The Art of Manliness - #183：When High School PE Was a Man-Maker

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast if you're like

00:00:19.620 most people who went to public schools in america you probably took a pe class or two

00:00:23.600 one you had to take it because it was required but also you probably took them because it was

00:00:28.100 an easy a right you spent 45 minutes maybe playing some basketball playing some dodgeball having a

00:00:33.120 class on stds or something like that i mean it was just sort of a blow-off class but during the 1960s

00:00:38.900 there was a high school in california called la sierra high and the coach there named coach

00:00:43.320 leprati we're going to talk about him today developed this intense physical fitness program

00:00:48.720 that was inspired by the ancient greeks 19th century physical culture and the goal was

00:00:53.740 to create strong young people sort of the healthy body healthy mind aspect from the ancient greeks

00:01:00.500 the idea of these if we can create strong young people we could create each young people with

00:01:05.060 character and mental fortitude etc they can go out and serve the country right be strong to be useful

00:01:09.880 in this program caught fire 4 000 other high schools adopted the same program jfk john f kennedy used it as

00:01:18.460 an example of what physical fitness education should be like in public schools and for about

00:01:23.680 10 years it was it was the talk of the town but then it just faded away then pe became this sort of

00:01:30.080 blow-off class that we have today well my guests today on the podcast are making a documentary about

00:01:35.340 this forgotten physical education program out of california at la sierra high my name is doug orchard

00:01:40.980 and ron jones today on the podcast we're going to discuss the history of this physical education

00:01:45.720 program its effect on the students who took part in it i mean some of these kids are now well they're

00:01:50.940 not kids anymore they're 70 years old and we're going to talk about the influence it had on them

00:01:54.980 and their lives we're going to talk about the exact routines these kids were doing and it's super

00:01:59.560 intense some of it was they were so fit that they were blowing away the military requirements when

00:02:03.900 they were 13 14 years old and then we're going to discuss what doug and ron are hoping this film will

00:02:09.200 do the conversation about physical education in our nation's schools really fascinating discussion

00:02:15.560 i think you're going to enjoy this so without further ado doug orchard ron jones and la sierra high

00:02:21.200 p.e. doug orchard ron jones welcome to the show all right thank you very much appreciate that so you

00:02:34.300 all are working on film about a fascinating part of american history it's about this physical education

00:02:38.780 program that was used across the country during the 1960s and 70s but you focus on the the school where it

00:02:44.840 originated from it's called la sierra based in california i'm curious uh where did you first

00:02:50.380 learn about this p.e. program uh coming out of la sierra high school during the 1960s well um i actually

00:02:56.600 three years ago was assigned to this but i'll never do make an infomercial on some footlog product

00:03:04.440 and ron jones was one of the industry experts out there they asked me as an expert testimonial for

00:03:11.960 this company so i met him that way after we got done there was a traffic jam even out in the desert in

00:03:17.640 la area and we had breakfast and um he was telling me about how america has de-evolved in physical

00:03:28.080 fitness levels and physical education but it used to be a much higher level in the 1800s than we are today

00:03:34.180 and because of my background i knew we had done that with education but i honestly with my

00:03:39.780 background i just assumed that we were hitting higher plateaus because you see these you know

00:03:44.560 these new levels that we performed in olympics and you know and everything so i assumed that that was

00:03:50.380 across the board and that people just were fit historically because they worked out in the farm

00:03:55.180 they were just moved more than we do today i had no idea that they did the gyms and everything else

00:03:59.800 and so he said that he'd been working and want to do a documentary on the history of physical

00:04:04.780 education and i said nobody's gonna watch that

00:04:08.280 and and it took about a year until he told me about la sierra and when i understood the la sierra story

00:04:18.000 and that's part most people who really look at this they know about la sierra because it was the last

00:04:23.440 great uh physical education program that made a national impact you know nothing's nothing's been

00:04:30.900 at that level since and so at that story it seemed quite interesting he was still working on getting

00:04:36.960 money um and we understood that was coming down the pike in the meantime there was one person who was

00:04:43.320 movie that that i found out about out of this area and i wanted to go interview because it's a quick

00:04:48.900 easy interview and when i interviewed him and saw firsthand and here's a guy who's 70 years old

00:04:54.800 the impact it made on his life outside of the waistline i you know it was it was life-changing

00:05:02.120 for me and and i from that point on we've done it without money we just did the film so it's been a

00:05:07.260 cool experience and maybe i should tell you the story yeah tell us that story it is not in the film

00:05:11.740 but here was a guy who from the age from second grade on he his parents worked for the oil industry

00:05:20.080 and he would bounce around every two months they'd move they'd move i mean it's not a little move they've

00:05:24.400 moved you know from california to texas and texas to colorado and all over the place and um as a result

00:05:31.000 every two months he's moving and in some school some states would say he's a second grader other states

00:05:35.820 say he's a first grader and you know and you have that problem so significant social problems

00:05:41.000 significant everything not an achiever and for some reason they just stopped when they

00:05:46.700 with that his freshman year he finds himself in lost year high and he had been in fights all the

00:05:52.420 time he says he was better to drop out of school he was going to be one of the statistics that we see

00:05:57.300 right and um but the program and the level of achievement that was there the structure

00:06:04.500 was so effective for him that it transferred to his other areas of his classes he started believing

00:06:09.360 himself and all that he went on and became this really decorated individual in the military and

00:06:15.960 whatnot did a lot of great things for our country and then and had a normal productive life when he

00:06:22.200 was about 65 he had a very simple basal scale skin cancer in his ear to have to remove they use a

00:06:29.540 mold procedure and in that process the infection got into the bloodstream went down to his bowels infected

00:06:35.760 everything they had to go in and they had to take everything out from that moment on he's on oxygen

00:06:40.300 he's got a bag he has to carry he's got uh then he goes into heart failure it was six months of

00:06:46.680 rehabilitation before he could walk and he tells me that when he got to the length of the first house

00:06:52.600 took him six months to be able to walk the distance with the walker of you know one house length

00:06:57.480 um he says he looked at the door and he had a flashback of back in the day when he was at la

00:07:04.440 sierra hockey doing 10 pull-ups for the first time and how coach stan leprote ran up to him

00:07:10.280 congratulated and said that's tremendous which is the word he always used he says but let me tell you

00:07:14.240 if you got you do 10 i bet you could do 11 there's always one more and he thought about that when he

00:07:20.860 looked that door and he says if i could do one i can go two house lengths and you know by the time i

00:07:26.900 met him in 70 he didn't have a walker you know that stuff he does the the oxygen in the bag he has

00:07:31.640 to carry the rest of his life but his attitude he says that every challenge he faced throughout his

00:07:37.460 life he would think back to the days that he was on the field doing this p.e program and that's what

00:07:44.400 he leaned on to overcome the stuff that like you know true with him and i started thinking about

00:07:51.780 what is our problem in america right now and we have so we incarcerate more human beings

00:07:56.880 25 of all the human beings that are incarcerated in the world are incarcerated here in america

00:08:02.160 that's what just 4.4 percent of the world's population we have a lot of big issues and i was

00:08:08.680 fascinating to see how physical education plays such a significant role to overcome all of us

00:08:14.880 and and that is what i did not understand and i think most americans right now don't get all right

00:08:21.160 that's an amazing story about a gentleman who was able to use his experience in the physical

00:08:25.340 education program at la sierra to battle cancer and overcome the obstacles other obstacles in his

00:08:30.580 life i'm curious you know this wasn't it we'll get into the details of it later on but this was an

00:08:35.420 intense physical education uh program i'm curious why did the p.e coach at la sierra decide to start

00:08:43.240 this super intense p program for his students well he you know it always goes back to who taught you so

00:08:49.920 he had some good mentors along the way and he also came out of the world war ii generation which

00:08:54.440 now a lot of these guys had still had those classical methods that really originated with

00:08:59.660 colonel herman kohler in world war one at west point and so um when we lost sight of the world war

00:09:07.880 ii generation we started losing you know those historical methods so they had brought back the world

00:09:14.080 war one methods for world war ii and lapradi was part of that generation that that basically unlocked

00:09:21.040 at least part of that movement code again so a lot of the guys came out of world war ii and they

00:09:26.080 they went to college in the gi bill and they ended up coaching and teaching p.e and lapradi was one of

00:09:31.920 those people so in the trailer you made for indiegogo you talk about john f kennedy as having a role

00:09:38.200 the revival of physical culture in america why was jfk so concerned about physical fitness uh in our

00:09:44.980 nation's youth well he was raised in the boston area so that's a stronghold for physical culture

00:09:50.120 you know on the east coast we have older cities so you know those that's where those classical

00:09:54.620 methods would have been very prominent in the late 1800s early 1900s so he came from that background

00:10:01.980 was an athlete and had some severe back injuries and was actually making a comeback

00:10:07.280 on the physical side because of working with dr hans kraus uh bonnie pruden was hans kraus's

00:10:14.300 research assistant and bonnie and coach stan lapradi were actually colleagues and friends so

00:10:19.840 it's funny how all this loops together um but jfk was he was a renaissance guy he he had the

00:10:26.580 the big picture that we're trying to um explain in the film he understood the connection to the greeks

00:10:33.560 he understood the connection of the mind and the body and to building better citizens through

00:10:38.800 physical education not just the physique part but learning how to think better and how to be better

00:10:44.520 people and so interestingly though um jfk was inspired by la sierra it wasn't the other way around

00:10:53.660 interesting and i don't i don't know if everybody understands that but it was actually lapradi was

00:10:58.820 doing his thing before jfk was involved and jfk heard about it that that's really fascinating

00:11:04.260 what's also interesting here is there's a there's a total trail all the way back we can go straight

00:11:12.260 back to early 1800s in germany and and then you know then you did some hops with renaissance research

00:11:18.880 going back to the romans and then to the greeks but stan lapradi was trained by a group that was

00:11:26.580 probably ever been as good as as la sierra um we just don't have as much footage and everybody's

00:11:33.980 dead who was participating in that program what's what's interesting here is you know the the students

00:11:42.500 are still alive and and so we have footage and it was such a popular program that they say that they

00:11:50.260 would have in a normal week there would be three visitors you know visitors from from russia and all

00:11:57.460 over the place would come and just watch they had these bleachers where people would watch them work

00:12:02.060 out um the students and so it was so well known so well documented that it's pretty simple to put

00:12:09.960 something like this together and and really address a lot of the a lot of the things that the

00:12:16.060 prejudices we have of how we think students would have reacted or would react today to this program

00:12:21.900 you know we could really go in and interview them and find out how was it what was it really like

00:12:26.260 to do this was it was a drudgery or was it was it good and how did it help you so i mean so the bottom

00:12:31.700 line is it was classically based um it really was nothing new and it was really just a fragment of how it

00:12:39.300 used to be yeah it was lost here was bringing back the old stuff just like muscle beach we look at

00:12:48.020 muscle beach and we think oh this is no they were bringing back the old stuff that their parents used

00:12:52.640 to use muscle beach was not new they were they had learned that from their parents who were involved

00:12:59.120 in classical medical orthopedic gymnastics coming out of the 1800s it involved a lot of off-the-ground

00:13:04.680 training and acrobatics and gymnastics so the other question he had from the other question he had

00:13:11.040 was you know what was what was the impetus for gfk and you know that goes back to the when he was a

00:13:17.560 senator well why eisenhower was president well when you know the result the first test came out go ahead

00:13:23.300 it's geopolitical you know there are there are spikes of fitness along uh in times of conflict so this

00:13:31.160 is what history shows us so what was going on in the 50s the cuban missile crisis the the soviets

00:13:36.940 were getting into outer space um there were things like this and if you look at the the bay of pigs

00:13:42.360 that was a very serious time for america and there was a lot of concern we were going back to war so

00:13:47.100 um eisenhower said we lost 20 percent more troops in world war ii than world war one based on the lack

00:13:53.620 of fitness alone so there was a great concern starting around 1954 that americans weren't fit enough

00:14:02.680 to preserve our our national security and that was tied to the the back postural fitness test that

00:14:10.020 dr hans kraus created in 1940 and bonnie prudent was part of that as i mentioned before so this whole

00:14:17.380 thing to get fit again basically hinged around the kraus weber test in 1940 that was presented to

00:14:25.140 doctor i mean president eisenhower 1954 bonnie prudent was a person that put the test in his

00:14:31.480 hand and explained it to him and it was out of that that the president was so concerned he formed

00:14:36.940 the president's fitness council and so that's that was the origins of the fitness council and then we

00:14:42.860 had the sport explosion so when you look around today and you see all the sports stadiums we really

00:14:47.160 didn't have that prior to the kraus weber test being presented to the president in 1954 we exploded

00:14:53.780 into sports thinking that that would fix it but we knew in 1920 or prior that sports was part of the

00:15:02.140 problem not part of the solution because it all sports created symmetries and imbalances in the body

00:15:07.440 and we're still not learning from history so what they knew classically is you had to prepare your body

00:15:13.280 to do the sports instead of just doing the sports to get fit it just doesn't work um that way and

00:15:20.120 we've been beating our heads against the wall for a long time so the the people that figure this out

00:15:25.200 they start moving differently and they start moving better they increase their physical literacy they

00:15:29.320 decrease their injuries they increase the cognitive ability of their brain to control their body and

00:15:34.880 things start rocking and so we want to be able to give that to people in the film because there's

00:15:42.360 more to pe than just pe and throwing the ball out that is not classical physical education it was

00:15:48.260 actually very sophisticated uh and quite deep and productive okay so let's get into the specifics

00:15:54.140 uh you mentioned that the program at last year was classically based we're talking ancient greeks

00:15:58.540 19th century physical culture inspiration from there so what was the fitness routine like i mean i guess

00:16:05.960 it was primarily for boys that did it i think girls did it too but it was it was primarily boys from

00:16:11.100 what i gathered from the documentary uh so what were these boys doing uh as part of their physical

00:16:16.980 fitness routine well this is kind of this is kind of interesting too because when you you know but you

00:16:22.360 get into lost there it looks like they did that off the ground training and you know size travel hop

00:16:26.980 jumping all period long and that was not true they did the calisthenics the first 12 minutes and then

00:16:33.560 for the for the main part of the pe period they had a classical pe program which involved restorative

00:16:40.460 arts to restore the body to its natural state um their strength endurance exercise routine actually

00:16:45.780 was restorative or corrective in nature as we've explained in the training videos um they also had a

00:16:52.000 martial arts component that was a second content area of classical pe the first was restorative arts

00:16:56.740 the second was martial for self-defense or national defense the third was pedagogy that of all sports

00:17:02.440 recreation play games dance things like that so they were doing the restorative corrective work

00:17:09.360 they actually had some martial arts they had some judo involved in their program

00:17:13.080 and then they would do they would play some sports and they would do games and things like that

00:17:18.920 during the main course the period unless they were testing or something of that nature so

00:17:23.720 they had all three components at la sierra it it wasn't like they just did jumping jacks all

00:17:30.440 all period and you know a lot of people don't understand that it was a classically based program

00:17:35.900 meaning they had all the three content areas represented and and also taught very well that's

00:17:41.420 another thing the teachers really worked hard there um you can't run a program like that throwing the ball

00:17:47.040 out you have to be actively engaged and be a very dedicated educator so one thing that i that made this

00:17:52.180 program unique i thought was really fascinating was there was a ranking system that the boys could

00:17:56.920 go through they wore yeah they wore different colored shorts based on their rank what was the purpose of

00:18:02.520 that ranking system and how did they advance from rank to rank it was called ability grouping that's

00:18:08.280 the technical term and um it was adopted by about four thousand schools so my high school in central

00:18:14.860 california actually used a version of la sierra it was pretty watered down but we had

00:18:19.240 four different colors of shorts and so just like if you went into a math class you wouldn't go into

00:18:25.000 advanced trigonometry or advanced algebra you know you'd have to work your way up in ability

00:18:31.260 and so physical education at least parts of physical education started using this type of system

00:18:38.640 as back early as the 1920s so again la sierra did not create the ability grouping system it was something

00:18:47.040 that was done before that we'll probably learn from others but um you know a lot of people look at that

00:18:52.700 today and say well you know you're it'd be negative you're ostracizing certain kids because they're not

00:18:58.100 fit enough and as one of the veteran teachers who taught a lawsuit or 26 years said it's just you know if

00:19:03.740 you have a bonehead math book you work your butt off to go to the next level i mean this is this is what

00:19:08.720 you do you you want to you know rise one step in the ladder this is how we're wired as human beings

00:19:15.200 um the the greek's called arete it was a-r-e-t-e and it means striving for excellence you're always

00:19:23.040 reaching you're striving for excellence you'll never truly be excellent because you're human and imperfect

00:19:27.660 but the idea the big idea is to strive and when we lose our our philosophy for striving that's when

00:19:37.680 we're dead and we're done and so la sierra had all this built in the philosophy of the program was

00:19:42.960 very important they had regular meetings at la sierra just to talk about philosophy of physical

00:19:47.860 education that means they were classically trained you don't see that in pe today no how many times

00:19:54.400 the department of high school have a philosophy meeting you know well one thing on this also i

00:20:01.180 interviewed in the film an individual who was a coach there from 61 to 63 then he left

00:20:06.640 went on and taught at another school that did not it was a traditional key at the time and then

00:20:13.080 after two years he says if he didn't have a chance to go to another school and start a program from

00:20:17.980 scratch that was more like la sierra he was going to just quit because he'd seen both ways and saw the

00:20:23.100 kids the reactions and and what he and so he was able to replicate la sierra and then put down in

00:20:28.480 bakersfield at a school and had great success there but what he said that he noticed is they always did

00:20:35.520 the test you know the presidential fitness uh council they had the fitness fitness test for

00:20:40.660 for many many years and and so one pull-ups were one of them he says like you go up there and the

00:20:44.880 kid would have two pull-ups you know after a few it kind of hurts and they would just stop they had a

00:20:51.780 couple more in them at least but there was no real incentive for them to keep striving and so he said

00:20:57.840 that the kids in a traditional program typically never achieved the fitness levels that they were

00:21:03.380 capable of and and and you know and experience what they would need for the rest of their life

00:21:07.940 you know to maintain that they didn't have a real reason to so they just went in and took a test

00:21:12.060 not too dissimilar to what's going on with our current testing and the academics right now and

00:21:17.640 different things where they're just teaching a kid for a test but rather than teaching them to learn

00:21:22.120 and enjoy you know the joy of learning so um he says that that color system he ended up going on

00:21:29.340 later and got his phd and wrote his dissertation just on that color system and tested kids who were

00:21:35.720 in a traditional p.e. program versus kids that were in one of these kinds of programs

00:21:41.000 and he tested the lower third of both schools and the theory was that those who were in a lost year

00:21:49.300 kind of program would have a lower self-esteem because they were stuck in those white shorts

00:21:53.440 you know they were the beginning level never got out of it and that would somehow

00:21:56.820 you know they would feel that some way and then what he found was that those kids at that

00:22:04.000 performance level um and that was based on the national test scores that were going on at the

00:22:08.640 time how many pull-ups went on business fitness thing they took the lower third of both schools

00:22:12.360 tested them and there was no difference at all what was different was the physical test the

00:22:17.800 physical level the average low level could do about nine pull-ups at the low school i mean at the

00:22:23.520 last year school and the average low the other school could do two so otherwise it was the same

00:22:30.560 so it didn't do anything to make a person feel better or worse instead instead it was the motivation

00:22:36.460 factor and that's actually going to be the title of the film motivation factor that that really provided

00:22:42.180 a reason why they should keep trying that there was something for them to accomplish another thing to

00:22:49.220 achieve for those who you know felt motivated by it but i've also interviewed people who could not get

00:22:55.040 out of that uh both today you know 50 years later as well as kids currently in the system right now in

00:23:00.440 schools they're still doing this and it was really interesting to talk to them they were very positive

00:23:05.720 about it so all the thoughts that we have projected to it because somehow it's negative it's just not

00:23:11.860 there and there's no scientific evidence on the peer-reviewed study that demonstrated it it's

00:23:18.160 interesting yeah that that high school is actually west high school in bakersville they went on to beat

00:23:22.780 lost here at a national uh marine corps fitness championship and and um he was the guy that wrote the phd

00:23:29.800 study dr tucker was mentored by stan leprote so it's kind of an interesting story um if you start

00:23:36.200 unraveling everything but it's yeah the other thing that's interesting with him is is really the

00:23:44.320 story you know what it took to get a school to do this in the first place and then he went on and

00:23:50.560 became a principal and eventually a superintendent he says as a principal and superintendent he was never

00:23:55.660 able to get a decent PE program up and running because he didn't have you know the coaches there

00:24:02.380 they just didn't have the background or the interest to do what was actually much harder

00:24:07.420 to implement and much more time intensive and whatnot and then we've seen plenty of coaches

00:24:11.740 stuck where they don't get the support from the parent level or the administrative level and in

00:24:16.440 reality you need all of that you need the parents there you need the coach there you need the principal

00:24:21.120 there and the superintendent you need all of it and so that's what and and here's what's disturbing i mean

00:24:28.120 and and also you know drives us uh passionately to to help inspire people through the film and the work

00:24:33.740 is that this is the kind of fitness that builds civilizations and it's the kind of fitness when

00:24:38.640 you don't have it that destroys a civilization or society so we are at the tipping point we we aren't

00:24:44.840 at a level of health and fitness that's sustainable and we really need to take some action um and we

00:24:51.020 don't have to recreate the wheel it's already been done and it's been done very well we just need to

00:24:56.200 unravel the history enough so we can start again without having to drive all blind you know um

00:25:03.520 we don't need to do that i mean thousands of years of human evolution and movement they kind of have

00:25:08.840 it figured out you know there's some there's some basic things we need to be doing that we're not

00:25:13.460 right i think i read that look magazine article about la sierra that you have on the site um

00:25:19.580 and it was really interesting because some of the stuff that they were doing

00:25:25.400 the the boys were like surpassing the requirements to get into the navy and these were kids who were

00:25:31.400 still 14 or 15 years old yeah they blew away some of the military academy requirements so i mean

00:25:36.660 the kids they were they were motivated la prati wrote about motivation a lot in philosophy so while

00:25:41.720 while we look at it and we look at the very the physicality of loss here with the eight pack abs and

00:25:46.740 you know all the different configurations of off-the-ground apparatus if you really get behind the

00:25:51.760 scenes it was mental it was philosophy and it was mental stability and it was much much deeper

00:26:00.260 beyond the physical alone so you you go so what Ron's bringing up is is something that i

00:26:08.240 am looking at this thought how do we how do we do this today um because you know we all

00:26:14.920 in some way kind of see that it would be a good thing for us to be healthier as a people right we

00:26:20.960 we understand you know the medical problems 80 of our health care costs are preventable and

00:26:25.920 obesity and all that um but what what are the other reasons we should be fit and are there other

00:26:32.980 reasons besides the waistline and and health and um and that's where we really focused for for quite a

00:26:40.440 while we interviewed uh probably 40 different phd and mds uh the top surgeons top uh researchers in

00:26:47.680 the world and people like john rady there at uh harvard medical school and uh who wrote that book spark

00:26:53.360 you know exercising in the brain um the relationship a bunch of neurosurgeons uh michael rosen there he's a

00:27:01.200 chief wellness officer of the cleveland clinic um just a whole plethora of folks and what was

00:27:07.780 interesting to me was how far our science today has come improving the correlation between

00:27:16.000 high cognitive as well as mental stability with exercise in fact there does not seem to be a way to

00:27:25.560 achieve our brain's potential without it it is how we become smarter and how we become

00:27:30.980 mentally stable it's through exercise and again it goes back to the it goes back to the greeks it

00:27:37.480 goes back to greeks healthy mind healthy body sound mind sound body um well that's just it that's just

00:27:43.960 it when we look at history that is a big component as to why you know in the 1800s it was recommended

00:27:51.520 that we spend a third of our time doing physical education and why the greeks were spending half their

00:27:55.680 time physical education it turns out it wasn't this over infatuation about how their bodies

00:28:00.660 look it was productivity it was you know you're you're to be smart and it was mental stability as

00:28:09.040 well as and this is the part that uh we really at least i didn't understand for for some time and

00:28:16.660 was shocked to see is your your social your sense of community that is taught through group physical

00:28:24.720 activity together that's how it's been done in the past um it's how nations are built that ron explained

00:28:30.560 and um and in a lot of ways that's what's missing we we know that we have an apathy problem in our

00:28:36.860 country today in america but this is actually a global issue and it's correlated to a person's

00:28:42.700 physical movement level you know where where we at the the less you move the less you feel like doing

00:28:49.420 and it's it's really that simple but they've proven that now you know and they've been

00:28:54.120 and so here we have science saying it we have history saying it and yet we're really not listening

00:29:01.080 and ultimately in doing this film i realized that we really don't listen to science and we really

00:29:08.460 don't listen to history so who are we listening to

00:29:11.260 and a point i want to underscore here is before people just go out go crazy and just start doing

00:29:19.920 more the the the history lesson is very clear we need to move better first before we move

00:29:27.880 more at random so um i want to point that out and i'm going to cite uh colonel herman kohler back at

00:29:35.400 west point in world war one he was adamant about safety quality uh he talked about the neurological

00:29:41.400 quality of movement and he was very assertive about directing the instructors to never train

00:29:48.360 into fatigue with the men and to preserve that economy of movement and you know the resiliency

00:29:56.000 um you know and and because you know you don't want especially in world war one where people were

00:30:00.720 moving more physically instead of in vehicles um you have to move well for a long time on limited

00:30:06.620 rations you couldn't afford for people to get hurt so if you want to know how people moved really well

00:30:12.660 with limited equipment and and support you know you have to go back pre-1920 look at somebody like

00:30:18.680 herman kohler so that that's that was a game changer for me as i got more into this i realized you know

00:30:24.560 it's not just that the movements were different and it's sometimes harder it was the intelligence it

00:30:30.420 was the physical literacy and that's the big picture we got to move better and we have to have

00:30:36.640 educated professionals that can teach that what we we can remake the equipment we have the catalogs we

00:30:44.760 have the pictures but what the reason that it took so long to unravel la sierra we had to figure out

00:30:50.580 the teaching methods that's what we were after people keep asking me all the time well what what

00:30:55.820 were the upper marks for the testing for the advanced levels they go that's not what you want what you

00:31:00.240 want is how they taught it how you taught a side struggle hop how do you teach a push-up to world war

00:31:05.080 two standards most people don't know it's completely different than most people do a push-up today

00:31:09.540 i've had many strong men doing sets of 20 and when they do a world war ii vintage push-up they're down

00:31:15.820 to one or two and that's when you start really learning about your bodies and getting stronger

00:31:20.400 and you stop getting hurt so much we don't have any uh records of an official injury any kind of injury

00:31:28.440 problem at la sierra we've talked to all these people the coach that was there 26 years says

00:31:33.080 injuries were a non-issue so when you look at what's happening today with with injuries and

00:31:38.920 people are walking and getting hurt and then you look at something like that it was so vigorous

00:31:43.020 and yet they're not hurting people okay something's going on here we need to start investigating this

00:31:49.140 intellectually and take a rational look at it and so that that's why it took so long but it's well

00:31:53.860 worth the effort so you mentioned a while back that the coaches would get together and talk

00:31:57.760 philosophy so what did they discuss in these philosophical meetings i mean was it the philosophy

00:32:02.700 underlying the fitness or were they trying to figure out how to convey a bigger message to the

00:32:06.780 students through physical fitness yeah wrong once you well let me give an anecdotal on that one while

00:32:11.800 you think about that response because okay one of the first people i interviewed he talked about

00:32:17.260 coach daniel probably was sitting there with a news person right next to him and a kid was complaining

00:32:22.640 about the agility drill you know this is a really high octane thing you do at the end of the strength

00:32:28.720 and endurance routine and he goes oh i hate these i hate this part said that loud and the coach leaned

00:32:36.280 over to the to the news reporter and said now you watch that kid has a problem in math in two weeks his

00:32:43.860 math score is going to go up because of what we're going to do right now

00:32:46.700 so one the coach knew which kids were having problems in academics second they understood how

00:32:55.640 what they were prescribing by way of exercise was going to help them with those academics now we we

00:33:02.560 can prove that now in math and and and with mris in your brain on what that actually does to your brain

00:33:10.060 so that you are going to be able to perform better but he understood that and so that was part of it and

00:33:15.640 the other part was motivation it was how do we motivate these kids i mean there's a there's a good

00:33:21.060 way to do it and a wrong way to do it when you have to get someone's face and motivate them and and

00:33:26.960 overall this was extremely positive program it does it may not look like it when you're looking at the

00:33:32.260 footage but i have not found one example i've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of these people

00:33:37.840 where it wasn't just positive to them they loved it i mean they said it was fun that that's the

00:33:44.780 word that they always used it was fun when you're out there as a group it's like a big dance everyone

00:33:49.640 moving together in perfect unison and and uh they just talked about how fun it was and you know i've

00:33:57.060 i presented at some universities and work with some younger people the last few years you know since

00:34:01.460 getting involved with the film project and it was interesting getting when then when i showed them

00:34:05.940 some of the back story of history in lost era the feedback um with quite a few of them was that

00:34:12.740 they almost a resentment um and frustration at least that they weren't given the same opportunity

00:34:21.080 to learn these methods because they realized as younger people they really messed up it was something

00:34:27.000 really special that happened before them and they didn't get a chance to do it it's just interesting

00:34:31.720 but then in terms of the deeper philosophy you know what they were teaching at last year and again this

00:34:36.800 goes back to the greeks because one of the things that they talked about in greek culture was learning

00:34:41.020 through physical education about being a good citizen about thinking clearly about being a leader

00:34:47.100 and so the philosophy lost there if you boil it down to a bumper sticker they were teaching

00:34:52.940 the students how to live their lives through physical achievement physical fitness they were learning

00:35:00.740 job skills communication skills social skills um they were learning how to pay attention to detail

00:35:07.340 you know all the things that you need to be successful in life many of the alumni said yeah

00:35:12.100 we learned it there in high school you know we learned it in pe yeah and so most people today if you ask

00:35:18.520 them what do you think of pe that's such a negative connotation to it because they never went through a

00:35:22.880 real quality physical education program but that's what it's supposed to be that's what it can be again

00:35:29.420 um it can be done we just have to get started and we have to be intelligent about it so that's what we hope to do

00:35:35.980 with the film yeah so it sounds like leprati had this idea that physical education was there to

00:35:40.400 supplement their learning in the classroom and now there's just this big disconnect i mean pe is just

00:35:46.140 something you do as an elective to pass an hour so you don't have to take another harder class uh so

00:35:51.420 there's a disconnect completely here's a big idea pe was there to create the learning environment in the

00:35:56.800 classroom how about that one because without it you won't have the good learning going on in the

00:36:01.800 classroom hence today we're drilling we're killing our test scores suck we're not moving you know my

00:36:07.980 my son right now he's learning he's getting a pup and he's learning how to be you know a pet owner

00:36:14.080 and to train him he just went through a training thing he runs upstairs to me yesterday he said dad

00:36:18.340 when we get this puppy we're gonna have to exercise it you gotta exercise this much this much you have to

00:36:23.840 always be running have to do this stuff because if it's just bundled up of energy it affects

00:36:29.160 the ability to learn when you're trying to train it it has to have gone through some exercise before

00:36:33.780 you train it or else it's you know and i thought this about everything we've been doing this film

00:36:39.000 about wow probably the best analogy for some reason our adults who don't need to run around

00:36:44.220 um are sitting there and they're expecting these little kids and and young adults to just sit there

00:36:50.460 and be capable to learn i mean everybody knows a dog can't do that people can't do it either there's a

00:36:56.820 point of diminishing returns so one that's getting the brain ready now one thing that is

00:37:01.560 interesting dr rating cited um by instituting a 30-minute PE program at an inner city school in

00:37:09.980 charleston south carolina they were able to in the morning they were able to see an 87 percent drop in

00:37:17.860 discipline problems one semester to the next 87 percent drop and then they went and did that to other

00:37:24.720 schools and it's that same number i mean you you pretty much have discipline go away you have a

00:37:30.660 ready interested person ready to learn capable to learn and uh mentally balanced restored chemically

00:37:39.880 you know ready your brain you can you can learn you're ready to go and ultimately we will never

00:37:47.340 achieve the test scores that we're trying to achieve both here in america as well as the world

00:37:52.500 whole world problem they're all doing the same thing i would say that the irony is that we're

00:37:56.140 getting rid of recess and physical education so we can spend more time in the classroom studying for

00:38:00.520 these tests so that the students can do better on the test but it sounds like what's actually that

00:38:05.540 it's actually counterproductive to do that extremely counterproductive yeah now there are some recent

00:38:10.760 reports of schools increasing recess and guess what the kids are getting better so yeah it's just

00:38:16.960 interesting we just can't keep doing this going down this road it's not going to work and by the way

00:38:21.860 lost era didn't have a bullying problem you know you think about these kids are very physical they're

00:38:25.400 probably fighting and pushing each other around not that is not the case it was all for one one for

00:38:30.800 all that was a team supportive environment everybody pulling for each other mentoring teaching um this is

00:38:37.320 what it's supposed to be yeah can we hold in on what ron just said this idea of all for one one for

00:38:43.380 all you know we're not going to disclose where but we found a school still doing this that started and

00:38:47.780 it's kind of the end of our film it's the big big secret right it's a big deal and i went into

00:38:53.580 inner city school you've got the whole gamut there i interviewed kids that live in the country club and

00:38:57.880 kids who are homeless right now and they all treat each other equal it was it was i interviewed 60 of

00:39:06.240 them and i was just fascinated in that process and what i saw was because they're a team

00:39:13.500 and everybody participates it's not just the jocks right everybody participates and the objective is

00:39:21.900 to get your whole team to progress together and so when you're done running through if you're fast

00:39:28.320 you turn around and you go track and help the the rest of the group and cheer them on and get them in

00:39:33.580 because you're out there as a group trying to move perfectly together you're outside yourself it's all

00:39:38.900 the whole experience is outside of you you're now part of the community you're part of a team

00:39:45.520 they have no bullying they treat each other like a family even though it's probably the most diverse

00:39:51.560 ethnic and diverse economic group i've ever seen at any school and i i saw this and it gave me a lot

00:40:01.000 of encouragement i just thought you know and so then we went and interviewed um someone who's one of the

00:40:07.780 top historians in the world um who looked at this historically and using these classical education

00:40:13.960 things and that's where we saw that the whole impetus to physical education historically the

00:40:20.960 reason the governments wanted to do it was to build nationalism when you get large groups of people to

00:40:26.800 move together they create it to create the sense of community independent of the ideology that was used

00:40:33.720 so you see in history germany doing it you see in history america doing it you see in history

00:40:39.060 hitler doing it right and you see right now them doing it in north korea in russia and you see isis

00:40:46.060 doing it right now so it doesn't matter what the ideology is if you want to build a group of people

00:40:51.880 and get them to be one and be a community and actually care about something besides just themselves

00:40:56.560 you have to get them to go orchestrate and move together get them to dance together do whatever

00:41:02.700 together but they've got to do it together they can't be so let me uh let me let me dissect this

00:41:08.360 a little bit so this um you know you talked about what was the philosophy behind lost era a large part

00:41:15.180 of this goes back to what's called the noble purpose and i don't care what system you study it

00:41:19.460 could be the german system coming out of jana in the 1800s or ling out of sweden the finnish the

00:41:24.800 checks um americans they all said all had some kind of guiding philosophy that was related to a noble

00:41:30.820 purpose right and so it's the betterment of mankind in general and helping the whole planet

00:41:36.180 if you look at it that way there are countries that have a national purpose but it's not necessarily

00:41:42.880 noble so we can argue that north korea definitely has a national agenda national purpose so you know

00:41:49.040 in american culture we would not say generally that that is noble so but the idea the so-called are great

00:41:55.060 to look at from czechoslovakia they had an amazing almost like a cradle to grave physical literacy

00:42:00.700 system you were born into it you went through it a lot of people competed in it with rhythmic

00:42:07.540 gymnastics on a field they could put over 14 000 people on a field at the same time doing beautiful

00:42:14.820 aesthetic high quality movements with with mass calisthenic drills i mean just absolutely amazing

00:42:21.100 and then as you aged you would teach and mentor it was all volunteer they would have these huge

00:42:27.680 festivals they were called slets s-l-e-t in europe and all these people i mean hundreds of thousands

00:42:33.040 of people would come in they would have these things for weeks at a time different cities would feed

00:42:37.860 different teams in and everything was volunteer and they brought that to america interestingly in

00:42:44.920 world war ii they had a rejection rate from the czechoslovakian men going into the surface less than

00:42:50.080 one percent wow wow that's how fit they were less than one percent now their their purpose for

00:42:59.500 doing this was to build better citizenship and to mentor the young and to be healthy and fit and they

00:43:05.060 i have a lot of information on the czechoslovakia and they constantly are talking about healthy body

00:43:11.100 healthy mind being positive being productive it's all there and it was there very strongly as late as

00:43:18.320 about 1965 which was about the time lost era was peaking so that's not that long ago and that's why

00:43:26.740 we we really want to zero in a lost year a little bit because they were the last high school to figure

00:43:32.940 it out at a level that changed the country and influenced the world there might have been pockets of

00:43:40.320 this or that but not no one school has done it since last year so so the other thing that level

00:43:47.220 when you interview the people today you know 50 years later after they were the class of 61 for example

00:43:55.020 they'll they'll tell me how somebody got cancer and um and suddenly the whole school rallies around

00:44:02.440 it didn't matter what year you were it just quickly goes out that so and so one of one of our longhorns

00:44:07.620 goes down and out and people go over the bomb all the long they'll help them out financially or

00:44:12.380 whatever someone loses their job it didn't matter what year it was didn't matter the fact they don't

00:44:16.660 know them at all they there they were a sense of community they were a team and they went out and

00:44:22.400 helped them kind of similarly that as if you were in a sports team and you were you know nationally ranked

00:44:27.480 your group and and you kind of kept that relationship together they've been that as an entire school

00:44:32.980 and as a community now it doesn't mean everything's all perfect i mean we found plenty of examples and

00:44:38.680 the other thing i found interesting is you know when we wanted to do this film you needed like half

00:44:44.240 a million bucks to consider it a low budget film taking below a million we figured we need at least

00:44:49.160 half a million to try to even get it to the point of going into a theater so we we got we got what 10

00:44:56.860 thousand alumni easily out of that school they all just gave 10 bucks we got 100 grand well

00:45:04.080 we had about 40 or 50 of them contribute and um you know we raised in total with everybody

00:45:11.640 you know out of 40 million views on facebook and half a million on youtube we raised you know about

00:45:16.680 20 000 so so there was um that was hard for ron and i to sit there we thought for sure they would

00:45:24.200 step up and basically i get the sense that it's kind of like all of us americans today you know all

00:45:30.520 of us benefit from from freedom and democracies that we really didn't do anything to enjoy this benefit

00:45:36.740 we it's not because of us it's because of people a long time ago who gave it to us those people knew

00:45:41.960 what they were doing and why and not everyone really respects that today and i got the same

00:45:47.900 sense from them but they still retain that sense of strong community and that is distinctly different

00:45:55.060 than those who didn't participate in that program it's very very interesting i'm curious about this

00:46:00.620 so it sounds like it sounds like this program i mean this program influenced over like 4 000 other

00:46:05.240 high schools they adopted a program similar to program some version of it why did it was it was

00:46:11.080 it was a global too i mean that those were 4 000 in the united states but we have records in our

00:46:17.180 archives of you know saudi arabia and all these different countries coming to visit and communicating

00:46:22.040 with the product so why did the program fade away well that's a really good question yeah that's a

00:46:29.580 loaded question geopolitical again you want to you want to take the lead on that doug and i'll chime in

00:46:33.660 well well you know we asked that question we get we get different answers so i'm just going to give

00:46:39.200 you all the answers okay and then in and because you're going to have a tough time really getting

00:46:43.860 it um there were reasons why it faded away after the golden era right heading into 1920 um but the

00:46:52.420 reasons the first big wound they got was vietnam war when it lagged on because you know physical

00:47:01.080 education is really good for an individual it's a human body and how you in an efficient manner get that

00:47:08.180 human body in shape you know with 12 minutes and then another five minutes of off the ground at the

00:47:12.700 end of the day and otherwise the rest of the stuff in the middle was just more fun how do you do that

00:47:17.260 efficiently if you're in the army well you do the same stuff you're going to do you're going to do the

00:47:21.500 exact same activities in the army so they solved they solved the boot camp and it looked pretty dang

00:47:26.420 similar to what they're doing there in high school and a lot of parents when they wanted to oppose

00:47:30.200 vietnam and the students felt like if they could if they could boycott and protest against pe then that's a

00:47:37.320 method that protest against the war so first was the link between what it perceived physical education

00:47:44.680 was to military that hurt them a lot and the same thing happened after world war one that's that was

00:47:51.560 really the death now for a lot of that classical physical education as well so but then the other

00:47:57.200 the other part was budget we saw in the 70s we saw in california for example at this high school

00:48:04.660 the coach says one of the coaches said the death now was when they stopped laundering the towels

00:48:09.580 so when you stop laundering towels boys you know they're not interested in taking showers without

00:48:14.580 a towel they forget their towel they're bringing it and you know all that stuff started happening

00:48:18.460 that was a big factor um so the budget was a bit of an issue you had but the other real factor i think

00:48:28.140 that really comes down to i mean honestly when i flushed through all this stuff it's the parents

00:48:34.440 it was the parents support that allowed it to start in the first place and the way stan

00:48:40.460 the proddy got that is he opened up the school in the evening and got the moms out and he did these

00:48:44.660 programs with the parents so that they had the buy-in they saw why they benefited them but it was those

00:48:50.660 it was the next generation of parents who didn't like little johnny going out there and have to do

00:48:55.140 something hard and they didn't understand the why behind it and so yeah and then and so

00:49:02.660 the school closed in 1983 and one of the well the big reason that the some of the people fought to

00:49:09.880 keep la sierra open as opposed to closing one of the other schools in the district due to some

00:49:13.960 boundary issues was the the fact that the pe program was globally famous um but they ended up

00:49:20.900 closing that and la sierra is now a community center interestingly though the pe program at la

00:49:26.600 sierra in the early 80s was on the way back it was they never got rid of it but it had waned a little

00:49:32.060 bit like dex said with the war it was actually making a comeback so um we found that kind of uh

00:49:39.540 interesting and and um you know things do cycle but um if la sierra was there today i'm sure they'd be

00:49:46.020 maybe doing something similar because they're now there are can we address it can we address the

00:49:52.300 female side of this with loss here too because a lot of people came out of yeah title nine came in

00:49:58.440 in the 70s so we've had criticism well where are the girls well they weren't involved with boys p.e. at

00:50:04.360 the time we're we're historians we're recording what happened we're not changing history this is the way

00:50:09.160 it was you can say it's good or bad but in those days that's the way it went down um well what's interesting

00:50:15.080 what they're wrong the girls had p.e. but the girls they had female they had female coaches and

00:50:20.880 those female coaches at that time chose not to do this program they had their own program which was

00:50:26.960 more traditional sports-based program it was softer it was softer more uh rhythmic if you could you

00:50:33.340 could say it that way but i think a bigger issue uh guys is that as the world war ii generation

00:50:39.560 left the ranks of p.e. we started losing the teaching methods and that's the real issue i'm

00:50:46.520 going to keep coming back to the teaching methods and because when you lose the teachers and you know

00:50:51.700 who's going to do it right so um and i have p.e. teachers across the country writing me all the

00:50:58.420 time they they're they know they're missing something they weren't taught in their credentialing

00:51:04.160 programs how to do any of this and they were taught how to do sports and so we the bigger problem here

00:51:12.020 is that and people ask me quite often i my son or daughter wants to go do something like you're doing

00:51:18.580 where should they go to school where should they apply i don't have one single university in america

00:51:22.740 that i can recommend because we've dismantled our quality physical education programs there are no

00:51:29.960 teacher preparation programs teaching what we're talking about they might have a history class and

00:51:36.060 they show some pictures and they do a little bit of this a little bit of that but the richness of

00:51:40.940 american physical education and and remember lost here was just a brief part of that um has been gone

00:51:48.400 for decades that's the bigger problem we have to start educating teachers so we can teach the methods

00:51:53.960 again and that has to be infiltrated into the you know we've got to get your universities back at

00:51:59.040 speed it's like when we lost our factories and now we need stuff and we have to rely on another

00:52:04.040 country to do it well our factory for building physical fitness we dismantled our factory

00:52:10.020 right now it seems like there's this explosion outside of schools or publicly funded institutions

00:52:16.720 that are doing this kind of stuff that la sierra was doing so for example like move nat comes to mind

00:52:22.600 i don't know if you heard of those guys yeah i know them and even like crossfit it seems

00:52:27.080 sort of but not exactly the same the whole idea that sports should be functional or fitness should

00:52:32.060 be functional are there are these sort of trends and fitness that's going to that could possibly

00:52:37.220 influence physical education programs in schools or is there going to be a lot of pushback to that

00:52:42.680 sort of uh functional fitness uh and pe and schools well it will will it influence yes but i'm going to

00:52:49.520 go back to the big picture first do no harm move well before you move more so it's it's always going to be

00:52:56.980 that way in the end you can fight it you can deny newton's laws of motion and physics you can blow

00:53:03.700 history off but this is how it's done you can't load people with excessive volume and high intensity

00:53:10.420 if they're not lining things up it just doesn't work right so we have to have an intelligent approach

00:53:17.020 this um at move nat is influenced by uh hibert system in french because erwin lacoro's was from

00:53:24.640 france so he has more of a classical position than a lot of other people out there um that being said

00:53:32.160 they're you know body weight only is only part of it there are other pieces of apparatus that have

00:53:38.060 to factor into that and then you'll see move nat kind of moving more into that now um instead of

00:53:44.360 just working with the body alone but they get the big picture right it's the mind body spirit connection

00:53:49.580 the quality yeah but you are right brett in the sense that there is that an absolute movement

00:53:55.920 uh making the old new you know where we're going back we're seeing some of these things we're seeing

00:54:01.320 higher intensity and different things coming forward and and what ron is pointing out there's a safety

00:54:06.660 issue and there's a way to teach this and and make it work in there what we're trying to do with the

00:54:12.380 film is show how the why behind well really this is the purpose of the film the really why behind it

00:54:20.400 is to be a flag that can be raised to get this to happen again you know in in its in its uh entirety

00:54:28.660 the way it once was and and for people to understand it and the reason why we need that today

00:54:34.680 is is because what's happened into the physical education is really not dissimilar that i'd like

00:54:40.900 to use an algae what would happen if we stopped teaching mathematics a hundred years ago you know

00:54:45.620 just picture this for a moment where would we be at today if a hundred years ago we just stopped

00:54:50.400 teaching mathematics maybe we kept the math facts you know so everybody knew five times five 25

00:54:55.200 you know that wouldn't be much knowledge to have to retain they could do that you know 20 minutes a day

00:55:00.240 on a friday and and compete against each other on that but otherwise um they wouldn't do math the

00:55:06.660 problem is no one would know how to apply it so we wouldn't have you know obviously our computers and

00:55:10.920 iphones and whatnot we wouldn't even have skyscrapers or bridges being built anymore and if you really

00:55:16.300 think about it we wouldn't even have houses because that still takes math so so we would regret

00:55:21.520 regress back to pre-egyptian time period of standard of living by stop teaching just that one subject

00:55:27.980 well physical education we stopped teaching it in its entirety over a hundred years ago the real

00:55:34.460 physical education so today i mean and if you think about the same analogy with math how would you go

00:55:40.820 back and reinstitute it how would you talk to people about advanced concepts in calculus or algebra even

00:55:47.580 with with when everyone only all they know is math facts you couldn't do it it'd be really difficult

00:55:55.800 and we are at that point right now with physical education our bodies and the diseases and everything

00:56:02.200 we are at that point that we need to go back and actually reintroduce this stuff and there's a

00:56:08.900 formula it has been done in the past we have societies have found themselves in this spot and how they

00:56:15.240 brought it forward um it's formula let's take what we need to do well here's here's an example today

00:56:21.320 um i i know a young man he's preparing for the olympic trials the olympic coaches that he's working

00:56:27.020 with in strength and conditioning because this guy actually knows some of the historical methods that

00:56:31.300 he's worked with i and uh my partner shane hilton and they're making fun of him because they say his

00:56:37.840 methods are outdated now he's using the good stuff he's using the indian clubs and the health wands and

00:56:44.700 he's using lost era and his body is changing and he's getting better and they're making fun of him

00:56:49.880 at the olympic level because they say he he's obviously outdated doesn't know what he's doing

00:56:53.840 he actually knows more than the strength coaches right so this is where we're at you don't know if

00:56:58.920 you don't know and how do you start the conversation um with people well and that's just it the positive

00:57:06.280 side is it's the process isn't isn't that difficult to bring back if you follow the formula and the

00:57:13.400 formula is it starts with an educated you know a few who understand it who dig it up

00:57:18.840 you know your wands and all these guys in the history who did it you just have to do the

00:57:22.760 renaissance effort second it goes to the educated elite so that's going to be our colleges and that's

00:57:29.320 also going to be our clubs that's going to be our you know the different gyms that's going to be

00:57:34.020 anybody who has the influence that wants to teach this stuff and then it goes to phase three which is

00:57:40.020 mass mobilization and that's that's how you got mass as well we're never going to reach inner city

00:57:45.540 schools and the kids and so many kids who are just finding themselves on a path to go straight

00:57:50.660 to prison we're never going to reach them unless we get this back in schools for them it has to be

00:57:55.680 for every student um la sierra eventually did combine the male and the female the last person

00:58:01.860 who graduated from the school i interviewed her who got the highest level of la sierra

00:58:05.380 and the incredible meaning this was for her um it works for all genders every ethnicity um

00:58:13.620 right we have we have young we have young women doing the last year routines now and they're doing

00:58:19.240 great with it and and one of them is over 60 years old so if you have the quality and the philosophy

00:58:25.660 behind the classical methods they will work you can't just take the tools and look at the the drills

00:58:31.140 in isolation and start just loading them up with volume and forgetting about the quality and physics

00:58:36.620 and the classical teaching methods it doesn't work that way but when you do it the old way

00:58:41.240 and correctly and precisely things start to happen and fairly quickly so this is this is why it's taken so

00:58:49.700 long to unravel all this because it's not just a PE program there's so much deep philosophy involved and

00:58:57.740 the quality movement it really took some time with a lot of us uh in deep reflection going over

00:59:04.040 thousands of pages of information basically over 100 years old doug ron this has been a great

00:59:11.080 discussion where can people learn more about the film and the project and can they still support the

00:59:15.240 film yeah yes they can and probably the easiest link is to go to motivation movie.com and i'll take

00:59:23.340 them to the website and all links will go from there they'll find the link to go to our indiegogo

00:59:28.140 crowdfunding effort um it's woefully underfunded um we're on about three weeks away from finishing

00:59:35.720 the first real edit cut of this and we'll go around and start to try to build up some some interest

00:59:41.700 and get some support in the film yeah we're our goal is to take to theaters

00:59:46.040 lost here high pe.com too and then they can reach me at the leanbraze.com

00:59:52.560 um we also have a facebook page it's got some pretty cool updates on it and um i have been popping

00:59:59.960 in a lot of the slides out of the archives and some of the articles and things like that and making

01:00:05.120 historical commentary on them helping to explain the story then not just the story of lost here on the

01:00:10.360 facebook post but the story behind lost here like what fed into training lapradi to be able to do

01:00:17.420 what he was able to do and lapradi was an interesting guy because he left lost here and went on to be one

01:00:21.740 of the top physical fitness guys in the country with the president's fitness council worked with

01:00:26.840 law enforcement university south carolina the last part of his career and with the military and

01:00:32.500 he was truly a remarkable professional and physical education of fitness but anyway um those are

01:00:40.220 good places to visit and uh i'd be happy to talk to people about it i i've worked with the military

01:00:46.240 uh i'm working with gymnasiums starting to do some workshops i'll be in spain next month

01:00:51.660 uh teaching lost era do some people over in europe that are interested so it uh it's it's moving

01:00:58.120 forward as it should very cool well doug ron thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

01:01:02.600 thank you i guess they were doug orchard and ron jones they are creating a documentary about the

01:01:08.260 la sierra high p e program you can find out more information about the documentary at la sierra

01:01:13.720 high p e dot com and when you go there you'll be able to watch archival footage of the what these

01:01:19.240 kids in action what they were doing it's pretty intense and amazing what they were doing for p e back

01:01:23.320 in the 60s you can also contribute to the film while you're there and if you make a donation they'll

01:01:27.620 even send you the workout program that these kids at la sierra were doing you can incorporate

01:01:33.160 your own it's all body weight pretty awesome well that wraps up another edition of the art of

01:01:40.400 manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website

01:01:44.340 at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this podcast and have gotten something out of it i would really

01:01:48.360 appreciate it if you would give us review on itunes or stitcher that helped get the word out about the

01:01:52.600 show as always i appreciate your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to

01:01:57.120 stay manly

The Art of Manliness - March 15, 2016

#183：When High School PE Was a Man-Maker

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