Thursday, November 4, 2010

Thursday Updates: Group Fitness

1) 2 days until "Call-to-Action II" Sat. Nov. 6, 8am, Blue Marsh. Bring your A-game!

2) Sat. Nov. 6 CF Classes Canceled, Gym Closed!

3) Sun. Nov. 7, 9AM: Sunday Special Workout (if you missed your CF fix on Sat. c'mon out for a workout).

4) NEW CF site launched. http://www.corpsfitness.net/





5) Reflections on Group Fitness: The banter (and frustration) in the comments to Monday's post had me thinking about group fitness. The best, most important, and often hardest part to get about CF is the power of the group, and the meaning of CK's "military-style group fitness."

I'm reading this fine book by Sebastian Junger, War, in which he chronicles time in Afghanistan. At one point, he marvels at the importance of attention to detail and policing of others in order, well, to stay alive. Not to condescend to suggest that CF parallels combat at all. Here are his observations:

"And because combat can hinge on the most absurd details, there was virtually nothing in a soldier's daily routine that fell outside the group's purview...There was no such thing as personal safety out there; what happened to you happened to everyone."

"The attention to detail at a base like Restrepo forced a kind of clarity on absolutely everything...I came to think of it as a kind of Zen practice: the Zen of not fucking up."

"In the civilian world almost nothing has lasting consequences, so you can blunder through life in a kind of daze...you lose a sense of importance of things."

"There are no hard feelings after everyone gets smoked...They're more pissed that they all let each other down. Once it's over it's over."

War, S. Junger
(another good read is Matterhorn, K. Marlantes)

4 comments:

Bob said...

So do we continue to banter on this blog or the new one?

Jan said...

I think we're here until Matt's had a tutorial on the new blog. Of course, once we move, you can always stay here and do some solo-bantering if you want, Bob. I don't think anyone will think that's weird at all.

BTW, those are fantastic quotes. The Zen of not fucking up goes hand-in-hand with "embrace it my ass!"

MD had a great group of 9 hard workers this morning. Like clockwork! Thanks W.

Matt_D said...

BF, I think the new site requires Fortran or COBOL skills...so I might be here a while.

Bob said...

Matt, We might need to explain what Fortran and COBOL is for the yutes who check in here.

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