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Fitness

The Sixty Year Fitness Challenge

We won’t turn the tide in America’s fight with obesity until we give people of all ages the tools to manage their own health and fitness.

Mindith Rahmat

Written by Mindith Rahmat Last updated on October 31, 2017

For all our advances in medical technology and understanding of how the human body works, we don’t seem to be getting any healthier. In fact, the first generation in American history with a shorter life expectancy than their parents has already been born. Lousy diet choices and a culture that demands sedentarism from cradle to grave have spawned a health crisis that costs us $147 billion annually and is the second leading preventable cause of death in the United States, and worldwide.

The answer to all of this, according to Ben Rollenhagen, is how we equip people from an early age to manage their own health and fitness. Ben’s job is to create future physical education instructors at Central Michigan University, and he believes that a move away from the current emphasis on sports and performance is crucial to creating a population that doesn’t require personal trainers, much less bariatric surgery.

Ben and Pete Hitzeman discuss the foundations of his lifelong fitness philosophy, how we can decide for ourselves how strong is strong enough, and the current threatened state of physical education in America. He unpacks the mindset behind many of the excuses people use not to get fit, and discusses the nature of the challenge we face in helping people overcome those excuses. He illustrates the danger of blind adherence to arbitrary performance benchmarks, and talks about how he’s working to save physical education through his work at the Specialized Foundation.

Mindith Rahmat

About Mindith Rahmat

Mindith is a born mover. She has spent her life exploring various athletic disciplines, starting with ballet and modern dance from an early age. She went on to become a E-RYT 500 certified yoga therapist and teacher and discovered CrossFit after the birth of her daughter.

Mindith coached CrossFit at a number of boxes near her home in Southern California, which lead to her involvement in Russian kettlebells and Olympic weightlifting. She has coached a wide variety of populations and cares deeply for women’s health, specializing in pregnancy and postpartum fitness. She is currently studying the principles of Natural Movement and Kettlebell Sport, and is working to complete an additional teacher training in the Taoist art of Yin Yoga with Master Paulie Zink.

Mindith founded Breaking Muscle in 2011. Over 5 million people a month have visited the site, hundreds of thousands of them follow Breaking Muscle on social media, nearly 2,000 coaches have written or appeared on its pages, and there are thousands of free, fully-formed training plans freely available. Breaking Muscle has won numerous awards in the industry and is recognized for pioneering new approaches to fitness and coaching techniques. In 2021, Breaking Muscle was acquired by Barbend. Mindith continues to devote time to her kids, pursue her doctorate in psychology, do research, and teach.

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