New Fitness Culture Scrapbook #4
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.
Roy J. Shephard’s monumental ‘An Illustrated History of Health and Fitness, from Pre-history to our Post-Modern World’ has some fun quotes from ancient Greek writers reacting to their contemporary Olympic athletes.
For example, Xenophanes wrote.
wisdom is better than the strength of men and of horses […] It is not right to prefer strength to good wisdom. For, if there should be among a people a man who is good in boxing, or in pentathlon, or in wrestling, or is swift of foot […] not for this reason would a city be better managed
Lol. Similarly, Euripides chipped in with:
Of the countless evils in Greece, none is worse than the race of athletes, for, first of all, they do not learn to live well, indeed they could not, for how could a man who is the slave of his jaw and the subject of his stomach acquire happiness to surpass his father? […] It is fitting rather to crown with leaves the wise and good man, one who as a moderate and just man rules best his city
The posters promoting the joys of walking in the USA’s National Parks in the 1930s were beautiful, and the story behind them equally so.
In 1933, newly-elected President Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which “found work for unemployed Americans while also helping preserve the parks and forests that were their national heritage”. They did important conservation work in the parks, and this was publicised in a series of 14 hand-silkscreened posters produced by the (also centrally-funded) Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project.
Here are three examples:
On a related note, I have started reading Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’.
The word “lost” comes from the Old Norse los, meaning the disbanding of an army, and this origin suggests soldiers falling out of formation to go home, a truce with the wide world. I worry now that many people never disband their armies, never go beyond what they know. Advertising, alarmist news, technology, incessant busyness, and the design of public and private space conspire to make it so.
A recent article about the return of wildlife to suburbia described snow-covered yards in which the footprints of animals are abundant and those of children are entirely absent. As far as the animals are concerned, the suburbs are an abandoned landscape, and so they roam with confidence.
She goes on to talk about how children rarely roam nowadays…
Lest we should think that this sort of wildlife is only available in American National Parks, the 18th century Welsh forger-mythologist Iolo Morganwg has some harsh words for us:
Stupid Bristol that never noticed the wonderful curiosities of nature that abound so much in every corner about it, almost if not entirely beyond what is to be met with in any part of Britain, and which crowdingly obtrude themselves so much on the half-opened eye, that one is astonished to think how the Demon of Idiotic Dullness could […] pass by them daily without the least attention.
Ha! I’ll return to Morganwg at some point in the future because he had some fun ideas about exercise too…
We could learn from the adventures of queer climbing pioneer Gwen Moffat. This profile / experimental sound piece from Radio 3’s brilliant ‘Between the Ears’ series is magical.
(At Bristol Co-operative Gym we love her so much we named one of our monthly subscriptions after her)
I’m a huge admirer of the Husker Dü-loving weightlifting coach Norm Meltzer and hope to interview him for my podcast one day. I loved this picture of his mailman getting some reps in.
Meltzer used to produce this amazing, totally iconic (to me, though sadly it’s pretty unwatched) series called Schvitzin’ with Norm on a local community TV network. To me, he’s an inspiring example of someone who’s really ploughing his own sardonic, inclusive, community-focused, fitness culture furrow. My hero 😍
The bits with his dad in this episode are beautiful:
Finally, big thanks to my friend Barry for sending me this fantastic McSweeney’s article on “Maximalist Life Hacks”:
I’m an early bird, and an afternoon bird, and the evenings between 8 PM and 4 AM are when I really bust out.
It reminded me of the brilliant recent Bob Mortimer character Barry Homeowner.
The article links to an excellent previous one on Minimalist Life Hacks.
Every ten minutes, I push the nearest OFF button no matter what.
GOOD LORD I LOVE THIS FILM ❤️