No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training…[W]hat a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.
-Socrates
Growing up I tried to be an athlete, however, one thing that had set me back was that at a young age I was diagnosed with moderate Asthma (which is something of a misnomer, as not breathing is rarely moderate!). One of the first asthma attacks that I remember was being in the pool at a swimming lesson, I was probably about eight years old at the time, and fancied myself quite the mediocre swimmer, feared by men and loved by The Ladies everywhere! I recall the exact instances that it occurred...
We were drilling the front crawl:
Y'know this one?
Anyway, I remember that I got around halfway through the drill (4 total laps, width-wise, lawl) and quickly my breathing became faster and more shallow, my chest felt like it was full of cotton balls that were lit on fire, and I could feel myself getting dizzy. My instructor-- who I remember well because of this particular instance-- let me continue on my own for the next two laps back, like any good instructor should, after all it builds character to push through these sorts of things. Right?
In any case, I continued to swim, and on the last lap back, my arms and legs became lead weights attached to my torso that were dragging me under the water from what I can only imagine came from oxygen deprivation. I couldn't finish my front crawl, so I doggy paddled the last half-lap back to my waiting classmates (I was, of course, the last one to finish).
The reason I tell this story is to clarify why I love Socrates' (via Xenophon) above quote. His comments may seem harsh at first but I think Socrates has it right as he advises that a citizen do what their body is capable of. We will, for the the purposes of this post, ignore the Greek's (and Socrates') fascination with physical beauty, as the beautification of the body for the Greeks was proportionate to the amount of exercise they performed (the Greeks didn't have the same understanding of diet than we do, but they were still pretty damn smart when it comes to that too).
For me, it is also telling that a person like Socrates, who is and was known for his intellect, spoke often and openly about the importance of physical exercise. Socrates, like many citizens of ancient Greece fought in a number of battles, and was recorded as quite heroic in the ones that he participated in. Greek warfare, to oversimplify, was an extremely tiring affair, and it was necessary to be physically fit to remain combat-effective.
Greek Red-figure kylix (drinking cup, where we get the term chalice) showing a soldier in full panoply (armor set) everything this soldier is wearing/holding would have weighed 60-80 pounds. Keep in mind also that people were much smaller 2500 years ago, when a large man would have been 5'8" and weighed 180 pounds the average man would have been 5'2" and weighed 160 or less!
So is there a correlation between intelligence and physical exercise? I would postulate that there is little to indicate that inherent intelligence has little to do with how naturally athletic someone is (look no further than high school jocks). However, what I think is of particular importance to the furtherance of one's mind is the ability of the mind to push itself through hardship in a healthy manner. Physical exercise is the most easily reproduce-able experiment in which one could create an environment to push through hardship.
While I certainly don't equate intellectual exercises with physical ones, I would hypothesize that they are correlated in some ways. In many fields of study (for normal humans, notwithstanding outliers like Beethovens, Einsteins, etc.) resilience is more necessary than inherent talent. At least I really hope so!
I'm no physical dynamo or intellectual titan, and I probably won't be winning any Nobel Prizes or Olympic medals; but I swam those two last goddamn laps, and that's gotta mean something.
PS (yes I realize the absurdity of adding a postscript over the internet) In semi-related news for those (if any) who care about my Judo posts I broke my rubber bands for uchikomi, even worse I have it on tape. It was very embarassing, for a number of reasons, and I am debating whether to put the video up on here...
Me, often.
