Keeping Fit All the Way Part 11

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARM AND BODY WORK. THIS EXERCISE PLACES A HANDICAP ON A HEAVY MAN]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 compa.s.s, 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.

CHAPTER VIII

Vacillation and doubt are poison to the nerves.

This is the reason why it is advisable to teach co-ordination, prompt response to the command of the brain over the muscles, and the general sense of self-control which comes to a man when he has only to think in order to turn that thought into quick action. One of the penalties of the executive position is that, although the man begins as a disciplined private, when he goes up higher and gradually reaches the point where he gives commands only, and never has any practice in obeying them, he gets the habit of pushing b.u.t.tons to make other people jump, while there are no b.u.t.tons pushed to make him jump.

WORRY AND FEAR

Now as to worry. It has been said, and not untruly, that one of the very largest causes of worry is bodily weakness. And in more than a majority of cases this weakness comes from poor physical condition. A good digestion and proper elimination seem to make the organism move smoothly, not alone with muscles, but with nerves. Hence if we get the engine right, the lungs doing their duty, the skin acting as it should, and the bowels and kidneys taking off the waste products, we generally find a robust man, little given to that most expensive habit, "worry."

Fear is the forerunner of illness.

There is nothing quite so effective in producing a bad condition of the human system as fear, and this fear is what worry develops into; later it becomes pure, downright cowardice.

Worry makes cowards. If a man has enough worry and anxiety, fear follows in its wake, and then the man becomes a mental and moral and often a physical coward.

THE FATAL MISTAKE

The average man, when he is pressed to overwork, thinks that by cutting out some of his exercise and devoting that extra time to his work he can accomplish more. There never was a greater mistake; in the long run this method is the most expensive of all. No factory manager would think of running his automatic machines twice as long with half the amount of oil, and yet that is just what the man is trying to do in this case. The result is that he gradually piles up the various toxic products within himself until self-poisoning is inevitable. All his organs struggle to eliminate these poisons, but, being given no a.s.sistance, they gradually become less and less efficient, and then begins the payment of the penalty, for Nature never forgives this kind of treatment. From a practical, useful running machine he retrogrades into something fit only for the sc.r.a.p-heap. The history is the same in all cases, although it may be more or less prolonged. The discomfort, occasional slight illnesses, the gradual loss of effective thought and power to concentrate, lack of appet.i.te, unreasonable temper, insomnia, nerve diseases, and perhaps a complete nervous and physical breakdown if the conditions are not recognized in time, are the varying punishments inflicted by Nature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARCH WORK]

I have referred to Nature's order, "You must earn your bread by the sweat of your brow." Almost every one, in these modern days of civilization, is earning his bread in some other way; well, he must make up for this by some kind of exercise or else Nature will surely take her toll. When men were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows they were not always sure of getting a surplus of it, and that was not a half-bad thing. In fact, it was far better for the race than present conditions under which so many men have given up physical work altogether. But instead of cutting down on their food they double up on it.

SOMETHING OUT OF A BOTTLE

The usual temporary panacea for these ills of the flesh is to get some so-called "specific" in the form of a medicine and gobble it religiously. Thousands of men and women, who are unwilling to take five or ten minutes' exercise two or three times a day, will swallow something out of a bottle on a spoon before each meal, with a splendid satisfaction and confidence. Perhaps temporarily it produces improved results. At any rate, it gives a sense of mental satisfaction, and that something stands off the trouble for a while. There is still another method which has some show of reason in it, although, after all, it does not compare with the wiser, saner course. A man or woman is persuaded that if he or she will only give up some particularly attractive self-indulgence the result will be increased health and vigor. For instance, there is a common belief that tea or coffee is the cause of many ills. Perhaps this is true, but the giving up of tea or coffee will never cure the ills that come from lack of exercise, loss of fresh air, over-eating, and over-indulgence. The mere fact that a person is giving up something that he likes does not make him immune to the penalties which he incurs day after day by other offenses against the laws of Nature.

CONSERVING THE PRESIDENT'S HEALTH

Rear-Admiral Carey T. Grayson, personal physician and health director to President Wilson, says:

"You may make the statement, in so many words, that physical exercise has been the means of making a normal, physically perfect man of the President. And when a man is in a normal condition he is in perfect health and physical trim. That was the initial intention in this case, just to make the President physically fit, and to keep him so."

Richard M. Winans says:

"The Admiral told me that when he first took charge of the President, Mr. Wilson was not a little averse to taking any sort of exercise.

However, Doctor Grayson early succeeded in impressing upon Mr. Wilson that good health was an absolutely important factor in dealing with the grilling duties which would face him during the coming four years, and that his physical well-being was vital not only to himself, but to the welfare of the entire country."

The President has a dislike almost akin to abhorrence for mechanical appliances intended to exercise the muscles of the body. There is not a dumbbell, or an Indian club, nor a medicine-ball, nor a punching-bag, nor a turning-bar, nor a trapeze, nor a lifting or pulling apparatus, nor a muscle--exercising machine of any sort or description in the White House. The only mechanical device used by the President is a simple, unoffending golf-club.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPRING WORK.]

Aside from his work in the open air, Mr. Wilson takes a number of physical exercises indoors, very few of which have ever been described in print. Some of these exercises are taken as a subst.i.tute for outdoor recreations at times when weather conditions are too extreme. But the major part of them, and especially the more unusual of these exercises, are regularly practised as a part of his daily routine. As a matter of fact, they are pretty closely dove-tailed in with his office work.

FLEXING EXERCISES

However, if the President really has a favorite among his various physical exercises, it is said to be that of "flexing." This he employs almost entirely as an indoor exercise, and it perhaps is the one he practises more often than any other.

"Flexing," as Doctor Grayson put it into its simplest every-day term, is nothing more nor less than just good, old-fashioned "stretching"

expressed in a scientific and systematized form of exercise. It is the most generally and commonly executed muscular exercise, and it is practised by nearly all the animal kingdom.

President Wilson uses his flexing movements with a careful regard to system, and a great deal more regularly and frequently than any other of his varied physical exercises. Particularly during his periods of concentration, when at work at his desk in the preparation of his messages to Congress or in the drafting of notes to foreign governments, the President, at short intervals, will either settle back in his chair and flex his arms and hands and the muscles across his back and chest, or he will rise and stand erect for a more thorough practice of the flexing movements for a period of a minute or more. At these times he will throw his body into almost every conceivable posture--twisting, turning, bending, stooping, the arms down, forward, back, and over his head, the muscles of the limbs and entire body flexed almost to the point of tremor, the fingers spread, and the muscles rigidly tensed.

In the opinion of Doctor Grayson, if business and professional men, particularly those who work at high tension in the cities, would pause in their work at frequent intervals during the day and give a few seconds of their time to the energetic practice of the flexing or stretching exercises, there would soon come to be not only less, but, possibly in time, no cases reported of this or that noted man, the famous lawyer, merchant, or financier, dropping dead at his desk or in his home or in the street, on account of apoplexy caused by hardened arteries.

One of Mr. Wilson's princ.i.p.al physical movements is that of body-twisting. With the toes at a slight outward angle, the heels touching and the body erect, he begins the movement by twisting the body a little more than half-way around; then swinging back in an arc, at the same time bending at the hips, until he has completed the circle and reached a hip-bending position, with the fingers of one hand touching the floor, the other extended vertically. This gives a stretching movement to all of the muscles of the torso, side, back, and abdomen, as well as considerable play to the muscles of the legs and arms.