Professor Locs: June 2013

06/10/2013

My Shaun T Insanity Experience

I would like to report a crime. I was physically assaulted.

The good news is that I can positively identify my attacker. The assailant is a bald headed, light skinned African-American male about 6’1” who weighs about 175 pounds and goes by the street name Shaun T.

Yes, I am talking about the reigning prince of boot camp fitness, “Mr. Insanity” himself.

I have been committed to getting back in shape. I typically work out at the gym and was getting decent results, but I needed something different.

I had heard of the physical fitness empire built by the behemoth Shaun T, and I’ve marveled at this muscle man on television and wondered if he would stand up to all the hype.

We started with one of his first cardio DVDs. Shaun T is in a gym with an equally fit posse of participants with not an ounce of body fat between them…lol.

Historically when I work out, I am accustomed to doing a set and resting a few minutes before I start the next exercise. Shaun T’s Insanity workout flips the script and works you like a pack mule for three minutes with only 30 seconds to recover before the Insanity starts again.

But before you get to the exercises, you have to survive the warm-up, or as I loving refer to it, the 10-minute cardiac arrest.

This warm-up session will truly let you know just how out of shape you really are. I was just three minutes in when I slipped, fell and almost drowned in a small wading pool of my own sweat.

This guy definitely knows what he is doing. He baits you during the grueling cardio routines. You are sweating buckets, your joints ache and the only thing louder than the background music is the sound of your own labored breathing, but just when you are about to say “I quit,” Shaun T whips off his shirt. So now that you are face to face with the physical perfection that is Shaun T, you realize maybe, just maybe, that you too can have a six pack like Shaun T instead of the 40 ounces of Old E I carried around.

My love-hate relationship continued for more than two weeks. And like anyone who has been assaulted, I wanted proof of the attack, so I posted daily pictures of my grueling encounters. I noticed almost immediately after posting to Facebook that other victims would come forward to share similar stories of how Shaun T had whooped their big butts into shape.

I had been indoctrinated into a bizarre, cult-like following of P90X, Insanity, Asylum Shaun T followers I dubbed as Insaninites…lol. The Insaninites have their own culture. Folks were coming forward offering to be my coach, and alumni of the Insanity workout were all bragging about the coveted Insanity “I Earned It” t-shirt, which you can only get by submitting pre- and post-Insanity abuse pictures of yourself.

I have to admit that I began to look forward to my encounters with Shaun T, so I decided to try his latest endeavor: Hip Hop Abs.

I went online after watching the infomercial more times than I can count. Hip Hop Abs was on sale for $19.95, so basically for the price of an eight-piece family meal at KFC, I could dance myself into a beach body, bathing suit, summer, svelte physique.

My adventure online was eye opening and helped me appreciate how Shaun T built and maintains his empire. Before I could purchase Hip Hop Abs, I literally had to turn down about 15 other items. Shaun T was trying to sell me vitamins, meal replacement shakes, recovery juice, nutrition guides, workout charts, measuring tape and, I think, a BeachBody enema kit to literally flush those pesky pounds away.

Almost 20 minutes later, I finally emerged with a confirmation number for my Hip Hop Abs DVD. I also realized that the only thing more grueling than Shaun T’s cardio workout might be his online sales pitch…smile.

Posted at 06:53 AM in African-American, Celebrities, My Life, Popular culture, Sports | Permalink | Comments (1)

06/02/2013

Will Smith on Parenting

Will Smith is in the news, not for a blockbuster film but for his views on parenting, and more specifically for his views on African-Americans and their attitudes toward their children.

Power couple Will and Jada Smith have been known for their unorthodox relationship, which now seems to spread to how they raise their children. Will Smith claims that he and Jada do not subscribe to the notion of children as property, which he says is a strong belief in the black community, a notion he said dates back to slavery.

We’ve all heard the expression made popular by TV dad Bill Cosby: “I brought you into this world and I’ll take you out.” The expression, to me, is not so much about ownership but conveys a sense of deep responsibility. If black folks learned anything from slavery, they learned that they wanted more for the next generation.

“Dr. Smith” has a different approach: “My style of parenting is very similar to that of my parents, minus the concept of ownership,” he told HauteLiving.com. “I think that, specifically in African American households, the idea coming out of slavery, there’s a concept of your children being property and that was a major part that Jada and I released with our kids. We respect our children the way we would respect any other person.”

I believe Smith’s ideology is centered more in economic privilege than in culture. This is also systemic of what happens when we try to adopt a mainstream philosophy that may not work for marginalized communities. We try to treat your children like any other person when they are not like any other person; they are your children, and you are responsible for them as an authority figure.

They are not your pals.

I have a theory. One of the reasons it seemed easier to raise children back in the day was because our kids and families they associated with shared similar values.

My nephews have friends who will walk in your house, not speak, go into your refrigerator without asking permission or think they can stay over without permission, then look at you crazy if you ask to speak to their parents.

When I was a kid, I would never walk into a friend’s house and not speak to their family. Nor would I be allowed to be at their house past a certain hour and not have them look at me and query, “What are you doing here, and does your mother know where you are?”

What is frustrating is that you can be a good parent and instill all the right values in your children, but now, in our efforts to maybe be in the best neighborhoods and have our children attend certain schools, we are no longer around folks who share the same value system, and our kids want to bring that non-sense back home with them because they see their friends getting away with all kind of shenanigans.

As someone who had a career of working with young people, especially black youth, I have witnessed a decline in how young folks are being parented. In our attempt to assimilate and attain more than our parents and grandparents, we begin to cast off some of the values that made us successful adults – values like basic manners, hard work and honoring your family and elders.

In the HauteLiving.com interview, Will Smith said: “You would never tell a full-grown adult to clean their room, so we don’t tell our kids to clean their rooms. Actually, we tell our kids ‘you don’t have a room, that’s our room and we are letting you borrow it.’ ”

Hey that sounds familiar, because my mom used to say the same thing.

I really believe Smith is debating semantics. However you tell the Karate Kid to clean up his room is your business, but maybe the Fresh Prince should be reminded that his family’s West Philly values made him the A-list Hollywood star he is today, so maybe, just maybe, they were doing something right.