KID STATUS MOBILITY

Mobility- Formerly known as stretching.

"Mr. Jones, Why the Face are you doing right now?"
"Ahem, I am teaching you literature and writing. I am an English Teacher"
"No I mean with that large rubber band."
"FORGING ELITE FITNESS! GO BACK TO WORK!"

Unless you're a hot yoga super master or level 70 Elf Gymnast, I'm willing to conclude that you have in your body, some sort of movement deficiency from lack of flexibility, tacked down muscles, or shortened ligaments. Here are some of my biggest issues and their causes as if you care.

Ankles- Possibly genetics, I have really thick joints all over my body. I'm willing to bet that it might also come from years of wearing shoes with gigantic heels like those nike shox and reebok zig-techs shortening my Achilles. (another blog post in itself)

Groin- Years of not stretching my groin because stretching the groin hurts :/

Hamstrings- years of squatting heavy loads, but not to a proper depth. I have big ol' quads and itty bitty hamstrings. Also only ever power cleaned rather than squat cleaning. I never front squatted or overhead squatted until now (I'm 28).

You can't see from the picture, but I'm making a tremendous pain face in each frame

My mobility strengths are:

My shoulders- I can skin the cat all the way through to touch the ground with the rings pretty high! whoo fancy!

My face- I've never had issues with facial expressions, and it's just beautiful!

To work on all of my range of motion issues I reference the best website in the webworld www.mobilitywod.com. Kelly Starrett has about a million (just over 500) short videos on how to stretch, myofascial release, "open", and prep just about any muscle, or tendon---aka torture yourself into better mobility. mobilitywod.com is an every-day-read and super interesting! he can't do anything about your face though :/

Also dehydration and sugar directly effects our muscle elasticity. Drink up and lay off the candy bars and overly sugary fruits and veggies like carrots and sugar coated carrots. Ok eat carrots, but not enough to turn orange, and I'm serious about not eating sugar coated carrots.

Little Cooper's range of motion is my goal for mobility! As I was doing shrugs in front of a mirror in 2001, I never would have imagined that I would one day hope to be as flexible as a 5 year old girl.

Zumba Zumba fitness

zumba zumba fitness!

Crossfitters scoff at bodybuilders. Bodybuilders scoff at Crossfitters, endurance athletes, people who wear glasses, yogis, downhill skiers, etc.
All of the above scoff at Zumba.

Tonight I attended a friend - Jenna's - final Zumba class in Ellensburg instead of Crossfit. It was rad - I admittedly enjoyed it. I even didn't mind the muscle hamsters looking into the dance studio to snicker. I thought of a lot of witty comebacks just in case one of them were to comment on my way out, but nobody said anything.

The top of the fitness pyramid is Sport, according to Glassman or whoever came up with it. Zumbas not necessarily sport, but neither are thrusters a pull ups really. Zumba is a great experience of movement though. The dance moves are just complex enough to challenge, but simple enough to get the heart rate up a bit.

It is well documented that complex rhythm patterns are good food for brain development so I would argue that the process of learning foreign choreography to the complex rhythm patterns makes an enriching cocktail for holistic kinesthetic postures.

High impact-- great for bone density, good prescription for women.
Choreography-- terrific for developing proprioception and balance.
Rhythm and music driven-- stimulates the brain, also just fun.

I'm on the phone because I'm trying to convince any number of these women's husbands to come join us so that I'm not the only dude.

Another note: Blog posts from now on will be short, I assume you'd rather be moving.

Interests change evolve. I thought this blog up years ago to be about the intellectual pursuit of things I like that aren't necessarily intellectual--OUTellectual... I was fat then. What I like now is fitness, so outellectual is taking on a new focus but with the old parameters-- The intellectual pursuit of fitness wellness.

why not call it wellellectual or fitellectual? A question you didn't ask, but one you would nod to in agreeing inquiry. Compared to the prefixes 'fit' or 'well', 'out' is ambiguous enough to embrace whatever I want, just like theunitive.com.

What if I started blogging again?

What if I started blogging again? I haven't written anything in a long time. Football season was great, but I wish we were still playing. Now is the season for shredding! But this is not an entry about shredding; it's about music.

Yesterday on NPR-ATC(all things considered), Rob, Melissa, and Tom, the NPR music critic, reviewed the new release All Day by an artist I hadn't ever heard of, Girl Talk. I don't even know where to start. The album is a remix on steroids. I think it's made of 100% sampling, because there's absolutely nothing in the album that I've never heard before. But in the same breath, everything's been mixed to create something I couldn't ever imagine. I would describe the listening experience as an exercise in nostalgia and... well... let me start over. I would describe the listening experience as being lead through all the pop music of the last... Ok here's an example: Lil' Jon mashed with Simon & Garfunkel, but only for a second or two before Girl Talk moves on to mashing up at least 2, and sometimes 3 or four samples from oftentimes completely unrelated genre's and eras.

Get it. It's a free download from illegal art as either one continuous 70 something minute track or multiple tracks for easy management. I prefer having the album split into tracks, All Day really is one entire track and album that should be experienced in its entirety at least once!

A Poem!

My great friend Mike asked me to write a Poem to contribute to his blog and I thought I should post it here as well!

wtf buttons?

Content in waiting waned when a button unraveled from my shirt.
And Just before it rolled down my chest into the palm of my hand,
It held as fast as a loose tooth the Hole third from the top.
My shirt stayed closed but that tacky butonless hole cried out
For its button.
I can sew on my own button, but its void stirs a longing.
Look at my shirt incomplete and say "it is not good that the man should be alone
Semicolon
I will make a helper fit for him."

-Devin Colby Jones

Farewell Facebook

Friday, on the way to watch the worst team in baseball, our Seattle Mariners, I stopped off at the best place to shop for reasonably priced fashions, our North Bend Outlet Mall, and acquired a new pair of the best shoes for human feet, our Vans Authentics. The colour-way that I procured was black with black souls, a colour-way I had yet to own, but one that my good friend Cameron Grant had bought a full year earlier. So what is the first thing I decided to do? Put on my new shoes? Text or call Cam to tell him about the shoes I bought? Nope, I did the cutest thing I could think of at the time: Funny Facebook Status Update! BUT for some reason, 'suggestively morbid' was the funniest genre I could think of. It read something along the lines of:

"In honour of Cameron Grant, I just bought the Black on Black Vans Authentics. Rest in peace Cam. Cameron Grant (1984-2009). We miss you buddy."

For two hours, my status was broadcast to the roughly 270 people on my friends list. Sarah, Cam's wife and parents received calls by concerned and crying friends. Cam and Sara had to make numerous phone calls and text messages to clear up the mess I had caused. And as my guilt set in, I began to really boil down facebook and examine what it has done to my life. My guilt was genuine, but this ordeal revealed how people have made facebook their real lives (myself included). Rather than just asking me something like, "are you kidding Devin?" people, in tears, called Sarah. I'm sure that my closer friends and family knew in an instant that I was joking.

In the case of those who didn't, I realize that people know too much about me to know nothing about me at all. My influence has grown too wide for a 26 year old who knows essentially nothing about life. I think about my 270 or so facebook 'friends' and now realize that I've been trying to get to know these people by reading statuses, looking at vacation pictures, and reading profiles, all of which are only what we choose to project on facebook and not our real selves. I've even been neglecting my closest friends abroad; I haven't called Matt King, the Grants, Jake, in forever, because I can just read their wall and know what's up. Rather than calling my own family, I stay up to date via their facebook pages (I think they do the same to me). And it all breaks my heart. Facebook promises to be this social network that brings people together and keeps people in touch and makes our community global, but it's nothing more than a social crutch and Facebook has actually done the opposite of what it promised me. Social interaction should have the consequences that facebook robbed of relationships. Then the question arose, "What if I didn't have facebook?"

My response was really what scared me. "NO!" I cried out. And all at once all my fears arose. "How will people know what I'm doing? Who will laugh at my jokes? How will I get to know new people? How will I know what people are doing with their lives? How will girls get to know me?" I really want to know how I can hang on to something so insignificant as facebook. I clutch on to facebook with some crazy kung fu grip until it oozes out between my knuckles. My response to the question "What if I didn't have facebook?" is just dripping in bondage. All of my fears about not having facebook are squelched in light of the Gospel and how God truly created us to be in relationship with him and others. I can't honestly go on building my house in the facebook sand, relying on it to make me friends. I was fearfully and wonderfully made in the Image of God. He made me witty and charming and intelligent and good looking and generous and good hearted and if I'm blessed to have friends and influence they come from His plan in me alone. I will lean on his sovereignity for those things, not on facebook.

I want my life to be an open book where anyone has complete access to anything and everything about me, which is what I thought I had with Facebook. Rather than an all-access, open book, facebook is just the cover and the synopsis on the back. Facebook isn't even the spark-notes version of you or me. Let us buy each other's books and read them in full because God made the world too big to be as small as facebook has made it.

Dual Blog! a. What I do during Japanese class b. Hipstamatic iPhone App.

Whenever I tell people that I 'facilitate' a Japanese class, people ask me, "can you even speak Japanese?" And I reply, "No I don't, but I have a student teacher who teaches the class for me and he is great." And naturally, people want to know what I do with the extra two hours, when I'm not teaching. These two hours have become my favourite hours of the day and I always try to be a good steward with the extra time.

Every day I start out by checking my email.

The stapler is no doubt covered in germs so I use a lot of hand sanitizer.

These two hours are an excellent time to drink some coffee. Kyle left this mug in my car. He said I could have it.

Grade some papers.

Star Sticker. Kids love star stickers.

Also, I use the time to plan ahead and organize my notes and thoughts for teaching future Freshman World History classes.

If there is time, I might chat up a buddy on gmail or try to do something creative like write a blog entry.

Hand sanitizer is vital to teachers.