In December of 1960, while still the President-Elect, JFK wrote an article for Sports Illustrated called \u201cThe Soft American.\u201d In it he bemoaned the fact that American young people lagged far behind their European counterparts in physical fitness.<\/p>\n
Kennedy believed the \u201csoftness\u201d of the nation\u2019s youth portended greater consequences than the obvious health one. \u201cThe physical well being of the nation is an important foundation for the vigor and vitality of all activities of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
What did our 35th<\/sup> President propose doing about it?<\/p>\n In a word\u2014WALKING.<\/p>\n Most notably, he revised a challenge begun by Teddy Roosevelt for folks to walk 50 miles in 20 hours (spread over 3 days). Though most Americans didn\u2019t get that extreme, many did start walking regularly.<\/p>\n Hiking clubs and community walks surged. And, according to one source, \u201csuddenly, walking was \u2018cool\u2019 again.\u201d<\/p>\n Making walking cool\u2014could it happen again?<\/p>\n Tomorrow\u2019s blog.<\/p>\n **<\/p>\n JFK\u2019s brother Bobby (Robert F Kennedy) walked the 50 miles in street shoes. Is it any wonder RFK Jr. is so fit?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In December of 1960, while still the President-Elect, JFK wrote an article for Sports Illustrated called \u201cThe Soft American.\u201d In it he bemoaned the fact that American young people lagged far behind their European counterparts in physical fitness. Kennedy believed the \u201csoftness\u201d of the nation\u2019s youth portended greater consequences than the obvious health one. \u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3591"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3594,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions\/3594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}