GYMNASTICS
The story of Jahn and the Turners--The enthusiasm which this movement
generated in Germany--The ideal of bringing out latent powers--The
concept of more perfect voluntary control--Swedish gymnastics--Doing
everything possible for the body as a machine--Liberal physical
culture--Ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movements
and correcting defects--The ideal of symmetry and prescribing
exercises to bring the body to a standard--Lamentable lack of
correlation between these four systems--Illustrations of the great
good that a systematic training can effect--Athletic records--Greek
physical training.
Under the term gymnastics, literally naked exercises, we here include
those denuded of all utilities or ulterior ends save those of physical
culture. This is essentially modern and was unknown in antiquity,
where training was for games, for war, etc. Several ideals underlie
this movement, which although closely related are distinct and as yet
by no means entirely harmonized. These may be described as follows:
A. One aim of Jahn, more developed by Spiess, and their successors,
was to do everything physically possible for the body as a mechanism.
Many postures and attitudes are assumed and many movements made that
are never called for in life. Some of these are so novel that a great
variety of new apparatus had to be devised to bring them out; and Jahn
invented many new names, some of them without etymologies, to
designate the repertory of his discoveries and inventions that
extended the range of motor life. Common movements, industries, and
even games, train only a limited number of muscles, activities, and
coördinations, and leave more or less unused groups and combinations,
so that many latent possibilities slumber, and powers slowly lapse
through disuse. Not only must these be rescued, but the new nascent
possibilities of modern progressive man must be addressed and
developed. Even the common things that the average untrained youth can
not do are legion, and each of these should be a new incentive to the
trainer as he realizes how very far below their motor possibilities
meet men live. The man of the future may, and even must, do things
impossible in the past and acquire new motor variations not given by
heredity. Our somatic frame and its powers must therefore be carefully
studied, inventoried, and assessed afresh, and a kind and amount of
exercise required that is exactly proportioned, not perhaps to the
size but to the capability of each voluntary muscle. Thus only can we
have a truly humanistic physical development, analogous to the
training of all the powers of the mind in a broad, truly liberal, and
non-professional or non-vocational educational curriculum. The body
will thus have its rightful share in the pedagogic traditions and
inspirations of the renaissance. Thus only can we have a true scale of
standardised culture values for efferent processes; and from this we
can measure the degrees of departure, both in the direction of excess
and defect, of each form of work, motor habit; and even play. Many
modern Epigoni in the wake of this great ideal, where its momentum was
early spent, feeling that new activities might be discovered with
virtues hitherto undreamed of, have almost made fetiches of special
disciplines, both developmental and corrective, that are pictured and
landed in scores of manuals. Others have had expectations no less
excessive in the opposite direction and have argued that the greatest
possible variety of movements best developed the greatest total of
motor energy. Jahn especially thus made gymnastics a special art and
inspired great enthusiasm of humanity, and the songs of his pupils
were of a better race of man and a greater and united fatherland. It
was this feature that made his work unique in the world, and his
disciples are fond of reminding us of the fact that it was just about
one generation of men after the acme of influence of his system that,
in 1870, Germany showed herself the greatest military power since
ancient Rome, and took the acknowledged leadership of the world both
in education and science.
These theorizations even in their extreme forms have been not only
highly suggestive but have brought great and new enthusiasms and
ideals into the educational world that admirably fit adolescence. The
motive of bringing out latent, decaying, or even new powers, skills,
knacks, and feats, is full of inspiration. Patriotism is aroused, for
thus the country can be better served; thus the German Fatherland was
to be restored and unified after the dark days that followed the
humiliation of Jena. Now the ideals of religion are invoked that the
soul may have a better and regenerated somatic organism with which to
serve Jesus and the Church. Exercise is made a form of praise to God
and of service to man, and these motives are reënforced by those of
the new hygiene which strives for a new wholeness-holiness, and would
purify the body as the temple of the Holy Ghost. Thus in Young Men's
Christian Association training schools and gymnasiums the gospel of
Christianity is preached anew and seeks to bring salvation to man's
physical frame, which the still lingering effects of asceticism have
caused to be too long neglected in its progressive degeneration. As
the Greek games were in honor of the gods, so now the body is trained
to better glorify God; and regimen, chastity, and temperance are given
a new momentum. The physical salvation thus wrought will be, when
adequately written, one of the most splendid chapters in the modern
history of Christianity. Military ideals have been revived in cult and
song to hearten the warfare against evil within and without. Strength
is prayed for as well as worked for, and consecrated to the highest
uses. Last but not least, power thus developed over a large surface
may be applied to athletic contests in the field, and victories here
are valuable as fore-gleams of how sweet the glory of achievements in
higher moral and spiritual tasks will taste later.
The dangers and sources of error in this ideal of all-sided training
are, alas, only too obvious, although they only qualify its paramount
good. First, it is impossible thus to measure the quanta of training
needed so as rightly to assign to each its modicum and best modality
of training. Indeed no method of doing this has ever been attempted,
but the assessments have been arbitrary and conjectural, probably
right in some and wrong in other respects, with no adequate criterion
or test for either save only empirical experience. Secondly, heredity,
which lays its heavy ictus upon some neglected forms of activity and
fails of all support for others, has been ignored. As we shall see
later, one of the best norms here is phyletic emphasis, and what lacks
this must at best be feeble; and if new powers are unfolding, their
growth must be very slow and they must be nurtured as tender buds for
generations. Thirdly, too little regard is had for the vast
differences in individuals, most of whom need much personal
prescription.
B. In practise the above ideal is never isolated from others. Perhaps
the most closely associated with it is that of increased volitional
control. Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his
activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his
environment. Every new power of controlling these by the will frees
man from slavery and widens the field of freedom. To acquire the power
of doing all with consciousness and volition mentalizes the body,
gives control over to higher brain levels, and develops them by
rescuing activities from the dominance of lower centers. Thus _mens
agitat molem._ [Footnote: Mind rules the body.] This end is favored by
the Swedish _commando_ exercises, which require great alertness of
attention to translate instantly a verbal order into an act and also,
although in somewhat less degree, by quick imitation of a leader. The
stimulus of music and rhythm are excluded because thought to interfere
with this end. A somewhat sophisticated form of this goal is sought by
several Delsartian schemes of relaxation, decomposition, and
recomposition of movements. To do all things with consciousness and to
encroach on the field of instinct involves new and more vivid sense
impressions, the range of which is increased directly as that of
motion, the more closely it approaches the focus of attention. By thus
analyzing settled and established coördinations, their elements are
set free and may be organized into new combinations, so that the
former is the first stage toward becoming a virtuoso with new special
skills. This is the road to inner secrets or intellectual rules of
professional and expert successes, such as older athletes often rely
upon when their strength begins to wane. Every untrained automatism
must be domesticated, and every striated muscle capable of direct
muscular control must be dominated by volition. Thus tensions and
incipient contractures that drain off energy can be relaxed by fiat.
Sandow's "muscle dance," the differentiation of movements of the
right and left hand--one, e.g., writing a French madrigal while the
other is drawing a picture of a country dance, or each playing
tunes of disparate rhythm and character simultaneously on the
piano--controlling heart rate, moving the ears, crying, laughing,
blushing, moving the bowels, etc., at will, feats of inhibition of
reflexes, stunts of all kinds, proficiency with many tools, deftness
in sports--these altogether would mark the extremes in this direction.
This, too, has its inspiration for youth. To be a universal adept like
Hippias suggests Diderot and the encyclopedists in the intellectual
realm. To do all with consciousness is a means to both remedial and
expert ends. Motor life often needs to be made over to a greater or
less extent; and that possibilities of vastly greater accomplishments
exist than are at present realized, is undoubted, even in manners and
morals, which are both at root only motor habits. Indeed consciousness
itself is largely and perhaps wholly corrective in its very essence
and origin. Thus life is adjusted to new environments; and if the
Platonic postulate be correct, that untaught virtues that come by
nature and instinct are no virtues, but must be made products of
reflection and reason, the sphere and need of this principle is great
indeed. But this implies a distrust of physical human nature as
deep-seated and radical as that of Calvinism for the unregenerate
heart, against which modern common sense, so often the best muse of
both psychophysics and pedagogy, protests. Individual prescription is
here as imperative as it is difficult. Wonders that now seem to be
most incredible, both of hurt and help, can undoubtedly be wrought,
but analysis should always be for the sake of synthesis and never be
beyond its need and assured completion. No thoughtful student fully
informed of the facts and tentatives in this field can doubt that here
lies one of the most promising fields of future development, full of
far-reaching and rich results for those, as yet far too few, experts
in physical training, who have philosophic minds, command the facts of
modern psychology, and whom the world awaits now as never before.
C. Another yet closely correlated ideal is that of economic postures
and movements. The system of Ling is less orthopedic than orthogenic,
although he sought primarily to correct bad attitudes and perverted
growth. Starting from the respiratory and proceeding to the muscular
system, he and his immediate pupils were content to refer to the
ill-shapen bodies of most men about them. One of their important aims
was to relax the flexor and tone up the extensor muscles and to open
the human form into postures as opposite as possible to those of the
embryo, which it tends so persistently to approximate in sitting, and
in fatigue and collapse attitudes generally. The head must balance on
the cervical vertebra and not call upon the muscles of the neck to
keep it from rolling off; the weight of the shoulders must be thrown
back off the thorax; the spine be erect to allow the abdomen free
action; the joints of the thigh extended; the hand and arm supinated,
etc. Bones must relieve muscles and nerves. Thus an erect,
self-respecting carriage must be given, and the unfortunate
association, so difficult to overcome, between effort and an involuted
posture must be broken up. This means economy and a great saving of
vital energy. Extensor action goes with expansive, flexor with
depressive states of mind; hence courage, buoyancy, hope, are favored
and handicaps removed. All that is done with great effort causes wide
irradiation of tensions to the other half of the body and also
sympathetic activities in those not involved; the law of maximal ease
and minimal expenditure of energy must be always striven for, and the
interests of the viscera never lost sight of. This involves educating
weak and neglected muscles, and like the next ideal, often shades over
by almost imperceptible gradation into the passive movements by the
Zander machines. Realizing that certain activities are sufficiently or
too much emphasized in ordinary life, stress is laid upon those which
are complemental to them, so that there is no pretense of taking
charge of the totality of motor processes, the intention being
principally to supplement deficiencies, to insure men against being
warped, distorted, or deformed by their work in life, to compensate
specialties and perform more exactly what recreation to some extent
aims at.
This wholesome but less inspiring endeavor, which combats one of the
greatest evils that under modern civilization threatens man's physical
weal, is in some respects as easy and practical as it is useful. The
great majority of city bred men, as well as all students, are prone to
deleterious effects from too much sitting; and indeed there is
anatomical evidence in the structure of the tissues, and especially
the blood-vessels of the groins, that, at his best, man is not yet
entirely adjusted to the upright position. So a method that
straightens knees, hips, spine, and shoulders, or combats the
school-desk attitude, is a most salutary contribution to a great and
growing need. In the very act of stretching, and perhaps yawning, for
which much is to be said, nature itself suggests such correctives and
preventives. To save men from being victims of their occupations is
often to add a better and larger half to their motor development. The
danger of the system, which now best represents this ideal, is
inflexibility and overscholastic treatment. It needs a great range of
individual variations if it would do more than increase circulation,
respiration, and health, or the normal functions of internal organs
and fundamental physiological activities. To clothe the frame with
honest muscles that are faithful servants of the will adds not only
strength, more active habits and efficiency, but health; and in its
material installation this system is financially economic. Personal
faults and shortcomings are constantly pointed out where this work is
best represented, and it has a distinct advantage in inciting an
acquaintance with physiology and inviting the larger fields of medical
knowledge.
D. The fourth gymnastic aim is symmetry and correct proportions.
Anthropometry and average girths and dimensions, strength, etc., of
the parts of the body are first charted in percentile grades; and each
individual is referred to the apparatus and exercises best fitted to
correct weaknesses and subnormalities. The norms here followed are not
the canons of Greek art, but those established by the measurement of
the largest numbers properly grouped by age, weight, height, etc.
Young men are found to differ very widely. Some can lift 1,000 pounds,
and some not 100; some can lift their weight between twenty and forty
times, and some not once; some are most deficient in legs, others in
shoulders, arms, backs, chests. By photography, tape, and scales, each
is interested in his own bodily condition and incited to overcome his
greatest defects; and those best endowed by nature to attain ideal
dimensions and make new records are encouraged along these lines. Thus
this ideal is also largely though not exclusively remedial.
This system can arouse youth to the greatest pitch of zest in watching
their own rapidly multiplying curves of growth in dimensions and
capacities, in plotting curves that record their own increment in
girths, lifts, and other tests, and in observing the effects of sleep,
food, correct and incorrect living upon a system so exquisitely
responsive to all these influences as are the muscles. To learn to
know and grade excellence and defect, to be known for the list of
things one can do and to have a record, or to realize what we lack of
power to break best records, even to know that we are strengthening
some point where heredity has left us with some shortage and perhaps
danger, the realization of all this may bring the first real and deep
feeling for growth that may become a passion later in things of the
soul. Growth always has its selfish aspects, and to be constantly
passing our own examination in this respect is a new and perhaps
sometimes too self-conscious endeavor of our young college barbarians;
but it is on the whole a healthful regulative, and this form of the
struggle toward perfection and escape from the handicap of birth will
later move upward to the intellectual and moral plane. To kindle a
sense of physical beauty of form in every part, such as a sculptor
has, may be to start youth on the lowest round of the Platonic ladder
that leads up to the vision of ideal beauty of soul, if his ideal be
not excess of brawn, or mere brute strength, but the true proportion
represented by the classic or mean temperance balanced like justice
between all extremes. Hard, patient, regular work, with the right
dosage for this self-cultural end, has thus at the same time a unique
moral effect.
The dangers of this system are also obvious. Nature's intent can not
be too far thwarted; and as in mental training the question is always
pertinent, so here we may ask whether it be not best in all cases to
some extent, and in some cases almost exclusively, to develop in the
direction in which we most excel, to emphasize physical individuality
and even idiosyncrasy, rather than to strive for monotonous
uniformity. Weaknesses and parts that lag behind are the most easily
overworked to the point of reaction and perhaps permanent injury.
Again, work for curative purposes lacks the exuberance of free sports:
it is not inspiring to make up areas; and therapeutic exercises
imposed like a sentence for the shortcomings of our forebears bring a
whiff of the atmosphere of the hospital, if not of the prison, into
the gymnasium.
These four ideals, while so closely interrelated, are as yet far from
harmonized. Swedish, Turner, Sargent, and American systems are each,
most unfortunately, still too blind to the others' merits and too
conscious of the others' shortcomings. To some extent they are
prevented from getting together by narrow devotion to a single cult,
aided sometimes by a pecuniary interest in the sale of their own
apparatus and books or in the training of teachers according to one
set of rubrics. The real elephant is neither a fan, a rope, a tree nor
a log, as the blind men in the fable contended, each thinking the part
he had touched to be the whole. This inability of leaders to combine
causes uncertainty and lack of confidence in, and of enthusiastic
support for, any system on the part of the public. Even the radically
different needs of the sexes have failed of recognition from the same
partisanship. All together represent only a fraction of the nature and
needs of youth. The world now demands what this country has never had,
a man who, knowing the human body, gymnastic history, and the various
great athletic traditions of the past, shall study anew the whole
motor field, as a few great leaders early in the last century tried to
do; who shall gather and correlate the literature and experiences of
the past and present with a deep sense of responsibility to the
future; who shall examine martial training with all the inspirations,
warnings, and new demands; and who shall know how to revive the
inspiration of the past animated by the same spirit as the Turners,
who were almost inflamed by referring back to the hardy life of the
early Teutons and trying to reproduce its best features; who shall
catch the spirit of, and make due connections with, popular sports
past and present, study both industry and education to compensate
their debilitating effects, and be himself animated by a great ethical
and humanistic hope and faith in a better future. Such a man, if he
ever walks the earth, will be the idol of youth, will know their
physical secrets, will come almost as a savior to the bodies of men,
and will, like Jahn, feel his calling and work sacred, and his
institution a temple in which every physical act will be for the sake
of the soul. The world of adolescence, especially that part which sits
in closed spaces conning books, groans and travails all the more
grievously and yearningly, because unconsciously, waiting for a
redeemer for its body. Till he appears, our culture must remain for
most a little hollow, falsetto, and handicapped by school-bred
diseases. The modern gymnasium performs its chief service during
adolescence and is one of the most beneficent agencies of which not a
few, but every youth, should make large use. Its spirit should be
instinct with euphoria, where the joy of being alive reaches a point
of high, although not quite its highest, intensity. While the stimulus
of rivalry and even of records is not excluded, and social feelings
may be appealed to by unison exercises and by the club spirit, and
while competitions, tournaments, and the artificial motives of prizes
and exhibitions may be invoked, the culture is in fact largely
individual. And yet in this country the annual _Turnerfest_ brings
4,000 or 5,000 men from all parts of the Union, who sometimes all
deploy and go through some of the standard exercises together under
one leader. Instead of training a few athletes, the real problem now
presented is how to raise the general level of vitality so that
children and youth may be fitted to stand the strain of modern
civilization, resist zymotic diseases, and overcome the deleterious
influences of city life. The almost immediate effects of systematic
training are surprising and would hardly be inferred from the annual
increments tabled earlier in this chapter. Sandow was a rather weakly
boy and ascribes his development chiefly to systematic training.
We have space but for two reports believed to be typical. Enebuske
reports on the effects of seven months' training on young women
averaging 22.3 years. The figures are based on the 50 percentile
column.
----------------+--------+----------------------------------+--------
| | Strength of |
|Lung | | | |right |left |Total
|capacity| legs |back |chest|forearm|forearm|Strength
----------------+--------+------+-----+-----+-------+-------+--------
Before training | 2.65 | 93 |65.5 | 27 | 26 | 23 | 230
After six months| 2.87 | 120 |81.5 | 32 | 28 | 25 | 293
----------------+--------+------+-----+-----+-------+-------+--------
By comparing records of what he deems standard normal growth with that
of 188 naval cadets from sixteen to twenty-one, who had special and
systematic training, just after the period of most rapid growth in
height, Beyer concluded that the effect of four years of this added a
little over an inch of stature, and that this gain as greatest at the
beginning. This increase was greatest for the youngest cadets. He
found also a marked increase in weight, nearly the same for each year
from seventeen to twenty one. This he thought more easily influenced
by exercise than height. A high vital index ratio of lung capacity to
weight is a very important attribute of good training. Beyer[1] found,
however, that the addition of lung area gained by exercise did not
keep up with the increase thus caused in muscular substance, and that
the vital index always became smaller in those who had gained weight
and strength by special physical training. How much gain in weight is
desirable beyond the point where the lung capacity increases at an
equal rate is unknown. If such measurements were applied to the
different gymnastic systems, we might be able to compare their
efficiency, which would be a great desideratum in view of the
unfortunate rivalry between them. Total strength, too, can be greatly
increased. Beyer thinks that from sixteen to twenty-one it may exceed
the average or normal increment fivefold, and he adds, "I firmly
believe that the now so wonderful performances of most of our strong
men are well within the reach of the majority of healthy men, if such
performances were a serious enough part of their ambition
to make them do the exercises necessary to develop them." Power of the
organs to respond to good training by increased strength probably
reaches well into middle life.
It is not encouraging to learn that, according to a recent writer,[2]
we now have seventy times as many physicians in proportion to the
general population as there are physical directors, even for the
school population alone considered. We have twice as many physicians
per population as Great Britain, four times a many as Germany, or 2
physicians, 1.8 ministers, 1.4 lawyers per thousand of the general
population; while even if all male teachers of physical training
taught only males of the military age, we should have but 0.05 of a
teacher per thousand, or if the school population alone be considered,
20 teachers per million pupils. Hence, it is inferred that the need of
wise and classified teachers in this field is at present greater than
in any other. But fortunately while spontaneous, unsystematic exercise
in a well-equipped modern gymnasium may in rare cases do harm, so far
from sharing the prejudice often felt for it by professional trainers,
we believe that free access to it without control or direction is
unquestionably a boon to youth. Even if its use be sporadic and
occasional, as it is likely to be with equal opportunity for
out-of-door exercises and especially sports, practise is sometimes
hygienic almost inversely to its amount, while even lameness from
initial excess has its lessons, and the sense of manifoldness of
inferiorities brought home by experiences gives a wholesome
self-knowledge and stimulus.
In this country more than elsewhere, especially in high school and
college, gymnasium work has been brought into healthful connection
with field sports and record competitions for both teams and
individuals who aspire to championship. This has given the former a
healthful stimulus although it is felt only by a picked few. Scores of
records have been established for running, walking, hurdling,
throwing, putting, swimming, rowing, skating, etc., each for various
shorter and longer distances and under manifold conditions, and for
both amateurs and professionals, who are easily accessible. These, in
general, show a slow but steady advance in this country since 1876,
when athletics were established here. In that year there was not a
single world's best record held by an American amateur, and
high-school boys of to-day could in most, though not in all lines,
have won the American championship twenty-five years ago. Of course,
in a strict sense, intercollegiate contests do not show the real
advance in athletics, because it is not necessary for a man in order
to win a championship to do his best; but they do show general
improvement.
We select for our purpose a few of those records longest kept. Not
dependent on external conditions like boat-racing, or on improved
apparatus like bicycling, we have interesting data of a very different
order for physical measurements. These down to present writing--July,
1906--are as follows: For the 100-yard dash, every annual record from
1876 to 1895 is 10 or 11 seconds, or between these, save in 1890,
where Owen's record of 9-4/5 seconds still stands. In the 220-yard run
there is slight improvement since 1877, but here the record of 1896
(Wefers, 21-1/5 seconds) has not been surpassed. In the quarter-mile
run, the beet record was in 1900 (Long, 47 seconds). The half-mile
record, which still stands, was made in 1895 (Kilpatrick, 1 minute
52-2/5 seconds); the mile run in 1895 (Conneff, 4 minutes 15-3/5
seconds). The running broad jump shows a very steady improvement, with
the best record in 1900 (Prinstein, 24 feet 7-1/4 inches). The running
high jump shows improvement, but less, with the record of 1895 still
standing (Sweeney, 6 feet 5-5/8 inches). The record for pole vaulting,
corrected to November, 1905, is 12 feet 132/100 inches (Dole); for
throwing the 16-pound hammer head, 100 feet 5 inches (Queckberner);
for putting the 16-pound shot, 49 feet 6 inches (Coe, 1905); the
standing high jump, 5 feet 5-1/2 inches (Ewry); for the running high
jump, 6 feet 5-5/8 inches (Sweeney). We also find that if we extend
our purview to include all kinds of records for physical achievement,
that not a few of the amateur records for activities involving
strength combined with rapid rhythm movement are held by young men of
twenty or even less.
In putting the 16-pound shot under uniform conditions the record has
improved since the early years nearly 10 feet (Coe, 49 feet 6 inches,
best at present writing, 1906). Pole vaulting shows a very marked
advance culminating in 1904 (Dole, 12 feet 132/100 inches). Most
marked of all perhaps is the great advance in throwing the 16-pound
hammer. Beginning between 70 and 80 feet in the early years, the
record is now 172 feet 11 inches (Flanagan, 1904). The two-mile
bicycle race also shows marked gain, partly, of course, due to
improvement in the wheel, the early records being nearly 7 minutes,
and the best being 2 minutes 19 seconds (McLean, 1903). Some of these
are world records, and more exceed professional records.[3] These, of
course, no more indicate general improvement than the steady reduction
of time in horse-racing suggests betterment in horses generally.
In Panhellenic games as well as at present, athleticism in its
manifold forms was one of the most characteristic expressions of
adolescent nature and needs. Not a single time or distance record of
antiquity has been preserved, although Grasberger[4] and other writers
would have us believe that in those that are comparable, ancient
youthful champions greatly excelled ours, especially in leaping and
running. While we are far from cultivating mere strength, our training
is very one-sided from the Greek norm of unity or of the ideals that
develop the body only for the salve of the soul. While gymnastics in
our sense, with apparatus, exercises, and measurements independently
of games was unknown, the ideal and motive were as different from ours
as was its method. Nothing, so far as is known, was done for
correcting the ravages of work, or for overcoming hereditary defects;
and until athletics degenerated there were Do exercises for the sole
purpose of developing muscle.
On the whole, while modern gymnastics has done more for the trunk,
shoulders, and arms than for the legs, it is now too selfish and
ego-centric, deficient on the side of psychic impulsion, and but
little subordinated to ethical or intellectual development. Yet it
does a great physical service to all who cultivate it, and is a
safeguard of virtue and temperance. Its need is radical revision and
coordination of various cults and theories in the light of the latest
psycho-physiological science.
Gymnastics allies itself to biometric work. The present academic zeal
for physical development is in great need of closer affiliation with
anthropometry. This important and growing department will be
represented in the ideal gymnasium of the future--First, by courses,
if not by a chair, devoted to the apparatus of measurements of human
proportions and symmetry, with a kinesological cabinet where young men
are instructed in the elements of auscultation, the use of calipers,
the sphygmograph, spirometer, plethysmograph, kinesometer to plot
graphic curves, compute average errors, and tables of percentile
grades and in statistical methods, etc. Second, anatomy, especially of
muscles, bones, heart, and skin, will be taught, and also their
physiology, with stress upon myology, the effects of exercise on the
flow of blood and lymph, not excluding the development of the upright
position, and all that it involves and implies. Third, hygiene will be
prominent and comprehensive enough to cover all that pertains to
body-keeping, regimen, sleep, connecting with school and domestic and
public hygiene--all on the basis of modern as distinct from the
archaic physiology of Ling, who, it is sufficient to remember, died in
1839, before this science was recreated, and the persistence of whose
concepts are an anomalous survival to-day. Mechanico-therapeutics, the
purpose and service of each chief kind of apparatus and exercise, the
value of work on stall bars with chest weights, of chinning, use of
the quarter-staff, somersaults, rings, clubs, dumb-bells, work with
straight and flexed knees on machinery, etc., will be taught. Fourth,
the history of gymnastics from the time of its highest development in
Greece to the present is full of interest and has a very high and not
yet developed culture value for youth. This department, both in its
practical and theoretical side, should have its full share of prizes
and scholarships to stimulate the seventy to seventy-five per cent of
students who are now unaffected by the influence of athletics. By
these methods the motivation of gymnastics, which now in large measure
goes to waste in enthusiasm, could be utilised to aid the greatly
needed intellectualization of those exercises which in their nature
are more akin to work than play. Indeed, Gutsmuths's first definition
of athletics was "work under the garb of youthful pleasure." So to
develop these courses that they could chiefly, if not entirely,
satisfy the requirements for the A.B. degree, would coordinate the
work of the now isolated curriculum of the training-schools with that
of the college and thus broaden the sphere of the latter; but besides
its culture value, which I hold very high, such a step would prepare
for the new, important, and, as we have seen, very inadequately manned
profession of physical trainers. This has, moreover, great but yet
latent and even unsuspected capacities for the morals of our academic
youth. Grote states that among the ancient Greeks one-half of all
education as devoted to the body, and Galton urges that they as much
excelled us as we do the African negro. They held that if physical
perfection was cultivated, moral and mental excellence would follow;
and that, without this, national culture rests on an insecure basis.
In our day there are many new reasons to believe that the best nations
of the future will be those which give most intelligent care to the
body.
[Footnote 1: See H.G. Beyer. The Influence of Exercise on Growth.
American Physical Education Review, September-December, 1896, vol. I,
pp. 76-87.]
[Footnote 2: J.H. McCurdy, Physical Training as a Profession.
Association Seminar, March, 1902, vol. 10, pp. 11-24.]
[Footnote 3: These records are taken from the World Almanac, 1906, and
Olympic Games of 1906 at Athens. Edited by J.E. Sullivan, Commissioner
from the United States to the Olympic Games. Spalding's Athletic
Library, New York, July, 1906.]
[Footnote 4: O.H. Jaeger, Die Gymnastik der Hellenen. Heitz,
Stuttgart 1881. L. Grasberger's great standard work, Erziehung und
Untericht im klassischen Alterthum. Würzburg, 1864-81, 3 vols.]
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