How to Get Strong and How to Stay So Part 2

This is a question quite worthy of the consideration of every teacher of girls in our land, and a paragraph full of suggestion, not only to every parent having a child's interests in his or her keeping, but to every spirited girl herself as well.

Every school-girl in America could be daily practised in a few simple exercises, calling for no costly, intricate, or dangerous apparatus, taking a little time, but yet expanding her lungs, invigorating her circulation, strengthening her digestion, giving every muscle and joint of her body vigorous play, and so keeping her toned up, and strong enough to be free from much danger either of incurring serious disease, or any of the lighter ailments so common among us. As to her usefulness, no matter where her lot is to be cast, it will be increased, and, it is not too much to add, her happiness would be greatly enhanced through all her life as well.

CHAPTER IV.

IS IT TOO LATE FOR WOMEN TO BEGIN?

But if the school-days are past and the girl has become a woman, what then? If the girl, trammelled by few duties outside of school-hours, has found amus.e.m.e.nt for herself, yet still needs daily and regular exercise to make and keep her fresh and hearty, much more does the woman, especially in a country like our own, where physical exercise for her s.e.x is almost unknown, require such exercise. Our women are born of parents who pride themselves on their mental qualifications, on a good degree of intelligence. Our educational system is one which offers an endless variety of spurs to continued mental effort.

Are not the majority of our women to-day, especially in town and city, physically weak? The writers on nervous disorders speak of the astounding increase of such diseases among us, of late years, in both s.e.xes, but especially among the women. General debility is heard of nowadays almost as often as General Grant. Most of our women think two miles, or even less, a long distance to walk, even at a dawdling pace, while few of them have really strong chests, backs, or arms. (If they wish to test their arms, for instance, let them grasp a bar or the rung of a ladder, and try to pull themselves up once till the chin touches. Not two in fifty will do it, but almost any boy can.) Hardly a day goes by when a woman's strength is not considerably taxed, and often overtaxed.

There is no calling of the unmarried woman where vigorous health and strength--not great or herculean, but simply such as every well-built and well-developed woman ought to have--would not be of great, almost priceless value to her. The shop-girl, the factory operative, the clerk in the store, the book-keeper, the seamstress, the milliner, the telegraph operator, are all confined, for many hours a day, with exercise for but a few of the muscles, and with the trunk held altogether too long in one position, and that too often a contracted and unhealthy one. Actually nothing is done to render the body lithe and supple, to develop the idle muscles, to deepen the breathing and quicken the circulation--in short, to tone up the whole system. No wonder such a day's work, and such a way of living, leaves the body tired and exhausted. It would, before long, do the same for the strongest man. No wonder that the walk to and from work is a listless affair. No wonder that, later on, special or general weakness develops, and the woman goes through life either weak and delicate, or with not half the strength and vigor which might readily be hers.

And is it any better with the married woman? Take one of limited means.

Much of the work about her home which servants might do, could she employ them, she bravely does herself, willing to make ten times this sacrifice, if need be, for those dearest to her. Follow her throughout the day, especially where there are children: there is an almost endless round of duties, many of them not laborious, to be sure, or calling for much muscular strength, but keeping the mind under a strain until they are done, difficult to encompa.s.s because difficult to foresee. In the aggregate they are almost numberless. A man can usually tell in the morning most of what is in front of him for the day--indeed, can often plan so as to say beforehand just what he will be at each hour. But not so the housewife and mother of young children. She is constantly called to perform little duties, both expected and unexpected, which cannot fail to tell on a person not strong. A healthy child a year old will often weigh twenty pounds; yet a woman otherwise weak will carry that child on her left arm several times a day up one or more flights of stairs, till you would think she would drop from exhaustion. Let sickness come, and she will often seem almost tireless, so devotedly will she keep the child in her arms. While children are, of course, carried less when they begin to walk, many a child two, or even three years old, is picked up by the mother, not a few times a day, even though he weighs thirty or forty pounds instead of twenty. Now for this mother to have handled a dumb-bell of that weight would have been thought foolish and dangerous, for nothing about her suggested strength equal to that performance. And yet the devotion of a weak mother to her child is quite as great as that of a strong one. Is it any wonder that this overdoing of muscles never trained to such work must sooner or later tell? It would be wonderful if it did not.

Yet now, suppose that same mother had from early childhood been trained to systematic physical exercise suited to her strength, and increasing with that strength until, from a strong and healthy child, she grew to be a hearty, vigorous woman, well developed, strong, and comely--what now would she mind carrying the little tot on her arm? What before soon became heavy and a burden--a willing burden though it was--now never seems so at all, and really is no task for such muscles as she now has. Instead of her day's work breaking her down, it is no more than a woman of her vigor needs--indeed, not so much as she needs--to keep her well and strong.

And, besides escaping the bodily tire and exhaustion, look at the happiness it brings her in the exhilaration which comes with ruddy health, in the feeling of being easily equal to whatever comes up, in being a stranger to indigestion, to nervousness and all its kindred ailments. This vital force, sparing her many of the doubts and fears so common to the weak, but which the strong seldom know, enables her to endure patiently privation, watching, and bereavement. And who is the more likely to live to a ripe old age, the woman who never took suitable and adequate exercise to give her even moderate vitality and strength, or she who, by a judicious and sensible system, suited to her particular needs, has developed such powers?

But, while this is all well enough for young girls, is it not too late for full-grown women to attempt to get the same benefits? The girl was young and plastic, and, with proper care, could be moulded in almost any way; but the woman already has her make and set, and these cannot readily be changed. Perhaps not quite so readily, but actual trial will show that the difficulty is largely imaginary. To many, indeed to most women, the idea is absolutely new, and they never supposed such change possible. Bryant, beginning at forty, made exercise pay wonderfully.

Bear in mind how, with a few minutes a day, Maclaren enlarged and strengthened men thirty years old; that, out of his cla.s.s of over a hundred, the greatest gain was in the oldest man in it, and he was thirty-five. Let us look at what one or two women have managed to effect by systematic and thorough bodily training. In "The Coming Man" Charles Reade says (p. 50), "Nathalie, a French gymnast, and not a woman of extraordinary build, can take two fifty-six-pound weights from the ground, one in each hand, and put them slowly above her head." She has "a sister who goes up the slack-rope. Farini saw her pitted against twenty sailors. The sailors had a slack-rope; she had another. A sailor went up as far as he could; the gymnast went as high on her rope at the same time. Sailor came down tired, the lady fresh. Another sailor went up, the lady ditto; and so on. _She wore out the whole twenty, having gone up an aggregate of feet higher than St. Peter's Church at Rome._ This feat is due to great strength, complete either-handedness, and the athlete's power of pinching a rope with the sinews of the lower limbs."

But is this great and unusual strength, especially of the arms, desirable in most women? Not at all; but that is not the point. When Farini says that the first step toward making one a skilled gymnast or acrobat is to bring up the weak arm, and shoulder, and side--usually the left--until equally strong with its, till now, superior mate, and that he is constantly doing that, he is doing more by far than would be needed to make most women, not as strong as acrobats and performers, but--a far more important matter--reasonably and comfortably so, sufficiently to keep nervous disorders away, to enable them to be far better equal to the daily duties, and to spend life with an appreciation and zest too often unknown by the weak woman; finally, to preserve for a woman the bloom and healthy look which once in a while she sees, even in a woman of advanced years, and which would be her own did she use the means to have it.

And what should a woman do to get this health and strength and bloom? Just what is done by the young girl. Indeed, there are a hundred exercises, almost any of which, faithfully followed up, would help directly to bring the desired result. With her, as with girl or man or boy, the first thing is to symmetrize, to bring up the weaker muscles by special effort, calling them at once into vigorous action, and to restore to its proper position the shoulder, back, or chest, which has been so long allowed to remain out of place. The symmetry once gained, then equal work for all the muscles, taken daily, and in such quant.i.ties as are found to suit best.

The variety of exercises open to woman, especially out-of-doors, is almost as great as to man. Every one knows some graceful horsewoman, and it is a pity there were not a hundred where there is one. One of the most expert of our acquaintance is the mother of one of the most gifted metaphysicians in the land, and he already is a middle-aged man. There are a few ladies in this country, and a good many in England, who think nothing of a five or six mile walk daily, and an occasional one of twice that length. Once in a while a married woman here will do some long-distance skating. In Holland, in the season, it is with many an every-day affair. Some of the best swimmers and floaters at the watering-places are women, and they certainly do not look much troubled with nervousness. More than one woman has distinguished herself in Alpine climbing. The writer once saw a woman, apparently about twenty-eight, a handsome, vigorous, rosy Englishwoman, row her father from Putney to Mortlake, on the Thames, a distance of four miles and three furlongs, not at racing pace, to be sure, but at a lively speed. The measured precision of that lady's stroke, the stately poise of the body and head, and the clean, neat, and effective feathering, would have done credit to an old Oxford oar.

What woman has done, woman may do. Bind one arm in a sling, and keep it utterly idle for a month, and meanwhile ply the other busily with heavy work, such as swinging a hammer, axe, or dumb-bell, and is it hard to say which will be the healthier, the plumper, the stronger--the _live_ arm, at the end of the month? And will this only apply to men's arms, and not to women's? Who has usually the stronger, and almost generally the shapelier arm--the woman who, surrounded with servants, takes her royal ease, and has American notions and ways of exercise, or the busy maid in her kitchen? If the latter's arm is large, yet not well-proportioned, it simply means that some of its muscles have been used far more than the others.

Now, to her who understands what exercises will develop each of the muscles of that arm, and who can tell at sight which are fully developed or developed at all, and which are not, it is easy to bring up the backward ones, and so secure the symmetry and the consequent general strength. The same rule holds good of all the other muscles, as well as those of the arm.

Plenty of active out-door work will go far toward securing health.

But it will only develop the parts brought into play, and there ought to be exercise for all.

Now what daily work, and how much of it, will secure this symmetry, erectness, and strength, supposing that, at the outset, there is no organic defect, but that the woman is simply weak both in her muscular and in her vital systems? In the first place, let it be understood that the connection between these systems is intimate, and that the judicious building and strengthening of the former, and the keeping up that strength by sensible daily exercise, tells directly on the latter. Vigorous muscular exercise, properly taken, enlarges the respiration, quickens the circulation, improves the digestion, the working, in fact, of all the vital parts. Dr. Mitch.e.l.l says it is the very thing also to quiet the excited nerves and brain.

The amount of that exercise daily depends on the present strength of the woman. If she is weak generally, for the first fortnight the exercise, while general enough to bring all the muscles into play, must be light and easy. Then, as a little strength is gained, the work advances accordingly.

If partially strong at first, invariably the first thing to do is to adapt the exercise mainly to the weaker muscles till they catch up.

Suppose the right arm is stronger than the left, as frequently happens, because it has had more to do. For the first month--or, if necessary, for the first two months--let the left arm have nearly all the exercise, and that exercise as vigorous as it can comfortably take. Then, when it is found that it can lift or carry as heavy a weight, and pull or push as hard as the right, keep at it, by means of exercise, until both arms can do the same amount of work, and are equal. But suppose the arms are already equally strong, or, rather, equally weak--that both the back and chest are small; that is, not so large or well-proportioned as they should be in a well-built woman of a certain height--then all that is necessary is to select work especially adapted to strengthen the back, and other work telling directly on the chest. For the first fortnight very mild efforts should be made, and the advance should be gradual, taking great care never once to overdo it. Let the advance be made as the newly-acquired strength justifies and encourages it. What particular exercises will effect the strengthening and development of any given muscles will be pointed out in the chapter on Special Exercise, at the latter part of this book.

How about the length of time this daily exercising will take? It is all easy enough for the rich, whose time is their own, and who could spare four or five hours a day if necessary; but how is the woman to manage it who must work from seven to six, or even far into the evening as well? She can hardly get time to read about horseback riding and Alpine climbing, much less take part in them. Well, it is a poor system which cannot suit nearly all cases. The woman who works steadily from early morning till well into the night, especially at employment at all sedentary and confining, is undergoing a test and a hards.h.i.+p which will certainly call for a strong const.i.tution, good condition, and a brave spirit as well, or the strain will surely break her down, and bring to her permanent weakness. If so many hours must be spent in labor, then let her secure ten or fifteen minutes, upon rising, for a series of exercises in her room. At the dinner-hour, again at supper-time, and once about mid-morning, and again at mid-afternoon, three or five minutes could generally be spared for a few brisk exercises calculated to limber and call into vigorous action the back, and many of the muscles so long held almost motionless until they stiffen from it. If there is a whole hour at dinner-time, and half of it could be spent in walking, if possible with a cheerful and energetic companion, who would make her forget the dull routine of her day--not dawdling, aimless walking, but stepping out as if she meant it, with a spring and energy which quickens the pulse, driving the morning's thoughts out of the mind, scattering low spirits to the winds--it would bring a pleasant feeling of recreation and change. The benefit to be derived from such a walk would be immediate and marked.

Is this asking much? A mile and a half could easily be covered in that time, and, by a strong walker, even two, while the dinner would taste twice as good for the exercise. Another mile, or even half a mile, might be walked at supper-time, the pace always being kept up. If the confinement is so close as not to permit even these few s.n.a.t.c.hes of time for a little recreation, never mind. Do not give it up yet. The ten minutes on rising were made sure of anyhow.[B] Yes, another chance remains. When at last the work is over, even though it is time to retire, get out-of-doors for half an hour's smart walk with brother or friend, and see how refres.h.i.+ng it will prove. The jaded body will almost forget its tire, and the sleep which follows, while it may not be quite as long as before, will make up in quality, and the new day will find a far fresher woman, one better up to her duties, than if no exercise had been taken.

To her who does not labor so long, but has her evenings to herself, unless already broken by disease, there need be no trouble about getting strong and healthy. Let her do the little exercise above mentioned till evening; then, first eating a hearty supper, beginning with such distance as she can walk easily, add to the distance gradually, until she finds herself equal to four or five miles at a smart pace for her--say three and a half miles to the hour. (The professional masculine pedestrians do eight miles an hour, to be sure; but Miss Von Hillern, for instance, is good for about six.) This, taken either every evening, or, say, four evenings a week, will soon give tone, and make the woman feel strong instead of weak, will enable her to digest what she eats, and will visibly improve her appet.i.te. Let her give five or ten minutes for exercising the arms and chest before retiring, and she has had abundant exercise for that day, while any trouble she has had in the past about sleeping is at an end.

But sufficient as the evening walk is, of course if it can be had in daylight and in the suns.h.i.+ne, it is all the better. Few mothers are so placed that they cannot each day, by good management, get an hour for the care of their health. Let them be sure to take a quick, lively walk for the whole time, not with arms held motionless, but swinging easily as men's do--of course, for the first month taking less distances, but working steadily on. They will be astonished at the very gratifying difference in the result between it and the old listless walk, and how much easier the day's duties come now.

But there is one cla.s.s of women who are especially favored--a large cla.s.s too, in our land--the daughters of parents so well to do that, between their graduation from school and the day they are married, their time is practically their own. If weak at the start, let them, after gradual exercise begins to make them stronger, take more besides the few minutes at rising and retiring, and the hearty const.i.tutional afoot. If their walking is done in the afternoon, let them set apart half an hour in the latter part of the morning (if possible, with another girl similarly placed) for work which shall strengthen the arms and the whole trunk. If there is a good gymnasium convenient--especially if it has a teacher of the right stamp--there will be the best place for this work.

But if not, a little home gymnasium like that suggested later in the chapter on that subject, and which every girl ought to have, would be the place. Very soon this extra work will tell. Look what the four hours a week, just with two-pound wooden dumb-bells, very light Indian clubs, and light pulley-weights, did for a youth of nineteen in one year![C]

An increase of an inch in height, of one and a half around the upper arm, of three and a half inches in the girth of the chest, of fifteen pounds in weight--would not these work marked changes in any young woman, and would they not nearly always be most desirable changes? It is not a matter of inches and pounds alone. This increase of girth and weight is almost sure to tell most beneficially on the health and spirits as well--in short, on the general vigor.

If, with the increase in size and strength, care has been taken to practise special exercises to make and keep her erect, to at all times, whether sitting, standing, or walking, hold the head and neck where they should be, there is not much doubt but that, even in one short year, the difference in any girl, not strong or straight at the beginning, will be very marked. It really lies with young women of this cla.s.s to make themselves physically--in proportion to their height--what they will.

Is there any need of pointing out to a spirited girl the value of a sound, healthy, and shapely body? Is there any sphere in woman's life where it will not stand her in good stead, and render her far more efficient at whatever she is called on to do--as daughter, sister, wife or mother, teacher or friend? Nor is the benefit limited even to her own lifetime, but her posterity are blessed by it as well. Would she like to have inherited consumptive tendencies, for instance, from her parent? Will her children like any better to inherit the same from her? In our Christian lands, we find, if history be correct, that the great men have almost invariably had remarkable mothers, while their fathers were as often nothing unusual. The Sandwich Island proverb, "If strong be the frame of the mother, her sons will make laws for the people," suggests truths that will hold good in many other places besides the Sandwich Islands. Let every intelligent girl and woman in this land bear in mind that, from every point of view, a vigorous and healthy body, kept toned up by rational, systematic, daily exercise, is one of the very greatest blessings which can be had in this world; that many persons spend tens of thousands of dollars in trying to regain even a part of this blessing when once they have lost it; that the means of getting it are easily within the reach of all, who are not already broken by disease; that it is never too late to begin, and that one hour a day, properly spent, is all that is needed to secure it.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] See (page 169) how Mr. Bryant used those morning minutes, and how well he was repaid for it, too!

[C] See page 147.

CHAPTER V.

WHY MEN SHOULD EXERCISE DAILY.

The advantages to men of a well-built body, kept in thorough repair, are very great. Those of every cla.s.s, whose occupation is sedentary, soon come to appreciate this. Some part of the machinery gets out of order.

It may be the head, or eyes, or throat; it may be the lungs or stomach, liver or kidneys. Something does not go right. There is a clogging, a lack of complete action, and often positive pain. This physical clogging tells at once on the mental work, either making its accomplishment uncomfortable and an effort, or becoming so bad as to actually prevent work at all. It may make the man ill. There is very little doubt but that a large majority of ailments would be removed, or, rather, would never have come at all, had the lungs and also the muscles of the man had vigorous daily action to the extent that frequent trial had shown best suited to that man's wants. One of the quickest known ways of dispelling a headache is to give some of the muscles, those of the legs, for instance, a little hard, sharp work to do. The reason is obvious.

Dr. Mitch.e.l.l puts it well when he says that muscular exercise flushes the parts engaged in it, and so depletes the brain.

But fortunately that same exercise also helps make better blood, gets the entire lungs into action, quickens the activity of the other vital organs, and so tones up the whole man, that, if the exercise is taken daily and is kept up, disorder, unless very deep-seated, disappears.

It is well known that when the system, from any cause, gets run down, disease is more likely to enter, and slower at being shaken off. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of men and women have hard work, mental strain, fret and anxiety, daily, and for years together--indeed, scarcely do anything to lighten the tension in this direction. They tell you they are subject to headache or dyspepsia, or other disorder, as if it was out of the question to think of preventing it. But had the work been so arranged, as it nearly always could be--far oftener than most persons think--to secure daily an hour for vigorous muscular exercise for all the parts, this running down would, in most instances, never come. The sharp, hot work, till the muscles are healthily tired, insures the good digestion, the cleared brain, the sound sleep, the buoyant spirits.

The president of one of the largest banks in this country told the writer that, disappointed one summer in not getting a run to Europe, reflection told him that one marked benefit such jaunts had brought him was from the increased sleep he was enabled to get, that thereupon he determined on longer sleeps at home. He got them, and found, as he well put it, that he could "fight better." Beset all day long with men wanting heavy loans, that fighting tone, that ability to say "no" at the right time and in a way which showed he meant it, must have not only added to his own well-being, but to the bank's protection as well.

Again, many men are liable to occasionally have sudden and very protracted spells of head-work, where sleep and almost everything else must give way, so that the business in hand may be gotten through with.

"Tom Brown" told the writer that, when in Parliament, he could work through a whole week together on but four hours of sleep a night, and be none the worse for it, provided he could have all he wanted the next week, and that since he was twenty-five he had hardly known a sick day.

A father, tired from his day of busy toil, may have a sick child, who for much of the night will not let him sleep. Such taxes as this, coming to one already run down and weak, cannot be braved frequently with impunity. Unless the five or six miles a day of Tom Brown and his fellow-Englishmen's "const.i.tutional," or some equivalent, is resorted to, and the man kept well toned-up, one of these sudden calls may prove too severe, and do serious if not fatal injury. This toning-up is not all. If the bodily exercise is such as to get all the muscles strong, and keep them so, the very work that would otherwise overdo and exhaust now has no such effect, but is gone through with spirit and ease. There is that consciousness of strength which is equal to all such trifles.

The very nervousness and worry which used to be so wearing, at the sudden and ceaseless calls of the day, have gone, and for the reason that strong nerves and strong muscles are very liable to go together, and not to mind these things. What does the athlete at the top of his condition know about nervousness? He is blithe as a lark all the day long.

Dr. Mitch.e.l.l says: "The man who lives an out-door life--who sleeps with the stars visible above him, who wins his bodily subsistence at first-hand from the earth and waters--is a being who defies rain and sun, has a strange sense of elastic strength, may drink if he likes, and may smoke all day long, and feel none the worse for it. Some such return to the earth for the means of life is what gives vigor and developing power to the colonists of an older race cast on a land like ours. A few generations of men living in such fas.h.i.+on store up a capital of vitality which accounts largely for the prodigal activity displayed by their descendants, and made possible only by the st.u.r.dy contest with nature which their ancestors have waged. That such a life is still led by mult.i.tudes of our countrymen is what alone serves to keep up our pristine force and energy."

Now, while this extreme hardiness and tone cannot be had by a person who has twelve hours of busy brain-work daily in-doors, and only one of bodily exercise, still, much can be done, quite enough to calm and tranquillize, and to carry easily over those pa.s.ses which used to be dreaded.