Post: #26

(10-02-2012 01:48 PM)Fisto Wrote:  Is this pretty much your plan Athlone?

What, to join this class and therefore avoid exposure to all of those issues?

That'd be nice, but I don't think I can. They don't suffer outsiders well.

I could go back to my home country (Jamaica) and join the equivalent 1%/upper class there, since my family is a part of it and I could find access via blood/connections if I played my cards right. That may be in the long term plans, but we'll see. Lots to consider there.

(10-02-2012 02:05 PM)Smitty Wrote:  Yeah, because of two words: self-discipline.

Major negative trends don't just hit the average joe. The average joe creates those trends through their own actions/inaction.

Not an invalid point. The average-joe, by virtue of being average, is naturally more susceptible to the more negative influences in our society. That's an unavoidable reality, unfortunately.

Post: #27

Quote:Yeah, because of two words: self-discipline.

Major negative trends don't just hit the average joe. The average joe creates those trends through their own actions/inaction.

Very true.

The culture for fitness is just so different here. I see it all the time. The reason that people hit the gym and exercise is to balance out the unhealthy aspects of their lives. Its a zero sum, if even that. Most are starting at an unhealthy physical level.

"I hit the treadmill for 30min, so I can have some take out and an ice cream for lunch" Then walk around in gym type clothes for all to see that they are into a healthy lifestyle.

Unless fitness is considered part of a healthy and balanced life, there will be no getting back to where we were before. We dont work the same laborious lives as generations before us so we need to consider the addition of fitness into our daily lives as a requirement.

Post: #28

(10-02-2012 02:05 PM)Smitty Wrote:  

(10-02-2012 01:45 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  This is a consistent trend with the elite in the USA-they tend to buck the major negative trends that hit the average joe.

Yeah, because of two words: self-discipline.
Major negative trends don't just hit the average joe. The average joe creates those trends through their own actions/inaction.

I would refute this partially. I've lived in extreme poverty and seen that the poorest people struggle harder than anyone. it's a slippery slope, and you have basically NO opportunities once you're there. GG world.

What we're seeing is gradual elimination of the weak. You're going to see a lot of sociopathically cutthroat businessmen on one end, and a lot of disenfranchised cutthroat poor people fighting for scraps on the other.

On the subject of fitness, I know the better shape I'm in the happier I am.

Post: #29

(10-02-2012 01:49 PM)Fisto Wrote:  

(10-02-2012 01:48 PM)jammer Wrote:  35% to 1%? I'm calling BS on that unless they specifically tailored it to the Europeans. Americans consistently beat out the world at all age levels in competitions, yet they are being beat that overwhelming of a margin?

Our "best" owns the rest of the world, it's the rest of the country that's a bunch of pussies.

Thats still not a great explanation to explain such a disparity. There is no reason to believe that our tops are so much better than Europes, yet somehow the average American kid is so much worse than the average European. Its more likely due to the tests they conducted. I bet the average little league team or gymnastics team in the US beats out the average Austrian team. I doubt Austria is doing something so special that the average American kid is 71x more likely to fail a physical test than the average Austrian kid, yet somehow this doesn't translate to results at all in the Olympic level or the Junior competition level.

Post: #30

this a 7 year old american. how many pullups can he perform?
seriously, the whole sports-system is different in europe. we don't have high school/college teams and stuff like that, at least german sport is based on free "membership corporation" (idk if this is the correct translation). there is no connection between professional sports and school beneath high school level.

Post: #31

(10-02-2012 02:03 PM)thedude3737 Wrote:  

(10-02-2012 01:49 PM)Fisto Wrote:  

(10-02-2012 01:48 PM)jammer Wrote:  35% to 1%? I'm calling BS on that unless they specifically tailored it to the Europeans. Americans consistently beat out the world at all age levels in competitions, yet they are being beat that overwhelming of a margin?

Our "best" owns the rest of the world, it's the rest of the country that's a bunch of pussies.

I think about this a lot. We're an interesting country. We have some of the best minds, athletes, entrepeneurs, inventors, musicians, artists, on and on and on. Yet, the base population is utter garbage.

There's a line in Waking Life that applies to this, the old man is talking about why so few men acheive greatness. He offers, "Actually, the gap between say Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human". At the end of the speech he concludes with, "Why so few? Why so few humans acheive greatness? That question can be answered with another question: what is the most universal human characteristic? Fear? Or Laziness?"

Great movie, big fan of Richard Linklater. I would encourage everyone to see "Waking Life"

There's a lot of fodder in the film for RVF style conversations:






In terms of getting the base population up to a higher standard, I touched on this in another post here:

/thread-26014-...#pid492915

Quote:Education is one area that could have the biggest impact if there was a practical discussion about snowball effects for future generations.

Less focus on social studies and theories, more on trades, STEM, etc. We should try to adopt an attitude again of learning for pleasure being a leisure area, rather than a "follow your 18 year old eclectic interests and hope it works out after college"

Daily finance and real world concepts as the standard for examples in math, rather than over specialized curriculum that will never be used by most of the population.

Analysis of media using prudent research methods (i.e. sample size, correlation, confounding) etc. instead of "critical theory" BS

Fewer attempts at sports diversity and minimizing risk in gym class, more on healthy routines and understanding of the body (how hard is it to teach basic anatomy early and stuff like stretching?).

I wanna see our children back doing gymnastics in school, and workouts in big ass lines like in Asia. What do you really get out of games like Soccer-Baseball and Ultimate Frisbee?

^ Starting to drift, but I think strong foundations (facts over feelings) is what will determine a lot of future success, and you can see large scale cumulative effects like reduced health care costs, better financial planning, etc.

Humanity seems to do a 2 step forward, 1 step back walk through history. Big Pharma and modern feminism shouldn't need to exist in their current state if things were taken care of at the base level.

Post: #32

(10-02-2012 01:55 PM)Fisto Wrote:  

(10-02-2012 01:50 PM)Checkmat Wrote:  There's an old saying about the difference between the Russian/Soviet mindset to sports and the American.

In Russia, you get in shape to play sports.
In America, you play sports to get in shape.

What they mean is, in the USSR they had rigorous athletic training that covered General Physical Preparedness (GPP) starting at a young age. So no matter what, all children had a baseline of athleticism before pre-teen years when they would branch off and specialize in one sport for the rest of their lives. In the US, kids play a plethora of sports but without focus on GPP. Sports are often used as a tool to avoid being fat.

Absolutely correct. One of my wrestling coaches was a 3 time world champion and Olympic silver medalists from the USSR. We obviously trained the way he did, GPP (Wrestling in general is training in GPP) but he also noted that Americans would win in competition even when they shouldn't. IE Miracle on Ice, Rulon Gardner etc. He said American's will to win was stronger because Americans would compete out of love for a sport rather than being forced into it.

Really interesting post. I'm sure that you have loads more experiences you could share from over the course of your career. I can't speak for everyone else, but I think that would be a great subject for one of your blog posts.

It may just be me, but I love reading and watching about athletes experiences. Not so much their achievements in competition, but their training, lifestyles, sacrifices made etc. I always thought that kind of thing could make a great television show, as we only ever see the finished product of athletes competing in competition, but never the grind they had to put themselves through to get there.

Post: #33

(10-01-2012 08:56 PM)houston Wrote:  Do schools still require kids to take gym classes?

Not really, it can be substituted for other classes nowadays.

In Texas:

• You only need 3 semesters of PE, I think it has been dropped to 2 semesters.
• You can take PE online, I did this in HS and only filled out forms stating I worked out and took quizzes on book chapters.*
• PE can be substituted by taking Band/Orchestra/etc
• PE classes consist of playing basketball/soccer/kickball. You run 2-3 times a semester, might be taken for a grade.
  

* - I was so lazy that I never logged on and failed the class, instead went to a community class to take a weightlifting class. Went from leg pressing 200 to 620 in 8 months.

Post: #34

I took PE every semester in high school because I liked it. However, I don't think anyone worked all that hard during PE. Everyone basically just fucked around.

Post: #35

(08-02-2013 08:25 AM)RioNomad Wrote:  I took PE every semester in high school because I liked it. However, I don't think anyone worked all that hard during PE. Everyone basically just fucked around.

PE was useless in high school. It was ran by coaches that only cared for the football fags in there. Everyone else just fucked off, cause we were on our own. Waste of time.

PE is a liability for public schools. It's easier to cut it out altogether. Stupid people are breeding at an alarming rate, and I wouldn't want my kid surrounded by a bunch of undisciplined fucktards running around with baseball bats. Fitness of children falls on the parents, not the school system. Put them in an after school sports league and go be a part of it.

Post: #36

Its true, fucktards breed in litters it seems. Weekly I see some retard from my high school on Facebook giving birth to baby retards. Usually they have multiple children back to back. We need to go Spartan on them and throw those infant dipshits off of a cliff.

One girl I know already has one kid that was taken away from her. She just had another baby. No job. No education. Now her little brother, who is equally as useless, just had a kid. Neither of them are over 22 or 23. She's bound to shit out one or two more useless bastards before she hits 30.

Post: #37

Your average American today is stronger than a European.

Mangina syndrome is far stronger on continental Europe than in the USA (and Canada).

Post: #38

(08-04-2013 02:31 PM)DjembaDjemba Wrote:  Your average American today is stronger than a European.

Mangina syndrome is far stronger on continental Europe than in the USA (and Canada).

I need to stop making fun of our funny neighbors up north. DJDJ, Laner, and the rest of the Canuck crew are bringing some solid value to the forum. If you commie bastards would let me cross the border, I'd sponsor a big meetup later this year.

Post: #39

So I guess the Intel in the OP is completely wrong then.

Post: #40

(08-04-2013 02:56 PM)Vicious Wrote:  So I guess the Intel in the OP is completely wrong then.

I don't put a lot of stock in the writings of a man that got his brains blown out in broad daylight, with so many entities involved, the truth is still obscure.

Congrats on your 3K post.

Post: #41

(09-29-2012 04:19 PM)Laner Wrote:  

Quote:Especially disheartening were the results of the five strength tests: 35.7% of American children failed one or more of these, while only 1.1% of the Europeans failed, and among Austrian and Swiss youth the rate of failure was as low as .5%.

I call bullshit on JFK. He was manipulated by Kraus into declaring a national fitness crisis.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.10...f61ndL2aSo

By the time the children are 11 years of age the percentage of failure on any item is less than 8 per cent, and agrees very closely with the results found for European children.

Post: #42

I wonder what gym classes in school are like now days, if they even exist in most schools anymore.

When I was in 2nd grade at in Cincinnati's public schools, my favorite gym exercise consisted of climbing 30' long pipes hanging from our gym ceiling. We were graded based on how high we could climb, and the only safety gear we had was a 3"-4" thick mat on the gym floor. And this was in 1996 or so! I can't even imagine the liability issues this might entail now-a-days.

Post: #43

PE classes are being cut being budgets are getting cut. Same with art and music. They cut the non-necessary stuff aka the things that don't improve standardized scores.

Post: #44

JFK would turn in his grave if he knew how much worse things are now.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

Napoleon Hill

Post: #45

(08-04-2013 10:52 PM)TheKantian Wrote:  PE classes are being cut being budgets are getting cut. Same with art and music. They cut the non-necessary stuff aka the things that don't improve standardized scores.

Legal reasons also as Schools are cutting anything that will expose them to lawsuits. Its different if a kid signs up for Football and he signs a waiver with his parents but gym class as a "forced" part of the curriculum leaves doors open to parents suing schools if their kid is a fool falls off a mat and busts up their leg.

My generation was the last to have mandatory hardcore gym in grade schools where I'm from. We still had the apparatuses up and going while we did the soft "agility" training on the ropes and bars, we had fitness tests also, I think once every month or two. In HS we had a weightlifting component which was mandatory in grade 9 gym where we had to spend like 3 weeks working out in the pit and then tracking the strength gains we made. That got cut the next year over some dumb reason I don't remember.

When I think back to the grade school stuff it was all soft military training. School yards used to be soft military courses for kids, the old school playground was a mini fitness and agility training centrer with legit fitness tools built in but still the opportunity for a kid to be imaginative and abstract (both a child's mind and body should be stimulated and challenged with taught respect to certain limits/discipline to keep them in check, all are lacking these days in schools); people whom designed those things in those days knew what they were doing...





....





^Royal Military Acadamy Canada training course

Post: #46

(10-02-2012 01:24 PM)Giovonny Wrote:  Americans are soft because their lives are soft.

This.

We've been too spoiled for too long. It's one of the reasons I left. A lot of the European socialist democracies are even softer though.

Politicians/governments in these 'democracies' have a hard time saying no after generations of quality of life improvements. Everyone in the US pretty much expects the world these days.

I thought this Onion news story was pretty funny and sadly there's way more than a kernel of truth in this:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-...abl,33335/