New York Times
02-12-07
Uh-oh. Aerobics may have been damaging to health
By David Sheff, NEW YORK TIMES
OLIVIA Siemens, in a shiny blue Speedo swimsuit and with goggles pinching her
forehead, climbed out of the pool and draped a towel over her shoulders. Before
she walked (stiffly) toward the women's locker room at the Koret Center at the
University of San Francisco, she complained: "Swimming is just about the only
exercise I can do these days. I'm a fashion victim — the fashion of aerobics."
Siemens, 54, a jewelry designer in Berkeley, said she often took as many as six
aerobics classes a week in the 1980s when, she said, "aerobics was new and
everywhere, and my friends and I all did it with a vengeance."
Sipping a drink from Jamba Juice, she added: "I was jogging in place with Jane
Fonda. I did my jumping jacks and high knee lifts with Richard Simmons. I twirled
my arms and punched the sky while hopping on one foot to the music of Olivia
Newton-John. It was supposedly all about staying in shape, but look at me: I can
hardly walk."
Siemens isn't the only casualty of the early aerobics craze that took millions of
Americans to group exercise classes for the first time. The hordes came,
believing that nonstop jumping, kicking and running in place to (bad) throbbing
music was the ideal way to raise one's pulse.
"I was on the concrete floors in bad tennis shoes jumping with everyone else,"
said Jay Blahnik, a spokesman for the IDEA Health & Fitness Association, a
trade group. Blahnik, 38, now teaches rowing, running and cycling in Orange
County, but he
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spent a dozen years leading aerobics classes. "A lot of people doing aerobics
back then can no longer do any jumping whatsoever," he said. "They have
problems with their backs, feet and hips."
Some of the damage is severe. "It's not uncommon for us to see acute and
overuse injuries from high-impact aerobics," said Dr. Jordan Metzl, a sports
medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. "It's part of
the reason that aerobics classes are on the wane."
Indeed, if current trends continue, aerobics will be as rare as, for example, those
vibrating belts that were supposed to jiggle away fatty hips and gravity boots that
were supposed to — what was it they were supposed to do? For now, the
popularity of aerobics is sharply down from when it was "the mainstay of fitness
in America," said Mike May, a spokesman for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers
Association.
It's why you may have noticed — if you have shown up at your gym attired in
your best leg warmers with a sweatshirt off one shoulder — the lack of aerobics
classes on the menu. Fewer than half of the 300 gyms and health clubs recently
surveyed by IDEA offered aerobics classes, a number that is "continuing to
decline," according to the summation of the report.
At its peak in the mid-1980s, an estimated 17 million to 20 million did aerobics,
May said. But only 5 million did in 2005, according to a report by the sporting
goods association. "We expect the 2006 numbers to be significantly lower," May
said. "Aerobics are increasingly out of favor."
The legacy of injuries is one reason. Many instructors like Blahnik will not teach
aerobics — because they cannot. "Those hardest hit by all those aerobics were
often the teachers, because they were pushing harder than anyone else and
doing the classes a dozen times a week," Metzl said. "Our bodies just weren't
meant to withstand all that pounding."
Another reason for the decline of aerobics is that fitness has become more
sophisticated, so some classes are hybrids that work the body and the mind;
others offer calorie burn while minimizing wear and tear; still others alternate
hard bursts with easy intervals.
"Much of the decline in aerobics has come as a result of new and innovative
classes and techniques," said Kathie Davis, the executive director of IDEA.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a former Air Force flight surgeon, first coined the term in the
title of his 1968 book. But by "aerobics," Cooper meant cardiovascular exercise.
The name was later appropriated by the aerobics movement popularized by Jane
Fonda in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Until Fonda opened her first workout studio in 1978, gyms had almost exclusively
been the province of male bodybuilders and boxers. Her 1981 "Workout Book"
was a best seller, and in the ensuing few years she, along with Richard Simmons
and Judi Missett, the creator of Jazzercise, an aerobics spinoff, taught aerobics
on TV and in exercise videos.
The proliferation of other studios and gyms eventually ushered in the
phenomenon of group exercise and, along with it, aerobics music and fashion.
"When we started, people looked at us as if we were crazy," said Molly Fox, who
was one of the original Fonda-trained instructors. "'Lift your legs up and down?
Why?"'
Fox, who now teaches yoga, dance and Pilates at Equinox Fitness gyms in the
Bay Area, said: "For the first time, millions of people started exercising together
and many of them were women. Women were liberated in a new way. Suddenly
it was all right to leave the house in tights and leotards, wear thongs and sweat in
public."
Aerobics classes led to the current gym culture. "Now that women in sexy clothes
were going to the gyms, men followed," said Maggie Linderman, 44, a San
Francisco pastry chef who attended a decade of aerobics classes. "For my
friends and I, gyms replaced discos as the spot we'd go to meet guys." But she
shudders when she thinks of the neon spandex or ghastly music. "I hear Donna
Summer or the Bee Gees," she said, "and my legs start to quake."
Some former aerobics enthusiasts are almost wistful. "We had a great time," said
Frederick Schjang, 48, who taught the classes for more than a decade. "And we
got our hearts in shape." He admitted, however, that he has paid a price. "The
persistent stress on the joints finally got to us," he said. He blames aerobics for a
torn meniscus, which required surgery, and for the osteoarthritis he has in both
knees. "I gave my knees to the aerobics movement," he said.
As a result, Schjang, who still teaches 15 group classes a week, but mostly
Pilates and Feldenkrais Method, a movement class popular with dancers, said he
no longer exercises with his students. "Instead I instruct," said Schjang, who
teaches at Equinox Fitness clubs and a Reebok Sports Club. "What a novel idea!
I instruct the way a baseball manager does: A manager sat in the dugout and
signaled to Maury Wills to steal second base. No one ever thought the manager
had to steal second base along with him."
High-impact aerobics shouldn't shoulder all — or even most — of the blame for
ruining people's joints. "There's the potential for problems from anything with
persistent impact on the joints," said Lynn Millar, a professor of physical therapy
at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Mich. "Running five days a week,
especially without good shoes, can be a problem, too. Kickboxing can be just as
harmful if you're doing too much of it."
She added, "Aerobics can be extremely helpful, just not every day."
Taking a diverse roster of classes can help gym-goers avoid injury. "It used to be
one size fits all," Metzl said. Now there are "pre- and postnatal classes to classes
that emphasize low or high resistance or low or high impact."
He added, "There's cycling, dance, step, almost limitless choices."
"We moved on from aerobics," said Rick Sharp, a professor of exercise
physiology at Iowa State University in Ames. "Some of it's that trends
changed, but also we have gotten smarter about fitness. We have better flooring
in gyms and better shoes. We have learned moderation, variety and common
sense. My activity of choice may be swimming, but when I swim too much I have
shoulder problems. The solution? I don't swim too much."