How to Get Strong and How to Stay SoBlaikie, William
Science
How to Get Strong and How to Stay So
Blaikie, William
Physical education and training
For still more rapid and decided advance, an hour at the gymnasium
during the latter part of the morning, half of it at the rowing-weights,
so thickening and stoutening the back, and the other half at "dipping"
and other half-arm work on the parallel bars--so spreading and enlarging
the chest and stoutening the back-arms--these will increase the
development rapidly, and will sharpen the appetite at a corresponding
rate. But it must be real work, and no dawdling or time lost.
Few young men in any active employment, however, can spare this morning
hour. Still, without it, if they will follow up the before-breakfast
work, the walking in the fashion named, and the running, they will soon
find time enough for this much, and most satisfactory results in the
way of improved health and increased strength as well. Indeed, it will
for most young men prove about the right amount to keep them toned up
and ready for their day's work. If they desire great development in
any special line, let them select some of the exercises described
in the previous chapter, as aimed to effect such development, and
practice them as assiduously, if need be, as Rowell did his
tread-mill work for his legs.
_Daily Exercise for Women._
And what should the girls and women do each day? With two-pound wooden
dumb-bells at first, let them, before breakfast, go through twenty-five
movements of each of the five sorts just described for young men. After
six weeks or two months they can increase the number to fifty, and,
if this does not bring the desired increase in size, and strength
of arm and chest and back, then they can try dumb-bells weighing four
or five pounds each.
Out-of-doors, either in the latter part of the morning or afternoon, if
they will, in broad, easy shoes, walk for one hour, not at any listless
two-mile pace, but at first as fast as they comfortably can, and then
gradually increasing until in a fortnight or more they can make sure of
three miles and a half at least, if not of four miles within the hour,
and will observe the way of stepping just suggested to the men, they
will get about walking enough. And if once in awhile, every Saturday,
for instance, they make the walk all of five or six miles, getting, if
city ladies, quite out into the suburbs and back, they will be surprised
and gratified at the greater ease with which they can walk now than
formerly, and at their freshness at the end. Recent reports from India
say that English ladies there often spend two or three hours daily in
the saddle. Every American lady who can manage to ride that much, or
half of it, and at a strong, brisk pace, will soon have a health and
vigor almost unknown among our women and girls to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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