Physical Subculture

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I’m still processing the forum I mentioned from the last post. Since my small collection of readers have all added brilliant comments, I am forced to have to use my brain a bit further. So I’d like to briefly mention what I talked about. After the usual diatribe about empowerment (ya know: define “strength,” ritual vs. routine, etc.) I brought up two different but intriguing school programs that are incorporating a great deal of movement into the students lives, one local, one near Chicago.

(I should mention that the article link for Doherty’s efforts at Sac High is a bit out of date. It mentions he had 80 students working with him at that time, with a waiting list of 20 more. Now he has over 200 students throughout the day, spread over 10 platforms and several different training sessions. The football team went from a 3-7 record to a 7-4 record… coincidence?).

Why a school in the Midwest? Because that school (and now the school district) is one of the key players in the research finding direct correlations between movement and increased brain activity. Test scores for that region dominate the area, and sometimes dominate the US, with some of there science scores ranking in the top three IN THE WORLD. This is on top of the estimated .8% obesity rate at the school (that’s right… POINT 8, about 1 in 130 kids), says the Center for Disease Control. Walk into your local high school and see what the numbers are.

I bet football isn’t the only thing that will benefit from Doherty’s program at Sac High. It would be interesting to document, since the percentage of folks playing team sports into the adults lives is very low, but education lasts forever.

Zac, was right, and led the way to many more accurate comments. There is more we can do than teaching folks to WALK.

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Wednesday night: the fights!

Going back another day in the week found AJ, Brent and little ol’ me hooking up with the Devastation Co. crew to watch some live MMA at the Yolo County Fairgrounds. When walking onto the fairgrounds, I was excited to see a high level of turnout and celebration for these fights, like MMA had found massive support in this area. Heck there were even food and clothing vendors, face painting… live bands…

rides…

Okay, it it took me a while to realize that we were walking into the middle of the Yolo County FAIR!! So Jessica Simpson’s IQ is twice mine, big deal. Some greasy food, followed by an abandoned attempt at funnel cake, and all was better (it’s the rules: for the week after a competition, law decrees that a face must be stuffed with fried substances that are more chemical than food).

DevCo fighter Jonny ‘Spicy’ Goh was on the card and we waited in anticipation while the stands in front of us filled up with a motorcycle gang who liked to wear green. Spicy’s fight should’ve been over in the first 20 seconds when he locked onto a successful arm bar, only to have to ref break them up due to his opponent throwing a knee to Spicy’s head. The crowd knew Spicy was gypped, displaying their disapproval by booing the ref loudly. The knee was superfluous and the ref shouldn’t have done anything but let Spicey win. But alas, he lost by decision after the full three rounds.

All there was to do after that was drown all sorrows in yet more fair fare, this time involving some science experiment passing itself off as ice cream.

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The Sacramento Bee seems to dig Bodytribe. The article that featured our wacky ways a few weeks ago was accompanied by a video. I just saw it for the first time yesterday.Here it is.

And it seems the rumors were true. The Bee did feature the Tommy Kono article yesterday, highlighted by a keen photo of Ed in the midst of snatch (must…not…make…obvious…joke).

And speaking of the Olympics (we were… at some point… right?), I’m all caught up watching the women’s lifting, so now I’ll watch the men’s, but my crush on Julia Rohde doesn’t allow me to get too excited about the men’s divisions.

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Alright, my friends, I gotta go hiking now. Next week the oddities won’t end, as I’m supposed to be on Sac and Co. with Air Supply. But, as I am currently not All Out of Love, I’d better hit the trails.