Funny Videos
America's Funniest Home Videos Part 1
America's Funniest Home Videos Part 18
America's Funniest Home Videos Part 100
America's Funniest Home Videos part 632
How To Make Fun Of College Kids
As I was journalistically perusing the internet last night, I came upon an entry in a web log ("blog") that tickled my ol' funny bone. It seems that well-off Ivy League students at Princeton University are participating in short role-playing games in order to "experience the virtual realities of poverty." "Quite unlikely!" I scoffed. Do I detect a prime opportunity to make fun of college kids? Why, this one is straight from the textbook!:
Use sarcasm to mock the easy life that college students lead: Goodness, I hope these sheltered students will be able to bear the strain of a simulated version of "The stressful task of providing for one's basic necessities and shelter on a limited budget" during the course of "four 15-minute 'weeks.'" That's an entire hour of limited budgets!
Emphasize the gulf between college students' self-regard and their paltry accomplishments: I bet you feel real accomplished after "experiencing" poverty, eh? Eh?
Point out that the do-gooding activities of college students tend to help their egos rather than the actual problems at hand: Dartmouth students recently ended world hunger by challenging themselves to survive for one full day on only $2. They also got free t-shirts! Food surpluses are now flowering throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
Find an example that embodies the simultaneous disconnect from reality and excess self-esteem of the modern student: "Derek Lyon ‘11, who said his experience volunteering in the Ecuadorian rain forest compelled him to eat the $2 dinner Wednesday night, said he believes Dartmouth students are not truly in touch with global poverty and hunger on a daily basis." Dartmouth students outside Derek Lyon '11, that is!
Quote at least one student whose reasonable perspective makes his peers look that much more ridiculous: "'As a person who lives and sees poverty at home, I think it's sort of a stupid exercise,' [Zimbabwean Dartmouth student Tanaka] Mhambi said. 'I mean, fasting for a day isn't going to tell you what hunger is like.'"
Finally, acknowledge playfully that you yourself may have suffered some of the same defects of the character back when you were in college. (Don't want people to think you're self-righteous): But hey, we all did some ridiculous things back in the old college days, amirite? Can't be too hard on the kids. They're not half as bad as I was! Why when I wasn't getting heavily intoxicated, I was having sex with countless fetching coeds, who were attracted to my "bad boy" persona. Crazy times!
Well, what if you could make that happen?
Okay, okay, maybe not the orgasm thing (not ruling anything out, though), but what if you could find a way to exercise that was so outrageous, so exhilarating, so much fun you couldn’t wait to do more of it every single day. What if it became such a treasured part of your life, you actually had to pull yourself away from it to make time for other pursuits?
Sound impossible? Not at all. I’m about to reveal the master key and then deliver…
The secret to making exercise not only highly-effective, but incredibly fun.
But, one thing you should know is that, if you’re over the age of 25, you’ll very likely not find it your local gym.
Exercise & the “Ugh!” Factor
When you were a child, you ran around all day, played catch, climbed trees, swam, danced around, jumped rope, hopscotched and bounced off walls until you passed out. Back then, you called it play and you loved it. But now you call it exercise . . . and you loathe it. Indeed, every time you think about working out, your entire body forms the word, “Ugh!” What changed?
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What most people don’t realize is it’s not the work part of exercise they hate, it’s the boredom!
Somewhere in your journey from kid to grownup, you went from mind-engaging, ever-changing, attention demanding activities to mind-numbing, repetitive movement. From kick-the-can to the treadmill. From jazz to the stepper. From play to exercise. Why?
Because, as life becomes fuller and schedules get tighter, you turn to the seemingly easiest, most efficient option to satisfy your fitness needs. This inevitably leads you to the steps of the nearest gym. In an effort to maximize returns and get as many people in and out as quickly as possible, however, most facilities allocate the majority of floor-space and budget to legions of treadmills, rowers, steppers, weight and other repetitive-motion machines. This mode of exercise squeezes in more members per square foot and requires fewer staff. And, while it yields admirable profits and offers workout efficiency, it is also excruciatingly, relentlessly dull.
The industry knows this and has responded primarily by adding reams of televisions, radios, web terminals and computers. Again, this simply treats the symptoms and leaves the disease untouched. Facilities spend vast amounts of money to distract you from the fact that the options they provide, while efficient, are astoundingly devoid of joy. They lead to early dropout, derail health goals, create a strong aversion to exercise and lead many to dispense with a part of life that, approached differently, would be a source of great joy.
Like it or not, most of us are not elite athletes looking to jump higher, sprint faster or pummel more defenders.
We just want to look and feel great, be healthy and have the ability to live life to its fullest. And the more fun we can have along the way, the better. After years of relenting to typical mind-numbing exercise, however, we have all but given up on the possibility of using the words “fun” and “workout” in the same sentence. Exercise, to us, translates to drudgery and our mission is simply to get it over with as quickly as humanly possible.
Interestingly, the gym industry is not any happier about this than we are. With a nearly 40% annual drop-out rate and an inability to attract and satisfy 150 million adults desperate for a solution, the current mode of operation costs facilities tens of millions in extra advertising and lost revenue every year.
So strong is the aversion to gyms that, according to American Sports Data, 93% of Americans believe exercise will improve their lives, but only 15% can bring themselves to join a gym. Even so, the industry continues to squeak out a nice profit and, with rare exception, hasn’t been willing to take the extra steps or invest the funds necessary to transform the typical gym experience into something outrageous. So, where do we go from here?
Engage the mind and the body will follow!
If you want to love exercise again, you need to break out of your exercise box. Shift your mindset away from the futility of the pure “physical efficiency” model of exercise and back to the mind-engaging ambrosia of play.
Indeed, the demand for “play” or “activity-based” exercise has begun to fuel a recent explosion in alternative forms of movement among adults that actually engage the mind, cultivate passion and inspire joy—activities like martial arts, power yoga, dancing, team sports, boxing, badminton and rock climbing.
This renewed mindset is also inspiring a return of many distraction-based exercises, like the treadmill and stationary bike, back to their mind-engaging roots. More people are walking, cycling and running outside and on trails where the mind becomes much more involved, challenged and focused on the activity and the ever-evolving environment.
And, as demand for this style of movement grows, the industry is starting to listen. Indeed, there is a movement afoot to cut deeply into the status quo. The commercial fitness companies who “get it,” the handful of visionaries who have been willing to take big chances and create a wealth of innovative, fun, exciting programming are now emerging as the industry leaders.
A small number of big box solutions, like Equinox, have stepped up their game and brought a better balance to their offerings and, in the process, demonstrated to the industry that this approach not only adds life to members’ lives, but is fantastically profitable. And, we’ve also seen a bit of a re-emergence of boutique studios that devote themselves to creating experiences steeped in joy, engagement, delight and community.
So, then how do you apply this understanding to your own fitness quest?
First, we shift your focus away from minutes, miles per hour, repetitions and calories. We figure out your Motion Profile—what makes you tick, what jazzes you from a movement standpoint. Then we build on this to find or create the most mind-engaging and downright “exhilarating” workouts of your life. We find things that require you to pay intense attention, change constantly and challenge your mental as well as your physical abilities.
