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Beyond the Gym

Beyond the Gym is a guide to exercising outside, you guessed it, the gym.

Though the gym has many uses−because it’s designed for exercise and fitness, everything about it is meant to thrust you in the right mind-set−it has its drawbacks, too. Yes, the free weights and machines seem to desire your limbs for conditioning; and then there’s the mirrors to reflect how great you look and how hard you’re working out; and, the most important motivation, other people who lead by example leading you to run faster, sit-up quicker, and bench more. These factors make the gym the best place to regularly train and work out if, that is, you can afford a membership and the time to go. Yet despite the gym’s limitations, there are very few other ways for people who want to be healthy and fit to be so, unless they recreate a gym in their own home, or go to an outdoor field to play sports. That’s why I’ve developed ways to exercise in the places I have to go throughout my day, such as subways, cubicles, and cars. Eventually I hope to have exercises specifically made for buses, planes, trains, and anywhere else humans find themselves. Read More…

Quotes

There’s a scene in The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk which three writers give advice to a younger writer. They talk like the three witches advising Macbeth b efore his head is separated from his body: “Start collecting proverbs, sayings, anecdotes, jokes, aphorisms, lines of poetry, and poetry anthologies.” They do not offer standards for the collection, as if to say it is no use doing anything less than remembering everything. V.S. Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, seems to have taken the idea to heart; when a youngster he used to repeat to himself every line of a conversation he had just had so that he could one day write all about it.

“On the subject of personal style: the apprentice writer always begins by imitating those who came before him. This is born of necessity. Do not children also learn to speak by imitating others?”

The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk