Indigenous Ability

  Let’s talk subsistence living for a moment. A People. A Culture that squeezes every bit of nourishment from resources, be they organic or inorganic. Object #1: The Organic Example--The Buffalo A food source? Of course. A clothing source? Indeed. Shelter source? Yep. Tool source? Again, yes. Ceremonial source [Spiritual anchoring]? Again, affirmative. A brief inventory [very brief] of the uses of a single buffalo would include… ·         The obvious, meat/protein source. ·         Other aspects of the animal were not ignored for sustenance: heart, liver, intestines, kidneys, bone marrow, tongue. ·         Some drank the liquid squeezed from the gallbladder. ·         Amongst Comanche, it was considered a “treat” to open the stomach of a buffalo calf and drink the curdled milk contents found within. ·         The skin could be tanned into rawhide or parfleche—this could be hair on for warm clothing or scraped free of hair for shelter covers and other uses. ·  

  We will begin with an historical comparison and then offer a possible “Why” and end with a “How” for those who wish to improve their own game. Readers of Civil War era letters home from presumably young and ill-educated men, and the journals, diaries, and reminiscences of mountain men, ranchers, cowmen, lawmen, circuit riders, miners, et al. reveal a remarkable display of gorgeous evocative prose-and, in many cases poetry. [Many a soldier, explorer, young cowboy would compose in camp or on the trail.] The language often bordered on the flowery and can be likened to something found in a Victorian novel. Readers of Charles Portis’ well-researched novel True Grit , or the Coen Brothers faithful 2010 adaptation catches some of the flavor of the earthy stateliness of speech and writing even when “in the midst.” When one reads letter after letter, journal after journal of men and women with little to no “education” producing bracing prose and expressing themselves with a grandeur tha

  Strap in, buckle-up and hang on tight as we’ve got a journey to take. Scenery along the way… ·         “Mad Dogs” on the English Frontier ·         A Samurai throws shade ·         A BJJ champ & kettlebell pioneer changes his mind. ·         Bruce Lee offers us pruning shears. ·         A French poet gets strategy in one line. ·         A Mafia tactic for cutting to the chase. All this in in aid of making we Warriors more efficient in our choices of training, drilling and separating the wheat from the chaff. Let’s begin in 1853, in Burma [presently Myanmar] a notoriously torrid zone, both climate and military-wise, a young subaltern, Garnet Wolseley, made the following observation. [BTW-Wolseley would go on to a storied career, more on him another day.] “ The Queen’s Army took an idiotic pride in dressing in India as nearly as possible in the same clothing they wore at home. Upon this occasion [in Burma], the only difference was in the trousers, which were ord

Today let’s take a walk [literally, for a change] through a few old school diagnostic tests that you may find of use in every step you take in life. [The video demonstrates one exercise from Unleaded 2B: Stabilizing Muscle-The Hips , which delves deeply into today’s topic.] Old School physical culturists were more than just surface thinkers, physical culture was not simply what you could do in the gym, it was what you brought to life, with every breath and with every step. Just as important, and to many Old Schoolers more important, than the weight you could walk under in the gym was how you walked under control of your body in everyday life. Movement under weight or in a given calisthenics is a movement in a set finite period with deliberate attention paid to it. Old School thought wanted this deliberate attention brought to the inattentional movements of all aspects of moving under the load of your own body. There were a series of “tests” to assess such mundane movement