EFL Blog

Writing blog posts these days, with Facebook and Twitter being the default method of mass communication, feels a bit like sending a telegram.  With my schedule of training people and running a business time is at a premium.  And not to get off on a tangent but in my spare time I’m working on an equation that demonstrates the amount of time a fitness pro spends posting on Facebook about their awesome blog posts and articles is inversely proportional to the amount of people they actually train. If valid I’m betting on a Nobel.

So these days when I do have time to write it’s usually reserved for sources of information useful for reference. In my opinion learning more about the history of health and physical culture, and Dr. Ed Thomas is an absolute treasure. So without further ado here is video of a lecture he gave to Gray Cook’s university class.

Gray is recognized as an excellent physical therapist and sought after by pro athletic organizations, so when he says we calls Dr. Thomas a mentor and expert on physical culture well…

In the first two parts Dr. Thomas goes into the early history of physical training methods brought to American by Europeans, who themselves learned from Persian, Indian, and Asian sources. The second two lecture segments go into the changes (devolution) of physical training and standards in the 20th Century until we ended up with the fattest and worst moving population on earth.

Essentially Dr. Thomas points out that to work our way out of this sorry state we only need to learn what was done a century ago and integrate those methods into our current fitness and health models. Some might think that overly simplistic but I disagree.

Dig in and enjoy!