Section I: What My Core Program Will Do for You

Chapter One: What Every Woman Needs to Know
Can you imagine having all the energy you need, all the time?
Nancy, 32, has it. "Sitting at the computer all day used to leave me feeling drained. But now that I’m doing the core exercises, I don’t feel like I’ve been run over by a truck by the end of the day. After work I’m taking a course in art school instead of dragging myself home and collapsing on the sofa."

Would you love to feel great every day?
Maria, 42, does. "For the first time in much too long I feel terrific, from head to toe. I never thought I’d feel this way again. I was dragging myself around, always feeling as if I were just one step away from moving at the pace of my 85-year-old grandmother. Best of all, I can accomplish everything I need to do, from lifting and carrying to walking long distances. I can’t thank you enough!"

Is the notion of moving with ease and beautiful posture something you dream about?
For Jenna, 47, it is a reality. "Finally, I feel graceful; my strides are fluid. When I catch a glimpse of myself in a store window I see a confident woman, not someone who looks like she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders."

Do you wonder what it would be like to be able to summon strength anytime you needed it?
Carol, 36, can. "My arms and shoulders and even my hands were losing so much strength that I could barely carry my groceries. I figured it was just a sign of getting older. Not only do I really appreciate being proved wrong — now I don’t have to think about whether I have the strength I need. It’s always there."

Would you like to rid yourself of aches and pains once and for all?
Leslie, 40, did it. "Whenever I played on my company’s softball team I felt it the next day. Back strain. Shoulder pain. Now I’m a star hitter and the day after a game I can savor the victory — not try to soothe aches and pains."

Is the idea of having dependable stamina immensely appealing?
Ellen, 37, knows how great it is. "I’ve been jogging for a few years but I was getting more and more worn out from it, partly because I was having a lot of discomfort in my hips. Now I enter mini-marathons, and keeping up with my husband is no trouble at all."

Core Benefits
You can enjoy all the benefits described above, and more, if you will give fifteen minutes a day to performing the Core exercise program I’ve used with such success for the women I treat in my practice. Moving through your busy life with a strong and supple and pain-free body is your right — because that is how nature intended you to be. I’m going to show you how to restore to your body what your life as a woman saps from it.

Why I Wrote This Book
One morning a few years ago, I was on my way to work. As I stood, surrounded by other riders on a slow-moving bus, I started to observe how some of the women aboard carried themselves. I’ve had this habit for a long time. Even before I became a physical therapist I was always fascinated by the way people — and especially women — held, and moved, their bodies.

A well-dressed, fit woman in her forties who was standing next to me kept tugging at the strap of her obviously overloaded carryall. Her whole body leaned so far to the right it seemed as though the carryall had a gravitational pull all its own. Near her, a woman in her twenties, who was sitting, tilted her head to an extreme angle as she talked on a cell phone. She continually rubbed her neck, which was obviously hurting. Then there was the tall thirtyish woman who carried fatigue around her shoulders like a heavy shawl. Her whole body slumped forward as she held on to the back of a seat with both hands.

What a shame, I thought to myself. These women look so uncomfortable — and they don’t have to be.

Then, as the bus stalled in traffic, I noticed a woman on the street, who was at least eighty years old. In sharp contrast to the women on the bus, all of them much younger than she, this woman carried herself with freedom and ease. As she strode confidently on her way, her body was in perfect alignment. Looking at her, I realized how much I could do for the women on the bus — and every woman.

My work could give them the gift of strength and easy movement and physical balance today, and for the rest of their lives. They too would look, and move, like that confident, graceful, strong woman on the street, no matter what their age.

I decided right then that I would write a book that would enable women to use everything I had learned through my work, and that this book would be my way of fulfilling the commitment I had made, after my mother’s early death from a heart attack, to the cause of women’s health. I want to help women to change their lives, starting at the core. And I know how to do it quickly, easily, and inexpensively.

Fifteen Minutes a Day That Will Change Your Life
The Core Program is the fifteen-minutes-a-day, five-times-a-week exercise regimen that will give you benefits no single other fitness program can offer. In a very short time it will:

• Build strength
• Abolish muscle aches and pains
• Improve your posture

• Put an end to joint stiffness

• Give you a graceful, easy stride

• Eliminate fatigue after each session

• Relax your body so that you get a good night’s sleep

• Improve your balance

• Enhance your stamina for the day ahead

• Heighten your sexual pleasure

• Rid you of occasional nausea and headaches and other symptoms for which doctors can find no cause

In fact, from your very first workout, you will experience an increased sense of well-being — a new sense of ease, energy and relief from everyday aches and pains.

The Core Program will give your body a head-to-toe workout that will also tone your muscles and carve inches off your waist and hips. You’ll look great and feel terrific. Best of all, the easy-to-do Core movements can be done no matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter whether you are overweight or skinny, fit or sedentary. Maybe you’ll be able to do only one or two to start, but eventually almost everyone is able to perform all the exercises in the Core Foundation. Many others will go on to the more advanced versions of the program.

All you need is an exercise mat, which stores easily under a bed, or simply use a large folded towel for cushioning. Wear an outfit that allows you easy movement. Sweats are fine; so is an old leotard or leggings and a T-shirt. After you master the Core Foundation program, you have the option of continuing to the Intermediate program, and eventually to the Ultimate Core. These more advanced programs include some new exercises, and some variations on the Foundation exercises. They also introduce the use of simple hand and ankle weights, for added benefits.

I know that being a woman equals being busy. Family. Career. Children. Friends. Shopping. Traveling. Cooking. Grooming. Gardening. Cleaning. Exercise. And this is only a partial list. With two children (one a baby), two physical therapy offices and one husband, my life is extremely hectic. So hectic, in fact, that I barely managed to do the photo shoot for the exercise sections of this book before I got really big with the pregnancy for my second child. I was three months pregnant when we did these photo sessions, as may be obvious in some of the pictures. So I think I understand as well as anyone how precious, and how short, time is. That’s why I made sure that the Core Program is lifestyle-friendly.

Do the program when it is convenient for you, in the privacy of your home or as part of your gym workout. Do it in the morning, the evening, or anytime in between. (I have patients who close their office doors and take a restorative fifteen-minute Core "break" in the afternoon.)

As a Woman, You Need the Core Program
The Core Program derives from my experience of treating thousands of women for the most frequent aches and pains they experienced in their heads, necks, shoulders, arms, backs and legs. I noticed that, no matter where they were feeling discomfort, all of their problems seemed to relate to underdeveloped and unbalanced muscle groups in one area of the body — the core. What I’m calling the "core" is the torso, which extends from the base of the neck to the bottom of the spine, and includes the abdomen and all the back and hip muscles. These are the parts that stabilize as well as encase the vertebrae surrounding the spinal cord, through which the thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves branching off from the spinal cord emerge.

The brachial plexus is the group of nerves that branches off the spinal cord through the area of the neck, extending into the upper extremities of the body. The sciatic nerve, the largest nerve in your body, which is actually made up of a group of five nerve roots, emerges from the lumbar spine and passes through the buttocks and down each leg, supplying the lower extremities of the body. Because their ultimate source is the spinal cord, the nerves in both your arms and your legs function best when you have a strong and stable core.

Both the neck and the lower back are dependent on the core muscles to stabilize the spine so that all the vertebral segments align with one another in a way that does not compress the nerves that pass through them. When nerves are compressed they can’t deliver full electrical impulses to muscles. When that happens, the muscles can’t work the way they should. Weakness and pain are the result.

In almost all of the patients I was seeing, I found that the core muscles supporting the torso weren’t as strong as they needed to be — and that was the root of the discomfort.

The exercises I give to my patients — the exercises of the Core Program, which are the...