Seeing exercise as a pointless vicious cycle can establish a barrier to physical performance, health and fitness. But changing your outlook and stepping into such a training loop can turn it into a virtuous cycle of fitness. The Exercycle In the early days of KineSophy, I shared this cartoon satirizing … Read more
My search for the perfect footwear continues with Xero Shoes’s HFS minimalist running shoes and Alpine minimalist winter boots. Why Minimalist Running Shoes and Boots? As I’ve explained in previous KineSophy articles (e.g. this review), I prefer flat, thin-soled shoes with ample toe room. Such minimalist shoes allow my feet … Read more
In 2016, I inducted Serena and Venus Williams into the KineSophy Hall of Fame for their individual excellence in women’s tennis, their social consciousness and their unwillingness to conform to the unfair expectations of their detractors. And the Williams sisters certainly deserve their place among the groundbreaking figures in sports … Read more
Figure skating, ice dancing, bobsledding and fake snow take center stage as I look at a variety of topics related to the recent Winter Olympics. The 2022 Winter Olympics wrapped up nine days ago, concluding a global sporting event often overshadowed by issues beyond sports. An ongoing global pandemic, the … Read more
KineSophy explores connections between physical fitness and movement and non-physical qualities like intelligence, resilience and overall well-being. Some of these connections are observational—for example, exposing oneself to physical challenges makes a person better equipped to face non-physical challenges. Others are based on scientific research, such as the strong connection between … Read more
Befitting the name of his field, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva combines a robust study of fossils with a curiosity about the origins of human nature in his book First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human. The result is a thorough account of the evolutionary steps that led our human ancestors … Read more
One year ago, I closed 2020 hoping for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and optimistic that we had learned some hard lessons from the previous year. While the first wish hasn’t come to fruition in 2021, I do believe the past two years have forced all of us to … Read more
How do the world’s top athletes and most daring adventurers push their bodies to the absolute limit over hours or days of relentless movement? And what lessons can the rest of us take from these astonishing feats of endurance? Those are the questions that motivate Alex Hutchinson’s Endure: Mind, Body, … Read more
No matter who you are or what you do or want from life, you should care about physical fitness. Here’s why. Two Arguments for Fitness We all get standard health advice from a variety of sources: friends, family, medical practitioners, the media. “You should eat well,” they tell us. “You … Read more
Jeremy DeSilva is a paleoanthropologist at Dartmouth College and the author of First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human. He is a part of the research team that discovered and described two ancient members of the human family tree– Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi. He has studied wild chimpanzees in Uganda and … Read more