SecondSport.com, or Me & My Medicine Ball

This gentleman is Aaron Molyneaux Hewlett. He is seated with Indian clubs, a medicine ball, dumbbells, and a wand, these instruments were known as the "Four Horsemen of Hand-Held Exercise Tools". Hewlett was the first director of the Harvard College Gymnasium built in 1859. He taught there until his death in 1871. I recently discovered this man through an ESPN Magazine article online, titled "The Ball That Just Wont Die" by David Fleming. It has opened up a whole new vein of history on medicine balls for me. According to Mr. Fleming, the medicine ball's first recorded appearance in America was in one of these photos. Hewlett sits at his desk, one foot propped on a medicine ball. Additionally, Fleming reports that the term medicine ball first appeared in an English-language dictionary in 1895. Check out the above title link for some mind blowing medicine ball stuff, and Google, A Conversation with Aaron Molyneaux Hewlett and his Friends. These photographs are the only posed pictures I have seen with the "Four Horsemen of Hand-Held Exercise Tools" or as I thought they were called The Four Horseman of Fitness. I thought it might be just a myth, but this is hard evidence of pre-Civil War physical education; and, at Harvard!
We are still meeting and doing our Daily Dozen every MWF @ 7am on the BB court behind Zilker Elem; You'll come.

Aren't kids just incredible? They have very few poor movement habits, with enthusiasm to spare and no sense of "can't". We find this same wonderment in our new medicine ball members as they sense their own new bilateral movements patterns developing while they are learning the Daily Dozen. It is the tapping into that emotional motivation that we use to sustain our own wonderment with movement. As we strive to perfect our Daily Dozen, primarily though our accuracy skill, to control our pace and efforts directed though the medicine ball. The feedback we get from our own medicine ball throws self-coach us to that perfection we seek.

Get your Medicine Ball "Daily Dozen" every MWF at 7am this summer on the Ann Arbor side (on the BB courts) of Zilker Elementary School in Austin, TX; y'all come. Join us for a great summer conditioning extravaganza. Or, at least a rational approach to fitness & health.

I have recently bought this vintage
"Rawlings" Medicine Ball that is very unique. I have tried to buy this medicine ball for over 4 years and am proud to finally have it. Although, it is small, 10 inches in diameter and weighs only a little over 3 pounds, it may be one of the only surviving medicine balls of this type from a major historical USA manufacturer. The strap/sling goes completely through the medicine ball and anchors on the opposite side. This medicine ball is now the center piece to my collection.