Not-So-Obvious Reasons To Be Fit and Athletic

PaleoPeriodical has the details. Highly recommended. A quote:

One of MovNat’s direct predecessors (and forefather of Parkour) is Georges Hébert, who I’ve quoted in the title of this post. As a French naval officer stationed off the coast of Martinique in 1902, he witnessed a volcanic eruption that wiped out the town of St. Pierre. He and his fellow shipmen rescued some 700 people in the chaos. When Hébert returned to France, he scanned the crowds of people and came to the sad realization that very few could save themselves if they had to. In response, he developed his “Natural Method”:

The final goal of physical education is to make strong beings. In the purely physical sense, the Natural Method promotes the qualities of organic resistance, muscularity and speed, towards being able to walk, run, jump, move on all fours, to climb, to keep balance, to throw, lift, defend yourself and to swim.

Sadly, when I scan a crowd of people today, I see the same problems Hébert saw over a hundred years ago. I can only imagine his shock at how much worse it is today.

Read the rest.

I sometimes scan survivalist blogs, where they consider “sh*t hits the fan” situations and TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it). Are you ready, physically?

Jamie Scott wrote about survival of the fittest in context of the devastating Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquake of 2012.