Less Is More, Tales Of Minimalism

The value of space, think first

FREE SPACE, HOW MUCH YOU VALUE IT

One day I discovered the importance of sport and its fundamental effects on the human body and mind. Nowadays it's almost a commonplace the association between physical activity and a healthy mindset. So I began to buy manifold books, magazines and subscribe to some online courses. They were all about this correlation, health and sport, (the sport's concept was extremely more emphasized than physical activity's, I lately understand the reason, but it would be too late). This bunch of sources described a myriad of different sports, all with their peculiarities, advantages and disadvantages of all sorts. There are solo sports and team sports, reasoning sports and action sports, outdoor sports and indoor sports. The multitude of sports was very diversified, therefore, I was excited because my study could have continued for many years. I was a boy when I began and I didn't have a personal income, thus I had to ask for sports items as presents for Christmas time or my birthdays. My first experiences were much guided by my parents' early knowledge so they introduced me to the world of martial arts. After two years of practice I collected a multicolor collection of belts, whose, the last conquered, was the brown belt that preceded the black one I never reached.

The end of my fondness for Karate arrived when I discovered the different  weaknesses of this discipline. Karate in fact, if not correctly approached, could bring about a strong asymmetry in body development, because each martial artist has a dominant guard, someone with the left arm more advanced than the right one or vice versa and the same for legs. In my young mind this factor was decisive, when I knew it, from a magazine for professional martial artists and not for amateurs like me, I imagined myself after ten years and I saw a crooked man, not at all nice to behold.

I had to repair my crookedness as soon as possible before it would have been too late. I make a deep lecture on my diversified sources and finally I could find out, with a neat agreement between some authors, that the sport which would have formed the most symmetric and proportioned body was swimming. Hence my swimming practice began. My level certainly increased, I got able to swim in different styles, from crawl, breaststroke, butterfly stroke and sidestroke. I was particularly successful in short distances in which I was quite competitive so to win some of the amatorial competitions I partook in. 

After about five years of swimming practice, another shadow began to appear in my mind. From my studies I focused on the fact that swimming wasn't the aptest sport to gain muscles. In those years, in Europe, it was extremely in fashion, at least greatly more than nowadays, to have a physique particularly developed in muscle mass so to look like the perfect males printed on the covers of all magazines. This issue got important to my eyes when I was near my twenties and my will to gain sex appeal neatly increased. My references were those big men who constantly changed their training routine to perfect, more and more, their physique and almost none of them practiced swimming to reach their results. Enlightened about that, I looked for a solution to obtain muscle mass with the practice of swimming and I found out that long distances provoked catabolism that is the burning and the following reduction of muscles' growth, short distances on the contrary, strengthen and increase the growth hormones' production  so to stimulate subsequently muscles' growth. I read about the existence of paddles to fix on the hands with little rubber bands. These paddles allow the swimmer to thrust more quantity of water each stroke, so to train muscles more intensely and raise their dimensions. I certainly bought them and I could effectively perceive a decisive increase of my muscle, firstly thanks to a more evident pump effect that is the blood repletion of muscles after an intense effort. I was greatly satisfied and I implemented my swimming training with paddles for the following months. This training routine was quite useful to enhance my performances in the short distances, therefore my trainer agreed as well to stick with their use.

Meanwhile I kept expanding my sports' knowledge and I could read that muscles' gain doesn't fit well with swimming performance, besides I was getting quite bored with that type of training that I ended up giving it up.

After various thoughts I decided to join a gym where I knew the possibilities to vary my own training were abundant. There I found some trainers, each prophetising different training methods. In a few weeks I had to equip myself with some gadgets like gym gloves in order to avoid calluses on the hands, a one liter water bottle so that I couldn't forget to drink the right amount of water, a specific gym bag provided by the gym, (my old one was put in the closet near my multicolor karate belts and  karategies, the karate suits). 

I was getting fond of the gym and of everything linked with that context, my trainers, the barbells and dumbbells, my training partners and so on.

It guaranteed a good variety of workouts and, in the meantime, a good amount of socialization, and who knows, the chance to meet a girl with my own habits and love for the gym.

When I enrolled at university in a different town from where I was raised, I had to change gym and subsequently everything like trainers and friends, and I had to bring everything necessary to keep on with my practice.

After three years of university I had to continue my studies in another city, thus I prepared myself for another move.

Studies ended, then, I was involved in the third move looking for work, this time in a big city where the rent of the house was skyrocketing. Consequently I could live in a small apartment where all my stuff began to get tight. I began to realize that for each change of my house I lose something of my former activities, the karate belts once then, the gym gloves, the gym bag or the swimming suits another time. And for every time I lose something I have to buy another thing as the one I had lost. Only with a complete rearrangement of my house that I did once in a while, I found out the object I thought was lost, that instead was only well hidden.

Furthermore I began to wipe myself out with all those gym changes, that I finally decided to buy some burbells, dumbbells, a mat, some kettlebells and so on. Thereafter I understood the bad deed with the nth move, when together with my bunch of stuff, I had to move 150 kg of cast iron.

I was thirty in that time and I forgot to say that I was living with a girl (even if not always the same) for 4 years and I had to empty some space of my apartment to assure her some space for her garments and things.

The years passed and things kept  disappearing and reappearing, and I kept buying the same things in a vicious cycle.

 After the wedding and the first child the space was definitely gone and the move was quite infeasible, the stuff to move was now thirty times my stuff when I began to move 15 years before. With all house duties, and wife's and son's necessities, my home training was every day more difficult to do, the same for the space, I was forced to train in evermore narrow spaces.

And with the 'nth son the space ended, at this point my sons' toys were everywhere.

But my hope to train myself didn't give up. My will to study about training didn't stop and I found out about calisthenics and the possibility to train without tools and heavy stuff impossible to move, through practices like running, bodyweight lifting and simpler, healthy trekking or hiking with the entire family. I found out that in order to maintain a good shape it would only be necessary  about one hundred minutes of physical activity per week,not depending on its nature, and that the basis for the right health for a good father, a good worker and a good citizen, was the diet we chose day after day.

Three years after this discovery I decided to sell  all my storaged, now useless, stuff and my family began to breathe again, in a house that never seemed so big as now. Often, for a strong feeling of respect for others, I couldn't sell to anyone my stuff that I knew one day it could be a useless object in a person's life and I decided to throw it out.

Eventually, after ten years,  I can witness that never I had a bigger epiphany than that to free my house of all that stuff.

Nevertheless, I remained convinced of that decision, and I keep asking myself the same question," must a man try the clutter in his own life before to really comprehend what is really useful in life?"