Keeping Fit All the Way Part 10

On rising, let him stand erect, brace his chest firmly out, and, breathing deeply, curl dumbbells (ten pounds each for a 165-pound man) fifty times without stopping. Then placing the bells on the floor at his feet, and bending his knees a little and his arms none at all, let him rise to an upright position with them fifty times.

After another minute's rest, standing erect, let him lift the bells fifty times as far up and out behind him as he can, keeping the elbows straight and taking care, when the bells reach the highest point behind, to hold them still there a moment.

Next, starting with the bells at the shoulders, let him push them up high over the head and lower them fifty times continuously.

Is it any wonder that we abandoned such "setting-up"?

Again, it was pointed out how, by special exercises, a man might increase his biceps two or three inches in a year and the calves of his legs an inch or two! Now what was the average man to do this for? What was the object? To admire himself in the mirror? Or did he intend to make of himself a professional weightlifter? Practically the only real good in all this was the deep breathing, and that would not be lasting except in so far as a part of the exercises tended to open up the chest.

How many of us have heard that fairy-tale that if we practised deep breathing for a few minutes daily our lungs would acquire the habit and we should continue it unconsciously when seated at our desks!

A PERFECTLY USELESS STUNT

Just to show what we are _not_ attempting to do, here is a quotation ill.u.s.trating perfectly the old-fas.h.i.+oned idea that health depends upon extraordinary muscular development:

At our suggestion he began practising this simple raising and lowering of the heels. In less than four months he had increased the girth of each calf one whole inch. When asked how many strokes a day he averaged, he said that it was from fifteen hundred to two thousand, varied some days by his holding in each hand, during the process, a twelve-pound dumbbell, and then only doing one thousand or thereabouts. The time he found most convenient was in the morning on rising, and just before retiring at night. The work did not take much time; seventy strokes a minute was found a good ordinary rate, so that fifteen minutes at each end of the day was all he needed.

We new recognize how silly are such exercises taken for the mere sake of adding an inch or two to an already serviceable muscle.

PENNY-WISE AND POUND-FOOLISH

It is poor gymnastics when the main object is to expend a certain number of foot-pounds of energy to secure increase in cardiac and pulmonary activity, without care being taken that these organs are in a favorable condition to meet the increased demand put upon them. It is poor gymnastics if we desire to astound the world by nicely finished and smoothly gliding combinations of complex movements fit to be put into the repertoire of a juggler, or by exhibitions of strength vying with those of a Sandow, if we do not take into consideration the effects upon the vital functions.

"Look at these fellows," said the physician, "built like giants and rotten inside!" True, he was speaking of a lot of big negroes, but he found the same condition in others--men with stiff muscles and slow movements, men with shoulders pulled forward and no chest expansion, breathing wholly with their abdomens. As he put it, "Those men will to-morrow be the recruits for another army, the one which fills the tuberculosis hospitals."

NATURE'S PROCESS

What we want is suppleness, chest expansion, resistive force, and endurance; and these do not come from great bulging knots of muscle nor from extraordinary feats of strength. Rapid s.h.i.+fts from severe training to a life of ease and indulgence is not Nature's process. It is not the way in which she carries on her work. Every step she makes is a little one. She seems never to reckon time as an essential in her economy. We should heed the lesson. The man who eats, drinks, and neglects all care of himself for a year, and then rushes madly into a period of severe physical exercise and reduction, may at the end of the month, if he possesses sufficient vitality, come out feeling fine. But if he repeats the process of letting himself go, Nature puts on the fat more and more and a second severe reduction becomes necessary. And it is only a question of time as to the exhaustion of any man's vitality through these extremes.

TIME THE GREAT ELEMENT

Any one who has had the opportunity of talking with the men in authority who are bearing the burden of fitting a nation for the present emergency cannot fail to be impressed with the fact that time is the great element. We must really prepare our men, we must make them fit in the shortest s.p.a.ce of time that will accomplish the result. And we must conserve our man-power. It is no longer a question of putting on such severe work as shall weed out all but the physical giants; we are not trying (as seemed to be the idea in the first Plattsburg camps, before the war) to make the going so stiff as to leave us only 50 per cent. of hardened men. We want every man who can be brought along rapidly into condition, and not the strongest only. Hence the problem takes on a new phase.

We all recognize that the quality and previous training of the men this country is sending into service have a very potent bearing upon the length of time required to make fighters of them. For, after all, the man whose training and discipline have been along a kindred line becomes serviceable much earlier than the man who has to acquire the necessary spirit and quality. No one who has listened to the coaches of our various college teams, or who has read either the preliminary prospects of a game or the account of it afterward, but must have been impressed with the continual repet.i.tion of emphasis upon the "fighting spirit."

Hence, when our athletes flock almost _en ma.s.se_ to the colors, it means that we are enlisting a large number of picked men who have been in training both mentally and physically, and who, under discipline, will make obedient, courageous, and enthusiastic fighters. But a large number of these have been out of college or out of strenuous athletics a year or two, or longer, and they need physical conditioning to get back.

There is thus a new idea of considerable importance involved in these condensed setting-up exercises. For the world does move, and those who thought themselves up to date on boats, aeroplanes, drill, and the like have found even within a year that they must make acquaintance with advanced theories and new and improved methods.

ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES

Probably the most vital point is that the setting-up exercises should not "take it out of the men." If we find a man exhilarated and made eager to work at the end of his setting-up we have accomplished far more than if we tire him out or exhaust any of his store of vitality. If, in addition to this, we can reduce the amount of time occupied in these setting-up exercises and yet obtain results, we have saved that much more time for other work.

Because they did take it out of the men, the old-time conventional setting-up exercises were s.h.i.+rked and the leaders were unable to detect this s.h.i.+rking; men went through the motions, but slacked the real work.

Furthermore, all these systems tended to take a longer period of time than was necessary to accomplish the desired results, and made "muscle bound" the men who practised them.

It has been found in sports and athletic games that over-developed biceps, startling pectoral muscles, and tremendously muscled legs are a disadvantage rather than an advantage. The real essential is, after all, the engine, the part under the hood, as it were--lungs, heart, and trunk. Finally, if we give a man endurance and suppleness he becomes more available in time of need.

Another point of equal importance is that the setting-up exercises should be rendered as simple as possible. If we are obliged to spend a considerable period of time in teaching the leader so that he can handle setting-up exercises, extension of the number of leaders is rendered increasingly difficult. If, therefore, we can make this leaders.h.i.+p so simple that a long course of instruction is not necessary, we save here, in these days of necessarily rapid preparation, a very material amount of time.

Still, further, it is found that many of the present setting-up exercises made an extraordinarily wide variation of effort between heavy and light men. The light man would put in only a small amount of muscular effort, whereas the heavy man, in the same length of time and under the same exercise, would be taxed far more than he could comfortably stand.

Again, in the point of age, similar variations necessarily exist.

Naturally it is out of the question to a.s.sume that the youth from eighteen to twenty-five and the man of fifty-five to sixty can take the same amount and the same kind of exercise. On the other hand, if we consider the work each is required to do in his daily routine, we can, so far as the setting-up exercises are concerned, bring the two points nearer together, especially if we regard these setting-up exercises in the proper light--a mere preparation for the more onerous tasks that are to follow.

MODERN PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Bearing all these points in mind, we test out the setting-up exercises so that we may obtain a set answering the following requirements:

First--Reduce them to a period of eight or ten minutes once or twice a day.

Second--Make them simple for leaders to learn.

Third--Eliminate movements that, on account of the daily work, are unnecessary.

Fourth--Render them more difficult of evasion or s.h.i.+rking.

Fifth--Direct them specifically in the line of increased resisting power, endurance, and suppleness.

Sixth--Make them of value in establis.h.i.+ng co-ordination, muscular control, and more prompt response to command.

Seventh--Equalize them for use by both heavy and light men.

Eighth--Select the exercises in such a way that the set may be of nearly equal value to both enlisted men and officers, as well as to executives behind the lines.

SLACKING IN SETTING-UP DRILLS

Many of us have seen setting-up drills of various kinds. Moving pictures of such drills show in a very striking way how much of the work not only could be slacked, but _is_ being slacked right along. In fact, high officers in our service have become so disgusted with the setting-up exercises as to consider abandoning them altogether. In some stations or cantonments a great many men were tired out with the setting-up exercises; so much so that they had neither life nor vitality for some little time for other work. For the sake of ill.u.s.tration, let us examine one particular movement. It consists of the men lying flat on the ground or floor; then, with straight back, lifting themselves by the arms; finally, giving a jump with the arms and clapping the hands together once, and then coming back to the original position. The non-commissioned officer who was leading this exercise weighed about 138 pounds. It is easy to imagine the contrast between his doing this stunt and a heavy man of 180 or 190 pounds attempting it.

It is unnecessary to describe in detail the parts of the setting-up exercise which tend to develop members which are already pretty thoroughly exercised in the daily routine of work and drill. The average man of the service needs expansion of chest capacity, which adds to his resistive power; a stronger, better-developed back; and suppleness and quickness and mobility of trunk. To develop these qualities we must have exercises which may be continued on board s.h.i.+p or near the front, and which can be carried on without apparatus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEG-RAISING]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIDE-FALLING. THIS ARM AND BODY WORK PLACES A HANDICAP ON A HEAVY MAN]

The ordinary system of setting-up exercises has been growing out of favor for some time. Athletic trainers have come to look with considerable suspicion upon the gymnasium-made candidate with big biceps and large knots of muscles. It was also found that, outside of weight-lifting and inordinate "chinning" and apparent great strength on the parallel bars, these men were not so valuable as the lesser muscled but more supple candidates. To put it briefly, it was found in actual practice that what was under the ribs was of more value than what lay over them.

A CALL FOR WORK THAT WILL COUNT

Even at the risk of repet.i.tion, some facts should be driven home.