Life on the Mississippi
There comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
If you've traveled the physical therapy and training circuit for awhile, you've probably run into the teachings of Gary Gray. Gary is a master teacher and a pioneer in the world of functional movement and rehabilitation. He can tell you all about the biomechanics of human movement and offer up some keen insights into functional living as well. He's a real sensei.
Gary uses a variety of interesting techniques to illuminate his thought process. For example, when the biomechanical explanations start to get overly technical and sophisticated, he becomes wary. Not wanting to get lost in the stratosphere of abstraction, he looks for a practical, down-to-earth confirmation of where he's going. For Gary, that confirmation comes from Pooh Bear.
Now I've never been a scholar of Pooh Bear myself, but from what I gather, this critter is famous for his sensible take on complex issues. When Gary asks "What would Pooh Bear think about this rehabilitation concept?" he's looking to counter-balance our tendency to over-analyze things. Pooh Bear keeps him grounded.
In effect, Pooh Bear helps Gary find the ground truth in a thought process. Ground truthing is a term used in cartography, meteorology and other disciplines in which data are gathered at a distance and then verified. Ground truth refers to information that is collected "on location." The collection of ground truth data allows us to confirm and interpret abstract theoretic ideas. So for Gary, Pooh Bear is an agent of ground truth.
Now as I've said, I have never been a student of Pooh Bear myself, but I have searched for my own agent of ground truth, my own agents of common sense. And being an avid reader of Mark Twain, the choice is obvious: Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
To refresh your memory, Tom and Huck were the boys described in Samuel Clemens classics, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. These kids lived in Hannibal, Missouri, in the middle of the 19th century. Their lives were rural, simple and yet incredibly adventurous. Their experience was highly physical and robust.
There's lots of reasons to like Tom and Huck as grounding personalities in the world of health and fitness. First, they lived in a time before modernity really hit the fan. There was agriculture in their lives to be sure, but there was also lots of hunting, fishing, playing and above all, walking. No cars, no computers, no concrete, no couches, no air-conditioners. There was copious contact with nature and a generous sense of temporal affluence. That is, people actually had time to live.
Not only that, Tom and Huck's lives were untainted by adult instruction in physical fitness. They were basically wild animals, playing their way to physical development and health. They received instruction in basic literacy, but that was about it. In essence, Tom and Huck were both autodidacts; in terms of physical education, they were almost entirely self-taught. Their inquiries into life were curiosity-driven, practical and relevant.
the Tom and Huck lifestyle
For those of us who are mired in modernity, it's essential that we revisit the era of Tom and Huck and get a sense of what their young lives were like. It was only a few generations ago, but the experience was light years from the way we live today.
For Tom and Huck, a typical summer night might go like this: Stay awake in bed until after dark and wait for the "owl hoot" that tells you your friend has arrived outside. Climb out the window and slide down the drain pipe, jump onto the shed and climb to the ground. Walk a few miles to a hill outside of town, carrying shovels or a dead cat to ward off warts. Wait until the light of the moon casts a long shadow in just the right spot and then start digging for buried treasure. Dig deep into the ground, sweating hard until you hit rock, then try somewhere else. Later, you might visit a graveyard or a "haunted house," then run like the wind from the bad guys.
During a summer day, you might walk down to the river, "borrow" a boat and row out to Jackson Island and spend the rest of the day swimming and climbing trees. Or, you might explore the local cave and even get lost for a few days. You might even flee down the Mississippi on a raft, pitting your body against the elements. Along the way, you might pull into shore, walk long distances between towns or steal some chickens that "weren't resting too comfortable." It was all intensely physical and primal.
Tom and Huck lived a life that we now understand as inherently healthy. For example, they understood the folly of footwear and avoided it whenever possible. Shoes were for Sunday, a painful and unpleasant departure from normal living. Unconsciously, they did the right thing. By avoiding footwear, they kept their feet, ankles, knees and hips smart and fast. Tom and Huck's feet were highly effective sense organs, speaking volumes to their spinal cords and brains. They didn't look like athletes, but their bodies were highly intelligent, much more so than the typical modern.
Nutrition was never a problem because there really wasn't much to eat and all of it was organic, genuine food. Meat was good, but so were the vegetables; these kids were hungry because they were in constant motion. No drive-through, no chemically-enhanced speed eating. Do your chores and later, you'll get to eat.
Above all, Tom and Huck lived a play-based, adventure-based lifestyle. Their fantasy lives were rich and they made do with the simplest of toys. There were chores to be done and fences to be whitewashed, but they did their best to avoid it. The mere sight of a steamboat churning up the river could spark an entire afternoon of mimicking and role-playing, entirely without the direction of adults or software programs.
As for physical experience, we can be sure that Tom and Huck never did a work-out or set foot in a gym. They never practiced specialized sporting specialties. They never counted sets or reps. They never wore heart-rate monitors or pedometers. They never logged their progress on spreadsheets. They never played baseball, basketball or football; these sports came later.
And yet, it's safe to assume that the Toms and Hucks of the 19th century were healthy and physically educated. Sure, there were injuries and infectious diseases, but there was no obesity, no diabetes and none of the physical malaise that afflicts us today. Physical apathy was unknown.
Tom and Huck were not super-athletes, but they were super-healthy and highly adaptable, ready to take on a wide variety of physical challenges, from cave exploration to long-distance river travel. Tom and Huck's success in navigating the world of middle America is proof enough: these kids were physically educated and smart.
What would Tom and Huck do?
So what would Tom and Huck have to say about our modern crisis of the human body? What would they say about the plight of the modern human and our frantic, hyper-stressed, aphysical culture?
They would be flummoxed no doubt, and they would be shocked to see how incredibly disempowered we have become: A vast population of weak and helpless individuals, completely dependent on technology for the most basic functions of life. A vast population of work-addicted people, with never enough time to sit on the porch or explore the world on foot. A vast population of people so completely dependent on automobiles that many can scarcely walk, their sensory-motor circuits having gone dormant from lack of use. A vast population of people whose only physical exertion comes from being strapped into an exercise machine while watching the visual madness we call TV.
Tom and Huck would be mystified but ultimately they would rebel. They would flee our predicament. They would build a raft and head down river, hiding out during the day and floating nights. They would set out the lines and catch some fish, liberate a few chickens and try to steer clear of the big towns. Along the way, they'd have more adventures. They'd get hot and cold, hungry and tired. But they'd flee from thunderstorms in the afternoon, see the stars at night and marvel at the wonders of the natural world.
Be like Tom, Be like Huck
The human body is in crisis, there can be no question. As adults, we propose all sorts of adultified solutions: more and better technology, more and better administration, more programs, more of everything that got us into this predicament in the first place. But we are blowing it; we are missing the target by a thousand miles. We are missing the fundamentals of simple physical living and play-based adventure. We desperately need Tom and Huck to get us back on course.
The conventional wisdom holds that "it takes a village to raise a child." But in our case, it's better to say that "it takes a child to raise a village." Or, more specifically, it takes two sensible boys to show us the folly of our ways.
So forget the policy recommendations cranked out by the big institutions. Forget the expensive, energy-sucking devices that promise the ultimate in physical conditioning. And while you're at it, forget the technicolor role-models. Forget Mike. Forget Lance. Forget Laird. Forget every big money athlete, every gold-plated champion, every gym rat and every pampered poser that lives on a magazine cover. Get some authentic physical experience in the natural world. Be like Huck. Be like Tom.
Phoo Bear would certainly agree.
