Original Strength takes exercise back to basics

There are always new exercise trends designed to get you up on your feet and moving but a new trend out of Fuquay-Varina gets you down on your hands and knees, crawling like a baby.

"I asked God to show me how to train to be resilient," Anderson said. "I opened up some child development books, and I started crawling and rolling around on the floor."

Now, Anderson is convincing many others about the benefits of crawling.

"Crawling really gets the body moving the way it's supposed to move; it restores your strength. It restores your mobility even if you've lost it," Anderson said.

Mobility was 63-year-old Jane Koch's problem.

"I had a frozen shoulder, a lot of back tightness, and it's totally released all the tightness that I had, so I have full range of motion again," Koch said.

You begin on your knees, advance to hands and feet and then on to other exercises designed to tie all the joints into coordination with each other.

"It can be just as gentle as you want it to be, but you can make it as intense as you want it to be," Anderson said.

"There's not a workout that goes by that you're not out of breath for the whole time, pretty much," said class member Sam Brown.

Brown, 35, has always been into fitness. Crawling has been his thing now for four years.

"I'm stronger than I've ever been," Brown said. "I grew up playing sports and lifting weights and all that, but this is kind of a whole body strong."

Anderson even wrote a book about what he calls Original Strength.

He travels the country telling people about it, including the Cincinnati Bengals and the National Basketball Association Champion Cleveland Cavaliers.

"We've taught them how to roll around on the floor, rock and crawl, just like they did when they were children," Anderson said.

But he hasn't outgrown Fuquay-Varina, and he doesn't intend to, though there are now coaches certified in Original Strength's crawling trend across the country and in British Columbia.