-to-body-weight ratio.

To solve this dilemma, gymnastics trainers developed unique weight training exercises designed to increase the maximum strength of an athlete without unduly increasing muscle mass. These exercises involve multiple sets with a low number of repetitions performed explosively, thus training an athlete to use a greater percentage of their muscle fibers while avoiding increased muscle mass (Buhrle and Werner, 1984.) Using similar training principles, Larissa developed tremendous strength yet remained tiny as she progressed from Level 5 to Level 10 in gymnastics.

“You Did What You Trained For”
    
Larissa joined a graduating class of 650 at Shenendehowa High as she climbed the rungs of high school. While her peers occupied themselves with clique politik, Larissa spent 3 and ½ hours a day at the World Class Gymnastics Academy after school. She traveled to sectional, regional, and then national competitions until she reached Level 10 proficiency, just one level shy of Olympic caliber.

The sport demanded total commitment. Larissa practiced five days a week, and she participated in Ukrainian folk dancing on her day “off.” While other gymnasts sometimes developed a hard athletic formality, folk dancing helped Larissa stay graceful and fluid. Athleticism and grace combined like nitro and glycerin to make Larissa a dynamic threat to win any meet. Fellow gymnasts learned to respect the soft-spoken New Yorker’s astounding ability to flip and fly. “I love to compete,” Larissa says, her pale blue eyes snapping, “but otherwise I’m pretty shy. Am I abnormal?”

Competitions in high school were often huge, sometimes with hundreds of gymnasts waiting for hours to compete. “It could be nerve-wracking as you waited for your event,” she recalls, “but when it was your turn the training took over and your adrenaline got pumping and you did what you trained for.” Larissa did what she trained for particularly well. By the time she graduated from high school, she was a silver medallist at the Empire State Games, and was the 2000 New York State Champion in the floor exercise, while placing third in the all-around gymnastics competition. Colleges scrambled through their own gymnastic routines to recruit her.

Ivy League Moxie

Cornell University won the match for Larissa. “It had a good gymnastics program, a gorgeous campus, and was only three hours from home,” she says, “It was the perfect fit.” Recruited for the gymnastics team, Larissa was a key contributor from day one. She consistently placed first or second in a number of events, and she won the ECAC Coaches’ Choice Award as a junior for her consistent high-octane performance. That season, she posted some of the best all-around scores in Cornell history, and contributed more team points than any other gymnast. Cornell won the Ivy League Championship, and little Larissa was the Big Red’s most potent weapon.

The balance beam and the floor exercise were her favorite and best events. “The balance beam is 4” wide and 4’ off the ground,” she says nonchalantly. To perform multiple back flips on an elevated beam barely wider than a credit card takes more than training; it takes moxie. Larissa was fearless. “Your body figures out what to do,” she says of her training, “it knows where the beam is.” Was she ever injured? “I broke my ankle once,” she says matter-of-factly, “and I fell in a dismount from the uneven bars.” Her skinned face and deviated septum were more an annoyance than a handicap, and she won the all-around competition at the very next meet. Still, there were consequences to the fall, and Larissa waited until after gymnastics to have her septum realigned: “I had surgery last summer so I can breathe again!” she chirrups happily.

By the time Larissa was a senior, she was voted team captain and had set Cornell records on the floor exercise and balance beam. Her beam score was a near-perfect 9.825. When asked why she was picked as captain, Larissa squirms in her chair and offers, “I wasn’t a vocal leader. I was more the strong, silent type who led by example. I always got along with everyone.”

“I Stuck With It”

There were no doctors in her family, but Larissa received medical experience by proxy. Her grandmother suffered from scarlet fever as a child, and as a consequence experienced heart-valve trouble throughout her life. She bore the brunt of a lot of harsh diseases, but fought through them courageously. Finally, doctors implanted a stainless steel device to replace the damaged valves. Larissa often visited her grandmother in the hospital and remembers her joking, “My heart valves are guaranteed for 200 years!”

It was this early experience with hospitals, doctors, and medicine that gave Larissa the impetus to pursue a medical track at Cornell. “I always liked science in school, and I was always amazed at the doctors who cared for my grandmother. Everyone at the hospitals seemed so friendly,” she says. That doesn’t mean that it was easy. “I switched my major a few times, but ended up as a biology major even though it was a challenge,” she says, reverting unconsciously to gymnastic terminology, “I stuck with it.”

After visiting the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) website, Larissa realized that she liked the principles of osteopathy, which seemed more natural than allopathic medicine. She shadowed a hometown doc, Dr. Cotugno, a UNECOM alum who talked up the school to Larissa. After volunteering at Cayuga Medical Center, Larissa realized with a sense of satisfaction, “I can do this!”

She applied to UNECOM and matriculated after graduation from Cornell in 2005. It was a huge adjustment, mostly because she had to sit for hours at a time. “It was a lifestyle change, really,” Larissa admits, “I was used to three hours of workouts each day of my life, and now I had to sit in class in one place, without being able to flip or bounce.” Static tension aside, Larissa likes the atmosphere of friendliness at UNECOM, and she finds her classmates kind and helpful. “Everyone is relaxed,” she says, “It isn’t cutthroat like I though medical school was supposed to be.”

Larissa lives with three other medical students, which she loves, and has started to run after class to expend some restless energy. She feels inexperienced, but knows that UNECOM will prepare her for the future. “I’m interested in dermatology,” she says, “or maybe radiology or neurology.” There is no hurry to decide.

The Graceful Music of War 

In the meantime, Larissa has thrown herself into another lifelong love: Ukrainian folk dancing. She performed with a children’s group in Albany, and now participates with a group of professional dancers called “Syzokryli” (check out their website at www.syzokryli.com). Led by master choreographer Roma Pryma Bohachevsky, the group has performed at the Lincoln Center and conducts a summer camp, where Larissa is a counselor.

There are many types of dances, but Larissa’s favorite is predictably the most demanding. “The Hopak is a Ukrainian folk dance from the Poltava region (central Ukraine),” she says, “and is one of my absolute favorite dances to perform. It is usually done at the end of a show as sort of the grand finale. It is an extremely energetic, athletic, and happy dance.” Originating from Kozak victory dances, the Hopak starts with the brooding music of battle, then bursts into glorious flying melodies as victory is achieved and the maidens enter with their flowered headpieces and ribbons flowing in the breeze. All participants must smile broadly as they perform the exhausting routine, trying their best to make the brutal look beautiful.

The entire group dances for eight minutes – a marathon for a dance – with red boots stepping in unison and dancers performing solos according to their skill. “Guys will try to do crazy acrobatic type dance,” Larissa says, “with huge leaps and jumps and mock sword fights, while girls will do incredibly intricate dance combinations, spins, and jumps. I don’t think I can remember a time when this dance was performed without a standing ovation.” It is the closest thing to gymnastics that Larissa has found, and it gives her great joy to perform. Even as a physician, she plans to dance for as long as she can.

It is her cup of tea.

-Steve Smith, RSAS

(Larissa’s friend is producing a documentary on Ukrainian folk dancing called “Folk.” To see the trailer, go to http://www.kinorox.com and click on “trailers.”)

Larissa Calka, MSII (right) leads a group of maidens in a Ukrainian folk dance. Photo Courtesy Larissa Calka.