Exercise and Growth : Part 1

A Handbook of Health
by Woods Hutchinson

(Page 23 of 30)

Fatigue as a Danger Signal. The chief use of exercise in childhood, whether of body or mind, is to make us grow; but it can do this only by being kept within limits. Within these limits it will increase the vigor of the heart, expand the lungs, clear the brain, deepen sleep, and improve the appetite. Beyond these limits it stunts the body, dulls the brain, overstrains the heart, and spoils the appetite. How are we going to tell when these limits are being reached? Nature has provided a danger signal - fatigue, or "tiredness."

Fatigue is due, not to complete exhaustion, but to poisoning of the muscle, or nerve, by its own waste substances. If the fatigue is general, or "all over," it is from these waste substances piling up in the blood faster than the lungs, skin, and kidneys can get rid of them. In other words, fatigue is a form of self-poisoning.

We can see how it is that exercise, which, up to the point of fatigue, is both healthful and improving, when carried on after we are tired, becomes just the opposite. Fatigue is nature's signal, "Enough for this time!" That is why all methods of training for building up strength and skill, both of mind and muscle, forbid exercising beyond well-marked fatigue. If you yourself stop at this point in exercising, you will find, the next time you try that particular exercise, that you can go a little further before fatigue is felt; the third time, a little further yet; and so, by degrees, you can build up both your body and brain to the fullest development of which they are capable.

In muscular training, a series of light, quick movements, none of which are fatiguing, repeated fifteen, twenty, or a hundred times, will do much more to build up muscle and increase strength, than three or four violent, heaving strains that tax all your strength. Real athletes and skilled trainers, for instance, use half-or three-quarter-pound dumb-bells and one-or two-pound Indian clubs, instead of the five-pound dumb-bells and ten-pound clubs with which would-be athletes delight to decorate their rooms. A thoroughbred race-horse is trained on the same principle: he is never allowed to gallop until tired, or to put out his full speed before he is well grown. In fact, the best methods of all forms of exercising and training always stop just short of fatigue. Education and study ought to be planned on the same principle. Exercise of either our muscles or our minds after they have begun to poison themselves through fatigue never does them any good, even if it does not do them serious harm; and, where the exercise is for the sake of building us up and developing our powers, it is best to stop for a little while, or change the task, as soon as we begin to feel distinctly tired, and then to try it again when we are rested.

This is one of the secrets of the healthfulness and value of play and games for children, and for older persons as well. When you get tired, you can stop and rest; and then start in again when you feel rested - that is to say, when your heart has washed the poisons out of your muscles and nerves. In fact, if you will notice, you will find that nearly all play and games are arranged on this plan - a period of activity followed by a period of rest. Some games have regular "innings," with alternate activity and rest for the players; or each player takes his turn at doing the hard work; or the players are constantly changing from one thing to another - for instance, throwing or striking the ball one minute; running to first base the next; and standing on base the next. Every muscle, every sense, every part of you is exercised at once, or in rapid succession, and no part has time to become seriously fatigued; so that you can play hard all the afternoon and never once be uncomfortably tired, though your muscles have done a tremendous lot of work, measured in foot-pounds or "boy-power," in that time.

The good school imitates nature in this respect. The recitation periods are short, and recesses frequent; a heavy subject is followed by a lighter one; songs, drawing, calisthenics, and marching are mixed in with the lessons, so as to give every part of the mind and body plenty to do, and yet not over-tire any part.

All-Round Training from Work and Play. Every game that is worth playing, every kind of work that accomplishes anything worth while, trains and develops not merely the muscles and the heart, but the sight, hearing, touch, and sense of balance, and the powers of judgment, memory, and reason, as well.

If you are healthy, you know that you don't need to be told to play, or even how, or what, to play; for you would rather play than eat. You have as strong and natural an appetite for play as you have for food when you are hungry, or for water when you are thirsty, or for sleep when you are tired. It is just as right to follow the one instinct as the others, though any one may be carried to extremes.

Some of the most important part of your training and fitting for life is given by plays and games. Not only do they put you in better condition to study and enjoy your work in school, but they also teach you many valuable lessons as well. Our favorite national game, base-ball, for instance, not only develops the muscles of your arms and shoulders in throwing the ball and in striking and catching it, and your lungs and heart in rushing to catch a fly or in running the bases, but also develops quickness of sight and hearing, - requires, as we say, "a good eye" for distance, - makes you learn to calculate something of the speed at which a ball is coming toward you or flying up into the air, requires you to judge correctly how far it is to the next base and how few seconds it will take to get there and whether you or the baseman can get there first.

Houghton Mifflin Company
Copyright, 1911, By Woods Hutchinson
All Rights Reserved
Tenth Impression

About the Author

Woods Hutchinson (1862-1930) was an American physician, born at Selby, Yorkshire, England. He graduated from Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1880 and received his medical degree from the University of Michigan four years later. He worked as a professor of anatomy at the State University of Iowa and then became a professor of comparative pathology at the University of Buffalo.