Indigenous Ability

  [First, Mr. Thoreau, on resolve and every act a work of art or of defacement.] “ Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the God he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them .”—Thoreau ·         Every act, every choice is but another strike of the chisel on the marble of our Lives. ·         No hammering—nothing is revealed. ·         Unaesthetic hammering, a substandard work is revealed. ·         Be it our bodies, our characters, our interactions with all—we are the Artists. ·         May we all have the Eyes and Determination of the Old Masters! ...

  THE MESCALERO MOUNTAIN TEACHING “Climb the Mountain. If it is rocky, climb the Mountain. If it is hard, climb the Mountain. If it wakes fright, climb the Mountain. The Mountain is the Way.” Indigenous Tribes of the Americas are full of such youthful “hardship” training. Practices designed specifically to build physical and mental fortitude, dare I say, forge a Warrior Spirit. We find this echoed perfectly in practices 300 centuries ago in Ancient Greece. THE HERCULES ROAD “ Prodicus, who, besides his discoveries in grammar, is the author of a popular and edifying fable which has served in many schoolrooms for many centuries. It tells how Heracles once came to some cross roads, one road open, broad, and smooth and leading a little downhill, the other narrow and uphill and rough: and on the first you gradually became a worse and worse man, on the second a better one.”— Gilbert Murray, The Five Stages of Greek Religion [1925]   To Forge Yourself into a Greek Warr...

  “ A Western Apache warrior named Palmer Valor who came of age in the mid-19 th  century recalled that his mother had encouraged him to swim in icy streams and endure other hardships when he was a boy so that he would be ready to take on any opponent .”- The Way of the Warrior Indigenous Tribes of the Americas are full of such youthful “hardship” training. Practices designed specifically to build physical and mental fortitude, dare I say, forge a Warrior Spirit. We find this echoed perfectly in practices 300 centuries ago in Ancient Greece. “ As to their bodies, we train them as follows. When they are no longer soft and weak, we strip them, and begin habituating them to the weather, making them used to the seasons, so as not to be distressed by the heat or given to the cold. Then we rub them with olive oil and supple them that they may be more elastic. After that, having invented many forms of athletics and appointed teachers for each, we teach one, for instance, boxing...

Hey Crew, a quasi-lengthy disquisition into TMC aka Old School Sweat Poppin' Flexibility/Mobility. For those who wish to dive deeper, that web address is the ticket.

  Block 6, the concluding Block in the Whole Hog Program details… The 31-Step TMC: Flexibility Through Strength Program . ·          Do NOT think of flexibility or mobility as passive pursuits. ·          Just as one “braces” for a heavy lift less you suffer an injury, “flexibility” at the athletic margins in Old School thought was all about applied muscular tension. ·          If you were to attempt a heavy back squat under the influence of muscle relaxers the tonic-integrity of the “bracing” [Valsalva Maneuver] would compromise intra-abdominal pressure/stability and lead to injury. ·          Directed force, be it moving a load, grappling an opponent, delivering or receiving a strike requires muscular tension. ·          Old School Combination Man Conditioning Thought co...