Featuring Colin Pistell

Because there are so many young professionals out there making their mark on the world, I have decided to showcase some here.  Twice a month, I feature a young professional who is doing wonderful things and whose work I think you will find interesting.

This week: Colin Pistell

Your Website:  Fifth Ape

Describe what you do:

Put simply, I am a coach, a trainer, and a small business owner. My company, Fifth Ape, has a unique approach to health and fitness. Fifth Ape is a system of training natural movement skills and evolutionary fitness. We recognize that we are a part of the natural environment - indeed, we were shaped by it - and that we are healthiest when we are well integrated with the land, with each other, and with ourselves.

Modern fitness programs focus on isolation - they isolate muscle groups on machines, isolate everyone from natural world in massive climate controlled big box gyms, and anesthetize their clients with televisions mounted in front of treadmills, loud music, and other gimmicks. We believe physical movement is an aesthetic, joyful experience. We train natural movement skills such as running, jumping, lifting, carrying, throwing, catching, climbing, crawling, vaulting, and defense - skills our ancestors relied on for millennia - as a means of reconnecting with our environment and with our own animal nature. We also place a heavy emphasis on community - Fifth Ape training is done in a group where everyone works closely with everyone. Most importantly, we believe in the power and importance of play, both as a means of getting physically fit and a way to foster creativity, learning, and happiness.

Describe the most organized space in your home:

My spice rack. I love to cook and I tend to get improvisational in the kitchen. Knowing where everything is in the heat of the moment helps prevent tragic over-application of cayenne pepper.

If you had a magic wand, which chore would you take care of with it?

Dusting. I’m generally pretty good about keeping everything orderly, getting the laundry done, etc. but dusting always seems to fall by the wayside - it’s time consuming!

How do you keep track of your to-do items?

I use a combination of Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, Mindbody, and lots of post-it notes. I try to find combinations of solutions that integrate well with each other and sync up automatically in the cloud. It’s working out pretty well so far.

If you could invite anyone to join you and your friends for a dinner party at your place, who would you choose? And what would you prepare?

I assume we aren’t constrained to living people? I’d have to go with Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins. Both men’s writings have done much to shine a light on the stupendously intricate machinery of nature, from the birth of galaxies to the evolution of bacteria. Sagan and Dawkins both call out the fact that we are all intimately connected to the universe, down to an atomic level, and that we are connected to our past through a great biological thread that leads back to the origins of life. Both have been primary influencers of Fifth Ape’s philosophy.

I’d prepare a hearty meal of homemade sauerkraut and beef bourguignon to fuel the intellectual conversation. Ideally, we’d finish with a big bowl of berries, assuming they were in season.

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Thanks Colin!  The more I learn about your company, the more I love it! 

You can also follow Fifth Ape on Facebook and for Triangle folks, there is a Fifth Ape Meetup group.

If you or someone you know would be a great addition to this feature, please email me with contact information.  { info [at] orderuporganizing.com }