Play as If Your Life Depends on It: Functional Exercise and Living for Homosapiens

by Frank Forencich

Offers a comprehensive look at human physical fitness and health. This book connects us with our hunting and gathering origins. It teaches us how to integrate movement into our daily lives and train... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972335803
• ISBN13: 9780972335805
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Go Animal Publishing
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Inspiring and Revolutionary

"Play As If Your Life Depends On It" will motivate everyone, from sofa slugs to physical dynamos. Incorporating the idea that humans evolved in the African Savannah, the author makes a compelling case that we need to be physical in ways that honor our ancestry. While he doesn't advocate giving up the 9 to 5 in favor of hunting and gathering, he encourages considering one's every day movements and varying them in ways that emphasize grace and flexibility. No program is instituted, but his concept is one that deeply resonates. Whether this translates into a spring in one's step, or a determination to engage in playful activity every day is left to the reader.Truly a refreshing, sound idea without the vehemency or stridency and guilt that one finds in run-of-the-mill "fitness" books.

Excellent new outlook to fitness!

I've always been quite active, but I have wanted to add pizzazz to my otherwise gruesome workout routine. Play as if Your Life Depends on It is an excellent guide that helps the reader integrate unconventional workout and play moves into our ordinary lives. Frank Forencich gives workout and exercise a whole new meaning by explaining how hunting and gathering is relevant to everyday physical activity. This book is as essential as it is insightful. I for one look forward to play as though my life depends on it!

Time To Play

This book is fun to read, thoughtful, and inspirational. Frank Forencich has figured out how fitness got boring and why "working out" really seems like work: we've forgotten the importance of play. This book is satisfying on a number of levels -- intellectual (it discusses the importance of function in an evolutionary context), emotional (it reminds us how fun it USED to be to exercise), and practical (it gives us good, simple roadmaps to recapturing the love of movement we had as kids). Forencich gives the reader a great paradigm: focus on function, and the other benefits of fitness will come naturally. The title isn't just tongue-in-cheek -- by the end of the book you realize that not just the quality of your life but your life itself might really depend on your playing as if your life depends on it. This book goes way beyond your typical exercise book. It's the only one of its kind I know of. As a fitness book, though, it's definitely the best I've read. Ever.

Fitness for life as a human being

Frank Forencich brings the concept of fitness back to our common ground, the bodies we have inherited through millions of years of evolution. In light and playful terms, he explains how we can satisfy our genetic inheritance. If we use our bodies for the tasks for which they were designed, we will not only achieve overall health and fitness, but we will enjoy ourselves more. He explains that our genes cause us enjoy eating, and loafing, and making love...because these are adaptive behaviors! Get off the treadmill and bench press, and have exercise be as much fun as eating, sleeping, and sex...play as if your life depends on it!

A fluid and playful approach to physical fitness...

A fluid and playful approach to physical fitness. Frank Forencich tackles many of the phantoms associated with sport culture and he opens up the ideas of excesize, sport and fitness in a way that is acheivable to all. In his own words, excersize should be "playfull, primal and functional". Frank clearly explains how excersize is a basic ingrediant in life and how it can remain child-like and challenging in all levels of development.In addition, this book is an easy read. Frank carries the reader with his light and humorous wit through a history of physical fitness rooted in the discapline of evolutionary biology.