Simplicity

Simplicity is hard.

yesterday at the local Unitarian Universalist Church, where one of my housemates does snackfood for the children (and where I take my kiddos on Sundays) there was a bit of a bobble in the food showing up.

There's a lot of trouble with the snacks for the kids as, even though the church as a whole is focused loudly on eating a 'low carbon diet' with a focus on natural, sustainable, local foods- the children's snacks have traditionally been donuts, "go-gurt", "froot by the foot" and other such ....delicacies.

My housemate has been very instrumental in helping that change- to the point where you can almost guarantee the presence of whole fruit in the snacks.

Well, Simplicity is the problem. The kids are happy eating apple slices, or grapes, or carrot sticks. Parents who volunteer to supply food cannot handle this, though. There's a constant creeping need to add things- cheese slices, hummus dip, 7 kinds of fruit in quantities too small to share out well to the classes. Dips. Always something has to be added because just eating fruit can't be done!

This weekend when the parent who volunteered to go get food asked, it was a 5 minute circular conversation where everytime my housemate said "apples are in season, a 5 pound bag of apples is fine"- the response was "with what?" "can I get cheese?" "how about peanut butter?"

Simplicity.

As a knifemaker, I try and focus on simplicity in design and ergonomics. It's surprisingly hard. I practice, and regularly simplify a design I'm working on through 2 or 3 iterations.


In exercise- simplicity.

One of the things I like best about the Convict Conditioning program is that it is dead simple. You have 6 moves, each with 10 progressive steps. You just do them. it's helpful to have a pullup bar around, but it's very simple on equipment. Just do the reps. Slowly.

Kettlebells are currently going through a major period of complexification. There's really not but a few core movements- swings, snatches, getups, presses. Maybe deadlifts and hot potatoes, too.

You can do nothing but swings and getups forever and be in fantastic shape.

But lately it's like there's a new program variation, exercise, or 'system' every couple of hours.

I like the simple approaches:

100 morning swings.
lots of snatches twice a week.
20 minutes of 'messing around' twice a week.

or the brutal minimalist workout (TGUs, swings, and hindu squats)

The program minimum, of course.

One of the most attractive things about a kettlebell is simplicity. It's a gym in a cannonball. Why complexify it?