In The News

Newsweek Magazine, 2006
Exercise: Hard to the Core

Increasing the strength of the torso isn't a fitness fad, it's a key to healthier aging.

By Peg Tyre and Jennifer Barrett
Newsweek International

Feb. 20, 2006 issue - David Burnes was on a walking tour of Madrid last fall when the low-grade discomfort he'd been feeling in his back for weeks morphed into molar-grinding pain. Burnes, 50, realized he needed serious medical attention and cut his trip short. Back in the United States, he was diagnosed with a ruptured disc and, after rejecting surgery, was sent for intensive physical therapy. Burnes, the CEO of a Massachusetts software firm, was unimpressed at first by the stretching, crunches and leg lifts he had to do. "It seemed like the stuff girls do," says Burnes, who biked, skied and worked out with weights before his back problems slowed him down. But after 20 minutes of sweating and grunting, Burnes had a revelation. "These instructors," he admits with a laugh, "were kicking my butt."

Actually, they were strengthening his core muscles. And what Burnes and millions of other boomers are discovering is that a strong torso, though hard-earned, is essential for long-term fitness. For decades, doctors have known that aerobic exercise is critical for cardiovascular health, and that regular weight training is important to maintain strength and muscle mass in the arms and legs. But in the past five years, physicians, physical therapists and other health professionals have begun urging people, especially middle-aged desk jockeys, to keep their core muscles supple and strong in order to maintain and improve posture, motility and balance. Recent studies have shown that people with strong muscles in their trunks, abdomens, buttocks and pelvises tend to get fewer injuries, too. Knowing what we do about how age affects the human body, says Marjorie Albohm, director of research at OrthoIndy, a chain of orthopedic clinics throughout Indiana, "the big question is, Why haven't we focused on building core strength before?"

Probably because, unlike quads or triceps, whose condition you can measure with a thumb and a forefinger, core muscles are hard to pin down. Underneath your skin, your torso is swathed in overlapping layers of large flat muscles that extend from the top of the shoulders to the bottom of the pelvis. Smaller ones, even deeper inside, are slung from the lower spine, ribs and hip or extend from one part of the pelvis to another. Others wrap around the midsection like a belt. Optimally, when the arms, legs and neck move, these core muscles keep the body stable. That, in turn, allows muscles in the extremities to function more efficiently. "Think of your arms, legs and neck as spokes on a wheel and your core is the center," says Miriam Nelson, director of the Hancock Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Even if the limbs are strong, she says, "if the center is not working well, the wheel won't work as well either."

Core conditioning isn't quite as straightforward as pumping a barbell. Doctors say that most adults need help isolating their core muscles before they can contemplate a core strength-training routine. When patients come to see Dr. Jennifer Solomon, an orthopedist who specializes in sports injuries at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, she instructs them to lie supine with knees bent, then press the curve of their lower back into the floor and draw their navel in. The burn that slowly blossoms in their gut, she tells them, is the rectus transverse abdominus, sometimes called "nature's weight belt," which stretches from the ribs to the pelvis. When this muscle is used properly, it helps protect the back. Don't assume yours is strong. "I regularly have patients with six-pack abs," she says, "who simply haven't learned to strengthen their core muscles."

Once they learn how to work the muscles, though, the effects can be far reaching. Even after five decades of ballet training, Stephanie Beatty, 64, a former television executive turned Pilates instructor from New York City, says core training dramatically improved the fluidity of her movement. Years of dancing had left her with serious injuries, but she has sustained far fewer since she began Pilates 12 years ago. In recent years, doctors have begun to link shoulder, knee and ankle injuries to weak core muscles. In 2003, Dr. Mary Lloyd Ireland, an orthopedic surgeon at the Kentucky Sports —Medicine Clinic in Lexington, led a small study of young women between the ages of 12 and 21 with exercise-related knee pain. Using a series of complicated diagnostic tests, she found that the injured women's hip muscles were 26 to 36 percent weaker than their uninjured counterparts'.

It's not enough to feel the burn. Building core strength usually involves motion. For many, that means executing familiar exercises in unfamiliar ways. When clients come to Phyllis Douglass, owner of Equilibrium Fitness in La Verne, California, a gym that specializes in rehabilitation, she may ask them to do bicep curls—standing on one leg. Or execute a series of excruciatingly slow sit-ups, engaging all the abdominal muscles. At home, clients are urged to practice standing up from a chair without using their arms.

Neurologists believe that improving core strength may have another big benefit—staving off balance problems, one of the most obvious and devastating effects of aging. As people age, the nerves in their cerebellum, the command center for movement, begin to lose their waxy myelin coatings and die. By activating those neural centers through a series of regular and continually changing movements, doctors now believe people can keep those nerves alive longer. Although core strength exercises are not a magic bullet, says Douglas Vetter, assistant professor of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine, "it's not a stretch to say that we may be able to put off some of the degeneration this way."

A college athlete, Horace Grant, 52, of Houston, says he didn't think about core strength until he started running again in his 40s. After sustaining a series of hamstring and ankle injuries, he realized that his body had changed with age. In order to run fast and stay safe, "I needed to retrain the muscles in my core so that I could get my legs up," he says. So along with his regular runs, he attended Pilates, yoga and core workout classes. His gains were gradual, he says, but they eventually paid off. Last year he was internationally ranked as one of the fastest middle-distance runners over 50. He hopes core strength training will help him keep up the pace for the rest of his life.
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

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