Keeping fit all the way : $b how to obtain and maintain health, strength and efficiencyCamp, Walter
Science
Keeping fit all the way : $b how to obtain and maintain health, strength and efficiency
Camp, Walter
Hygiene; Physical education and training
The President has a dislike almost akin to abhorrence for mechanical
appliances intended to exercise the muscles of the body. There is not a
dumbbell, or an Indian club, nor a medicine-ball, nor a punching-bag,
nor a turning-bar, nor a trapeze, nor a lifting or pulling apparatus,
nor a muscle--exercising machine of any sort or description in the White
House. The only mechanical device used by the President is a simple,
unoffending golf-club.
[Illustration: SPRING WORK.]
Aside from his work in the open air, Mr. Wilson takes a number of
physical exercises indoors, very few of which have ever been described
in print. Some of these exercises are taken as a substitute for outdoor
recreations at times when weather conditions are too extreme. But the
major part of them, and especially the more unusual of these exercises,
are regularly practised as a part of his daily routine. As a matter of
fact, they are pretty closely dove-tailed in with his office work.
FLEXING EXERCISES
However, if the President really has a favorite among his various
physical exercises, it is said to be that of "flexing." This he employs
almost entirely as an indoor exercise, and it perhaps is the one he
practises more often than any other.
"Flexing," as Doctor Grayson put it into its simplest every-day term, is
nothing more nor less than just good, old-fashioned "stretching"
expressed in a scientific and systematized form of exercise. It is the
most generally and commonly executed muscular exercise, and it is
practised by nearly all the animal kingdom.
President Wilson uses his flexing movements with a careful regard to
system, and a great deal more regularly and frequently than any other of
his varied physical exercises. Particularly during his periods of
concentration, when at work at his desk in the preparation of his
messages to Congress or in the drafting of notes to foreign governments,
the President, at short intervals, will either settle back in his chair
and flex his arms and hands and the muscles across his back and chest,
or he will rise and stand erect for a more thorough practice of the
flexing movements for a period of a minute or more. At these times he
will throw his body into almost every conceivable posture--twisting,
turning, bending, stooping, the arms down, forward, back, and over his
head, the muscles of the limbs and entire body flexed almost to the
point of tremor, the fingers spread, and the muscles rigidly tensed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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