Twenty years ago, Liz Torbert of Cathedral Heights noticed she was shrinking.
Diagnosed with scoliosis in her mid-twenties, Torbert experienced no visible effects until after menopause, when her bone density decreased. Then her spine began to collapse. Throughout her adult life she had been 5 feet 5 1/2 inches tall; by 2000, she'd shrunk to 4 feet 11 1/2.
Pilates, which has found a huge new audience in the past several years, has cultivated a reputation for being able to create longer, leaner muscles . . . and to increase height.
|
|
"My ribs were touching my pelvis," Torbert said. "I was leaning that far over."
Today -- at 75, about six decades after most people get their growth spurts -- Torbert has regained two inches, standing 5 feet 1 1/2 inches. She credits her new stature to three years of regular Pilates classes.
Pilates, an 80-year-old rehabilitation exercise regimen that has found a huge new audience in the past several years, has cultivated a reputation for being able to create longer, leaner muscles . . . and to increase height.
"[Y]ou'll be taller and slimmer, you'll lose stress and pain in your neck and back, you'll increase your ab strength and your joints will loosen up. . . ." reads an advertisement for Quantum Fitness Pilates in Cleveland Park, where Torbert practices.
Other ads are peppered with similar claims that hedge a bit: that you'll "feel taller" or "stand taller"; students who have been taking the classes for some time are quoted as saying things like, "I feel taller."
But Torbert's case is the exception, experts say: A Pilates student who does not have a condition like osteoporosis or scoliosis isn't likely to gain height.
"There's no such research to prove that Pilates will make a person taller," said Moira Merrithew, founder of Stott Pilates, a national equipment and training company. "What it can do is improve the posture so that people stand taller."
Chronically poor posture, Merrithew explained, can be corrected by strengthening the muscles surrounding the spine. A major emphasis in Pilates is balancing the transverses abdominus, the deepest layer of the abdominals, with the multifidus, the major muscle supporting the lower back.
