Re: Cro_Magnon Fitness Ideas :-)

 
 
I'm including this incidence as a cro-magnon's inadvertent attempt at
fitness for a reason:
 
https://streamable.com/p6zemm
 
 
There is a school of fitness in Iran that its originator was an Armenian
Iranian whose main (open) profession was teaching French language. A bit
on that: In those years (end of 1930s to end of 1950s) French was the
second language of choice in Iran for international communication and
access to scientific and other academic journals and texts, etc. Iranian
politicians outside Iran learned and spoke French, not English. For a
brief 10 year period before that, from about 1935 to 1945, German was
the language of choice for all such activities, but that changed after
WWII.
 
I still remember old Iranian men and women knowing a good bit of German
in my early childhood, but throughout my childhood French still ruled as
the favorite second language.
 
So the market to teach French in Tehran was good in those years, But the
knowledge to teach it couldn't come out of nowhere, cause it hadn't been
taught (yet) in high schools. So those Iranians whom their backgrounds
had exposed them to it first, learned and then began teaching it to
others, making some money on the side. Such Iranians were the Armenians,
Gorjestanis, some Polish men and women, and just about every well-doing
Jewish Tehranis. They were men as well as women. Both did it.
 
Well, this particular Armenian French teacher had his own private little
school for teaching French set up in a few rooms of his old Tehrani
style nice large home not that far from the ministry of finance. Most of
his clients were employees of that ministry. Teaching fitness to those
same clients was his other activity for which he charged separately :-)
 
God knows what other professions he may've had, as Tehran had been
packed for about a decade with spies of all major forces in the world.
Armenians were usually Stalin's spies. Jews were usually Americans' and
Brittons' spies. Parsi Indians who had businesses in Tehran were always
- without exception - British spies. And Germany who had many spies in
Iran had picked them from ordinary normal Iranians who were well-doing
and educated, but after WWII the numbers had quickly gone to zero.
 
Most these spies worked as double agents because it is extremely hard to
make a pure dedicated spy out of an Iranian to work only for a
non-Iranian power. Even as Jews or Armenians, etc, when they are raised
in Iran and have absorbed what Iran offers to her citizens, a connection
is made at the bottom of the heart level that's really impossible to break.
 
That's for instance why even Israelis helped Khomeyni in that imposed
1980-88 war. Also that is the reason Iran could not be turned into a
colony of a major power. All these "MKO" members today that you've been
paying for decades to create trouble in Iran? Every one of them has
served Iran too. Without exception. "Spying" itself was invented in
Iran, mind you. You can't beat them to that. Darius established its
foundations, and institutionalized it. Your "Jesus" was an Iranian spy.
Your "Three Magi" were Iranian spymsters. Iranians not only fucked your
Neanderthal mothers from 44k to 24k years back, creating you who stand
right now looking at yourselves in the mirror, but affected your
history, saved you from Mongols, and gave you science and religion both!
 
So you may now throw a glimpse or two at why there are no Iranian spy of
yours that isn't a double agent. Why there _is_ still an Iran today, to
begin with. And why Iran will outlast the entire European and American
cro-magnon funky nations.
 
So this handsome, tall, well-built and well-developed entrepreneurial
Tehrani Armenian, most likely had other sources of income also to afford
such a house :)
 
Back to fitness now :-)
 
The guy was heavily into fitness. He had studied, developed, created,
and invented his own ideas of fitness. Had made his own school of
fitness in fact. And his clients would swear to its effectiveness and
benefits. He had _hand-drawn_ and typed his own manuscripts for clients
to follow its special steps of the daily exercises (all his French
teaching material were also hand typed by himself). It was a complete
work, including progression, variation, finisher, primer, "deload", etc,
anything that a nice procedure should cover but without creating a
burnout. It did not believe in concept of burnout in exercises (probably
to prevent mental stress buid up). The booklets were free for each new
client, part of what he charged them per session. I remember how it
looked inside. The pages were larger than usual, and it had black typed
letters mixed in with red and blue colored elaborate drawings of various
positions and stuff. All hand-made.
 
But the overall idea of the exercises was making sure to include
completion of two objectives in each session: You had to exercise to a
level that you'd profusely sweat no matter in what weather you were, and
then right after, either swim in your pool for a couple of minutes, or
if you didn't have a pool in your house, you had to empty a big bucket
of water on the top of your head downward a few times over. In any
weather! Tehran is hot during summer, so no problem there. But do you
know how cold it is in Winters? It has three months of biting cold
winter because the weather is essentially that of a mountain's.
 
So the gal in the clip above, when I saw how she got submerged into icy
cold water, did complete the second objective of that school of exercise
after all :-) Hehe :)
 
I remember how that teacher looked like. My mother was away for some
days, I think visiting her family, and my father had to take me along to
that exercise class for two or three days. I simply fooled around by
myself in the cold large yard while a group of 20 or so enthusiasts,
including my father, were ferociously exercising at the command and
direction of the Armenian guy, together with him, and of course at the
end, they all dived into the huge pool in the middle of the yard
splashing and shouting at the top of their voices, smack in the coldest
winter afternoons!..
 
As I recall right now, the Armenian man appeared to be in his late
twenties or early thirties — though he might have been older, as he had
a healthy look about him. I also remember how he moved, with the
effortless grace and confidence of a seasoned gymnast, tall and poised,
striking the perfect balance — never exaggerated, but never lacking!..
Never too fast, and never too slow. One day my father came home and said
the guy had suddenly died. Had been found in his yard dead on the ground
by his part-time maid. That points to possible spy activities in his
background. He may've been involved in pro-Soviet activities. And this
was still 1950s.
 
From then on, my father did the exact same exercises early in the
morning at home before going to his job at the ministry. And in those
few years still living in the middle of Tehran, our "pool" was too
little to swim in (comfortable for ornamental fish though). So my
father, even in coldest early mornings in winter, would break the ice at
the top of the water, and fill up bucket after bucket with zero degree
water, and emptied them on his head and body after some vigorous
exercise inside... I, my two elder brothers, and sometimes even my
mother (my sisters weren't born yet), would look at him from behind
frozen window glass, wondering and shivering at the same time...
 
I still remembered the Armenian's name in 1980s cause I remember writing
something about him in a letter to my father. But I have forgotten his
name now. He lived in the typical traditional Tehrani style home, in one
of the best of them. Large, wide, with all the elements in place. A tiny
form of that architecture which was usually for a newly wed couple is
like this, I mean the yard part:
 
https://i.postimg.cc/htCCGZqg/small-one-family-traditional-home.jpg
 
But the large ones instead of that little "pool" in there, have a fully
fledged swimming pool in the middle, and the number of rooms on all four
sides are so many that often several relatives lived in them with their
own families and shared the yard together for various events that always
held in the yards, from religious processions to happy ancient holidays'
festivities. This is an example of a moderately large traditional
Tehrani house: (again just the yard of it)
 
https://i.postimg.cc/m2TNHxRM/large-traditional-home.jpg
 
Remnants of such houses still in use in Tehran are now museums and fancy
restaurants and various culture centers (art exhibitions, cultural
clubs, chess houses, bookstores, etc). They don't build those beautiful
houses anymore in there because they have features about them that is
not available in Tehran of today anymore. For instance, the traditional
air-conditioning of the house for hottest days of summer requires access
to Ghanat water, which is subterranean and flows through the lowest
level of the building half-way below the ground level. Such Ghanat
systems don't exist around the houses anymore, as every spot of land in
Tehran is now occupied by some structure, making it impossible to direct
the Ghanat waters from foot of the mountains to the house. The cold
Ghanat water must be flowing through down there so wind-directing
features on the roof of the house would send the moving air inside those
halls over the moving water to spread the coldness of the water
everywhere throughout the air in the hall.
 
I have been in such houses in extreme north Tehran (when they still
existed) down there at the first level in hottest days of summer,
feeling quite chilly with just a pants and shirt on! It was quite cold,
and no electricity or energy was used to achieve it.
 
So the Tehrani traditional form of house, which heavily depended on a
Ghanat system connected to them, aren't built anymore.
 
 
Funny a few centuries back, some cro-magnon French Bozo who visited
Tehran and it happened to be Summer, wrote in his book about the visit,
"Tehrani people live under the ground", without understanding one bit
what it was he was looking at :) Typical cro-magnon understanding of
Modern Humans.
 
So back to our amazing Armenian guy. He must've been making a heck of a
lot of money cause he had, all by himself, one of those huge traditional
houses in an expensive part of Tehran close to several ministries and in
the wealthiest area of Tehran of those days (the "Owdeligan" town). His
clients in both classes were well-doing nicely paid government
employees. And by all probability, he was also a spy of the Soviets.
That's probably why he had not married yet, too dangerous a life to
build a family around it while such activities are underway, as time
proved it also. But what a man.. :) If my father, a cautious, careful,
and skeptic man, fell for his methods and classes, he must've been a
jewel indeed.
 
By the way, my father's French was still better than his English till
the end of his life :) In his late life touring of Europe he said he had
to often revert to French, sometimes working and sometimes not working
depending on which country he was in.