via theonion.com
I’ve just arrived at Le Corre’s training base in the Brazilian rain forest. For the next 3 days, he’ll be teaching me one of humankind’s oldest, trickiest, and most indispensable physical disciplines. Le Corre calls it “Natural Movement” — or “MovNat” in its French abbreviation — and to explain what it is, he points at Zuqueto.
“This guy is in amazing shape,” Le Corre says, speaking Brazilian Portuguese with an almost native accent. “He’s strong and he has great endurance. But what happened here? All he had to do was get on top of this pole, and he couldn’t. I can do it. Zuqueto’s great-great grandfather could probably do it. At one point in time, just about every man alive could do it. But Zuqueto can’t. And why? Because his body isn’t smart enough.”
A smart body, he explains, knows how to convert force and speed into an almost endless menu of practical movements. Hoisting yourself onto a pole may seem as trivial as a circus stunt, but if you’re ever caught in a flood or fleeing an attacking dog, elevating your body 5 feet off the ground could mean the difference between safety and sorrow.
And with that one word — “practical” — Le Corre exposes a key weakness in modern exercise: Our workouts are domesticated, while the world out there is still plenty wild. In a pinch, can a man put gym-generated biceps and tank-tread abs to any real use? Could it be that our treadmill-running, elliptical-gliding, well-oiled Cybex world has turned us into show dogs who can’t hold our own in the hunt?
via menshealth.com
via rosstraining.com
Via Ross training.
“The video below was sent to [Ross] by a proud daughter. Within the clip, you’ll see her parents (who are also grandparents) training for the Tough Mudder obstacle course.
In the words of their daughter,
“One of the things I like the best is they do a lot of training together (even though they are very different sizes), and always have a fun and playful attitude. My mom just took her first parkour class a few weeks ago, and they are constantly looking for new challenges. They are great parents, grandparents, and role models.””
Posted via email from crasch’s posterous
via youtube.com
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Tools Unmask Desires
19-May-10
How much do we really know about why we do what we do? We are usually quite ready to explain the reasons for our actions in some detail, but on closer examination such explanations often seem to be rationalizations. So how can we tell which of our explanations to believe? If we are not willing to take people at their words, how can we learn what really drives their actions?
Automation offers an important clue. When people are willing to consistently delegate their choices to an automatic process that makes choices on the basis of certain explicit criteria, we can have more confidence that those criteria are really central to their preferences.
For example, many folks are willing to type an unknown address into an automated route-planning tool, and then actually follow the directions it provides. If they were only deferential to a few tools, we might suspect they show allegiance to folks associated with such tools. But in fact people seem willing to follow the routes of a great many tools. Since these tools claim to seek the quickest path, and also seem to actually find quick paths, we have good clear evidence that many people in such situations actually do want quick paths, all else equal. This offers a small but concrete advance toward figuring out what people actually want.
On the other hand, when people seem unwilling to use simple available tools that would directly give them what they say they want, we can conclude they aren’t entirely honest about what they want. For example, consider someone who says they really want to lose weight, and yet are not willing to use a tool like stickk.com, where they would arrange to suffer a self-chosen financial penalty for failing to lose weight. While we might posit that they are unwilling to do something new or weird, the more comfortable they are with other new/weird things, and the less evidence that anyone would criticize them for this, the more confidently we can conclude they just don’t want to lose weight that much.
via overcomingbias.com
Posted via web from crasch’s posterous
According to a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, dieters who had a financial incentive to lose weight were nearly five times as likely to meet their goal when compared with dieters who had no potential for a financial reward.
via time.com
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Acroyoga in India
06-Feb-10
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Pole dancing champion from Australia
28-Jan-10
via youtube.com
Via flutterby.
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via rwmj.wordpress.com
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via fscclub.com
Iron ladies of the 19th century. Via zuleikhajami on LJ.
Posted via web from crasch’s posterous