Science

Is this “slow” strength training method the fountain of youth? L.A.'s 90-year-olds say yes

Published

2 months ago

November 12, 2024

Is this “slow” strength training method the fountain of youth? L.A.'s 90-year-olds say yes

DeLoyce Alcorn is 92 years old — and pressing nearly four times that in weight at the gym.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Alcorn — dressed in a T-Shirt that read “Be Strong. Be Resilient. Be You.” — slid into the leg press machine, which was set at a whopping 312 pounds. He gripped the handlebars, closed his eyes and “got zen,” as he says. Then he pressed his legs forward very slowly.

“Slower, slower, smoooooth ….” urged his his trainer, standing by his side.

The retired aerospace engineer, who lives in Sierra Madre, did about four reps before his teeth clenched, his legs trembled and he let out short puffs of air through pursed lips. The exercise was just one minute and thirty-three seconds long. When it was over, Alcorn sprung to his feet, beaming triumphantly.

“I used to do 400 pounds!” he boasted. “But the COVID, it put me back. I’m working my way back.”

Alcorn was in the midst of his weekly workout at the Strength Shoppe in Echo Park, where he and his wife, Patricia Alcorn, 88, have been training for 12 years. They’re devotees of an exercise called slow-motion strength training. Often referred to as SuperSlow or Power of Ten, the resistance training technique involves lifting weights very slowly and methodically, with 10 seconds each spent on the lifting and lowering motions of the exercise. Doing so eliminates momentum and is therefore easier on the joints and connective tissue — one reason many fans of slo-mo training are in their golden years.

Patricia Alcorn, 88, works out with her trainer, Melinda Hughes, at the Strength Shoppe.

(Marcus Ubungen/Los Angeles Times)

The workout is typically done using MedX equipment, weight machines that were developed in the 1980s for rehabilitative purposes. They’re still used in physical therapy clinics, hospitals and gyms around the country.

Recently, strength training has become a hot topic in the world of exercise, in part because research continues to show its benefits for health and longevity. It builds muscle strength and bone density and is good for cardio metabolic health, especially for women. But slow-motion strength training, in particular, is beneficial for older exercisers, people healing injuries or those who are new to or returning to exercise because the slow cadence and focus on form — always with one-on-one supervision — reduces the chance of injury.

The method has also caught the attention of the wider exercise community because of its efficiency: a slow-motion workout is just 20 minutes long, once a week. It shouldn’t be done more than that, so the body has time to recover, says Melinda Hughes, co-owner of the Strength Shoppe. Slowing down the movement, eliminating momentum and not stopping to rest during an exercise set puts the muscle under greater tension for a longer period of time, forcing it to work harder, so exercisers may see greater benefit in less time compared with traditional strength training. Muscles typically fatigue from the exercise in just one to two minutes.

“Whereas traditional strength training takes three times the amount of time, with more reps and sets,” Hughes says, “and you don’t get to the level of intensity that you do with slow-motion strength training, where you just do one set to failure.”

Lai-San Ho on the rowing torso machine at the Workout Revolution with trainer Lorena Ortiz.

“It’s only 20 minutes. I can go on my lunch break!” says Lai-San Ho, a 33-year-old TV editor. She started slow-motion strength training at the Workout Revolution in Studio City after tearing her ACL in 2022 — it provided a low-impact way to exercise while recovering. But she stuck with it to stay fit.

“I could tell I was getting stronger in all areas of my body,” Ho says. “I’ve noticed certain aches and pains in my upper back, after a year, went away. I can’t imagine not doing it because I feel so many benefits.”

Jason Zaremski, a sports medicine physician at the University of Florida, says the technique is “legit, the real thing.”

“Any weight training is great for older individuals, but this routine reduces risk of injury while still gaining benefit,” he says. “There’s no jerky motions or throwing of weights. And it can increase your circulation — you get greater blood flow while activating your muscles. So you’re adding a cardiovascular benefit for something that’s typically anaerobic.”

Even so, other experts are skeptical about the technique.

“Sets going to failure, with a long time under tension, is a very uncomfortable, unnecessarily painful workout,” Casey Johnston, author of the weightlifting newsletter “She’s a Beast,” said. “It’s not necessarily more effective. So much of lifting is about coordination, neuromuscular activity in your body and stabilization and that’s not present using machines the way it is with free weights.”

A 92-year-old man and his trainer working out on the leg press machine.

There are about a dozen boutique fitness studios in L.A. that specialize in slow-motion strength training, as well as larger chains like the Perfect Workout. Though many of them have been around for decades, momentum around this subset of exercise picked up during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hughes says, adding that by 2022, the Strength Shoppe had doubled its staff at both its Pasadena and Echo Park locations and this month opened a Mid-City location. While gyms and fitness studios closed during early stay-at-home orders, many slow-motion strength training studios remained open because they offered an essential rehabilitative service: weight-bearing physical therapy for pain management, osteoporosis and other conditions.

Word got out. Then, after restrictions lifted, those looking for in-person studios with strong COVID protections found their way to slow-motion strength training. The environment of a typical studio is quieter and more intimate than a bustling gym. No more than two clients and their trainers are typically allowed in the space at once. The temperature is set at a chilly 68-70 degrees, because body heat rises with such strenuous exertion. There are typically no group classes offered and no music over the loudspeakers.

“It’s so absolute attention can be paid to form and alignment,” Hughes says, adding that her clientele ranges from age 12 to 93. “I, and other trainers who work with this, call it ‘the fountain of youth.’ We lose muscle and bone density as we age. It’s cumulative. When you gain — or regain muscle mass — you feel younger, your body is more supported.”

Melinda Hughes and Arjen van Eijmeren, owners of the Strength Shoppe.

At SuperSlowLA in Brentwood, which opened 25 years ago, the clientele ranges from age 15 to 89. But the studio specializes in the health of postmenopausal women, who make up 80% of its business (90% of its clients are female).

“Women get osteoporosis and osteopenia and other related health issues because of hormonal changes,” says owner Benjamin Fisher. “A lot of our clients are afraid of walking down the street and breaking a hip. The methodology of what we do, we keep bone loss at bay. We give them the strength to be more active and independent.”

Leona Katz, an 80-year-old attorney who has been training at SuperSlowLA for five years, calls the results “miraculous.”

“I was very overweight and had hip problems and blood pressure problems,” Katz says. “After my husband passed away, I made some life changes and lost more than 100 pounds. My kids call me Leona 2.0.”

At Myogenics Fitness, which opened in West Hollywood in 1998, the atmosphere is clean, simple and functional. Occasionally the studio will play white noise to help exercisers focus. Trainers coach clients on how to keep their breathing open and fluid while they lift.

“A lot of people compare it to mediating,” owner Chad Morris says of the workout.

A man, 96, lifts weights on a machine at Myogenics Fitness.

Marty Waldman, 96, has been training at Myogenics for about six years, which has been “very gratifying but also exhausting” as a nonagenarian, he says. He was a runner, skier and long-distance biker when he was younger, and is in relatively good shape today but for a heart condition and “two bad knees and shoulders.” But the retired businessman began slo-mo strength training because he wanted to feel stronger.

“It’s allowed me to do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do,” he says. “We just got back from a rigorous trip with the gorillas in Rwanda — there’s no way I could have done that if I hadn’t been in reasonably decent shape.”

Though slow-motion strength training has delivered clear results for many of its participants, those results come with a price: Sessions must be done with a trainer and typically cost between $80 and $100, so that a month’s worth of sessions are more than a monthly gym membership.

There are safety precautions too.

Marty Waldman's progress is recorded on his workout chart at Myogenics Fitness.

“You can’t do the same amount of weight that you’d do with a traditional routine,” says sports medicine physician Zaremski. “You may have to drop the weight because your muscles will fatigue quicker — they’re under tension for a longer period. Your form also needs to be especially accurate.”

Still, devotees say the cost is worth it.

“You cannot put a price on health,” says Blake Boyd, a 58-year-old actor-producer and former fitness trainer who came to the Strength Shoppe six years ago after having been diagnosed with arthritis in his neck. “It’s effective, it works. I’ll do it for the rest of my life.”

Rick Staddon, owner of Vitality Personal Training in Calabasas, says his clients comment that getting stronger has been a game-changer.

“I often hear: ‘I can carry groceries up the stairs now,’ ‘I can cut the grass,’ he says. “The simple things are very meaningful for a lot of people.”

An 80-year-old woman lifts weights at the gym.

For Alanna Kathleen Brown, an 80-year-old retired English professor, slow-motion strength training has turned her into a “walking miracle,” she says, climbing onto the seat of the High Row machine at Pure Strength in Studio City.

“I have osteoarthritis, I deal with obesity, I have blood pressure issues and GERD,” Brown says. “But I do weights. I’m strong. I’ve avoided surgeries.”

Then she lifts and lowers the weight very slowly until her cheeks are flushed pink.

“For me, doing slow weights is right up there with paying all the bills,” she says. “I’d give up a lot of things before I’d give this up. Because it’s quality of life — and independence.”

Science

Panama Canal’s Expansion Opened Routes for Fish to Relocate

Published

12 hours ago

January 7, 2025

Press Room

Panama Canal’s Expansion Opened Routes for Fish to Relocate

Night fell as the two scientists got to work, unfurling long nets off the end of their boat. The jungle struck up its evening symphony: the sweet chittering of insects, the distant bellowing of monkeys, the occasional screech of a kite. Crocodiles lounged in the shallows, their eyes glinting when headlamps were shined their way.

Across the water, cargo ships made dark shapes as they slid between the seas.

The Panama Canal has for more than a century connected far-flung peoples and economies, making it an essential artery for global trade — and, in recent weeks, a target of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s expansionist designs.

But of late the canal has been linking something else, too: the immense ecosystems of the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The two oceans have been separated for some three million years, ever since the isthmus of Panama rose out of the water and split them. The canal cut a path through the continent, yet for decades only a handful of marine fish species managed to migrate through the waterway and the freshwater reservoir, Lake Gatún, that feeds its locks.

Then, in 2016, Panama expanded the canal to allow supersize ships, and all that started to change.

In less than a decade, fish from both oceans — snooks, jacks, snappers and more — have almost entirely displaced the freshwater species that were in the canal system before, scientists with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama have found. Fishermen around Lake Gatún who rely on those species, chiefly peacock bass and tilapia, say their catches are growing scarce.

Researchers now worry that more fish could start making their way through from one ocean to the other. And no potential invader causes more concern than the venomous, candy-striped lionfish. They are known to inhabit Panama’s Caribbean coast, but not the eastern Pacific. If they made it there through the canal, they could ravage the defenseless local fish, just as they’ve done in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Already, marine species are more than occasional visitors in Lake Gatún, said Phillip Sanchez, a fisheries ecologist with the Smithsonian. They’re “becoming the dominant community,” he said. They’re “pushing everything else out.”

Science

Sitting hurts. Train for your desk job with these 5 easy exercises for your head and neck

Published

13 hours ago

January 7, 2025

Press Room

Sitting hurts. Train for your desk job with these 5 easy exercises for your head and neck

It’s Monday morning, the start of your work week. You’ve put the finishing touches on that big report, prepared for that imminent presentation. But it’s likely that there’s one aspect of the job you’re not ready for: the marathon of sitting at your desk all day.

Time to start training. Because while it might not be earthshaking news, it bears repeating: Prolonged desk work can lead to a host of musculoskeletal issues, from annoying aches and pains to injuries.

Even if your work space is ergonomically correct — and even if you exercise regularly in your free time — excessive desk work (considered three or four continuous hours) can lead to weakened, tight muscles, joint stiffness, inflammation in the muscles and tendons and tight fascia (connective tissue). Add it all up, and the result is typically some level of discomfort.

Left untreated, muscles that are stressed and deconditioned can lead to painful soft tissue problems, such as tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome, as well as chronic lower back pain. You can also become at risk for bulging or herniated discs, pinched nerves and other issues.

Desk work can also lead to biomechanical imbalances. Weakened glutes from sitting, for example, can lead to stress on the knees and lower back; tired hip flexors can alter pelvic movement, leading to lower back pain.

Which is concerning seeing as sitting for work is both on the rise and can put us at risk for other serious health issues, says Stella Volpe, president of the American College of Sports Medicine.

“We know that there are more Americans now that have sedentary jobs than ever in the past,” Volpe says. “The more we sit, the greater risk we have of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.”

Blame our sitting-related woes on the advent of furniture, says David Raichlen, a USC evolutionary biologist who studies sedentary behavior and exercise.

Before chairs with a back and arm rests debuted as a status symbol among ancient Egyptians about 5,000 years ago, he says that humans mostly kneeled or squatted for about 2 million years. Those resting postures require light muscle activity, but when the body is fully supported by a chair or a couch, it turns off that activity in the body parts being supported by the furniture, Raichlen says. Prolonged inactivity can then lead to muscle atrophy and other problems.

“From an evolutionary standpoint, the human body hasn’t yet adapted to furniture,” Raichlen says. “It never had to deal with completely inactive muscles for long periods of time until very recently.”

But the good news is you can train for long-distance sessions at your desk by working out your neck, your wrists, your lower back, even your feet and toes. These “exercise snacks,” as trainers call them, don’t require a trip to the gym, or equipment, or even much time.

They’re not meant to replace regular exercise, but they will — if done regularly — prepare your body for the challenge that is desk work by stretching and strengthening your muscles, taking pressure off your joints and reducing stiffness and inflammation in the area — all of which may alleviate pain and prevent new injuries.

“We’re designed to be hunter-gatherers, not to wiggle our fingers on a keyboard for eight hours straight,” says Dr. Joshua T. Goldman, a UCLA sports medicine physician. “We need to build up strength, for endurance purposes, to help those body parts tolerate that activity.”

“The human body hasn’t yet adapted to furniture. It never had to deal with completely inactive muscles for long periods of time until very recently.”

— David Raichlen, USC evolutionary biologist

We spoke to exercise physiologists, sports medicine physicians, personal trainers, physical therapists and others to devise a short, five-minute exercise routine for six key regions of the body. We’ll roll out one routine a week — starting with the head and neck area — for six weeks, until you have a complete full-body workout.

Each exercise is purposefully simple, meant to take 30-60 seconds. And each routine lasts about five minutes or less in total. They’re ideally done throughout the day, so as to promote mobility and circulation, bringing blood flow and nutrients to the muscles and tendons, and increasing lubrication in the joints. Set a timer. Take a five-minute break to execute one routine. Then get back to work.

Still too busy? Do just one exercise, for 30-60 seconds, then continue working. If you get through one routine by day’s end, consider it a win. Focus on a different routine the next day.

“It all adds up,” Volpe says. “Our society often thinks that if you’re not running a marathon, you’re not doing enough. But the additive effect is still good for you.”

A routine for your head and neck

The neck is a common area in which to develop pain from desk work. Looking at a computer monitor, we often jut our neck forward rather than tucking in our chin, as we should. That pushes our cervical column out of alignment and creates excess stress on the bones and discs of the cervical spine. It shortens and tightens muscles in the neck, which can lead to pain and cause tension headaches.

Do these exercises to help stretch and strengthen the muscles that support your head and neck. They’re demonstrated by trainer Melissa Gunn, of Pure Strength LA, whose team trains desk workers on how to protect their bodies through exercise.

Clasp your hands behind your head and gently tuck your chin down toward your chest. Hold 10 seconds. Do five times.

Slowly tilt your head to the left, bringing your ear toward your shoulder. Hold for 10 seconds, then raise it slowly back up to the starting point. Switch sides. Do three times on each side. To increase the stretch, after bringing your ear to your shoulder and holding, turn your head and look down toward your armpit on the same side, then return to starting position.

Place your back flat against a wall and stand with your feet about eight inches from the wall, with knees slightly bent. Your arms should be flush against the wall, with palms facing outward. Tuck your chin slightly and push your head gently against the wall. Slide your arms up the wall, as if doing a snow angel. Go as far as you can with your arms and hands flush against wall. Stop when they begin to pull away from the wall — typically when palms are between shoulder height and head height. Do 10 times.

Stand up straight and align your head, shoulders, hips and ankles — most people jut their neck forward without knowing it, creating static tension there, so consciously move your head back so it’s above your shoulders. Slowly roll your head in a circle, first to the left, clockwise, all the way around; then to the right, counter-clockwise. Do 3 times on each side.

Stand up straight and align your head, shoulders, hips and ankles. Your arms should be beside you and your palms facing outward. Then pull your arms back but no further than the back pockets of your pants — without lifting your shoulders — and draw your shoulder blades together. Hold for 2-5 seconds. Do 5-10 times.

(Exercises came from Dr. Joshua T. Goldman, UCLA sports medicine; Melissa Gunn, Pure Strength LA; Tom Hendrickx, Pivot Physical Therapy; Vanessa Martinez Kercher, Indiana University-Bloomington, School of Public Health; Nico Pronk, Health Partners Institute; Niki Saccareccia, Light Inside Yoga.)

Science

Lead Poisoning May Have Made Ancient Romans a Bit Less Intelligent

Published

20 hours ago

January 7, 2025

Press Room

Lead Poisoning May Have Made Ancient Romans a Bit Less Intelligent

Roughly 2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire was flourishing. But something sinister was in the air. Literally.

Widespread pollution in the form of airborne lead was taking a toll on health and intelligence, researchers reported on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

During the roughly two centuries starting in 27 B.C., a period of relative stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, the empire extended throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Its economy relied on silver coinage, which required huge mining operations.

But extracting silver from the Earth creates a whole lot of lead, said Joseph McConnell, an environmental scientist at the Desert Research Institute, a nonprofit group based in Nevada, and the lead author of the new research. “If you produce an ounce of silver, you’d have produced something like 10,000 ounces of lead.”

And lead has a host of negative effects on the human body. “There is no such thing as any safe level of lead exposure,” said Deborah Cory-Slechta, a neurotoxicologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center who was not involved in the research.

Dr. McConnell and his colleagues have now detected lead in layers of ice collected in Russia and Greenland that date to the time of the Roman Empire. Lead entered the atmosphere from Roman mining operations, hitched a ride on air currents and eventually fell out of the atmosphere as snow in the Arctic, the team surmised.

The levels of lead that Dr. McConnell and his collaborators measured were extremely low, roughly one lead-containing molecule per trillion molecules of water. But the ice samples were collected thousands of miles from southern Europe, and lead concentrations would have been highly dispersed after such a long journey.

In order to estimate the amount of lead originally emitted by Roman mining operations, the researchers worked backward: Using powerful computer models of the planet’s atmosphere and making assumptions about the location of the mining sites, the team varied the amount of lead emitted to match the concentrations they measured in the ice. In one case, they assumed that all silver production took place at a historically important mining site in southwestern Spain known as Rio Tinto. In another case, they presumed that silver mining was equally spread out across dozens of sites.

The team calculated that anywhere from 3,300 to 4,600 tons of lead were being emitted into the atmosphere each year by Roman silver-mining operations. The researchers then estimated how all that lead would be scattered across the Roman Empire.

“We ran the model in the forward direction to see how those emissions would be distributed,” Dr. McConnell said.

With those atmospheric-lead concentrations in hand, the researchers next used modern-day data to estimate how much lead would have entered the bloodstreams of people in ancient Rome.

Dr. McConnell and his colleagues focused on infants and children. Young people are particularly susceptible to taking up lead from their environment via ingestion and inhalation, said Dr. Bruce Lanphear, a public heath physician at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who was not involved in the research. “Pound for pound, children, particularly infants, eat more and breathe more.”

In recent decades, lead levels in children’s blood have been correlated with a slew of physical and mental health metrics, including I.Q., Dr. Cory-Slechta said. “We have actual data on I.Q. scores in kids with different blood-lead concentrations.”

Using those modern-day relationships, Dr. McConnell and his team estimated that children across much of the Roman Empire would have had around 2 to 5 additional micrograms of lead, per deciliter of blood. Such levels correspond to I.Q. declines of roughly 2 or 3 points.

For comparison, American children in the 1970s had average blood-lead-level enhancements of around 15 micrograms more lead per deciliter of blood before the phasing out of leaded gasoline and leaded paints. Their corresponding average I.Q. decline was about 9 points.

But lead exposure would have had other negative effects on Romans as well. Higher levels of lead in the blood have also been linked to higher incidences of preterm births and reduced cognitive functioning in old age. “It follows you throughout life,” Dr. Lanphear said.

Some scholars have hypothesized that lead poisoning played an important role in the decline of the Roman Empire. But that idea has been called into question, at least when it comes to water contaminated by lead pipes. A 2014 study showed that, while the pipes used to distribute water in Rome increased lead levels, the water was unlikely to be truly harmful.

These new findings make sense, said Hugo Delile, a geoarchaeologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who was not involved in the research. “They confirm the extent of lead pollution resulting from Roman mining and metallurgical activities.”

According to Dr. McConnell, the research also confers a dubious honor on Roman mining. “To my knowledge, it’s the earliest example of widespread industrial pollution,” he said.