Health: How to get it and keep it.: The hygiene of dress, food, exercise, rest, bathing, breathing, and ventilation.Woods, Walter V.
Science
Health: How to get it and keep it.: The hygiene of dress, food, exercise, rest, bathing, breathing, and ventilation.
Woods, Walter V.
Health; Hygiene
=Definiteness of Purpose.=--The person who doesn’t know where he is
going, never gets there. Know what you are going to do, then do it.
There are about four hundred muscles in the human body. It is clearly
evident that they cannot all be trained at the same time, nor is it
necessary or even desirable that they should be. Those exercises having
the most direct bearing upon the specific needs of the individual will
naturally come first. If he is troubled with indigestion, two-thirds
of the time that he allows himself for daily exercise should be
given to remedying that defect, and the rest to supplying some other
important need which will bring into play a different set of muscles.
If his lung capacity is inadequate, the larger share of time should be
given to the correction of this weakness. If shortness of breath and
interference with heart action are occasioned by increasing fleshiness,
the reduction of his superfluous fat must receive first consideration.
The important thing is to determine what is most needed at any stage
of the work, and to strike directly at that point. As, one after
another, the special points of weakness are covered, the exercises will
gradually take on more and more of an all-round character. As so many
of the infirmities of the flesh have their rise in impaired digestion,
imperfect respiration, or sluggish circulation, the exercises having
relation to these three subjects will always claim attention, not only
to secure but also to preserve health.
=Mind Engaging.=--While those whose mental energies have been on a
strain may find relief in exercises somewhat automatic, the most
beneficial and satisfactory results, as a rule, are obtained when the
mind is kept on the alert and the eye is brought into active play,
as in fencing and sparring, or when the exercise contributes to the
enjoyment of the individual, and is not self-imposed as an irksome task
or an unpleasant duty. The presence and co-operation of a congenial
friend adds much to the value of the exercise. Where this is not
convenient, the drill should be so varied in kind and in degree, from
day to day, as to sustain the interest. Without this, the exercises are
apt to be abandoned, or, if continued, they will not be attended with
the best results.
=Intensity.=--Much valuable time is wasted by persons who engage in
a certain kind of exercise, not because they are interested in it,
but because it happens to be the fad. Whether it be walking, running,
swimming, golf, tennis or croquet, they go at it in such a feeble,
listless manner as to excite pity rather than enthusiasm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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