Keeping Fit All the Way Part 9

Attention!

Right Face Left Face About Face Repeat

Attention!

Arms Cross Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Stride Stand Crouch (Quarter-bend)

Attention!

Arms Cross Arms Stretch Palms Front Bring Arms Downward and Backward Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Running in Place Stepping Deep Breathing

Hike or Outdoor Work

Company formation. Count off. "Squads Right--March!" While marching explain to them "To the Rear--March," and have them do it three or four times. Distance mile and a half, with same hill work as before. Give them "Double Time" for twenty steps twice during the march.

NINTH DAY

Attention!

Forward--March (Three steps and come to "Attention!") Same Steps Backward Same Steps Sideways Make Complete Square (Three steps forward, three to the right, three backward, and three to the left) Hips Firm Neck Firm Body p.r.o.ne Body Backward Bend Body Sideways Bend Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Running in Place Stepping Deep Breathing

Hike or Outdoor Work

Get some bars of iron, one inch in diameter and three feet long. They should cost fifty cents apiece, and weigh about eight pounds. Give half the company these bars to carry, and at the middle of the hike transfer them to the other half to bring home. Distance mile and a half. No "Double Time." Carry the bars by the middle in the hands, and then for a time behind the back and through the elbows, with the hands in front.

TENTH DAY

Attention!

Arms Cross Body and Knee Bend, turning on Hips and touching Floor with Hand (First one and then the other. The right hand on bending right knee and the left hand on bending left knee).

Attention!

Hips Firm Neck Firm Body p.r.o.ne Body Backward Bend

Attention!

Stride Stand Arms Cross Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Crouch (Quarter-bend)

Attention!

Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Running in Place

Attention!

Stepping Deep Breathing

Hike or Outdoor Work

Carry bars, distance mile and a quarter, every man carrying his bar all the way. "Double-time" them once during march for twenty steps. Insist on erect carriage all the way, with neck back against collars.

Part II

THE DAILY DOZEN

A CONDENSED SYSTEM OF EITHER GROUP OR INDIVIDUAL SETTING-UP EXERCISES

CHAPTER VII

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 cla.s.s, as may be shown in the case of the present world war. The first cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sets 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 to-day. 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, aeroplanes, 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly true. What we must now do is to supple him, to quicken his co-ordination, 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 co-ordination 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 pa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INCORRECT POSITION, SHOWING HOW MOST MEN SLACK IN SWEDISH EXERCISES BY LETTING THE BACK BEND]

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 ill.u.s.trate. 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.