MovNat in Outside Magazine, MMA on Fox News, and Neanderthal Cannibals?

So many good things happening, I can barely stay on top of it all.

1. Outside Magazine features Erwan Le Corre and MovNatOutside Magazine is a big deal, and I'm really happy for Erwan.  It's a great overview of MovNat, the connection to paleo eating and lifestyle stuff -- but it also has some sick stuff on Erwan's background.  Get this:

Then, at age 18, he happened to watch a television show about a 45-year-old Parisian stuntman named Jean Haberey. At one point, Haberey jumped out of a helicopter into an iceberg-strewn ocean wearing only swim trunks. It was the most outrageous thing Le Corre had ever seen—and he wanted to do it, too. A year later, he tracked Haberey down, and for the next seven years he followed him and his other disciples around the French metropolis, playing high-risk games: a "fight club of natural movement," as Le Corre puts it.

"He was the first guy to take people up onto the roofs of Paris," Le Corre said. "He also took us down into the underground, always barefoot, with no gear at all, to train people how to move silently like cats through urban obstacles … especially at night, when everyone was asleep."

Once, Haberey and Le Corre held a sit-up competition while dangling by their legs from a bridge over an eight-lane superhighway. Another time, Le Corre climbed along the transom of a tower crane, legs dangling in the void nearly a hundred feet above the ground. "It was crazy," Le Corre recalls, "but you just felt so alive."

Haberey's urban antics helped kick off the parkour craze, but Le Corre, like most of his followers, eventually grew disillusioned. "I supported him for a while," Le Corre says, "but it turned into a cult of his personality. It became too dark and underground, all about helping him, not others."

And I'm super excited for what Erwan has in store for the future:

One question we all seem to be pondering is finally asked out loud by Fred Fombrun: "What exactly am I supposed to do when I get back home?" he says. "There aren't a lotta parks where I live in northern New Jersey."

Le Corre is working on an answer. In 2009, he met Robb Wolf, the influential CrossFit instructor and The Paleo Solution author, through a mutual friend. Inspired by Wolf's story and the viral success of CrossFit, Le Corre began hammering out a business plan modeled on it: he hopes to train and certify instructors, who will license the brand for their own gyms or create grown-up outdoor playgrounds like ours. Or both.

I'll take this moment to point out that I was the mutual friend who put Erwan and Robb Wolf in touch!

2. My buddy Michael Malice, author of UFC Champion Matt Hughes' book Made in America, was on Fox News talking about legalizing MMA.  He did a great job.  Why was MMA banned originally?  Too brutal?  "Human cock-fighting," as John McCain put it.   But the reality is that there are few serious injuries or deaths...far fewer than football or boxing and probably a lot of other sports.  And even if there were more injuries, it's just more of the nanny state protecting people against themselves.  (First 3 minutes.)

3. Who ate the Neanderthals?  Other Neanderthals?  Were Neanderthals cannibals?

The bones were cut by stone tools and smashed open for marrow, suggesting that the Neandertals were cannibalized before the ground collapsed beneath their remains and buried them soon after their death, 49,000 years ago.

My question is: WHEN IS THE MOVIE COMING OUT?!?

Comments

"...I'll take this moment to

"...I'll take this moment to point out that I was the mutual friend who put Erwan and Robb Wolf in touch!"Wow, I don't remember Erwan teaching about patting one's self on the back! ;^) Of course, I'm kidding. Somebody should be giving you a pat on the back because of your part in exposing these ideas and people to a larger audience. I know that I would have never heard of MovNat (I was at the workshop where the magazine article's pictures were taken) or had "The Paleo Solution" on my Christmas list if I hadn't heard about them from you. Thank you and Merry Christmas!

Ha, I don't deny it was a

Ha, I don't deny it was a moment of pride. Looks like your workshop was a blast. Merry Chrismtas!

 Hey John, am I mistaken in

 Hey John, am I mistaken in remembering you mention that you' ve been to one of these MovNat retreats? Care to comment further on it (e.g., is it worth the $1700?)? 

This article in the LA Times

This article in the LA Times talks about the growing view among nutritionists and scientists that the rise in carb intake, not fat consumption, is to blame for America's obesity problems and, without using the word paleo, brings up the paleo nutritional view in the end http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-carbs-20101220,0,5464425.story?page=1

My only question here is in

My only question here is in regard to the northern New Jersey comment. I'm in that area, looking at the NYC skyline and a short train ride from yourself. There is plenty of space for me to run around on and leap off of. There are chickens being raised on the top of my block where I jump over railroad tracks. Wilderness is where you make it. I see foxes and turkeys in my neighborhood.