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
Another, tall and very slender, but with a large head and a very bright
mind, was an habitual fault-finder at everything on the table, no matter
if it was fit for a prince. A friend got him, for awhile, into a little
athletic work--walking, running, and sparring--until he could trot three
miles fairly, and till one day he walked forty-five--pretty well used
up, to be sure, but he walked it. Well, his appetite went up like a
rocket. Where the daintiest food would not tempt him before, he would
now promptly hide a beefsteak weighing a clean pound at a meal, and that
no matter if cooked in some roadside eating-house, where nothing was
neat or tidy, and flies abounded almost as they did once in Egypt in
Pharaoh's day. His friends frequently spoke of his improved temper, and
how much easier it was to get on with him. But after a while his efforts
slackened, and his poor stomach returned to its old vices, at least in
part. Had he kept at what was doing so much for him, it would have
continued to prove a many-sided blessing.
If steady and vigorous use of one set of muscles gradually increases
their size, why should not a similar allowance, distributed to each, do
the same for all? See (Appendix V.) what it did in four months and
twelve days for Maclaren's pupil of nineteen, whose upper arm not only
gained a whole inch and a half (think how that would add to the beauty
alone of many a woman's arm, to say nothing of its strength), and whose
chest enlarged five inches and a quarter, _but whose weight went up
eight pounds_! Or what it did (see Appendix IV.) for Sargent's pupil of
nineteen, who in just one year, besides making an inch and a half of
upper arm, and three and a half of chest, went up from a hundred and
forty-five pounds to a hundred and sixty, or _a clean gain of fifteen
pounds_. Or (see Appendix VI.) for Maclaren's man, fully twenty-eight
years old, who, in seven months and nineteen days, made _sixteen
pounds_; or (Appendix VII.) for his youth of sixteen, who in just one
year increased his weight _full twenty-one pounds_!
These facts certainly show pretty clearly whether sensible bodily
exercise, taken regularly, and aimed at the weak spots, will not tell,
and tell pretty rapidly, on the thin man wanting to stouten, and tell,
too, in the way he wants.
It will make one eat heartily, it will make him sleep hard and long.
Every ounce of the food is now digested, and the long sleep is just what
he needed. Indeed, if, after a hearty dinner, a man would daily take a
nap, and later in the day enough hard work to make sure of being
thoroughly tired when bedtime came, he would doubtless find the flesh
coming in a way to which he was a stranger. Many thin persons do not
rest enough. They are constantly on the go, and the lack of phlegm
in their make-up rather increases this activity, though they do not
necessarily accomplish more than those who take care to sit and
lie still more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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