Word: trunk
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Spend enough time at a health club or gym these days, and you're bound to overhear someone discussing core strength. The idea behind this new exercise buzz word is that the muscles surrounding your trunk--the ones that help you breathe and hold up your spine--need to be every bit as strong as your biceps or quadriceps. Indeed, says Wendell Liemohn, an exercise scientist at the University of Tennessee, "if you don't have a strong core, then moving your arms and legs won't be as efficient...
What that means in practical terms depends a lot on how physically active you are. Star athletes who have not built up their core strength have slower reaction times and are more prone to injury. Office workers whose trunk muscles have turned to flab behind their desks are apt to suffer chronic back pain. Older folks with poor core strength are likely to lose their balance and fall...
...prevailing wisdom among gym rats used to be that the best measure of core strength was how many sit-ups and push-ups they could do. That's wrong on two counts. Sit-ups and push-ups primarily work the muscles on the front side of the trunk, leaving those of the back weak and unengaged. It is also very easy to cheat at sit-ups by allowing hip muscles, and not the abdominals, to do the work. A properly executed crunch may not be as impressive as a sit-up, but the goal is to isolate and strengthen...
...cramped fuselage of Air Force One, surrounded by Jackie, Lady Bird, aides from both staffs and a handful of reporters, leaning and pushing against one another to witness this historic moment. Soon afterward one of them, Sid Davis, the White House reporter for Westinghouse Broadcasting, climbed on the trunk of a car at the edge of Love Field and was relating the story of that frantic, improvised Inauguration. He had to pause as Air Force One roared down the runway and took off, heading back to Washington--the most devastating and yet the most historic flight that grand airplane...
...Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you!" The standing microphone sank into a hole in the floor as Moore harangued on. After a commercial break, Martin quipped, "It was so sweet backstage, you should have seen it. The Teamsters were helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo." This was Martin's way of easing the tension and signaling, to the audiences in the theater and at home: We now return you to your regularly scheduled fatuity...