New Fitness Culture Scrapbook #12
This is a collection of five things I found out about in the past week that felt relevant to my work.
They can be read as individual curios, or, as I understand them, as waymarkers towards a more interesting and inclusive culture of fitness.
Ruth Stout started gardening in her fifties. She developed a “no-work” approach to “mulch gardening” that has had a big influence on modern permaculture ideas.
She’s a very funny and inspiring speaker, as seen in this short documentary.
I found this short film of one the climber Don Whillans’ last ascents, after thirty years in the pub, very funny and very moving:
One advantage of all exercise classes going online is that we can learn from gyms and trainers from all over the world.
The magnificent Non-Normative Body Club in Philadelphia has put together a great Home Workout Database spotlighting “anti-oppressive virtual fitness resources created by People of Color, trans, fat, and disabled trainers” with non-capitalistic access models.
I enjoyed reading about the 17th Century doctor John Floyer for the Strength Training A-Z I have been putting together for Bristol Co-operative Gym. I was reading about him in order to draw a line from his research on heart rates and his invention of the ‘Physician’s Pulse-Watch’ - the first stopwatch - but was really more interested in his earlier work exploring the idea of using taste therapeutically:
In the mid-1680s a Lichfield physician began investigating the properties of soot. He collected samples from a wood fire and a coal fire and popped each one in turn into his mouth, rolling it around his palate in order to distinguish and describe their tastes. About the same time he visited London and went to Chelsea Physic Garden. There he was “pleas’d with many Curiosities” and the “Ingenuity” of their ordering: he admired the “great Number” of specimens, and chewed the plants.