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HOW TO GET STRONG
AND
HOW TO STAY SO BY
WILLIAM BLAIKIE
[Illustration: Decoration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
FRANKLIN SQUARE
1883.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
TO
ARCHIBALD MACLAREN
WHO HAS PROBABLY DONE MORE THAN ANY ONE ELSE NOW LIVING TO POINT
OUT THE BENEFITS RESULTING FROM RATIONAL PHYSICAL EXERCISE, AND HOW
TO ATTAIN THOSE BENEFITS
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY
Dedicated
PREFACE.
Millions of our people pass their lives in cities and towns, and at work
which keeps them nearly all day in doors. Many hours are devoted for days
and years, under careful teachers, and many millions of dollars are spent
annually, in educating the mind and the moral nature. But the body is
allowed to grow up all uneducated; indeed, often such a weak, shaky
affair that it gets easily out of order, especially in middle and later
life, and its owner is wholly unequal to tasks which would have proved
easy to him, had he given it even a tithe of the education bestowed so
generously in other directions. Not a few, to be sure, have the advantage
in youth of years of active out door life on a farm, and so lay up a
store of vigor which stands them in good stead throughout a lifetime. But
many, and especially those born and reared in towns and cities, have had
no such training, or any equivalent, and so never have the developed
lungs and muscles, the strong heart and vigorous digestion in short, the
improved tone and strength in all their vital organs which any sensible
plan of body culture, followed up daily, would have secured. It does not
matter so much whether we get vigor on the farm, the deck, the tow path,
or in the gymnasium, if we only get it. Fortunately, if not gotten in
youth, when we are plastic and easily shaped, it may still be had, even
far on in middle life, by judicious and systematic exercise, aimed first
to bring up the weak and unused parts, and then by general work daily
which shall maintain the equal development of the whole.
The aim here has been, not to write a profound treatise on gymnastics,
and point out how to eventually reach great performance in this art, but
rather in a way so plain and untechnical that even any intelligent boy or
girl can readily understand it, to first give the reader a nudge to take
better care of his body, and so of his health, and then to point out one
way to do it. That there are a hundred other ways is cheerfully conceded.
If anything said here should stir up some to vigorously take hold of, and
faithfully follow up, either the plan here indicated or any one of these
others, it cannot fail to bring them marked benefit, and so to gratify
THE AUTHOR.
New York, July, 1883.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. DO WE INHERIT SHAPELY BODIES? 9
II. HALF BUILT BOYS 23
III. WILL DAILY PHYSICAL EXERCISE FOR GIRLS PAY? 42
IV. IS IT TOO LATE FOR WOMEN TO BEGIN? 57
V. WHY MEN SHOULD EXERCISE DAILY 74
VI. HOME GYMNASIUMS 91
VII. THE SCHOOL THE TRUE PLACE FOR CHILDREN'S
PHYSICAL CULTURE 104
VIII. WHAT A GYMNASIUM MIGHT BE AND DO 117
IX. SOME RESULTS OF BRIEF SYSTEMATIC EXERCISE 138
X. WORK FOR THE FLESHY, THE THIN, THE OLD 154
XI. HALF TRAINED FIREMEN AND POLICE 177
XII. SPECIAL EXERCISE FOR ANY GIVEN MUSCLES 199
a. To Develop the Leg below the Knee 200
b. Work for the Front of the Thigh 208
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