New Fitness Culture Scrapbook #8
This is a collection of ten 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.
It’s the first in a little while - I’ve had to rejig my approach to PT and the co-op gym in response to the pandemic. Putting this post together has been a nice distraction from all that, so I hope reading it can be too.
Those stories about people running marathons on their balconies or in their garden or whatever during the lockdown reminded me of the joke about walking round the table in this brilliant (improvised!) story from Gerard Hoffnung (it should start playing at the right place but if not it’s the track called Working Day):
I’ve referenced ‘An Illustrated History of Health and Fitness’ by Roy J. Shephard here before but I was thinking about a particular section in it all about sports to be played within the confines of an igloo, now that we’re all stuck indoors:
Among the more physical of such pursuits we may note a seated, arm-straightening struggle; a hick-kicking contest (the akaratecheak, a very demanding pursuit, where the competitor was required to kick a hanging target with both feet, with recorded jumps as high as 2.64m for men and 1.98m for women); a wrestling contest (the Una Tar Tuq) where the two contestants had their arms wound around each other, and attempted to lift the opponent off the ground; a leaping game (the orsiktartut, where the contestant leapt up to grab a taut horizontal rope and pulled the body over it); the Illupik (another jumping competition, where the contestant vaulted a sealskin float held by two other players; and sustained drum dancing (where there was a competition to see who could dance for the longest time, holding a large drum high above the head).
Unfortunately (but also kind of amazingly) I could only find a single, 15 second video of any of these activities on YouTube:
Though the search did also turn up this strangely beautiful video. Apparently it’s Allunaariaqattaarneq - a type of rope gymnastics traditionally used to keep kayakers strong during the off-season in Greenland!!!
The world is varied and beautiful... So many ways to exercise!
We’re all spending a lot of time indoors. Here are some of Dutch master Pieter de Hooch’s paintings of interiors from the late 17th century:
Leila and I have set up a little gym in the front room. In the spirit of the tiny home movement, it made me want to go on a search for other “tiny gyms”. I didn’t find much but quite enjoyed the tiny Crossfit gym in a build called The Silhouette by Wind River Tiny Homes:
And that got me thinking about the old, wood-heavy school gym aesthetic that I love so much. I enjoyed this short film about “crazy” (according to Vice Sports… It’s actually a cool documentary tho) German NBA coach Holger Geschwinder’s gym in Bamberg:
The same aesthetic is present in this training video of the Russian weightlifter Tima Turieva. I find it ultra, ultra inspiring; not just because it’s cool to see a world champion training in such a bare-bones gym, but also because of the aesthetic and the mix of ages and levels of experience…
Now is a good time to be raiding the back of the cupboard for forgotten tins of whatever. It makes me think about the Southern Italian “cucina povera”.
Also, I’ve been binge-watching an awful lot of Bon Appétit shows.
This video brings both together - Andy Baraghani making pasta e ceci:
I didn’t realise how much I needed to watch monks somersaulting over barrels until my brilliant client Sara shared it with me. Pure joy.
Lots to admire here too - love the sportswear:
I’m really looking forward to when we’re allowed to piss about outside again.