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may have been good enough even a year ago is antiquated and out of date
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 astonishingly 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 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.
[Illustration: 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 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 practised deep
breathing for a few minutes daily our lungs would acquire the habit and
we should continue it unconsciously when seated at our desks!
A PERFECTLY USELESS STUNT
Just to show what we are _not_ attempting to do, here is a quotation
illustrating perfectly the old-fashioned idea that health depends upon
extraordinary muscular development:
At our suggestion he began practising this simple raising and
lowering of the heels. In less than four months he had increased
the girth of each calf one whole inch. When asked how many strokes
a day he averaged, he said that it was from fifteen hundred to two
thousand, varied some days by his holding in each hand, during the
process, a twelve-pound dumbbell, and then only doing one thousand
or thereabouts. The time he found most convenient was in the
morning on rising, and just before retiring at night. The work did
not take much time; seventy strokes a minute was found a good
ordinary rate, so that fifteen minutes at each end of the day was
all he needed.
We new recognize how silly are such exercises taken for the mere sake of
adding an inch or two to an already serviceable muscle.
PENNY-WISE AND POUND-FOOLISH
It is poor gymnastics when the main object is to expend a certain number
of foot-pounds of energy to secure increase in cardiac and pulmonary
activity, without care being taken that these organs are in a favorable
condition to meet the increased demand put upon them. It is poor
gymnastics if we desire to astound the world by nicely finished and
smoothly gliding combinations of complex movements fit to be put into
the repertoire of a juggler, or by exhibitions of strength vying with
those of a Sandow, if we do not take into consideration the effects upon
the vital functions.
"Look at these fellows," said the physician, "built like giants and
rotten inside!" True, he was speaking of a lot of big negroes, but he
found the same condition in others--men with stiff muscles and slow
movements, men with shoulders pulled forward and no chest expansion,
breathing wholly with their abdomens. As he put it, "Those men will
to-morrow be the recruits for another army, the one which fills the
tuberculosis hospitals."
NATURE'S PROCESS
What we want is suppleness, chest expansion, resistive force, and
endurance; and these do not come from great bulging knots of muscle nor
from extraordinary feats of strength. Rapid shifts from severe training
to a life of ease and indulgence is not Nature's process. It is not the
way in which she carries on her work. Every step she makes is a little
one. She seems never to reckon time as an essential in her economy. We
should heed the lesson. The man who eats, drinks, and neglects all care
of himself for a year, and then rushes madly into a period of severe
physical exercise and reduction, may at the end of the month, if he
possesses sufficient vitality, come out feeling fine. But if he repeats
the process of letting himself go, Nature puts on the fat more and more
and a second severe reduction becomes necessary. And it is only a
question of time as to the exhaustion of any man's vitality through
these extremes.
TIME THE GREAT ELEMENT
Any one who has had the opportunity of talking with the men in authority
who are bearing the burden of fitting a nation for the present emergency
cannot fail to be impressed with the fact that time is the great
element. We must really prepare our men, we must make them fit in the
shortest space of time that will accomplish the result. And we must
conserve our man-power. It is no longer a question of putting on such
severe work as shall weed out all but the physical giants; we are not
trying (as seemed to be the idea in the first Plattsburg camps, before
the war) to make the going so stiff as to leave us only 50 per cent. of
hardened men. We want every man who can be brought along rapidly into
condition, and not the strongest only. Hence the problem takes on a new
phase.
We all recognize that the quality and previous training of the men this
country is sending into service have a very potent bearing upon the
length of time required to make fighters of them. For, after all, the
man whose training and discipline have been along a kindred line becomes
serviceable much earlier than the man who has to acquire the necessary
spirit and quality. No one who has listened to the coaches of our
various college teams, or who has read either the preliminary prospects
of a game or the account of it afterward, but must have been impressed
with the continual repetition of emphasis upon the "fighting spirit."
Hence, when our athletes flock almost _en masse_ to the colors, it means
that we are enlisting a large number of picked men who have been in
training both mentally and physically, and who, under discipline, will
make obedient, courageous, and enthusiastic fighters. But a large number
of these have been out of college or out of strenuous athletics a year
or two, or longer, and they need physical conditioning to get back.
There is thus a new idea of considerable importance involved in these
condensed setting-up exercises. For the world does move, and those who
thought themselves up to date on boats, aeroplanes, drill, and the like
have found even within a year that they must make acquaintance with
advanced theories and new and improved methods.
ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES
Probably the most vital point is that the setting-up exercises should
not "take it out of the men." If we find a man exhilarated and made
eager to work at the end of his setting-up we have accomplished far more
than if we tire him out or exhaust any of his store of vitality. If, in
addition to this, we can reduce the amount of time occupied in these
setting-up exercises and yet obtain results, we have saved that much
more time for other work.
Because they did take it out of the men, the old-time conventional
setting-up exercises were shirked and the leaders were unable to detect
this shirking; men went through the motions, but slacked the real work.
Furthermore, all these systems tended to take a longer period of time
than was necessary to accomplish the desired results, and made "muscle
bound" the men who practised them.
It has been found in sports and athletic games that over-developed
biceps, startling pectoral muscles, and tremendously muscled legs are a
disadvantage rather than an advantage. The real essential is, after all,
the engine, the part under the hood, as it were--lungs, heart, and
trunk. Finally, if we give a man endurance and suppleness he becomes
more available in time of need.
Another point of equal importance is that the setting-up exercises
should be rendered as simple as possible. If we are obliged to spend a
considerable period of time in teaching the leader so that he can handle
setting-up exercises, extension of the number of leaders is rendered
increasingly difficult. If, therefore, we can make this leadership so
simple that a long course of instruction is not necessary, we save here,
in these days of necessarily rapid preparation, a very material amount
of time.
Still, further, it is found that many of the present setting-up
exercises made an extraordinarily wide variation of effort between heavy
and light men. The light man would put in only a small amount of
muscular effort, whereas the heavy man, in the same length of time and
under the same exercise, would be taxed far more than he could
comfortably stand.
Again, in the point of age, similar variations necessarily exist.
Naturally it is out of the question to assume that the youth from
eighteen to twenty-five and the man of fifty-five to sixty can take the
same amount and the same kind of exercise. On the other hand, if we
consider the work each is required to do in his daily routine, we can,
so far as the setting-up exercises are concerned, bring the two points
nearer together, especially if we regard these setting-up exercises in
the proper light--a mere preparation for the more onerous tasks that are
to follow.
MODERN PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Bearing all these points in mind, we test out the setting-up exercises
so that we may obtain a set answering the following requirements:
First--Reduce them to a period of eight or ten minutes once or twice a
day.
Second--Make them simple for leaders to learn.
Third--Eliminate movements that, on account of the daily work, are
unnecessary.
Fourth--Render them more difficult of evasion or shirking.
Fifth--Direct them specifically in the line of increased resisting
power, endurance, and suppleness.
Sixth--Make them of value in establishing co-ordination, muscular
control, and more prompt response to command.
Seventh--Equalize them for use by both heavy and light men.
Eighth--Select the exercises in such a way that the set may be of
nearly equal value to both enlisted men and officers, as well as to
executives behind the lines.
SLACKING IN SETTING-UP DRILLS
Many of us have seen setting-up drills of various kinds. Moving pictures
of such drills show in a very striking way how much of the work not only
could be slacked, but _is_ being slacked right along. In fact, high
officers in our service have become so disgusted with the setting-up
exercises as to consider abandoning them altogether. In some stations or
cantonments a great many men were tired out with the setting-up
exercises; so much so that they had neither life nor vitality for some
little time for other work. For the sake of illustration, let us
examine one particular movement. It consists of the men lying flat on
the ground or floor; then, with straight back, lifting themselves by the
arms; finally, giving a jump with the arms and clapping the hands
together once, and then coming back to the original position. The
non-commissioned officer who was leading this exercise weighed about 138
pounds. It is easy to imagine the contrast between his doing this stunt
and a heavy man of 180 or 190 pounds attempting it.
It is unnecessary to describe in detail the parts of the setting-up
exercise which tend to develop members which are already pretty
thoroughly exercised in the daily routine of work and drill. The average
man of the service needs expansion of chest capacity, which adds to his
resistive power; a stronger, better-developed back; and suppleness and
quickness and mobility of trunk. To develop these qualities we must have
exercises which may be continued on board ship or near the front, and
which can be carried on without apparatus.
[Illustration: LEG-RAISING]
[Illustration: SIDE-FALLING. THIS ARM AND BODY WORK PLACES A HANDICAP ON
A HEAVY MAN]
The ordinary system of setting-up exercises has been growing out of
favor for some time. Athletic trainers have come to look with
considerable suspicion upon the gymnasium-made candidate with big biceps
and large knots of muscles. It was also found that, outside of
weight-lifting and inordinate "chinning" and apparent great strength on
the parallel bars, these men were not so valuable as the lesser muscled
but more supple candidates. To put it briefly, it was found in actual
practice that what was under the ribs was of more value than what lay
over them.
A CALL FOR WORK THAT WILL COUNT
Even at the risk of repetition, some facts should be driven home.
We are now working under conditions that should especially emphasize the
fact of time-saving. We must take ourselves seriously, whether we are in
the lines or behind the lines.
In the eight million men in this country between the ages of forty-five
and sixty-four are the country's greatest executives and financiers. We
can no longer give these executives and financiers two months in the
South in the winter and a long summer vacation. We can no longer let a
Plattsburg camp be a strenuous sifting out, a mere survival of the
physically fittest. We need every man whom we can make available, and we
need him with his vitality fully preserved and his endurance appreciably
heightened. Some are stronger, naturally, than others. In football
parlance we are no longer trying to pick a team out of a squad of two
hundred men; we are trying to get a hundred and seventy-five out of the
two hundred that can stand a fair pace and have enough left to fight
with when they get there. Any one who has been in touch with affairs in
Washington, any one who has been engaged in our munition-plants and in
our factories, any one who has worked upon Liberty Bond drives or Red
Cross fund-raising, knows that if we are to support our boys on land and
sea, these men who are trying to solve the problems of executive
management, and who have the task of raising funds in thousandfold
increased volume, must be also carefully conserved. For, after all, even
though we spell Patriotism with a capital P and Government with a
capital G, even though army and navy orders take precedence, there is
one great mistress of all, Dame Nature! And when she taps a man on the
shoulder and says, "Quit!" that man stops; and when he offers the excuse
that he has done it out of patriotism and loyalty she merely says: "I
don't care why you did it, you have finished!" And there is no appeal to
Washington from her verdict.
THE BIG PROBLEM
We shall soon hear the call for more men, men to fight and men to
support the men who fight. The game is on. We are all in it now, either
on the field or on the side-lines. We need to train for it fast and we
have no time to waste. For, after all, it is condition that tells. It
is the man who can stay, who can work at highest efficiency, and who can
hold out the longest who is going to be most valuable. If we save even
ten minutes a day in the setting-up exercises, we save, with a hundred
thousand men, 16,666 hours daily toward perfecting their other
knowledge. If we can make an able officer or a competent executive last
a year longer or even six months under the increased strain, it gives us
a year or six months more in which his understudy can gather the
necessary experience to take up his task.
[Illustration: ARM AND BODY WORK. THIS EXERCISE PLACES A HANDICAP ON A
HEAVY MAN]
[Illustration: ALTERNATE LEG-RAISING]
Millions of our youth are going out to fight, but disease and exhaustion
will kill more of them than will the guns of the enemy. Thousands of men
of the best brain-power in this country are going into committee-rooms
and conferences every day from nine in the morning till twelve at night
to devise better and more efficacious means of stopping the progress of
the Hun. If these men's brains are of value, and we know they are, then
the more clearly they act and the longer they last, the better for the
country.
THE NEED FOR A CONDENSED SYSTEM OF CALISTHENICS
The demonstration, with a group of busy business executives and
professional men, of the possibility of physical fitness at a small
expenditure has been already mentioned. This idea has spread and many
units of the Senior Service Corps have been organized. The writer's
services were later on drafted into national work. At the call of the
Secretary of the Navy, he was asked to take a position on the Naval
Commission to develop athletic sports and games and physical fitness in
our men at the various naval stations. In one week alone requests came
from over four hundred communities to establish units of this work among
business and professional men. Finding that it was impossible to answer
all these calls, the writer devoted himself personally to a class in
Washington, consisting of several Cabinet members, officials of the
Federal Reserve Board, and others, and these men profited extremely from
the work. But this should be done on a far larger scale.
The Hon. Daniel C. Roper, who was a member of the original class in
Washington, requested the writer to come down and spend a month or six
weeks in Washington, to organize drill groups in the various
departments, several of them, like the Department of the Interior,
having received requests to the number of three hundred or four hundred
from men who wished to make themselves better fit physically for the
work of these strenuous days. This, together with the demands from so
many communities throughout the country, show that we are all now awake
to the necessity of this cardinal feature of the nation's welfare, the
physical fitness and stamina of its youth and men. This new gospel
cannot be spread by one individual missionary, although there is little
doubt that, wherever the story is told, thousands of our overworked and
under-exercised men are glad to avail themselves of the opportunity.
[Illustration: EXTRA LEG WORK. THIS EXERCISE PLACES A HANDICAP ON A
HEAVY MAN]
This is the reason why the author has been led to devise a set of
exercises that can be put in small compass, as regards both instruction
and time required. Here follows a brief syllabus of the plan, in the
hope of placing it within reach of men who can afford but little time
for anything outside of their pressing office duties. We can no longer
take delightful vacations of indefinite length to restore our waning
vitality. The country needs every man and needs him at the best of his
power.
A REASONABLE PROGRAM
No matter how driven a man may be, it seems only reasonable to think
that he should be able to spend ten minutes twice a day on a condensed
system, or setting-up exercise, adding to it an outdoor walk of half an
hour. By this means he can keep himself physically fit to bear the
burdens which are falling more and more heavily upon the shoulders of us
all. The men who are going to the front first should have every chance
of conserving their vitality and increasing their resistive forces.
Those of us who must do work behind the lines should be kept equally fit
for that larger work without which the machine must inevitably break
down. The method is scientific and it has been tested on men of all ages
from eighteen to seventy. It embodies the elimination of all wasted
effort and concentration upon points of approved and essential worth. It
is as much a man's duty to make himself fit and to keep himself in that
condition as it is to carry on any other part of his work. This method
should be adopted not only in every department at Washington, but
throughout the country; it should be taught in our schools and colleges,
and so thoroughly that never again in a world-wide crisis shall we find
ourselves physically unprepared.