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)