Dear Keith,

I hope you are well. From Twitter in general it would seem there is an emotional shift, and even when I ruthlessly unfollow people who tweet about politics the effect is still felt, and I sense this in your latest tweets too. Outer chaos is difficult to ignore! It is a world event and its effects are felt in Mexico too.

I write to you because I sense a pretty honest commitment to following the progress of my own health, and I think as a specialist on the body you are of invaluable help in this endeavor. The idea is to have an self-performed annual check-up. I am in currently in good shape, I’ve been going to yoga during 6 months (divided due to COVID) and I currently consistently and effortlessly hit the gym every day, but I’ve been on and off for years.

My weight lifting routine is pogressive overload and through your own example I realize I am not supposed to be trying to outperform on a daily basis!

I already track my gym progress on a daily basis, but through yoga and examples such as yourself, I’ve learned that looking at the numbers is looking at the spedometer instead of the road. Besides registering my deadlift, bench press, squat, in numbers, I ought to register myself in video as you do yourself.

So my direct question to you would be:

What are some poses/exercises which depend solely on standing on even floor available to me which best reflect the state of my strength and flexibility? Reaching your toes for sure. Downward facing dog. Torsions. Arm bends. Lifting your leg on a straight back. The list could be yoga poses, but there’s a probably a better and more clear way of demonstrating flexibility, balance and strength.

I plan to add blood work and other health markers into it, but my budget is meager and if I am to measure myself at this time, it should be by almost free methods, such as blowing into a balloon (surely there are measured balloons?) and whatever convenient means are available to me, but I think doing some basic blood work may be cheap. But these are the ten thousand things.

I hope that you agree to my humble proposition to offer you credit for your help, in a way to make it a public consultation. This I intend to post to https://exploration.work which will be a sort of “paths of development” that I have for myself.