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COMMON-SENSE PHYSICAL TRAINING
By WILLIAM BLAIKIE
I
T is so common among physical trainers to build up a half-built boy, girl, man, or woman, that they find it no harder than it would be to make a fairly bright pupil master French or Latin; or for a good builder to finish a half-built house; or for a wagon-maker to repair a broken-down wagon.
Strangely enough they can point to a famous proof of what can be done in training a boy, not strong, into perhaps the strongest man of his height and weight in all the world to-day; one of the strongest it has ever known.
A jeweler's son, naturally delicate, not a strong boy when at school, Sandow has little by little, by sensible daily exercise, built himself into a giant, able to pick up an ordinary man with one hand, to throw him over his head, and to do many other feats which seem beyond human power. He is stronger than one man needs to be. But he has shown that one can make himself about what he will. John C. Calhoun said that when at Yale College, he had by rigid determination so disciplined his mind that, no matter where he was, how exciting and distracting the surroundings, or how tired his body, he could make his mind his willing servant as long as he liked. How many men do you or I know who can do that?
And when can we think more effectively—when weak and underfed, and sending weak, underfed blood to the brain, or when keeping it amply supplied with rich, nourishing life blood ? When the brain is busy, it needs more blood. Beecher found that in an hour's oration his neck gained half an inch in girth, and that it took about an hour to return to normal size.
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