FemmiNation: Men Today Are Weaker Than They Were a Generation Ago

Yes. That's because they're pussies, in the main.

In a series of studies testing grip and pinch strength, researchers report in the Journal of Hand Therapy that among the 237 healthy millennials studied between the ages of 20 and 34, men today are significantly weaker than their counterparts of the '80s.

Specifically, men could squeeze with 120 pounds of force in 1985 and only 95 today, reports Today.com. The strength of women dropped off, too, but not as substantially.

Mark Rippetoe, a big proponent of the idea that Strength = Quality of Life, is meanwhile ripping the Olympics as being soft and weak and for Babies.

The Olympics has turned from a celebration of human physical performance that once transcended global politics and popular culture into a propaganda event for the dominant interpretation of global politics and popular culture.

It is no longer about athletics and who wins the athletic competition -- it is now concerned with shaping our perceptions of what it means to compete with each other, and why we probably shouldn't celebrate winning at all. It has become an embarrassing mess for the entire human race, and it's time to stop wasting resources, time, and attention span on it.

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The Olympic Games were originally contested in ancient Greece, and consisted of a combination of athletics and equestrian events that derived primarily from the most practical of considerations of physical prowess: warfare. Various footraces, throwing contests, and jumping events comprised the ancient Games, which were held in the familiar four-year interval for about a thousand years.

Reconstituted in 1894, they have changed quite a bit over the past century. They now include three basic types of contests: 1.) Games such as golf, hockey, soccer, and basketball, where the athletes compete within the framework of a “score” generated within the rules of the game; 2.) Artistic judged events such as gymnastics and diving, where the athletes attempt to get as close as possible to a standard for the contested movement developed by their governing organization, and are judged for conformation to the standard by the consensus opinion of a panel of expert judges; and 3.) Athletic events such as the races, the heavy field events, and weightlifting that generate an objective, quantitatively measured score, and combat sports such as wrestling and fencing that generate a win or a loss.

Of these three types of contests, the athletics events display the greatest fidelity to the original idea of the Olympic Games. As far as I'm concerned, the addition of men's and women's golf was the best indication of the developing intent of the IOC.

Speaking of the idea of the Olympics having originated as essentially War Games in shorts: George S. Patton was an Olympian in 1912. He took the bronze in the modern Pentathalon, which seems pretty warlike, consisting of five events: Running, riding a horse, swimming, fencing, and shooting.

Patton, oddly enough, did poorly at shooting, but made up for it with his performance in fencing and running.

Incidentally, he designed the Army's sword the next year.

posted by Ace at 12:10 PM

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