1) Stalls. Either the dividing walls are low or there are some very tall guys at the Expo Center.

2) Production. I admit it…I have a CF problem. I watched the video feed of the Central East Regionals on Friday while doing unavoidable stuff. They were pretty darned good. Not NFL Game Day good, but frankly the ESPN3 feed and the CrossFit on-air talent was better than much of what we see on ESPNU by a long shot. Very fun, even for the non-CF’ers with me.

Makes me very excited to see what’s to come from Carson and the Games this summer.

3) People. “I like the animals; I LOVE the people”. (Movie quote). Sub in “workouts” for “animals” and you pretty much have CrossFit nailed for me.

Why? It’s a combination of finding the same thing each time I meet people in the CrossFit community for the first time, and watching the personal development of CrossFit folks I’ve known for many years. It never fails to amaze me how CrossFitters assume goodwill on the part of another CrossFitter they’ve just met. There is an assumption that you are going to be friendly, maybe friends. You welcome, and are welcomed by, each new CrossFit acquaintance, and it happens right away.

Without plans while waiting to hear from a friend last night I received no fewer than 6 invitations to dinner, most from folks I only really know a little, and one from a family I’d just met. Many thanks to all, but especially to the parents of one very special competitor who extended an invite to the Old Guy they’d literally just met!

It’s also striking to watch the personal development of CrossFit folks I’ve known for years now. Some of these people have become really big deals, and not just the competitors. Bigger jobs with lots of visibility and responsibility, successes piling upon one another. And yet each of these folks has retained a sense of humility that seems to be so often lost in other worlds as success arrives. They seem quite happy, too, even when under the gun. Their memories are long and the goodwill endures. One of them, arguably the busiest CrossFit person on the premises, took a few minutes he didn’t have to chat with an old friend. I’m glad I could make it too, Tony!

I spent a lot of my day smiling yesterday.

4) Mother’s Day. There’s a rather serious tone that pervades our CrossFit world when a new Hero is first introduced. Indeed, there’s been a rather serious tone ’round these parts ever since the “CrossFit for Hope” benefit was announced. How, you might ask, are these two things related, and how, for Heaven’s sake, are they related to Mother’s Day?

“He is survived by his parents, Ray and Pat…”

It’s been said that there are few things that are more painful than losing a child. No parent should have to bury a child. How often have you heard something like this? It’s a hard and dangerous world out there, and men like Mark Forrester do the hard and dangerous work necessary to keep the rest of us safe and secure. We mourn them, thank them for their sacrifice, but especially today we must look homeward toward a mother who has lost a child. We must look to her with arms outstretched to offer whatever support and comfort might be had.

Illness presents a different scenario, one that feels quite random and altogether unfair. No one asks for a life-threatening illness; no one volunteers for cancer. It’s especially poignant when this befalls a child, and then by extension a parent. It consumes you, fills up all of the spaces in your world and then some as you fight to save your child. There seems to be so little you can do, your desire and willingness to do so much notwithstanding.

This is in part because the people and the things that will help a mother save her child are the fruits of labors long-completed, the harvest of plantings made possible by the generosity of those who have gone before. 40 years ago only 25% of so of children with childhood leukemia survived. Now, through the generosity of millions and the foresight and talent of people like those at St. Jude’s hospital, ~90% of children survive.

90% survive to celebrate a Mother’s Day.

This is how these things are related, and this is what we should talk about when we discuss “CrossFit for Hope.” We are led by generous people who genuinely care about stuff like this, and it is on this that we should focus. Especially today.

So Happy Mother’s Day to Pat Forester; we grieve for your loss M’am and we pray for your comfort. Happy Mother’s day to Mrs. Foucher in Columbus, Ohio; thank you for sharing stories of your daughters and for your gracious dinner invitation. Happy Mother’s day to Grambingo, who is still convinced that her eldest is in need of parenting (which he may very well be!), and to Grammybingo who is comfortable that her daughter will ask if she does.

And Happy Mother’s Day to my darling Mrs. bingo, still blessedly the mother of 3 children through the generosity and talents of others long ago which were harvested when our child was in need.

I’ll see you next week…

Posted by bingo at May 13, 2012 5:34 AM

1) 5/5. Missed it. Cinca de Mayo is a fun tradition chez bingo; my day job intervened. Illness respects neither the clock nor the calendar.

2) Thug. The world’s biggest rabbit sleeps safely in his steel hutch despite three dogs who are very interested in his “well-being.”

The dogs discovered free-range cousins of Thug’s in the back yard. Didn’t go so well for the cousins.

Thug sleeps on.

3. Title IX. This is the 40th anniversary of the landmark federal legislation known as “Title IX”. Imagine, 40 scant years ago schoolgirls were cheerleaders or they sat in the stands. College athletic programs for women were offered as an after-thought if they were offered at all. The sports themselves were different, too. Ever see a video of a 1960′s girls basketball game? Weird.

Now? A 40 years-long explosion of athletic involvement and achievement in high schools and colleges across the land. Athletic scholarships for every sport that both men and women play. Indeed, at some schools the women’s teams are more successful and draw more fans than the men’s version.

Is it truly equal now? Have we reached a stage where there is true parity between men’s and women’s sports at the high school and college levels? Nah. Of course not. There’s this tiny little elephant in the room called football that thus far has no counter-balancing women’s equivalent, and it’s the biggest sinkhole of expenses at every single level. Drives the advocates of women’s sports nuts, but also screws up the math for men’s sports as well (more in a moment).

I have to confess to profoundly mixed emotions about this anniversary and Title IX. I have 2 sisters, both of whom played 3 sports in high school and both of whom made at least one Div. 1 team in college. It’s quite likely that they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to even play any of their sports at either level without Title IX. I have had too many friends to count who played field hockey, basketball, soccer volleyball in school who were able to take the lessons learned on the court or in the locker room and translate them into greater successes in life. Just like the boys.

So why the mixed emotions? The law of unintended consequences has never been repealed, and it rears its ugly head all the more frequently when a law is placed the the hands of single-issue tunnel-visioned do-gooders. Title IX has been responsible for the death (or failure to birth) of more men’s and boy’s athletic programs than any other single cause. The complexity of the math inherent in the law coupled with the one-gender viewpoint of those who enforce it has led to the demise of countless wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, volleyball and other programs on the MEN’S side of the ledger. Providence college dropped it’s baseball program the year after it made it deep into the NCAA play-offs due to Title IX.

I’m sorry…that’s whacked. Title IX makes no mention of “men” or women”, simply that there be no discrimination based on gender. The boy’s lacrosse program at our local high school was in danger of being dropped because it upset the balance and there was no new girl’s sport to make things “even”. Why? It wasn’t due to lack of support, simply that until this year there was no community call for a girl’s team. Whacked.

I wrote once about the difficulty of having a conversation with a “one-issue” person, someone who cannot see any aspect of the other side of an issue. Blind to it. How is it OK to deny young men the opportunity to play baseball of all things? And this at a school that does not field a football team.

Ah. There it is. The elephant in the room. The other “one-issue” individual in the conversation un-willing or unable to see any aspect of the other side. For it is football, of course, that skews the numbers in most circumstances. Providence College should be ridiculed, and one-gender Title IX crusaders mocked for allowing a fundamental sporting opportunity to be dropped in a non-football school. A pox on both sides, there.

But what of the others? The schools that drop successful wrestling, volleyball, tennis, and swimming programs for the men in order to balance the numbers and protect football (and basketball money)? What of the non-gender blind Title IX advocates who allow this to happen? What of the one-issue football supporters wearing blinders that prevent them from seeing anything in April other than Spring Practice? A pox on both sides here as well.

Reasonable people masquerading as adults should be able to resolve the football issue in a weekend. Heck, we’ve solved the BCS thing, haven’t we?

The original intent of Title IX was absolutely to remove the barriers to women and girls playing school sports. To bastardize that virtuous intent into a law that reduces the participation of anyone of any gender is shameful. We have seen in CrossFit and the CrossFit Games that equal participation results in equal thrills.

So Happy Anniversary to Title IX. Here’s hoping she is “born again” as she cruises toward 50.

Posted by bingo at May 6, 2012 7:49 AM

1) Sun. In the sky. In Cleveland. Honest.

2) Paleo fridge. It’s empty. Seriously, how much can one young man eat when his folks are doing the picking, digging, and killin’?

3) Winston Churchill 1. “Mr. Churchill is easily satisfied with the best.” My kinda guy.

4) Winston Churchill 2. “He loved beautiful and intelligent women.” Since leaving college I have been surrounded by women. My med school class was the first in the U.S. to have more women than men, for example. The medical/industrial complex employs mostly women, and both my office and my OR experiences occur largely in the company of women.

I love women! This has made my professional life more fun, I think. I love women, and my experiences with them have taught me that I should expect to have my expectations exceeded. It’s much the same around here, chez CrossFit. Did you take a look at the performances by the women, individual and team, at the Regionals yesterday?

People can be funny about men and women being friends, hanging together at work or at play. It’s a bummer because one can never have enough friends, and not allowing for friendships with members of the opposite gender decreases your potential pool of candidates by 50%. Churchill was known to have a lot of close friendships with beautiful and intelligent women, friendships that were just that and nothing more.

Again, my kinda guy.

5) Duration. Life is long. I’ve been saying this for a while now. Life is only short if you are unlucky. More often’s the case that your life is very hard and it’s STILL long.

How often have you heard the term “long and slow wins the race”? I’m becoming skeptical about this one as well. It seems to me that the average speed of the winning racer is, indeed, rather slow. But if you watch the race itself you notice that the most successful “racers” are actually doing serial sprints. Picking their spots and turning it on. Knowing when it’s “Go Time” and being able to floor it seems to be the best strategy in the long-life race.

If life is long we need to re-interpret some of our other strategies as well. “Carpe Diem”, live for the day, becomes somewhat more complex if we anticipate that we will live another, and another, and on and on. We typically view “Carpe Diem” through the prism of the classic thought experiment, the “get hit by a bus” scenario. As in: “If I get hit by a bus tomorrow would I be pleased with all I’ve done thus far, with what I did today?” In any life, long or short, this line of thought has merit; one should strive to max out each day, wring the most life out of every single one.

A long life prompts one to rise up and view a life not from 3 feet but from 3,000 or 30,000 feet as well. What happens if I DON’T get hit by a bus? If I look at the path I am now on, the trends I have established with the decisions and actions I have taken thus far, is what I am doing and where I seem to be going likely to create a life I will look back upon with pride and with a smile if I DON’T get hit by that bus?

The reality is that you are driving the bus, pedal to the medal at times and just cruising at others, carrying as your passengers the friends who get on and off over the long life. It may be more important to avoid hitting someone else with bus you are driving than it is to worry about being hit by a bus yourself.

For the duration of the trip, however long.

I’ll see you next week…

Posted by bingo at April 29, 2012 7:11 AM

My Dad had a business making a product where domestic production was disappearing. Faced with this reality (my Dad was a very good businessman—this reality did not escape him) he simply could not abandon the people who worked for him or the community in which they all worked. He did not outsource, and one by one they were bled away, a workforce of 800 slowly reduced to 250 or so, until there was nothing left to do but leave the business.

My mother-in-law Sandy founded and ran an alternative school in the 70’s. When we met in the 80’s the school was on solid ground, but no money was being made and the prospects for growth that would keep the school on solid financial ground were limited by the founding principles. I chatted with her about how she could generate more money in order to safeguard the school (and her) financially, specifically by “outsourcing” her resources to a more affluent clientele (wealthy homeschoolers, foreign exchange students). The mere thought of making decisions with revenue as a goal was so anathema to her that she categorically refused to even have the conversation. Now she has to consider selling the school.

Lesson? There are really hard choices before us, not only in business but also in life. There are always consequences from the decision, even when we are so sure that we have been true to some core, essential, existential truth. We can simultaneously win and lose.

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out which is which.

Sunday musings…

1) Convention. Man, it’s tough to stay with the CrossFit dietary prescription when you are on the road at a big convention.

Especially when your wine glass never seems to be empty.

2) Trouble. “If you don’t go where trouble is likely to happen, it’s more difficult to get in trouble.” Advice Mrs. bingo and I have shared with the bingo progeny early and often. Called an audible after dinner last night in a strange city and went back to the hotel.

Less trouble likely there.

3) Levon Helm. The drummer/singer for The Band passed away at 71 from throat cancer. In the world of my day job 71 is rather young; Levon’s life would be considered rather short.

Cancer of the throat is sometimes just bad Karma, but it’s more often a result of not so great life choices. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on Mr. Helm for I know nothing of his life outside of his music, but there is a lesson here nonetheless: life is less likely to be short if you choose to avoid those things known to be bad for you.

Simple, yet followed in the breach often enough that it still bears repeating.

4) Kodak. The great photography company is in the midst of a painful, excruciating death spiral. One of the most recognizable corporate names in the history of modern man is winding down to extinction. Why? It’s the “buggy whip maker” thing. Kodak thought they were a photography company (buggy whip maker) and failed to realize that they were in the image management industry (acceleration). They fell victim to the creative destruction of the digital age, the age of the internet, and the age of “social”.

How does that apply to CrossFit you ask? I think CrossFit is the agent of creative destruction now poised to disrupt an entire industry. No longer an outside, niche whatever, CrossFit is now big enough and has enough momentum that it will likely transform an industry and wreak havoc on traditional, entrenched businesses.

No kidding, bingo. Wow…verrrry perceptive insight on the fitness business. Ah, Grasshopper, but it isn’t the fitness business of which I speak at all. CrossFit is sitting at the edge of one of the more entrenched, businesses of all, and it is quite possible that CrossFit will upset the apple cart in a very substantial way, indeed, will be the agent of creative destruction.

The industry, Grasshopper, is health care.

5) Beauty. My two larger worlds (healthcare, CrossFit) are populated in part by extraordinary women. At the moment I am at a convention of my peers, many of whom are women of magnificent talent and accomplishment, just like my CrossFit world. Some of my professional peers and some of the women on the industry side of my world are also quite beautiful. Interestingly, here is where my two worlds diverge.

Beauty in my professional world makes one a target, and comes with an assumption of lesser significance. The prettier the woman the less serious her contributions are assumed to be, and the more she is resented and targeted when it is clear that she is someone who will make a serious contribution to any professional endeavor, be it business related or patient care.

Weird, huh?

This is one more way that our CrossFit philosophy–chase measurable, observable, repeatable fitness–informs our extended world view. I won’t embarrass any of the notable female Games athletes by naming names, but we all marvel at their results first, and then notice that they are also very attractive. Some of our best trainers and leaders, people who have made major contributions to the canon of CrossFit training and the growth of the CrossFit movement are women. Very attractive women. What we see of them first is their success, their value, their input.

Nicole Carrol (ANSI accreditation, co-director CrossFit training), Mikki Lee Martin (co-founder, co-director, CrossFit Kids)…these are leaders in our world and we rightly recognize that leadership first. They also happen to be beautiful women, a fact that we certainly don’t ignore but rather celebrate.

It saddens me to hear my colleagues lament the treatment they receive in my professional world, treatment that is so very different from how we recognize and relate to beauty in our CrossFit world. I thank the women of CrossFit for the lessons they have taught about true beauty, for being role models for women within and without CrossFit.

I welcome the day when this part of my CrossFit world crosses over into my professional world.

I’ll see you next week…

Posted by bingo at April 22, 2012 8:39 AM

Sunday musings…

1) Assume goodwill and goodwill will ensue. Extend kindness and kindness will find you.

2) Own every defeat. Give away every victory.

3) The law of supply and demand is immutable, irresistible, unrelenting and unavoidable. It cannot be controlled or eliminated; it is a natural consequence of our social evolution. Attempts to regulate supply and demand have failed miserably and universally in all instances over all time.

After all, the inevitable Black Market that is born of regulation always runs on supply and demand.

4) Dinner on Saturday with Lil’bingo and his GF came around to a discussion of how expensive it is to live in Chicago (the kids are very fond of Chicago). This, in turn, led naturally to the topic of “live to work vs. work to live.” A moving target for sure, but man do I wish someone had fed me one night when I was 19 and talked about that.

Why? Well, how many folks do you know who have managed to fold together their vocation and their avocation? Their employment and their passion? How many people do you know who give the same answer to the questions “What do you do for a living?” and “What is your hobby?” Not many, eh? In the world of my day job I can name exactly two. Cleveland has been good to me, but the fact remains that I moved to Cleveland solely for the job.

Cleveland has neither ocean nor mountain.

It’s quite a bit different in the CrossFit world, though. Young “Daigle’s-On-Fire” is about to join a few dozen folks whose day job is CF HQ, a dream job he barely had the guts to dream and now he’s about to embark on a 3000 mile trip to the intersection between work to live/live to work. One of my new friends met here, chez CrossFit, is an attorney who openly calls his day job his dream. You guessed it…he’s CF’s corporate counsel. Work and passion, vocation and avocation all wrapped up into one whole. No real “live to work or work to live” stuff for them, or indeed for most of the 3500+ Affiliate owners like my sons. I’m not entirely sure if they, or Coach, truly appreciate how monumental this is.

For the rest of us, though, we must sit down and have a little chat with ourselves. Is there something that makes us truly happy? Is there a place where we have a greater likelihood of achieving that happiness, or where it might be more easily attained? Sure, there might be additional responsibilities we must shoulder (support a family, repay an obligation) that might complicate the conversation, but that still leaves room for each of us to LIVE. Could you do whatever that is? Could you move wherever there is? All of the folks I’ve met in Key West or Park City or San Diego who work at whatever in order to fish, ride, or surf come to mind.

How about me? How am I doing with this work/live thing? Actually, I’m doing much better now than at most other points in my life despite the fact that my new business reality is a somewhat lesser version of past realities. I’m really good at what I do, and I accept and fulfill the responsibility of continuing to improve; the people for whom I work fare better now than ever before.

But more and more what I do for work is just that…work. My day job is what allows me to do the stuff that is probably a truer indication of who I am, of what makes me tick. I live as fully as I possibly can when I am at work; I’m good at what I do and it’s easier to enjoy something when you do it well. But I work to live.

Must it be thus? Is it somehow my destiny to not share the lives of those for whom live to work is synonymous with work to live? Meh, I dunno. It takes a certain type of courage to make that leap sometimes. I have a friend who lives in Del Mar who once asked me “when are you going to leave that dead end job and work with me?” I clearly didn’t have the courage at the time to fully explore that. Now? Who knows?

In the end, though, I think it’s important to have that conversation with yourself. Working to live, or living to work? It’s especially important if who you are and what you do are not both found where you work.

Think of it as a life in progress.

I’ll see you next week…

Posted by bingo at April 14, 2012 6:42 PM

(As an aside, I wrote once about a funeral I attended where the pastor clearly had no inkling who the deceased was. This recent ceremony, on the other hand, was presided over by a priest who’d babysat the children of the deceased as a teen, and had a 30 year friendship with the family. Huge difference.)

I continue to struggle with this, frankly. The intersection of religion and faith has become even more confusing to me as I round the turn at the far end of life’s track and head into the last 1/2 of the race. The intersection is kind of like a 4-way stop where 4 cars arrive at almost the same time. Who goes first? What are the rules? Who decides what rules apply? As you sit there what can you expect of the other three? Do they know the same rules? The rules part of the conversation, the religion part, continues to confuse me and has become more confusing as I’ve gotten older. At the 4-way I just sit and idle.

But faith…ah, faith…here I seek comfort. Here is where I seek to be at ease. There must be something before and after that 4-way, right? As a scientist I am compelled to go back in time, as far back as I possibly can, in order to try to understand, so that I may go forward in time, so that I may forecast what is to come. Yet there is always a point beyond which the exploration cannot proceed, forward or back. Conjecture and theory must yield there to something else.

I sit at the 4-way stop, GPS programmed for a journey toward faith. Cars come and go from 3 sides as the Celestial Garmin processes my request. The journey must be a long and complex one; the GPS continues to ponder the route. There I sit.

Uncomfortably.

My Dad called me with a funny story. Seems my niece, Jen, was visiting overnight on her way to the airport and a lacrosse festival. Nothing new there, but she had a friend along, the daughter of a long-lost college friend of mine. Lydia would spend the night in my ancestral home sleeping in the primordial bed from which sprang…yours truly!

I thought a bit about this as I sat in church yesterday. Home is a funny thing, eh? The definition of home is rather a moving target. When are you considering the question? Who’s home are you thinking about? My partner Ron’s entire family decamped to Kentucky 10 years ago, but it was home to Cleveland that he returned, back to his ancestral home for eternity.

I’ve returned more than several times for visits “home”, nights spent in the primordial bed. Some good, some not so much, each ended with a trip “home”. It’s funny–for 20 years or so Cleveland did not really feel like home to me. Nope, it was kind of a lay-over, an intermediate stop on some series of flights to wherever home was going to be. One of my biggest adult surprises was returning to Cleveland in year 20 and all of a sudden realizing that I was going home, to Cleveland, for the first time. It took 20 years and 2 children choosing to live there, but when I landed I was finally home.

A lesson, I guess,  is that you CAN go home again. Ron did. You just need to figure out where home is.

The “baby with the bathwater” approach in the halls of our Capitol and the editorial offices of our leading media outlets (WSJ excepted) is about as wrong-headed as you can get.  What we need is an AMERICAN solution to the challenges that we presently face with the economics of healthcare in the U.S., using our present system as the foundation.

Not surprisingly, I have some thoughts!

1) Malpractice tort reform. See my thoughts in “Tort Reform = Healthcare Reform”. Effective reform will dramatically reduce the scourge of defensive medicine with its attendant costs and risks to patients. Defensive medicine represents 15-25% of all medical costs in the U.S. That’s 15-25% of $2.5 Trillion. Do the math. While we’re at it, how is it good for the country to allow the tort bar to advertise for cases? Rake the muck in the hopes of unearthing errors or imagined?

2) Tax Reform #1: Remove the tax deduction for employer-offered health insurance. Provide a 100% TAX CREDIT to the lowest 60% of wage earners for the purchase of health insurance. Provide a progressive TAX DEDUCTION for the upper 40% of wage earners.

Tax Reform #2: Remove the tax deduction for advertising as a business expense for Hospitals. If we are concerned about unnecessary increased utilization of medical resources why are we allowing advertising by hospitals? For that matter, remove the tax-exempt status of any hospital or  provider that advertises. How is it appropriate to allow a hospital system to advertise to increase revenue, deduct that advertising as an expense, and still be not-for-profit? If it looks like a for-profit business, acts like a for-profit business, and sounds like a for-profit business, tax it like a for-profit business.

3) Insurance Reform #1: Reverse all of the for-profit conversions of previously not-for-profit health insurance companies. Who was the genius who thought THIS was a good idea? I don’t remember insurance premium increase that were quite so massive when all of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans were not-for-profit, do you? And while there were $Million execs in the non-profits I don’t recall any $10, $20, or $100 Million execs. Removing the need to answer to the stock market will create companies that will compete quite nicely with the for-profit companies without the horror of a government run system. Let the equivalent of NGO’s compete with the United Healthcares of the world.

Insurance Reform #2: Remove state-level coverage mandates and create a minimum federal set of mandates for comprehensive insurance policies. A REAL minimum. REAL medically necessary items. No Viagra or artificial  insemination coverage. Allow cross-state competition for the business. Real competition always drives prices lower.

Insurance Reform #3: Allow insurance companies (Medicare and Medicaid included) to discriminate IN FAVOR OF people who make healthy lifestyle choices (eg. no nicotine, no DUI, etc.). We are all so afraid of the stick that we refuse to allow any use of the Carrot.

4) Freedom of Speech/Restraint of Trade Reform #1: Abolish, once again, direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. There was a quantum leap in the utilization of all sorts of medications immediately following the 1997 rulings that allowed DTC pharmaceutical marketing. If it is so obvious that our ever-increasing levels of spending on medical care is a threat to the very existence of our fair Union, then DTC drug marketing is a version of yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater.

Freedom of Speech/Restraint of Trade Reform #2: Begin a return to the professionalism of yesterday by prohibiting all forms of advertising by, or for, physicians. The AMA gets a lot of criticism, most of it well-deserved in my opinion, but the court and FTC rulings that prohibited the AMA from censoring physicians who advertised was a seminal event in the de-professionalism of doctoring and medicine. Doctors and other medical advertising was, is, and always will be wrong. While we’re at it, do the same thing for the rest of the lawyers and the practice of law.

5) Public Health. Finally, and most importantly, go to the true root of whatever “Crisis” we may have here in the United States, be it a “Healthcare Crisis” or a “Healthcare Finance Crisis” or what have you. We as a people are not healthy; certainly not as healthy as we ought to be. We are not healthy because of some wrong-headed previous Public Health decisions (simple-carbohydrate based diets, abolition of school phys-ed programs, tort-fearing closures of playgrounds, etc.). We are not healthy because our ability to treat the diseases that result  from poor lifestyle choices (cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse, preventable accidents, etc.) is SO GOOD that we are able to keep more and  more unhealthy people alive longer and longer, paying ever more to do so along the way.

This is where true leadership can make a difference. Remember JFK and the President’s Council on Fitness? I do. 8 pull-ups in the fifth grade for me. Polio, measles, smallpox and whooping cough were once the leading killers of children in the U.S. but are now historical footnotes due to Public Health initiatives. (A pox on all the cretins advocating against childhood immunization).

We lead the world in per capita alcohol related accidents and deaths, losing young lives by the thousands each year. We have ever more increasing numbers of truly obese citizens who go on to suffer the diseases caused by that obesity, and we pay ever more for their diabetes, hypertension, strokes and heart attacks. These lifestyle choices are root causes for our increased expenditures on Healthcare, much more so than all of the targets of Beltway demagoguery like insurance company expense ratios and pharmaceutical company profit margins. A solution to this issue, more than all of numbers 1 through 4 combined or any other proposal yet floated, is the true crux of the solution to any “Crisis” we may be facing. Everything else is only there to buy time. Time to get healthy.

Pick a number; choose an age. 40. 50. 60. Anyone under that age gets “Well-care” or “Get Healthy Care” starting right now. Over that age they can have “sick care” only if they wish, but under that age if you try to be healthy you get rewarded.

There are no votes to be had in making Americans healthier. Nothing but hard work on every side of the equation. Who will stand up and do the hard work? Who will lead?

Who will have the guts to not only say that the Emperor is naked,  but also drunk and fat and puffing away our economy.

1) Volume. If you undertrain you may not finish; if you overtrain you may not start.

Lotta meat on that bone, especially around Games season.

2) Enabler. One who provides either implicit or explicit support of dysfunctional or harmful behavior.

I am an American physician, a specialist. Universally reviled, and nearly universally acknowledged as being at the root cause of what people regularly call our “dysfunctional healthcare system.” Funny thing, though, but my specialty includes providing ongoing care to patients with chronic eye diseases. I actually bridge the divide between specialty care (highly complex, single–organ surgery) and chronic primary care. Every day in my office I see patients with type II diabetes and other diseases that are at the very least highly influenced by lifestyle decisions.

We do not really have a healthcare system in United States, but rather a sick–care system. We actually do a pretty good job in pediatrics with a well thought out, well–established system of well–baby and well–care visits for the vast majority of children in America. Somewhere after our children leave their pediatricians in their teens the whole concept of well–care seems to disappear. No longer guided by the doctors of their youth, Americans are left to their own to make decisions about where their priorities will lie. This is certainly true of health and wellness.

There is an article on CNN.com today written by a very well spoken, highly intelligent and intuitive primary care physician from New England in which he cites a couple of examples of patients who got sicker when they decided they could not afford care for their illnesses. His approach disappoints me greatly; the appeal to the emotional is just one more way that our American sick–care system is the great enabler of our Nation’s un-well.

Think about it. We actually have the very best sick–care system on the planet. We manage to keep incredibly sickly and unwell Americans alive, and to some degree functional, in SPITE of horrific and horrible health–related decisions on the part of these individuals. Cardiac bypass surgeries and coronary artery stents. Evermore complex oral diabetic medications layered one upon the other. Heroic, simply brilliant surgical interventions to replace the joints of people who managed to double and triple the “load” they were meant to carry.

Our “health care system” not only enables our population to abuse their health and their fitness by rescuing them from their excesses, but in its present and proposed future forms it also insulates them from the responsibility of being healthy. There are certainly a minority of people who cannot afford sick care, but that number is buried by the number of people who choose to not be able to afford either health-maintenance or sick care. You only need to spend one day in a doctor’s office watching people finish a conversation on their iPhone ($499 + $100/month) about a game they watched on ESPN last night ($80/month for cable) before heading to the brewpub (smothered fries!), as they walk out to their new car ($500/month) to retrieve their iPad ($699 + $60/month) and catch a quick smoke ($5/pack, 1 pack/day), just before they complain to their physician about how hard it is to pay for their diabetes medicine.

3) DWB. Driving While Black. No matter what the story eventually turns out to be, there is very little that is good that is likely to come out of the Trayvon Martin debacle. Not for the Martin family, not for that neighborhood watch guy, and probably not for society as a whole, at least for quite a while. Why? For the simple reason that it is now 2012, we’re still having this conversation, and nobody has demanded change.

Let’s go back a bit, shall we? How about a trip to 1979 and suburban Rhode Island. I’m driving the family beater, my close friend in the passenger seat waves at a police car as we drive by on our way to the mall. My close friend, STILL my close friend, happens to be a very large Black man. You guessed it–flashing lights followed by “license and registration (no please).” Why? A version of Driving While Black.

“Come on, bingo. That’s ancient history. Things are different now.” Well, let’s move forward a bit. Dinner chez bingo sometime around the year 2000. My good friend the Rev. Mel and his beautiful wife are joining us at our house for dinner. Mel, a black Baptist minister, drives a bullet-proof Mercedes sedan. Never more than 5 mph over the speed limit. The Woodards were late for dinner. When I teased him about it Mel just shrugged his shoulders and said “DWB.” Even impeccably dressed for a dinner out, Mel was still a Black American man.

Now? I young black man in a hoodie returns from an errand, surely guilty of something until proven innocent. A non-black man approaches the youth, surely someone to be feared until proven otherwise. The fault, my friends, lies on BOTH sides of the conversation. At this late date in history it no longer matters what came first, you know? One side of the conversation needs to openly acknowledge that the vast majority of the other side does NOT participate in violent criminal activity. This part of the community needs to openly acknowledge this and aggressively teach that lesson to people of all ages. The other side of the conversation needs to openly knowledge that their ARE small parts of their community who DO engage in violent crime and to go about the hard work of isolating them as the outliers that they are and shunning them as a pox on BOTH communities.

We need to be done with the blame game. Indeed, indulging in finger-pointing at this late historical stage is also a type of enabling. By taking the easy way out, blaming this one for not fighting harder against unsupportable prejudice or pointing the finger at that one for some weak justification for criminal behavior is quite simply enabling the prejudiced and the predators to continue their pathologic behavior patterns.

NONE of us could have influenced the tragic outcome of that encounter In a random Florida neighborhood. ALL of us…Black, White, and other…have the duty and the responsibility and the ability to do the hard work necessary to prevent what STARTED it.

Start now.

I’ll see you next week…

Comment #16 – Posted by: bingo at March 25, 2012 8:38 AM

All sports came easily to me in my youth. Blessed with the genetic gifts of eye-hand coordination, speed, and quickness there was literally no sport that I tried in which I didn’t excel. Couple this with the fact that I was a very early grower (I was the center on my Jr. High JV hoops team) and I was the classic local sports prodigy for that era. In addition to pulling me out of the deep end of the athletic gene pool my parents also provided a home environment that was bathed in competition. Heck, blood might be drawn when my siblings and I tried to make the first mark in a new jar of peanut butter! I was far from special in my family; all four White kids were All-State in something, and my brother might still be the best natural athlete I’ve ever met.

The first time I “peaked” as an athlete was freshman year in High School. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but I would never be a better High School athlete than I was that year. I had stopped growing (I was now the point guard on the High School JV hoops team), and I continued to depend solely on my natural ability. I was still skilled, fast, and quick, but I was not terribly FIT. Under-strong. Not a ton of stamina. Typical teen diet. Add in a couple of injuries and a family move and I really didn’t return to that freshman year peak until my senior year.

My next peak as an athlete came in my sophomore year in college. As a freshman Division III tailback I did well enough, but the head coach was rather underwhelmed by my size and suggested a switch to defense. Stung, I set about proving him wrong (credit that family competitive gene) and got stronger, bigger, and tried to get faster (oops…better not get THAT much bigger). For the only time in my athletic career I trained to be a better athlete, a better football player. It helped immensely that my position coach, Dick Farley, turned out to be the best coach I ever had, and that he cared more about results than size. I started a bunch of games as a sophomore and really played rather well.

I then reverted to my tried and true, relying on whatever remained of those original genetic gifts from my parents. I never got better. Not one little bit. Given the opportunity to play tons of football over the next two years, to receive the benefit of magnificent coaching and possibly become a player to remember, I coasted. In the end I was nothing but a middle of the Bell Curve DIII cornerback, an average  Division III athlete. I wasn’t fit enough to do the work necessary to continue to get better and along the way I let both myself (and my teammates) and Coach Farley down.

If only I knew then what I know now. If only I had then what I have now. Bored and lonely in the gym, watching the ever outward creep of my waistline and the ever upward creep of my cholesterol, I stumbled upon Crossfit in the periodical Men’s Journal in December 2005. As a doctor who made it through Williams College, med school, and a residency I had long since learned that I wasn’t really THAT gifted. Hard work was now an intellectual and life habit, but until I  discovered Crossfit I had yet to do the same thing as an athlete. Whoa! This stuff turns out to be pretty powerful medicine!

“Practice and train the major lifts: deadlift, clean, squat, presses. Master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, push-ups, sit-ups. Bike, run, swim, and row hard and fast. Mix these elements in as many combinations as creativety will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts SHORT AND INTENSE. Keep food intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.”–Greg Glassman.

On January 1st, 2006 I began the Zone diet and I did my first Crossfit workout, “Angie”. Crossfitters name their benchmark workouts after women. You know…like hurricanes. 100 pull-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups, and 100 air squats. For time. For, like, as fast as you can. Seriously. It took me 45 minutes to complete and it took me 45 minutes to get up off the floor. All 100 of the pull-ups were assisted and 80 of the push-ups were from my knees (word of warning: don’t call ‘em girlie push-ups. Most Crossfit women are scary fit and NEVER do push-ups from their knees).

I was hooked! My fitness went through the roof. My waist size shrank. My cholesterol plummeted. Three days on and one day off for 6 1/2 years and I am as fit as the day I graduated from med school at age 26. World class fitness based on workouts that typically last 20 minutes or less utilizing functional movements performed at high intensity. Competition? Yup. Me vs. me. Every day is a competition in which the opponent is yesterday’s version of Darrell, and victory is achieved if tomorrow’s version is just a little bit better than today’s.

So why now? Why at age 46? I confess that I just don’t know. I was certainly ready for Crossfit at 46, but I would probably have been ready for it at 36, too. I’m just very happy to have found it at all, frankly. Very happy to be more physically fit today than I was yesterday, with the hope that I will be able to continue to say that for years to come. Coach Glassman thinks most athletes can hope for 10 full years of improvement no matter when they start. Man, wouldn’t it be great if he was right and I still had a few years of getting better to look forward to!

Yet I do wonder, every now and again. I can’t help but wonder, what kind of athlete might I have been if I had Crossfit as a young man? If I could have been ready for Crossfit as a young athlete. When I had Dick Farley as a coach.

How many more peaks might I have reached?