How to Get Strong and How to Stay So

by William Blaikie

Still standing erect, with arms akimbo, raise the right foot in front about as high as the left knee, keeping the right knee unbent. Hold the right foot there ten seconds; then drop it; then raise it again, fully six times. Then, standing, do the same thing with the left foot. This calls at once on the muscles across the abdomen, aiding the stomach and other vital organs there directly in their work.

This time raise the foot equally high behind; then return it to the floor and so continue, giving each foot equal work to do. The under thigh, hip, and loin are now in action; and when, later on, they become strong, their owner will find how much easier it is to run than it used to be, and also that it has become more natural to stand erect. The rate of increase of these last two exercises may be about the same as the others.

There is not much left now of the ten minutes. Still, if the work has been pushed promptly forward, there may still be a little time. However, all three of the kinds of work suggested for the front thigh need not be practised at the one recess, any one sufficing at first.

With head and neck again erect, and knees firm, hold the hands out at the sides and at arm's-length, and clasp the hands firmly together, as though trying to squeeze a rubber ball or other elastic substance. Beginning with twenty of these movements, fifty may be accomplished by the end of the fortnight; and by their continuance both the grip and the shape of the hand will be found steadily improving.

Clasp the hands together over the head. Now turn them over until the palms are upward, or turned toward the ceiling, and straighten the elbows until the hands are as high over the head as you can reach. While holding them in this position, be careful that they are not allowed to drop at all. Let the scholar march three or four times around the room in this position. It will soon be found that no apparatus whatever is necessary to get quite a large amount of exercise for the corners of the shoulders. In this way, while there is an unwonted stretching apart of the ribs, and opening up of the chest, the drawing in of the stomach and abdomen will be found to correct incipient chest weakness, half-breathing, and any tendency toward indigestion.

Following up the method, now let the class form around the side of the room, standing three feet apart, and about two feet from the wall. Place the hands against the wall, just at a level with and opposite to the shoulders. Now, keeping the heels all the time on the floor, let the body settle gradually forward until the chest touches the wall, keeping the elbows pretty near to the sides, the knees never bending a particle, and the face held upturned, the eyes looking at the ceiling directly overhead. Now push sharply off from the wall until the elbows are again straight, and the body back at vertical. Then repeat this, and continue six times for each half of the day for the first week. Keep on until you reach fifteen by the third week, and twenty-five by the second month. For expanding and deepening the chest, helping to poise the head and neck so that they will remain exactly where they belong—in an erect position—and for giving the main part of the upper back-arm quite a difficult piece of work to do, this will prove a capital exercise. Whoever will make a specialty of this one form of exercise until they daily take two or even three hundred such pushes, will find that any tendency he or she may have to flatness or hollowness of chest will soon begin to decrease, and will very likely disappear altogether.

In this last exercise most of the weight was on the feet, the hands and arms sustaining the rest. If the aisles are not over two feet and a half wide, let each pupil stand between two opposite desks and place one hand on each. Now, walking back about three or four feet, his hands still resting on the two desks, let him, keeping his body rigid and knees unbent, bend his elbows and lower his chest very gradually until it is nearly or quite level with the desk tops, then slowly straighten up his arms, and so raise his body again to the original position. Three such dips twice a day the first week, five or six the second, and by the end of the month ten or twelve, and that number then maintained steadily, will open and enlarge the chest materially before the year is out, while at the same time doing much to increase and strengthen the upper back-arm. This is harder work than pushing against the wall, because the hands and arms now have to sustain a much greater portion of the weight of the body, but it is correspondingly better for the chest.

Thus far exercises have been described calling for no apparatus at all, nor anything save a floor to stand on, a wall to push against, two ordinary school desks, and a fair degree of resolution. For children under ten, wooden dumb-bells, weighing one pound each, ought to be had of any wood-turner, and ought not to cost over five cents apiece. There might be one pair of dumb-bells given to each child, or, if the class is large, then a single dumb-bell for each, and they could be distributed among two classes for dumb-bell exercises.

Standing in the aisles, and about five feet apart, every child taking a dumb-bell in each hand, keeping the knees unbent and the head and neck erect, let them raise or "curl" the bells slowly until they are up to the shoulders, the finger-nails being held upward. Then lower, then raise again, and so on ten or twelve times each half-day for the first fortnight, and double that many thereafter. This tells principally on the biceps or front of the upper arm, on the front of the shoulder, and on the pectoral muscles, or those of the upper front chest. When, later on, any pupil endeavors to pull himself up to his chin, he will find what a large share of the work these muscles have to do. Instead of the one-pound dumb-bells then, his whole body will be the weight to be lifted.

Again, let the dumb-bells hang at the sides. Raise them slowly, high up, behind the back, keeping the elbows straight and the arms parallel. After holding them there five seconds lower them; do it again, and keep on, ten times twice a day at first, making it twenty in a fortnight, and thirty thereafter. This work will enlarge that part of the back of the upper arm next to the body, and will also tell directly on the whole back of the shoulder, and on the large muscles on the back just below where the arm joins it.