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
The writer, at nineteen, spent four weeks on a farm behind the
Catskills, in Delaware County, New York. It was harvest-time, and, full
of athletic ardor, and eager to return to college the better for the
visit, we took a hand with the men. All the farm-hands were uniformly on
the field at six o'clock in the morning, and it would average nearly or
quite eight at night before the last load was snugly housed away in the
mow. It was sharp, hard work all day long, with a tough, wiry,
square-loined fellow in the leading swath all the morning. But to follow
him we were bound to or drop, while the pitchfork or rake never rested
from noon till sunset. Breakfast was served at five-thirty; dinner at
eleven; supper at four; and a generous bowl of bread-and-milk--or two
bowls, if you wanted them--at nine o'clock, just before bedtime, with
plenty of spring-water between meals; while the fare itself was good and
substantial, just what you would find on any well-to-do farmer's table.
And such an appetite, and such sleep! Solomon must have tried some
similar adventure when he wrote that "the sleep of the laboring man is
sweet, whether he eat little or much." Well, when we returned to college
and got on the scales again, the one hundred and forty-three pounds at
starting had somehow become a hundred and fifty-six! And with them such
a grip, and such a splendid feeling! We have rowed many a race since,
but there was as hard work done by some of that little squad on that old
mountain farm as any man in our boat ever did, and there was not much
attention paid to any one's training rules either.
It is notorious, among those used to training for athletic contests,
that thin men, if judiciously held in, and not allowed to do too much
work, generally "train up," or gain decidedly in weight, almost as much,
in fact, as the fleshy ones lose.
Now, were the object simply to train up as much as possible, unusual
care could be taken to insure careful and deliberate eating, with a
generous share of the fat and flesh making sorts of food, and quiet rest
always for awhile after each meal, to aid the digestive organs at their
work. Slow, deep, abdominal breathing is a great ally to this latter
process; indeed, works direct benefit to many of the vital organs, and
so to the whole man. All the sleep the man can possibly take at night
would also tell in the right way. So would everything that would tend
to prevent fret and worry, or which would cultivate the ability to bear
them philosophically. But most thin people do not keep still enough, do
not take matters leisurely, and do not rest enough; while, if their work
is muscular, they do too much daily in proportion to their strength.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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