Play as if Your Life Depended on It

Play as if Your Life Depended on It is the first fitness book I've ever read, ever, to make having fun as integral to exercise as muscle growth. It's clearly written, but it's so dense with new insights into the very nature of physical being that you kind of get distracted from the realization that this man, Frank Forencich, has made the fun-exercise connection. It wasn't until I got to page 213 that I really understood what he is all about.

"One way to make movement more playful," he writes, "is to take boring single-plane movements and make them more complex and multi-planar...Instead of doing a straight squat, see if you can create a variation that turns or spirals...By creating these variations, you'll not only make your training more functional and effective, but you'll have a lot more fun as well."

See, he's talking about fun! As if it were OK to have it. Even in places like Fitness Centers.

This is a brave thing to do, especially in a world where people get so driven they forget who's doing the driving, if you know what I mean. It's a think that could completely prevent you from being taken seriously.

Further evidence of how serious Forencich is about this fun thing can be found on his site, GoAnimal. (GoAnimal? you ask. As in "Go ahead, be the animal that you are." As in, what a remarkably fundamental connection to help people make.). See, for example, his collection of games. They may not be your idea of fun. At first. Until you realize how much more fun they are than your idea of exercise.