If the triceps muscles are tolerably strong in the start, or in any case at the end of the month in which the last two exercises have been practised, try now a harder thing. Place the hands on the floor, hold the body out at full length and rigid, or as nearly so as you can, and push, raising the body till the elbows are straight. Now bend the elbows and lower again, till the face nearly touches the floor, keeping the body all the time as stiff and straight as possible, and then rise on stiff elbows again, and so on. If this is not hard enough work for the ambitious aspirant for stout triceps, he can vary it by clapping his hands between the dips, just as his face is farthest from the floor, though in such case it is sometimes well to have a nose accustomed to facing difficulty.
So far, in this work for the back-arm the hands at first held merely the weight of the dumb-bells; then, as they pressed against the wall, they had to bear part of the weight of the body, but not a large part, as that rested mainly on the feet. In the pushing from the floor the hands bore still more of it, but yet the feet had quite a share. Now try something where the hands and arms carry the entire weight of the body. Get up on the parallel bars, or on the bars in your door-jambs,[O] or, if no bars are convenient, place two stout chairs back to back, and then draw them about eighteen or twenty inches apart, and, placing one hand on each, holding the arms straight, lift the feet off the floor. Now lower till the chin is level with the hands, or nearly so, and then rise till the arms are straight, and then dip again, and so on, the knees and feet of course never resting on anything. Now you have one of the best known exercises for bringing quick development and good strength to the triceps or back-arm. When by steady daily trial you have gradually increased the number until you can do twenty-five fair dips without great effort, you have strong triceps muscles, and, if you have two legs and a reasonably heavy body to lift, good-sized ones at that. Most of your friends cannot manage five dips respectably, many scarcely one. But, lest you should feel too elated over your twenty-five, bear in mind that one gentleman in New York has accomplished over eighty without stopping, and this though he weighs upward of one hundred and eighty pounds; and if a reasonably accurate idea of what sort of back-arms were necessary for this marvellous feat, it may be had by observing the cut on the cover of this book. With a forty-four inch chest, his upper arm measures thirteen and a half inches down (half an inch more than Heenan's), and sixteen up, though he is but five feet ten inches in height, while Heenan stood four inches taller. He says that as surely as the ability exists to make many dips, so surely will there be a large back-arm, and it was hard work that brought him his. Slim arms may push up heavy dumb-bells once or twice, but it takes thick ones for sustained effort at smaller, though good-sized ones.
To Strengthen and Develop the Hand.
Very many of the exercises so useful in strengthening the forearm were at the same time improving the grip of the hand. But an evil of so much gripping or drawing the hand together is that, unless there is an equal amount of work to open and flatten it, it tends to become hooked. Notice the rowing-man's hand, and the fingers nearly always, when at rest, are inclined to be doubled in, as if half clutching something; and very often, where they have seen years of rowing, their joints get so set that the fingers cannot be bent back nearly as far as other people's. Some of the pushing exercises mentioned above for the triceps tend to counteract this, notably that where the fingers or the flat of the hands are pressed against the wall. An admirable exercise in this direction is, when you practice the pushing up from the floor for the triceps, to only touch the floor with the ends of the fingers and thumbs, never letting the palm of the hand touch it at all. This will soon help to rectify many a hand now rather cramped and contracted, besides bringing new strength and shape to the fingers.
To make any particular finger strong, attach a strap to the bar referred to on page [235], and placing that finger in the strap begin with raising a small weight from the floor until you have drawn your hand down to your chin; then from day to day gradually increase both the weight and the number, until, before a great while, you may find that you can raise an equivalent of your own weight. Now attach the strap to any stationary object as high above your head as you can comfortably reach, say a horizontal bar, and pull yourself up till your chin touches your hand. Some gymnasts can do this several times with the little finger.
Just where the thumb joins the palm, and between it and the forefinger on the back of the hand, is a muscle which, while at first usually small, can be developed and enlarged by any exercise which necessitates pinching the ends of the thumb and forefinger together, such as carrying a plate of metal or other thin but heavy substance between the finger and thumb. Harder work yet, calling on both this muscle and a number of others of the hand, consists in catching two two-inch beams running overhead, as in the ceiling of a cellar, and about a foot and a half or two feet apart, and walking along, sustaining the whole weight by the grip, first of one hand, then of the other. He who can do this has very unusual strength of fingers.
For improving the ordinary grip of the hand, simply taking a rubber ball in it, or a wad of any elastic material, and even of paper, and repeatedly squeezing it, will soon tell. Simpler yet is it to just practice opening and shutting the hand firmly many times. An athletic friend of ours says that the man of his whole acquaintance who has the strongest grip got it just by practising this exercise.
To Enlarge and Strengthen the Front of the Chest.
Every one of the exercises for the biceps tells also on the pectoral muscles, or those on the front of the upper part of the chest, for the two work so intimately together that he who has a large biceps is practically sure to have the adjoining pectoral correspondingly large.
But there is other work which tells on them besides biceps work. Whenever the hands push hard against anything, and so call the triceps muscles into action, these muscles at once combine with them. In the more severe triceps work, such as the dips, the strain across these chest-muscles is very great, for they are then a very important factor in helping to hold up the weight of the whole body. This fact suggests the folly of letting any one try so severe a thing as a dip, when his triceps and pectoral muscles have not been used to any such heavy work. Many a person who has rashly attempted this has had to pay for it with a pain for several days at the edge of the pectoral, where it meets the breastbone, until he concluded he must have broken something.