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
As the months roll on, and this steady work, directed right to the weak
spots, has strengthened and toughened you, now put larger weights on the
Fig. 8 appliance, and also increase the number of strokes until you do a
thousand or even two thousand daily--head and body always being held
erect, and full breathing a constant accompaniment. This making a
specialty of these chest-expanding exercises, none of which are severe
or violent, but which are still vigorous enough, and the abundance of
healthy and active out-door life, are sure to bring good fruits in this
battle where the stake is no less than one's own life. They are rational
and vigorous means, aimed directly at the weak part, and, with good air,
good food, cheerful friends, and ample sleep, will often work marvels,
where the filling the stomach with a whole apothecary shop of nauseous
oils and other medicines has wholly failed to bring the relief sought.
These exercises taken by a man already healthy at once tone him up and
invigorate him, until he begins to have something of the feeling of the
sturdy pioneer, as described by Dr. Mitchell.[P] And if the delicate
person tries the same means, using them judiciously and carefully, it is
but natural that he should find similar results.
Some years ago Dr. G----, of Boston, showed us a photograph of himself
taken several years previously. The shoulders were warped forward, the
chest looked flat, almost hollow, and the face and general appearance
suggested a delicate man. He said he inclined to be consumptive. Well,
by practising breathing, not on an ordinary "blowing-machine," where
you empty your lungs of about all that is in them, but on an
inspirometer, from which instead you inhale every inch of air you can,
and by practising vigorous working of his diaphragm, he had so expanded
his lungs that he could inhale three hundred and eighty cubic inches of
air at one breath! Certainly the depth of his chest at the later period
was something astounding, it being, as nearly as we could judge without
calipers, all of fourteen inches through, directly from breastbone to
spine, while it was a strikingly broad chest as well.
But an even more astonishing feature was the tremendous power of his
voice. He said that at the end of half an hour's public singing with the
opera singers (for he was skilled at that), while they would be hot and
perspiring he was only just warming up and getting ready for his work.
One thing all who ever heard him sing would quickly concede, namely,
that seldom had they anywhere heard so immense a voice as his. He said
that he had also run two blocks in one breath. He looked about the
farthest remove from a consumptive--a short, stout, fat man, rather.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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