The Daily Doze of Exercise : Part 1

Keeping Fit all the Way
by Walter Camp

(Page 6 of 14)

We may now consider the question of time-saving for those who may be obliged to largely forego pleasurable exercise and who yet desire to keep fit and well in spite of this deprivation.

There are two divisions in this class, as may be shown in the case of the present world war. The first class embraces all the men in active service, with two subdivisions - officers who are over forty and officers and privates who are under that age. The second class comprises the men (and women, too, for that matter) who, unable to do service at the front, must support the troops in various ways behind the lines. It is said that it takes five men behind the line to support one man at the front, and, judging from the pressure that already has come upon our people, this is manifestly not an incorrect statement. These reserves must be kept in good physical condition, and with this end in view the writer has prepared a modified form of setting-up exercises which has been tested out with large numbers in actual practice.

These exercises are intended to prepare the younger men for the more strenuous training which they are to undergo later; in the case of the older men, they are to be used before entering upon the ordinary day of business routine. After a great deal of study a system has been devised which answers the needs in both cases; it is not too strenuous for the older men, and it will add suppleness, vitality, and endurance to the physical assets of the younger men.

A Modern Physical System

We know how, in the stress of affairs brought about by war, not only individuals, but nations are suddenly awakened to the fact that what may have been good enough even a year ago is antiquated and out of date today. Under the pressure of war we are driven, whether we wish it or not, to put to immediate test virtually every fact of our daily lives. We find that almost every machine and well-nigh every method may be improved - in fact, that it must be improved.

Boats, airplanes, guns, industrial processes, even the actual business of living itself, all are being submitted to the test of emergency and are being made over upon new lines. So it is with our setting-up exercises. We can no longer afford to waste time or motion or effort. We are teaching on an intensive scale and we must take nothing out of a man in preparation; rather we must add to his store of vitality and energy. Perhaps we find that the routine of his ordinary work will strengthen sufficiently his legs and arms. This is astonishingly true. What we must now do is to supple him, to quicken his coordination, to improve his poise, and to put his trunk and thorax into better shape. We must give him endurance, quickness of response, and resistive force. This, therefore, being our problem, we eliminate the arm and leg exercises and go directly for the trunk and thorax. We must quicken coordination and improve the man's rapidity of response to command. And standing out above all is this major principle: "No vitality should be taken out of a man by these setting-up exercises; he should not be tired out, but rather made ready for the regular work of the day."

Out of Date Ideas

This war in which we are engaged has brought to our people some all-compelling truths. And the greatest of these is that our men, the flower of our racial stock, are deficient physically when put to the test before examining-boards. When one sees some two thousand men examined by draft boards to secure two hundred men for our army, as happened in some cases, when one reads that in a physical examination for the sanitary police force in Cleveland thirty-seven out of forty-two women passed and only twenty-two men out of seventy-two, one is ready indeed to believe that we have failed to produce men who can be called upon when the need arises to defend our country.

Our athletic sports have produced the right spirit, as the rush of athletes to the service has shown. But our calisthenics, our general building-up exercises have apparently failed in the physical development of our youth. They are antique. Permit me to illustrate. Only recently Professor Bolen, the authority on Swedish exercises, died and left behind him the record of his work. After twenty-five years of study he had decided that setting-up exercises were unnecessary in the case of a man's legs or arms or pectoral muscles, and that the attention should be devoted to the trunk - that is, to the engine itself.

Old-Time Fallacies

Here is what was once considered to be a reasonable morning "setting-up" exercise, and which, if coupled with a five-mile rapid walk and hopping first on one foot and then on the other for a half-mile, would prepare a man for his day's work.

On rising, let him stand erect, brace his chest firmly out, and, breathing deeply, curl dumbbells (ten pounds each for a 165-pound man) fifty times without stopping. Then placing the bells on the floor at his feet, and bending his knees a little and his arms none at all, let him rise to an upright position with them fifty times.

After another minute's rest, standing erect, let him lift the bells fifty times as far up and out behind him as he can, keeping the elbows straight and taking care, when the bells reach the highest point behind, to hold them still there a moment.

Next, starting with the bells at the shoulders, let him push them up high over the head and lower them fifty times continuously.

Is it any wonder that we abandoned such "setting-up"?

Again, it was pointed out how, by special exercises, a man might increase his biceps two or three inches in a year and the calves of his legs an inch or two! Now what was the average man to do this for? What was the object? To admire himself in the mirror? Or did he intend to make of himself a professional weightlifter? Practically the only real good in all this was the deep breathing, and that would not be lasting except in so far as a part of the exercises tended to open up the chest. How many of us have heard that fairy-tale that if we practiced deep breathing for a few minutes daily our lungs would acquire the habit and we should continue it unconsciously when seated at our desks!

About the Author

Walter Chauncey Camp (1859 - 1925) was a sports writer and football coach known as the "Father of American Football". Along with John Heisman, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Glenn Scobey Warner, and George Halas, Camp was one of the most significant people in the history of American football.