Extremes, Survival, Injuries, Faster Higher Stronger - Fitness Fixer

My professional and life work is understanding and studying the fastest, highest, quickest, coldest, hottest, bravest, strongest in human physiology. I study the body in extremes. I study what makes one person able to survive an event and the person next to him perish. Strong brave men get hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me. I make grown men cry.

Since I was small, I wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to live under the sea. I wanted to understand why three people will fall in freezing water, one will die, one will be sick, and one will be fine. In the same marathon, some racers will have heat exhaustion, others experience cold injury. I have lived underwater, on ships, and mountains. I examine long unsolved cold cases as Science Officer of The Vidocq Society, not to know how they died, but their state while alive. (I am the "Spock of Vidocq.")

Since I was very small, I read accounts of survival - stories of defecting MIG pilots, tiger pit prisoners, remote plane crashes, snowbound hikers, expeditions across continents, near-drownings, children of war, swimming races in the arctic, the different bones developed in children learning different trades and movement patterns. I grew up to study the difference in joint angles and limb lengths that confer speed or strength advantage. I study which and how much training supersedes inborn advantage and increases performance.

As a research scientist, I do the "get-your-hands-cold-and-dirty" work to distinguish what actually happens and how it comes to be that way. Many things we heard in school or in stories were never true, just repeated. My work in extremes is mostly behind the scenes (the team player scenario). Piles of data I collected and hand-analyzed for countless studies are in my file cabinets and brain. I apply these studies to develop training methods and injury recovery methods that work for the moment, and for long-term health.

Some readers have asked me to make a category of Fitness Fixer stories called Dr. Bookspan's Excellent Adventures. I will work on it. A few samples are in the Related links below.

Happy Solstice, the longest night of the year in the Northern hemisphere.

Related Fun Fitness Fixer:

• Time of Death From Body Temperature?
• Living Under The Sea
• Extending The Envelope - Military and Civilian
• Do Military Chants Help Running? - The Jody Calls
• Space Walks
• Indiana Jones Rocket Sled
• Hyperbaric and Aquatic Medicine On Travel
• Exercise and Medicine Underwater and at High Pressure
• Forensic Anthropology and Bone Density
• Three Common Swimming and SCUBA Myths in the News Again
• Thaipusam - Exercise of Body and Spirit
• Muay Thai Monks on Horseback
  

Related Solstice Fitness Fixer:

• Kid Fitness Reading Maps

Random Fun Fitness Fixer:

• Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine