The trainer Mary Layne, head of LifeStages Fitness, gave me some initial good news when we met at Fitness First in Reston, Va. My VO2 max score - the measure of the body’s ability to process oxygen - tested at 38. The therapist Speed, explosive power - none of this mattered to Richard Jackson, a physical therapist and owner of The Jackson Clinics in Northern Virginia, when he put me through his two-hour functional fitness exam. An imbalance in the core muscles, for example, means the stronger side overcompensates - and eventually something gets hurt. My sternum and clavicle had separated on the right side long ago - and fused in the wrong place. But the weak right hip and side muscles - they needed work to be brought into balance. read more

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Sue Green and Jeff Van Nostrand rehearse before a mirror in a Jessup, Md. Green, rehearsing with Van Nostrand, gave up her Arthur Murray career to teach dance to students with disabilities. Van Nostrand, who has spina bifida, brags that he can dance to about anything as he rehearses with instructor Green in Jessup, Md. He would rather rail about liberals who want to take away a man’s right to smoke openly in a dive bar, or own a gun, and if you want to get into government conspiracies, how about the programs to eradicate head lice in poor, rural areas in the 1940s, like West Virginia, where his mother grew up and had her scalp dusted with DDT (a now-banned insecticide) at the public pool? Sue watched him hit on four former Miss Wheelchair Americas, and dance with some other attractive young women. read more

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