SecondSport.com, or Me & My Medicine Ball

We stayed inside.
Tue 01/16 & 01/18

We're back from the Holidays and ready to begin anew. January is traditionally the time of the year that the Fitness industry surges with renewal. This has been going on for over 100 years here in the ole USA. Robert arrived to join Bruce & Stephen to make three. Santa brought Robert a new 10 pound medicine ball for Christmas in the colors of Baylor University, green & gold (yellow); so we proceeded to break it in with great enthusiasm.
The photo on the left is the original and the photo on the right is the cleaned and restored copy. This photo was taken May, 12, 1908 of a group of Turner women in Wilmerding, PA. "The Turnverein movement in German schools in the early 19th century emphasized the importance of physical education. German immigrants brought this movement to the United States, establishing Turnverein societies in many American cities. They also prepared gymnastics teachers in normal schools and pushed legislation to make physical education mandatory in American schools. Although membership in Turner societies has since declined, Turner festivals, which feature athletic and cultural competitions, still exist."; from the 1976 abstract of "The Contributions of German Turners to America's Exercise Expression: Then and Now", by Robert Knight Barney.

Our group started off the new year as a bunch of no-shows, except for Robert, that's him in the black T-shirt behind Stephen on the right. In this photo, by Paul of Paul's Purple Ball, Bruce is doing the most difficult bubble blow where he exhails with great force and drives the ball to Craig, those are his fingers on the ball to the left. Robert was away last week in Chicago but on his return he made the "showing for the Group New Years week. There have been medballers in Chicago going way back; that's Jim Braddock, aka The Cinderella Man (Russell Crow's movie), & Al Capone tossing the ball around in earlier times.