How to Get Strong and How to Stay So Part 5

On the walls there should be casts and drawings, showing well-proportioned and well-developed arms, legs, and trunks, and a brief statement with each of the various measurements and proportions, and the ages of the men from whom they were taken, and, if possible, the sort and amount of work done by each in their progress. These need by no means be all modern. Greece and Rome, Troy and Pompeii, could furnish their quota.

Suppose the director at once, on the joining of a pupil, recorded, on a page set apart specially in his register, the age, height, general physical characteristics, weight, girth of calf, thigh, hips, waist, lower chest, upper chest--both at rest and inflated--neck, upper arm--extended and drawn up--and the forearm, hand, and wrist, taking care to note the time of day the measurements were made, and also obtaining a photograph of the man as he then appeared in exercising costume. Suppose that, outside of the ordinary requirements as to method, decorum, order of using apparatus, and so on, the director refused to take any pupil who would not expressly agree to two things: first, to be at the gymnasium, stripped and ready for work, exactly at such a moment, four days out of the seven; second, to obey implicitly the director's orders, both as to what work he should do, and what omit.

Suppose the director's training had been such that he could tell at once, both from the looks and measurements of the man, where he was physically lacking, and that he so arranged his cla.s.ses that all whose left hands were weaker than their right had left-handed work only until they were equalized up; that weak thighs, calves, abdominal muscles, chests, and backs had special work given them, bringing the desired parts directly into play, lightly as each needed at first, and then gradually working upward, the stronger parts, meanwhile, being at rest. Suppose this were continued until, at the end of the year, or often long before it, it is found that one arm is now as strong as the other, that the gain in girth at almost every measurement is nearly or all of an inch, and at some even two or more inches.

Suppose a series of exercises, aimed directly to enlarge and strengthen the respiratory power, were given to all, and every one, also, had a few minutes each day of "setting up," and other work aimed not so much to add size and strength as to make the crooked straight, to point out and insist on a proper carriage of the head, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the whole trunk, and the knees, and to show each pupil what length of step best suited him, and which he ought to take.

Suppose that the director showed at once that he not only knew what to do all through, but how to do it, and so promptly won the confidence of those he sought to instruct and benefit.

Is there any question in which of these two inst.i.tutions the young man would make the most desirable progress? The first building and apparatus might be grand, fitted up with nearly all that could be desired, but the gymnasium lacked a masterhead who should show its possibilities. Gymnasium and apparatus were like an engine without steam. The second building was not of much account as a building, but quite all that was needed for the real end in view. The London Rowing-club boat-houses were for a long time mere sheds, not to be named in the same day with the tasteful stone boat-houses along the Schuylkill, for instance; but those same plain sheds have for many years turned out amateur oarsmen who could row down any in the world.

And what a benefit a gymnasium conducted on some plan similar to that above suggested would be to any college or university! And yet almost any college, even of limited means, could afford it. Change the plan a little, and make the attendance by all students just as it is in other branches--just as it is at West Point in horseback practice--compulsory.

Give the director a salary adequate to secure a first-cla.s.s man in his calling--not merely an accomplished gymnast, acrobat, boxer, or fencer, but an educated physician, the peer of any of his brother-members of the faculty, fond of his calling, fond of the field before him, thoroughly acquainted with the plainer kinds of gymnastics and of acrobatic work, and a good boxer, an instructor especially quick in detecting the physical defects in his pupil, in knowing what exercise will cure them, zealous in interesting him, in encouraging him on, what incalculable good he could do!

Every student in that college would practically have to be made over. Long before the four years, or even one of them, were through, that instructor would have made all the men erect (as is daily being done with the West Pointer). But his pupils, instead of being like the latter, developed simply in those muscles which his business called into play, would each be well developed all over, would each be up to what a well-built man of his years and size ought to be in the way of strength, and skill, and staying powers, and--a most important thing--would know what he could do, and what he could not; and so would not, as is now every day the case with many, attempt physical efforts long before he was fitted for them.

If he wanted to go into racing, the director would be his best friend, and would point out to him that the only safe way to get one's heart and lungs used to the violent action which they must undergo in racing, especially after the racer gets tired, would be by gradually increasing his speed from slow up to the desired pace, instead of, as too often happens, getting up to racing pace before he is half fit for it.

But he would also show him how one-sided it would make him, developing some parts, and letting others remain idle and fall behind in development, and--more important still--how brief and ephemeral was the fame which he was working for, and the risks of overdoing which it entailed.

Let one college in this land graduate each year a cla.s.s of which every man has an erect carriage and mien, has the legs and arms, the back and chest, not of a Hercules, not of a prize racer or fighter, but of a hale, comely, strong, and well-proportioned man, and see how well it would pay. Bear in mind that an hour a day put in in the right way and at the right work will effect all this in far less time than four years of trying. The hardest-reading man can readily spare the time for it, especially if he must. What! would it take him from the thin, cadaverous fellow he too often is, and do all that for him? Beyond all doubt it would. Such vigorous work would soon sharpen his appet.i.te, and he would find that, eat all he liked, he could digest it promptly, and would feel all the better for his generous living. The generous living has fed muscles now vigorously used; they have been enlarged and strengthened: the legs, which never used to try to jump a cubit high, even, once in the whole year, now carry their owner safely over a four-rail fence, and perhaps another rail, or even two of them. The lungs, which were scarcely half expanded, now have every air-cell thoroughly filled for at least one entire hour daily--an excellent thing for weak lungs. Correct positions of standing, sitting, walking, and running being now well known and understood, the lungs get more air into them than formerly, even when their owner is at rest. Another effect of it all is shown in a decidedly more vigorous circulation, and the consequent exhilaration and buoyancy of spirits, no matter whether the work in hand is mental or physical.

But will not this hour's work dull him mentally? It may be proper to digress for a moment and see if it will. Of men who have done just this kind and amount of work, this work aimed at every part of the body, we find no record, simply because, as we have already shown, considerable as the increased interest is in physical culture and development, this plan of reaching all the parts and being just to all, has scarcely been tried. But abundant proof that some physical exercise will not dull the man, but even brighten him, can be had without difficulty. A moment's reflection will show that a mind ever on the stretch must, like a bow so kept, be the worse for it, and that the strain must be occasionally slacked. There are two ways of slacking it. Both the physician and experience tell us that nothing rests a tired brain like sensible, physical exercise, except, of course, sleep.

"When in active use," says Mitch.e.l.l, "the thinking organs become full of blood, and, as Dr. Lombard has shown, rise in temperature, while the feet and hands become cold. Nature meant that for their work they should be, in the first place, supplied with food; next, that they should have certain intervals of rest to rid themselves of the excess of blood acc.u.mulated during their periods of activity; and this is to be done by sleep, and also by bringing into play the physical machinery of the body, such as the muscles--that is to say, by exercise which flushes the parts engaged in it, and so depletes the brain."[H]

Here, then, some physical exercise will rest his brain, and fit it for more and better work. But this does not necessarily imply so much as is called for in the hour. Happily, however, there is no lack of instances where work, quite as vigorous, though not as well directed, has accompanied mental work of a very high order, and to all appearances has been a help rather than a hinderance. Instead of one hour a day, Napoleon for years was in the saddle several hours almost daily, but we never heard that it clogged his mind. Charles O'Conor, always fond of long walks, is good at them to-day, and noticeably erect and quick of movement, though for weeks he once lay at death's door, and though he was born in 1804. James Russell Lowell, st.u.r.dy, broad, and ruddy, is said to never ride when he can walk, and he is nearly sixty.

Gladstone's reputation as an axeman among the Hawarden oaks has reached our sh.o.r.es. Indeed, it is doubtful if there are many better _fellers_ of his age in Europe, and he was born in 1809. Mr. M.H. Beebee, the present senior tutor at Cambridge University in England, who rowed at number two in the "'Varsity" eight against Oxford in '65, not only took the very highest university honor--a double-first--but a much higher double-first than even Gladstone had taken years before.

The fencing, duelling, and hard riding of Bismarck's youth do not seem to have perceptibly dimmed his intellect, or to have unfitted it for enormous and very important work in later life.

And while the in-door work equalizes the strength, and takes care of the arms and chest, the hour's "const.i.tutional" daily out-of-doors has an especial advantage, in that it insures at least that much out-of-door life and air. Dr. Mitch.e.l.l says, "When exposure to out-of-door air is a.s.sociated with a fair share of physical exertion, it is an immense safeguard against the ills of anxiety and too much brain-work. I presume that very few of our generals could have gone through with their terrible task if it had not been that they lived in the open air and exercised freely. For these reasons I do not doubt that the effects of our great contest were far more severely felt by the Secretary of War and the late President than by Grant or Sherman."

A recent, interesting, and wonderfully apt instance, more so than any of these, one going straight to the point, and as nearly as possible the equivalent of what we propose to urge later on all sedentary men, one where the proof comes directly from the gentleman's own pen, is that of the late Mr. Bryant, whose letter on the subject, written to a friend in 1871, will be found on page 169. With characteristic st.u.r.diness, with no one to aid or guide him, he hit on a plan of work to be done, partly in his little home-gymnasium, and partly on the road, and stuck faithfully to it till well over fourscore, and at eighty-two he told the writer that he continued his exercise simply because it paid.

His aim was to keep all his machinery in working order, and to prolong his life; and when he did die, at eighty-four, it was not from old age, not because his functions were worn out. With his usual vigor and energy when any writing was to be done, he had thrown himself into his work of preparing his address at the Mazzini celebration, till, tired and exhausted, the undue exposure to the hot sun and the resulting fall were too much for him, and these were what took him away.

But the plan here suggested will not only cover all he did, but more.

Bryant does not seem to have cared for erectness, nor for a harmonious development of all the muscles. But had the amount of work he took been so directed, he might in youth have attained that harmony, and maintained it through life, as Vanderbilt maintained his erectness.

There need be little fear, then, that a right use of the gymnasium will overdo. No better safeguard against that could be had than a wise director, familiar with the capacities of his pupil, watching him daily, instilling sound principles, and giving him the very work he needs. Under such a tutor a young man who went to college, on receiving his degree, would, if his moral and mental duties were attended to, be graduated, not with an educated mind alone, but an educated body as well; not with merely a bright head, and a body and legs like a pair of tongs. If the history of brave, independent, earnest, pure men goes for anything, it will be found that as the body was healthy and strong, it has in many a pa.s.s in life directly aided moral culture and strength, and has kept the man from defiling that body which was meant to be kept sacred.

FOOTNOTES:

[H] "Wear and Tear," p. 54.

CHAPTER IX.

SOME RESULTS OF BRIEF SYSTEMATIC EXERCISE.

In a country like ours, where the ma.s.ses are so intelligent, where so much care is taken to secure what is called a good education, the ignorance as to what can be done to the body by a little systematic physical education is simply marvellous. Few persons seem to be aware that any limb, or any part of it, can be developed from a state of weakness and deficiency to one of fulness, strength, and beauty, and that equal attention to all the limbs, and to the body as well, will work like result throughout. A man spends three or four weeks at the hay and grain harvest, and is surprised at the increased grip of his hands, and the new power of arm and back. He tramps through forests, and paddles up streams and lakes after game, and returns wondering how three or four miles on a level sidewalk could ever have tired him.

An acquaintance of ours, an active and skilled journalist, says that he once set out to saw twenty cords of wood, he was a slight, weak youth.

He found he had not enough strength or wind to get through one cut of a log--that he had to constantly sit down and rest. People laughed at him, and at his thinking he could go through that mighty pile. But they did not know what was in him; for, sticking gamely to his self-imposed task, he says that in a very few days he found his stay improving rapidly, that he did not tire half so easily, and, more than that, that there began to come a feeling over him--a most welcome one--of new strength in his arms and across his chest; and that what had at first looked almost an impossibility had now become very possible, and was before long accomplished. Now, what he, by his manliness, found was fast doing so much for his arms and chest, was but a sample of what equally steady, systematic work might have done for his whole body.

Indeed, a later experience of this same gentleman will be in place here; for at Dr. Sargent's gymnasium in New York, in the winter of 1878-'79, he, though a middle-aged man, increased the girth of his chest _two inches and five-eighths in six weeks_! and this working but one hour a day; and he found that he could not only do more work daily afterward at his profession, but better work as well.

The youth who works daily in a given line at the gymnasium as much expects that, before the year is over, not only will the muscles used decidedly increase in strength, but in size and shapeliness as well, as he does that the year's reading will improve his mind, or a year's labor bring him his salary. It is an every-day expression with him that such a fellow "got his arm up to" fifteen, or his chest to forty-odd inches, and so on. He sees nothing singular in this. He knows this one, who in a short time put half an inch on his forearm, or an inch; that one, whose thigh, or chest, or waist, or calf made equal progress. Group and cla.s.sify these gains in many cases, and note the amount of work and the time taken in each, and soon one can tell pretty well what can be done in this direction. Few of our gymnasiums are so kept that their records will aid much in this inquiry, simply because the instructor either has no conception of the field before him, or, if he has, for some reason fails to improve the opportunity.

Look at what Maclaren effected (as described by him in his admirable "Physical Education"), not with here and there an isolated case, but with both boys and men turned in on him by the hundred, and in all stages of imperfect development! Take it first among the boys. Under systematic exercise, W----, a boy at Radley College, ten years old in June, 1861, had, seven years later, increased in height from 4 feet 6-3/4 inches to 5 feet 10-3/4 inches, or a gain of 16 inches in all; in weight from 66 pounds--light weight for a ten-year-old boy--to 156 pounds; far heavier than most boys at seventeen; showing an advance of 90 pounds. His forearm went from 7-1/4 to 11-3/4 inches--very large for a boy of seventeen, and decidedly above the average of that of most men; his upper arm from 7-1/2 inches to 13-3/8--also far above the average at that age; while his chest had actually increased in girth from 26 inches--which was almost slender, even for a ten-year-old--to 39-1/2 inches, which is all of two inches larger than the average man's.

His description of this boy was: "Height above average; other measurements average. From commencement, growth rapid, and sustained _with regular and uniform development_. The whole frame advancing to great physical power."

Another boy, H----, starting in June, 1860, when ten years old, 4 feet 6-1/4 inches high, and weighing 73 pounds--much heavier than the other at the start--in eight years gained 13-1/2 inches, making him 5 feet 7-3/4 inches--of medium height for that age. He gained 71 pounds in the eight years, and at 144 pounds was better built than W---- at 156; for, though his forearm, starting at 8 inches, had become 11-1/2, a quarter of an inch less than W----'s, yet his upper arm had gone from 8-3/4 to 13-1/2 inches, or one-eighth of an inch larger, while his chest rose from 28-1/4 to 39 inches--within half an inch of the other's, though the latter was 3 inches taller.

He is described: "Height slightly above average; other measurements considerably above average. From commencement, _growth and development regular and continuous. The whole frame perfectly developed for this period of life._"

S----'s case is far more remarkable. He was evidently very small and undersized. "Height and all other measurements _greatly_ below average; the whole frame stunted and dwarfish. Advancement at first slight, and very irregular. Afterward rapid, and comparatively regular."

He only gained in height three-quarters of an inch from thirteen to fourteen, where W---- had gained 3-5/8 inches, and H---- 3-1/8 inches. Yet, from fifteen to sixteen, where W---- only went ahead half an inch, and H---- five-eighths of an inch, S---- actually gained 4 inches, which must have been most gratifying. His weight changes were even more noticeable.

From twelve to fifteen W---- gained 58 pounds, and H---- 39, while all S---- could show was 12. But from fifteen to sixteen see how he caught up!

Where W----made 11 pounds, and H---- 10, S---- made 22. Where W----'s chest went up 1 inch, and H----'s 1-1/2 inches, S----'s went up 3 inches.

Now, how long did these boys work? As Maclaren says "_Just one hour per week!_"

What parent believes that any hour in that week was better spent--better for the comfort, for the welfare of the boy, or better in fitting him for future usefulness--or what nearly so well? Most boys waste that much time nearly every day.

Look, too, at the benefit to the boy in all his after-life. Indeed, does not this hour a week, in some instances, insure an after-life, and s.n.a.t.c.h not a few from an early grave? Had every slim, thin-chested man in America, and every slim, thin-chested boy who never lived to be a man, spent an hour weekly under such tutoring, from the age of ten to eighteen, would not the benefit to our land in working-power, in vigor and force, and comfort as well, have been incalculable? And had it, instead of one hour a week, been two or three, or even an hour a day, might not the results have been even more gratifying?

Professor Maclaren may well congratulate himself on such good results among the boys. But what has he done with men? Some years ago twelve non-commissioned officers, selected from all branches of the service, were sent to him to qualify as instructors for the British army. He says:

"They ranged between nineteen and twenty-nine years of age, between five feet five inches and six feet in height, between nine stone two [128]

pounds and twelve stone six [174] pounds in weight, and had seen from ten to twelve years' service."

He carefully registered the measurements of each at the start, and at different times throughout their progress. He says:

"The muscular additions to the arms and shoulders, and the expansion of the chest, were so great as to have absolutely a ludicrous and embarra.s.sing result, for, before the fourth month, several of the men could not get into their uniforms, jackets, and tunics, without a.s.sistance, and when they had got them on they could not get them to meet down the middle by a hand's-breadth. In a month more they could not get into them at all, and new clothing had to be procured, pending the arrival of which the men had to go to and from the gymnasium in their great-coats.

One of these men gained five inches in actual girth of chest."

And he well adds: "Now who shall tell the value of these five inches of chest, five inches of additional s.p.a.ce for the heart and lungs to work in?" Hardly five inches more of heart and lung room, though part of the gain must have been of course from the enlargement of the muscles on the side of the chest.

He also hit upon another plan of showing the change; for he says he had them "photographed, stripped to the waist", both at first and when the four months were over, and the change even in these portraits was very distinct, and most notably in the youngest, who was nineteen, for, besides the acquisition of muscle, there was in his case "a readjustment and expansion of the osseous framework upon which the muscles are distributed." Now let us look a little at the measurements and the actual changes wrought.

In the first place, this last instance settles conclusively one matter most important to flat-chested youth, namely, whether the shape of the chest itself can be changed; for here it was done, and in a very short time at that. Again, of these twelve men, in less than eight months every one gained perceptibly in height; indeed, there was an average gain of five-twelfths of an inch in height, though all, save one, were over twenty; and one man who gained half an inch was twenty-eight years old, while one twenty-six gained five-eighths of an inch! (Most people suppose they can get no taller after twenty-one.) All increased decidedly in weight--the smallest gain being 5 pounds, the average 10 pounds; and one, and he twenty-eight, and a five-feet-eleven man, actually went up from 149 pounds at the beginning, to 165 pounds in less than four months. It is not likely there was much fat about them, as they had so much vigorous muscular exercise. Every man's chest enlarged decidedly, the smallest gain being a whole inch in the four months, the average being 2-7/8 inches, and one, though twenty-four years old, actually gaining 5 inches, or over an inch a month. Every upper arm increased 1 inch, most of them more than that, and one 1-3/4 inches. As the work was aimed to develop the whole body, there is little doubt that there was a proportional increase in the girth of hips and thigh and calf.

Again, from the Royal Academy at Woolwich, Professor Maclaren took twenty-one youths whose average age was about eighteen, and in the brief period of four months and a half obtained an average advance of 1-3/4 pounds in weight, of 2-1/2 inches in chest, and of 1 inch on the upper arm; while one fellow, nineteen, and slender at that, gained 8 pounds in weight, and 5-1/4 inches about the chest! Think what a difference that would make in the chest of any man, and a difference all in the right direction at that!

But the most satisfactory statistics offered were those of two articled pupils, one sixteen, the other twenty. In exactly one year's work the younger grew from 5 feet 2-3/4 inches in height to 5 feet 4-3/4 inches. He weighed 108 pounds on his sixteenth birthday; on his seventeenth, 129! At the start his chest girthed 31 inches; twelve months later, just 36! His forearm went up from 8 inches to 10 inches, and his upper arm from 9-1/4 inches to 11-1/4.