Uncover your inner athlete!

Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be eaten.. Each morning in Africa a lion awakes - it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve.


No matter if you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up you had better be running!



Thursday, November 22, 2012

Running from hunger


Normally I don’t do too many book reviews or product endorsements, but every once in a while one comes across a book that is really good and that provokes some thought in me and is worth sharing with readers.

This week I reviewed a book called The Gold Mine Effect byRasmus Ankersen, an ex-professional footballer from Denmark who took a career sabbatical to go in search of real meaning of talent and why some small and at times inhospitable areas on earth continue to produce champions in certain sports while the west with all the money, comforts and technology can’t replicate this success.

To achieve his goal, the author goes to live and train with athletes in the mountains of East Africa (long distance running), the streets of Brazil (football), ghettos of Jamaica (sprinting) and in rural Russia (ladies tennis). The realisation that he arrives at is that the reason that the west can’t or won’t reach these levels is because they quite simply don’t ‘want it’ badly enough.

This desire to achieve is something that I also highlighted in my book ‘The urban warrior - more than just an existence. You see folks money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t buy hunger or hunger to succeed.

For alot of kids in these areas, sport is their only hope at a better life. There is no backup plan of going to university or learning a trade - they have one shot and therefore they throw the kitchen sink at it. Often their parents are alot harder on them than western parents where we still tend to pander to kids needs and let them get away with murder while buying them everything that they need. For many kids there is no mummy and daddy to buy them a computer or video games and other junk - they may want such things but know that they have to first probably train until they fall over to earn money to buy it themselves.

Running together (while hopefully not pandering to kids), stride for stride on a life changing ride! -- Sean Muller

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