I have “not ten” dollars!

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“I have not ten dollars! I have to work my way up to having nothing” – Louis C.K.

The premise for this joke in the tortured comedian’s bit is about how he had $20 in his bank account, an amount so low it makes the bank go “you can’t have just $20, we’re going to have to charge you $15 to keep your account open”, leaving him with only $5. “You can’t get your $5 out. It’s like it’s in jail, you can go visit it, but you can’t get $5 from an ATM, for instance”. Then the next month the bank charged him another $15, leaving him with negative $10.

This comedic reference is a funny, yet powerful and sobering view of fitness in our contemporary life.

Once upon a time, we were functionally fit just from performing tasks geared at our survival: hunting, gathering, defending, moving, harvesting, plowing etc. These activities required walking, running, jumping, climbing, lifting, throwing etc.

In one of the chapters of the Practical Guide to Physical Education, the minimal aptitude requirement for an individual aged 18 years or up, which I mentioned in a prior blog (full chart to see where you are at), stated the following:

For an individual of at least 18 years of age and of normal constitution, performance should not rank below the following grading scale (which represents a score of 0):

High Jump without momentum                                          0.8m

High Jump with momentum                                                1m

Broad Jump without momentum                                        2m

Broad Jump with momentum                                              3m

Straight rope climb (without the use of the legs)                 5m

100m dash                                                                           16 seconds

500m run                                                                              1min 40 sec

1500 meter run (1.5K)                                                          6 minutes

Lifting of a 40kg/88lb weight or stone (deadlift)                    1 time

Average of both hands of 7.2kg/16lb shot put/throw            5m

100m swim                                                                            3 minutes

Underwater breath hold                                                        10 seconds

 

This, again, is for a score of “0”. Goose egg. Doesn’t make you an athlete, an Olympic champion. That’s the equivalent the zero Louis C.K. was hoping to have to work his way up from negative ten.

What does this mean? It means that not smoking, not drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, not eating junk food and not exercising is not sufficient to be a healthy individual. That places you at a negative. It means it is unhealthy to not exercise. It means you are experiencing passive injuries and letting your body degrade gradually because the comfort of our modern lifestyle is in direct contradiction with our constitution and you need to work your way up to be minimally healthy!

So, once again, the focus ought to be on daily movement and the Natural Method, a Practical Guide to Physical Education is outlining this for you simply, with no other goal than to make you whole truly the simplest layout, leaving you freedom under structure and leadership, the guidelines to earn your health and fitness birthright back!



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