An riddle not even the great Richard Simmons could solve.
Physical fitness is a grand mystery, one that the greatest minds of all history have tried to unlock. What is right so to do and what is wrong? Which way do muscles, endurance, vibrancy grow and which way do they shrink? Jazzercise yay or nay? Kettlebells in or out? Crossfit up or down? The Bunyanesque thinker Richard Simmons summed it up, rightly, when saying, “The human body, and how to train it, is the universe’s singular conundrum. I’ve resigned myself not to understand but simply like myself, eat healthy and squeeze my buns. That’s my formula.”
Wise and words that I try to live by own my own fitness journey, tacking them to the cedar walls of my infrared sauna and meditating upon them while I broil internally. As you well know, I purposed a month, or such, ago to pull myself from the morass of physical, mental inertia and march toward greatness once again. To strive for an above average cutback. A solid down carve.
And, as if listening, the universe responded, gifting me, and you too if you are bold enough, a personal digital fitness and health coach.
It whispered at me while I did pushups and squats like a convict in order to improve my pop-up.
It nodded while I danced ballet in order to improve my footwork.
It taught me to run, carrying me on its nylon wings toward a 4 minute kilometer and the ability to surf for more than 30 minutes without getting tired..
I would study the WHOOP application on my telephone nightly, watching strain soar, balancing recovery, but yesterday discovered an anomaly certain to befuddle the most august fitness scholars at the most gilded institutions like 24 Hour Fitness and Gold’s Gym.
Two days of the week, Wednesday and Friday, I do not train.
Those selfsame two days of the week shoot my heart beats through minutes through the roof.
An oddity.
An enigma.
And I pondered it while meditating on Richard Simmons, broiling internally, until the universe gently sighed the answer.
Wednesday and Friday are the days I gather with four of my best friends, all fathers, and our eight children, aged four through eight, in order to teach them.
The academy was founded near the beginning of last year as the pandemic chewed through schools, sticking boys and girls in front of Zoom screens for many hours a day. We met on a sailboat in Newport Harbor, halfway between my San Diego and their Los Angeles, and cobbled together math, English, Spanish, Arabic, history, sailing, literature, how to get in a straight line and stay there. How not to be an annoying spazz.
This year it has become even more serious with fully developed curriculums, science experimentation, ship shape penmanship, much memorization, nautical navigation, etc.
It has all been a wild experiment, learning how children learn, getting them to learn, tossing Derrida out the window and sorting through phonics, establishing both discipline and esprit de corps, preserving curiosity.
Oh, but nothing causes the heart to pound whilst towering over a five-year-old who has told you that three plus three is eight for the third time in a row. Nothing causes it to almost burst through its chest cavity when a seven-year-old snitches, yet again, when he’s been told at least one-thousand times, “Where do we put tattletales? That’s right. Up the mainsail.”
But then the four-year-old remembers that Jacques Cousteau’s boat was Calypso and somehow knows he invented the SCUBA tank without being told, the eight-year-old recites a passage from Dostoyevsky with award-winning flair and all of them, together, pound a bully at a park.
Proud moments that dot days mostly on the very border of full-blown aneurysms.
Teachers are saints and would likely receive pay raises if they each wore a WHOOP strap to work each and every day.
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