Sep

24

Oh Yes He Can

Filed Under Childhood Obesity, Fitness Motivation 

Babcock

“Can you remember a spring day in your thirteenth year? A seductive breeze, a few white clouds sketched by a careless artist, the sun striking maddening smells from the moist earth and encouraging unaccustomed pulses in various parts of your body.

It was just such a day in 1972, on a late-morning walk in a small Virginia town, that I came across a group of some thirty-five or forty thirteen-year-olds sitting on a grassy bank. I was on a lecture tour, summoned from my motel by the sight and smell of April blossoms.

Standing in front of boys and girls was a taut-muscled young man in gym shoes, gym pants, a white T-shirt, a crew cut, a whistle, and a clipboard. Next to the young man, like a guillotine in the sunlight, was a chinning bar. I stopped to observe the scene.

The man looked at his clipboard. ‘Babcock’ he called.

There was a stir among the boys and girls. One of them rose and made his way to the chinning bar: Babcock the classic fat boy.

Shoulders slumped, he stood beneath the bar. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘You can try,’ the man with the clipboard said.

Babcock reached up with both hands, touched the bar limply –just that-and walked away, his eyes downcast, as all the boys and girls watched, seeming to share in his shame.

I also walked on, flushed with anger. Beneath the anger, I sensed something tentative and hurt. The incident seemed to touch an area of my past that I had conveniently forgotten. The day was so lovely-no time to explore painful areas. I started thinking about other things.

But Babcock was not to let me off so easily. The vignette kept replaying itself in my mind. I was fascinated by the way the fat boy walked to the chin up bar, waddling slightly but moving fast as if eager to have it done with; his condemned stance beneath the bar, the minimal, symbolic touch of his hands on the metal; his utter resignation as he walked away, his head bobbing from side to side.

Again and again, Babcock rose, walked to the bar, stood there, touched the bar, walked off. The scene took on the quality of a Greek drama. The man with the clipboard became the stern-visaged god who devises tests for us, then sends us on without mercy to our respective fates. The boys and girls took the part of the chorus, by their silence condemning the unworthy, and yet by the same silence, expressing their own uneasiness and shame.”

…From George Leonard’s Classic Book, The Ultimate Athlete

So What Can We Do For Babcock?

Well, as it turns out, in the Chicago area (for example) Babcock represents at least 23% of all kids under the age of seven. Nationwide, it’s more than 10%. And if you use the pull up bar as your acid test, the figures actually grows dramatically worse because upper body weakness also comes into play.

The question then for the remainder of this book is…how can we help the Babcocks around the world? What can we do to give them the strength and the confidence required to…

  • set a goal,
  • get a couple workouts in each week for a prescribed period of time,
  • eat right,
  • get sufficient rest,
  • avoid negative habits including tobacco, alcohol, and drugs,
  • grab hold of the damn pull up bar
  • and show the world that they can do it too?
  • That’s the specific challenge that motivates this web site.

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