Brilliant Brains and Bad@ss Bodies

Extreme NERDbodies

With an IQ of 160, a Masters in Chemical Engineering and having just been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to MIT, it's safe to say swedish student Dolph Lundgren certainly had a bright future in whichever field he chose, engineering for the private or public sectors, or a continued career in academics. But Dolph was also a 6'5" 240lb Black Belt in Martial Arts, who found a gig as a bouncer, met Grace Jones, persisted his way into a Rocky movie. and the rest as they say is history. Dolph became one of the more famous Extreme NERDbody personalities of the last few decades.

On a more personal level, was a student named Stephan Humphries who I knew from my own days as a student at the University of Michigan. Stephan studied electrical engineering and I had a few classes with him. While Stephan was quiet in class and rarely spoke, he was a determined student. He could often be seen going into the library after dinner and coming out of the library around midnight. Even for your average engineer, concerned only with their studies Stephan's study habits were impressive, but Stephan wasn't your average engineer. In addition to his academics, Stephan excelled on the gridiron, as a lineman for the University of Michigan Wolverines. This meant Stephan had two full time jobs; football and his studies. At 6'3 270lbs Stephan was hard to miss when he made his way to class, the library or the practice field. To see Stephan made it no real surpise to later find out he was drafted by the Chicago Bears and as one of the Black and Blue brothers Stephan was part of the Chicago Bears Superbowl Championship teams, largely considerd one of the top 3 best football teams of all time. But, the real surprise about Stephan was to find out he not only excelled in football while carrying a full curriculum for electrical engineering but that he graduated with an almost perfect GPA, (I seem to recall it being something like a 3.96. ) and he was a NCAA top Five Award recipient for the combination of academic and athletic excellence. After his NFL days were over, Stephan continued to excel in the brainy side of life as he proceeded to enroll and graduate from Medical School and is now the Medical Director for a renown hospital in the western United States. Stephan was perhaps the first real glimpse I was given into those rare individuals who possess equally rare mental and physical capabilities. And while mosat of us, me included, are not trying to become NFL linemen, or hollywood action stars, we do want to optimize our phyiscal capacity within the requirements and contributions of our sedentary and intellectual careers.