The Physical Training of Girls : Part 3

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 10 of 28)

Abandoning their jackets, they abandon at the same time boyish games, and display an anxiety - often a ludicrous anxiety - to avoid whatever is not manly. If now, on arriving at the due age, this feeling of masculine dignity puts so efficient a restraint on the sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of feminine modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is approached, put an efficient restraint on the like sports of girlhood? Have not women even a greater regard for appearances than men? and will there not consequently arise in them even a stronger check to whatever is rough or boisterous? How absurd is the supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert themselves but for the rigorous discipline of schoolmistresses!

"In this, as in other cases, to remedy the evils of one artificiality, another artificiality has been introduced. The natural, spontaneous exercise having been forbidden, and the bad consequences of no exercise having become conspicuous, there has been adopted a system of factitious exercise - gymnastics. That this is better than nothing we admit, but that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny."

The pendulum has indeed swung across from those days to these of the hockey-girl, not to mention the girl who throws a cricket-ball and bowls very creditably overhand. There can be no doubt that this state of things is vastly better than that was, yet, as one has endeavored to insist, this also has its risks. Apart from the question as to the particular game or form of exercise, we must be guided in each case by the first signs of anything approaching undue strain. We must look out for lack of energy, for a lessening of joy in the exercise and of spontaneous desire therefore. Fatigue that interferes with appetite, digestion, or sleep is utterly to be condemned.

The Specific Criterion. - Such criteria apply, of course, equally to either gender, though it is more important to be on the look-out for them in the case of the developing girl. But in her case there is another criterion, which is of special importance, because it concerns not only her development as an individual, but her development as a woman. That criterion is furnished us by the menstrual function. It may safely be said that that exercise is excessive and must be immediately curtailed which leads to the diminution of this function, much more to its disappearance. I would, indeed, urge this as a test of the highest importance, always applicable to whatever circumstances. Defect in this respect should never be looked upon lightly; it may, indeed, be a conservative process, as in cases of anemia, but the cause which produces such an effect is always to be combated.

The Kinds of Exercise. - Given, then, this most important test as to the quantity of exercise of whatever kind - a test which indeed applies no less to mental exercise - we may pass on to consider the kinds of exercise best suited for the girl, it being premised that any one of them, however good in itself and in moderation, is capable of being pursued to excess, and that the danger of this is specially noticeable in the case of the girl, because, as we have seen, the effects of excess are more serious in her case, and also because girls are very apt to take things up with immense keenness, and sometimes, in even greater degree than their brothers, to devote themselves too much to the competitive aspect of things. The girl should certainly be content to play a game for the joy of it, and be scarcely less happy to lose than to win if her side has played the game and made a good fight of it. The competitive element is excessive in almost all sports today, and it is especially to be deplored in the games of girls, who are so liable to overstrain and so apt to take trifles to heart.

In what has been already said and in the end of our quotation from Herbert Spencer, it will be evident that purposeful games rather than exercises are to be commended. There is indeed no comparison for a moment possible between Nature's method of exercise, which is obtained through play, and the ridiculous and empty parodies of it which men invent. The truth is that Nature is aiming at one thing, and man at another. Man's aim, for reasons already exploded, is the acquirement of strength; Nature's is the acquirement of skill. It is really nervous development that Nature is interested in when she appears to be persuading the young thing to exercise its muscles. Man notices only the muscular contractions involved, thinks he can improve upon Nature, and invents absurdities like dumb-bells.

It is the nervous system by which we human beings live. Our voluntary muscles are agents of the will, agents of purpose; and while strength is a trifle, skill is always everything. We know now that it is impossible to carry out any human purpose by the contraction of one muscle or even one group of muscles. Even when we merely bend the arm we are doing things with the muscles which extend it, and when we raise it sideways we are modifying the whole trunk in order to preserve the balance. We have only to watch the clumsiness of an infant or a small child to realize how much skill the nervous system has to acquire. This skill may be mainly expressed as co-ordination, the balanced use of many muscles for a purpose and, as a rule, their co-ordinated use with one of the senses, more especially vision, but also touch and hearing.

This is the first of the physiological reasons why games and play of all sorts are so incomparably superior to the use of dumb-bells and developers, where movement and increase of muscular strength are made ends in themselves; whereas in play we are making relations with the outside world, responding to stimuli, educating our nerve muscular apparatus as an instrument of human purpose.

It is in part true to suppose that the play of children expresses an overflow of superfluous energy, but a still deeper and much more important conception of play is that which recognizes in it Nature's method of nervous development, the attainment of control and co-ordination, the capacity of quick and accurate response to circumstances and obedience to the will. Compare, for instance, the girl who has played games, avoiding danger as she crosses the road, with another whose youth has been made dreary by dumb-bells. It may freely be laid down, then, that systems of physical training are good in proportion as they approximate to play, and bad in proportion as they depart from it; and, further, that the very best of them ever devised is worthless in comparison with a good game. This evidently does not refer to, say, special exercises for a curved back.

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.