How to Get Strong and How to Stay So Part 13

Again, with back to the pulley-weights, hold the handles high over the head, and leaning forward about a foot, keeping the elbows unbent, bear the handles directly downward in front of you, and so do twenty-five.

Besides these few things, or most of them, put the bar (Fig. 3) in the upper place, and, catching it with both hands, just swing back and forth, at first for half a minute, afterward longer, always holding the head well back. This is capital at stretching the ribs apart and expanding the chest. If the above exercises seem too hard at first, begin with half as much, or even less, and work gradually up until the number named can be easily done.

If, once in mid-morning and again in mid-afternoon, the man, right in his store or office, will turn for two or three minutes to his dumb-bells, and repeat what he did with his home pair in the morning, he will find the rest and change most refres.h.i.+ng. But in any case, whether he does so or not, _every man in this country whose life is in-door ought to so divide his time that, come what may, he will make sure of his hour out-of-doors in the late afternoon, when the day's work is nearly or quite done_. If he must get up earlier, or get to his work earlier, or work faster while he does work, no matter. The prize is well worth any such sacrifice, and even five times it. Emerson well says, "The first wealth is health," and no pains should be spared to secure it. Lose it awhile and see. Exercise vigorously that hour afoot, or horseback, or on the water, making sure that during it you utterly ignore your business and usual thoughts. Walk less at first, but soon do your four miles in the hour, and then stick to that, of course having shoes in which it is easy to walk, and before long the good appet.i.te of boyhood will return, food taste as it often has not done for years, sound sleep will be surer, and new life and zest will be infused into all that you do. Let every man in this country who lives by brain-work get this daily "const.i.tutional" at all hazards, and it will do more to secure to him future years of health and usefulness than almost anything else he can do. It will be observed that there is nothing severe or violent in any of these exercises suggested for men--nothing that old or young may not take with like advantage. The whole idea is to point out a plain and simple plan of exercise, which, followed up faithfully, will make sound health almost certain, and which is easily within the reach of all.

_Daily Exercise for Consumptives._

And what should these people do? If there is one good lung left, or a goodly portion of two, there is much which they can do. Before breakfast they need to be more careful than others because of their poorer circulation. Still, in a warm and comfortable room they can work to advantage even then. In most instances consumptives have not large enough chests. Stripped to the waist, there is found to be a flatness of the upper chest, a lack of depth straight through from breastbone to spine; and the girth about the chest itself, and especially at the lower part of it, is often two or more inches less than it is in a well-built person of the same height. Now, to weed out these defects, to swell up and enlarge the chest, and bring it proper breadth, and depth, and fulness, this will go far toward insuring healthy and vigorous lungs.

And how is this done?

Standing under the handles in an appliance like that represented in Fig.

8, holding the body rigidly erect, the chest out, the knees and elbows unbent, bear the two handles downward on either side of you until the hands are as if extended on a cross, using only very light weights at first. Lower the weights again, then bear down again, and so do ten.

Just as you bear down each time, inflate the lungs to their utmost, and hold the air in them until you have lowered the weights again. Rest about a minute, then do ten more, and a little later ten more. This will be enough before breakfast work the first week. At breakfast, and whenever sitting down throughout the day, determine to do two things--to sit far back on your chair, and to sit at all times upright. No matter how many times you forget or fail, even if a thousand, keep trying until the erect posture becomes habitual. This point once reached, you have accomplished a great thing--one which may aid not a little to save your life.

Next, about an hour after breakfast, start out for an easy walk. Going quietly at first, the head held, if anything, back of the vertical, and the step short and springy; quicken later into a lively pace, and, holding that as long as you comfortably can, return to your room. If your skin is moist, do not hesitate a minute, but strip at once, and with coa.r.s.e towels rub your skin till it is thoroughly red all over, and then put on dry under-clothing. If you then feel like taking a nap, take it. When well rested, do thirty more strokes at the pulley-weights. In the afternoon try more walking, or some horseback work if you can get a steed with any dash in him. After you are through, then more weight work. Finally, just before retiring, take another turn at the weights.

After the first week run the weight work up to fifty at a time, and increase the out-door distance covered both morning and afternoon, being sure to go in all weathers, and to eat and sleep all you comfortably can. Vary the in-door work also somewhat. In addition to the exercise on Fig. 8, practice now an equal number of strokes daily on the appliance described as Fig. 9, and in the fas.h.i.+on described on page 249. After the first fortnight try hanging by the two hands on the horizontal bar and swinging lightly back and forth. Before breakfast, before dinner, before supper, and just before retiring, take a turn at this swinging. Of it, and the work on the two sorts of pulley-weights, a weak-lunged person can scarcely do enough. These open the ribs apart, broaden and deepen the chest, and inflate the lungs--the very things the consumptive needs. The out-door work secures him or her ample good air, vigorous exercise, and frequent change of scene. On the value of this good air, or rather of the danger of bad air, hear Langenbeck, the great German anatomist: "I am sure now of what I suspected long ago, viz., that pulmonary diseases have very little to do with intemperance, * * * and much less with cold weather, but are nearly exclusively (if we except tuberculous tendencies inherited from _both_ parents, I say _quite_ exclusively) produced by the breathing of foul air." This out-door work should also be steadily increased until the half-hour's listless walk at first becomes six or eight miles before dinner, and as much more before supper. From breakfast to supper one can hardly be exercising out-of-doors too much; and steadily calling on the heart and lungs in these very favorable ways, increased vigor and power are only what might have reasonably been looked for.

As the months roll on, and this steady work, directed right to the weak spots, has strengthened and toughened you, now put larger weights on the Fig. 8 appliance, and also increase the number of strokes until you do a thousand or even two thousand daily--head and body always being held erect, and full breathing a constant accompaniment. This making a specialty of these chest-expanding exercises, none of which are severe or violent, but which are still vigorous enough, and the abundance of healthy and active out-door life, are sure to bring good fruits in this battle where the stake is no less than one's own life. They are rational and vigorous means, aimed directly at the weak part, and, with good air, good food, cheerful friends, and ample sleep, will often work marvels, where the filling the stomach with a whole apothecary shop of nauseous oils and other medicines has wholly failed to bring the relief sought.

These exercises taken by a man already healthy at once tone him up and invigorate him, until he begins to have something of the feeling of the st.u.r.dy pioneer, as described by Dr. Mitch.e.l.l.[P] And if the delicate person tries the same means, using them judiciously and carefully, it is but natural that he should find similar results.

Some years ago Dr. G----, of Boston, showed us a photograph of himself taken several years previously. The shoulders were warped forward, the chest looked flat, almost hollow, and the face and general appearance suggested a delicate man. He said he inclined to be consumptive. Well, by practising breathing, not on an ordinary "blowing-machine," where you empty your lungs of about all that is in them, but on an inspirometer, from which instead you inhale every inch of air you can, and by practising vigorous working of his diaphragm, he had so expanded his lungs that he could inhale three hundred and eighty cubic inches of air at one breath! Certainly the depth of his chest at the later period was something astounding, it being, as nearly as we could judge without calipers, all of fourteen inches through, directly from breastbone to spine, while it was a strikingly broad chest as well.

But an even more astonis.h.i.+ng feature was the tremendous power of his voice. He said that at the end of half an hour's public singing with the opera singers (for he was skilled at that), while they would be hot and perspiring he was only just warming up and getting ready for his work.

One thing all who ever heard him sing would quickly concede, namely, that seldom had they anywhere heard so immense a voice as his. He said that he had also run two blocks in one breath. He looked about the farthest remove from a consumptive--a short, stout, fat man, rather.

Now the in-door chest work above recommended, and the steady and vigorous daily out-door work, all aiming to deepen and strengthen the lungs, are well-nigh sure to bring decidedly favorable results; while the doctor's habit of frequent, deep, and slow inhaling, cannot fail to work great good, and can hardly be practised enough.

After he of weak lungs has once built them up again and regained the former vigor, he should not only be sure of his daily in-door exercise and of his const.i.tutional, but of a longer outing daily than a stronger man would need. President Day, of Yale, said to have been a consumptive at seventeen, by good care of his body lived to be ninety-five, and it is far from uncommon for delicate persons, who take good care of the small stock of vigor they have, to outlive st.u.r.dier ones who are more prodigal and careless.

FOOTNOTES:

[P] See page 77.

CONCLUSION.

In the first eleven chapters of this little book attempt has been made to call attention both to defects and lacks, resulting largely from not taking rational daily exercise, and to what such exercise has accomplished wherever it has been thoroughly tried. In the last two chapters have been suggested not a long and difficult system of gymnastic exercises needing a fully equipped gymnasium, a trained instructor, and years of work to master, but rather a few plain and simple exercises for any given part or for the whole body, and hints as to how to distribute the little time to be given to them daily. The teacher, the parent--the child even, without the aid of either--the young man or woman, the middle-aged and the old, will all find variety enough of work, which, while free from risk, will still prove sufficiently vigorous to insure to each a good allowance of daily exercise. All else that is needed is a good degree of the steadiness and perseverance which are generally inseparable from everything worth accomplis.h.i.+ng.

THE END.