As you might know or remember, the 100 Day Warrior has found a new home in January. I opened a zendo on Nieuwe Herengracht 95, providing me with my first personal meditation and training space and the trainers and me started collaborating with the new gym in town: Vondelgym.
One of the founding fathers of that gym is Arie Boomsma. He is a Dutch tv personality, writer, former model and fitness enthusiast. I am not a big fan of tv and I don’t watch regular programs (I did watch the World Cup of course). I haven’t owned my own tv since 2004. But I have been aware of Arie’s tv shows up to a point that I even watched a couple of episodes online. This was in 2014, when the 100 Day Warrior was still in developmental phase. I was curious about his work because he embodied something relatively rare in The Netherlands: a masculine, contemporary presence combined with openness about his Christian beliefs. I resonate with the way he explores his spiritual path: personal, non-dogmatic, honest, respectful and compassionate of others. People around me were constantly saying that the 100 Day Warrior should be translated into a tv format and because I lacked any experience I needed somebody to talk to who I could trust. Since the tv industry is famous for being a snake pit the only person I could come up with was Arie. I had a feeling that he would understand me.
It is an interesting twist of faith that Arie and I are now working out together under the guidance of the trainers of the 100 Day Warrior. ‘My guys’ Wouter and Mike, the personal trainers who designed the programs for all the participants of the 100 Day Warrior, are now also offering their skills to the clients of Vondelgym with a special bi-weekly ‘skills training’. We are both fitness enthusiasts but not professionals. We work out often but are not as knowledgeable about the science and physiology behind certain exercises as Wouter and Mike. So we are attending squat class and are learning an impressive amount of new things about a basic exercise that I always believed to be pretty clear-cut.
Afterwards Arie and I had an interesting conversation. For me one of the big revelations of the 100 Day Warrior is to find out how closely related the underlying principles of spiritual and physical development are. What goes for the squat also goes for the self: what you are unaware of becomes your weakness. And once you become aware of your weak spot or blind spot and start giving it attention you become more whole and complete. By accepting and acknowledging that my underdeveloped adductors are my weakest link in my squat, I can improve my whole movement pattern by targeting them in my workouts more properly. My body will now become more balanced and will move more harmoniously. By accepting and acknowledging that fear of rejection is my biggest obstacle in professional communication I can grow as a human being and a professional by facing that fear. Now my communication will become more balanced and harmonious.
So much to learn.. And how nice to have found a like-minded soul to have such conversations with after we broke a sweat together.
In the accompanying pic you see Arie and I stretching our adductor muscles under the guidance of Mike. (Picture taken at Vondelgym, in case you were wondering)
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