# How to Get Strong and How to Stay So (1899)/Chapter 2

Chapter II
Half-built Boys
But, whatever our strong and weak points; few who have looked can have failed to see that the sports of our boyhood and youth, good as they are, as far as they go, do not meet the need. The top, marble, and jackknife of the boy are wielded with but one hand; and bring no strength. Flying kites does not overdo the muscles. Yet top-time, marble-time, and kite-time generally cover the play-hours of each day for a good deal of the year.
But he has more work than these bring. Well, what? Why, ball-playing and tag, and football; and hockey and skating, and coasting; and some tennis, and occasional archery; while he is a painfully accurate shot with a bean-shooter. He also, on some days, rides his wheel.
Well, in ball-playing he learns to pitch, to catch, to bat, to field, and to run bases. How many boys can pitch with either hand? Not one in a hundred, at least well enough to be of any use in a game. Look at the pitching arm and shoulder of some famous pitcher, and see how much larger they are than their mates. Dr. Sargent says that he has seen a well-known pitcher, whose right shoulder was some two inches larger than the left; indeed, his whole right side seemed out of proportion with his left. The catcher draws both ​hands in towards him as the ball enters them; and passes it back to the pitcher, almost always with the same hand. He has, also, to spring about on his feet; unless the balls come very uniformly; and to do much twisting and turning. The batter bats, not from either shoulder, but from one shoulder; to such an extent that those used to his batting know pretty well where he will knock the ball; though, did he bat from the other shoulder, the general direction of the knocking would be quite different. Some fielders have a little running and catching to do; and then throw the ball in to pitcher, or baseman, or catcher. But that throw is always with the stronger hand; never with the other. Many fielders often have nothing to do but to walk to their stations; stay there while their side is out; and then walk back again; hardly getting work enough, in a cold day, to heap them warm. Running bases is sharp, jerky work; and cannot take the place of fair running over a long distance. Nor is the fielder's running much better; and neither would ever teach a boy what he ought to know about running; and how to get out of it what he readily might; and, far better yet, how to make himself an enduring, long-distance runner. For all the work the former brings, ordinary, and even less than ordinary, strength of leg and lung will suffice; but for the latter it needs both good legs and good lungs.
Run most American boys of twelve or fourteen six or eight miles; or, rather, start them at it;—let them all belong to the ball-nine if you will, too—and how many would cover half the distance even, at any pace worth calling a run? The English are, and have long been, ahead of us in this direction. To most readers the above distance seems far too long to let any boy of that ​age run. But, had he been always used to running—not fast, but steady running—it would not seem so. Tom Brown of Rugby, in the hares-and-hounds game, of which he gives us so graphic an account, makes both the hares and hounds cover a distance of nine miles without being much the worse for it; and yet they were simply school-boys, of all ages from twelve to eighteen. We too have now and then hares and a pack of hounds; but not many.
Let him who thinks that the average American boy of the same age would have fared as well, go down to the public bath-house; and look at a hundred or two of them as they tumble about in the water. He will see more big heads and slim necks; more poor legs and skinny arms; and lanky, half-built bodies than he would have thought the town could produce. He need not see them stripped. One of our leading metropolitan journals, in an editorial headed, "Give the Boy a Chance," said:
"About one in ten of all the boys in the Union are living in New York and the large cities immediately adjacent; and there are even more within the limits of Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and the other American cities whose population exceeds a hundred thousand. The wits of these millions of boys are being forced to their extreme capacity, whether they are taught in the school, the shop, or the street. But what is being done for their bodies? The answer may be obtained by standing at the door of almost any public or private school or academy at the hour of dismissal. The inquirer will see a crowd of undersized, listless, thin-faced children, with scarcely any premise of manhood about them."
This was years ago. But is it not true to-day?
Take a tape-measure and get the girth of chest; upper and fore arm; of waist, hips, thighs, and calves of these little fellows; or of those of the school nearest your ​home; and their heights and ages. Now send to England and get the statistics of the boys of the same age who are good at hares-and-hounds, at football, and see the difference. In every girth, save height, there is little doubt which would show the better figures. Even in height, the article just quoted would find ground for calling our boys "undersized."
Cross to Germany; go to the schools where boys and their masters together, in vacation-days, sometimes walk two or three hundred miles, or even farther; in that land where the far-famed German Turners, by long training, show a strength and agility which are astounding; and try the tape-measure there. Is there any question what the result would be? When the sweeping work the Germans made of it in their war with France is called to mind; does it not look as if there was ground for the saying that it was the superior physique of the Germans which did the business?
When work is chosen that only sturdy limbs can do; and that work is gradually approached, and persistently stuck to, by-and-by the sturdy limbs come. But when all that these limbs are called on to do is light, jerky work; and there is none of the spur which youthful rivalry and pride in superior strength bring; what wonder is it that you do not find many strong legs and arms? For it is not always easy in the hurry of a match to so arrange your frame upon the ground that half a ton of iron,—or of more or less educated beef,—tumbling down on top of it, will not snap a bone or two!
Parents also must have noticed that often, around where they live, there is not one strong, efficient boy to lead on the rest; and show them the development which they might have and should have. Boys, like men, are fond of doing whatever they can do well; and ​of letting others see them do it; and, like their elders, they gladly follow a good leader. But if no one of them is equal to tasks which call for first-class strength and staying powers; and no one leads the rest up to a higher physical plane, they never will get there.
It is not a good sign, nor one that bodes well for our future, to see the few playgrounds of our cities and towns so much neglected. You may stand on many of them for weeks together and not see one sharp, hot game of ball; or of anything else, where each contestant goes in with might and main; and the spectator becomes so interested as to hate to leave the fun. Football is a game better known among us than it used to be, but in how many school-yards, or upon how many playgrounds do you see it played even once a week? For developing swift judgment; dash; and intrepidity, it has few rivals. No one dull or timid is ever a good football player. One fit to lead a football team in a sharp match, has in him the making of a leader of men in almost any calling. Weed out low tackling and mass-play, and we have no game in America which will make us a keener, tougher, braver race; fitter for peace or war. But the short, hasty recess in the crowded school-yard; or play snatched in the streets—these will never make robust and vigorous men. Yet these are too often all that our boys get; and so comes the natural result—small vital organs, and half-developed limbs.
Many of our cities have few or no playgrounds. Fortunately the Press is waking up, and has already done good work in New York, Boston, and elsewhere in causing public playgrounds, and even gymnasiums to be thrown open. But where there is one, there should be ten. No school should any more be without a playground than a school-house should be without ​windows. But helpful as are playgrounds and gymnasiums; yet both together will never make strong, fully developed boys and girls, men and women. They need good teachers as much as the schools themselves do.
Again, outside of a boy's ball-playing, scarce one of his other pastimes does much to build him up. Swimming is excellent; but is confined to a very few months in the year; and is seldom gone at, as it should be, with any regularity; or with a teacher, fit to lead the boy on to its higher possibilities. Skating is equally desultory, because, in many of our cities, winters pass with scarcely a week of good ice. Coasting brings nerve and judgment; and some up-hill walking, good for the legs; but does practically nothing for the arms. Cycling, as we shall see presently, partly fills the bill.
So boyhood slips along, until the lad is well on in his teens; and still, in nine cases out of ten, he has had nothing yet of any account in the way of that systematic, rigorous, daily exercise which looks directly to his weak points; and aims to weed them out, and to build up his general health and strength as well. He gets no help where of all places he might so easily get it—the school. Save in a few cases, no system of exercise has been introduced into any school or college in this land, unless it is at the Military Academy at West Point, which begins to do for each pupil, not alone what might easily be done; but what actually ought to be done. It will probably not be many years before all of us will wonder why the proper steps in this direction have been put off so long. Calisthenics are here and there resorted to. At some schools and colleges enough has been accomplished to tell favorably on the present health of the student; but not nearly enough to make him strong and vigorous all over, so as ​to build him up against ill-health in the future. At others certain exercises, excellent in their way, admirable for suppling the joints and improving the carriage, have for some time been practised. But this physical work does not go nearly far enough; and seldom reaches each pupil's peculiar weak spot; much less builds slim arms, legs and bodies into well-built and strong ones. Nor is it done by all the students; nor by any for a large part of the year. In most of our schools and colleges, the pupil is not shown the good results he will derive from exercise. And the teacher often knows less in this field than do some of his scholars.
The evil does not end here. Take the son of the man of means and refinement; a boy who is having as liberal an education as money can buy, and his parents' best judgment can select; who spends a third or more of his life in fitting himself to get on well in the rest of it. Surely he ought to come out ready for his life's work; with not only a thoroughly trained mind, and a strong moral nature; but with a well-developed, vigorous physique; and a knowledge of how to maintain it, so that he may make the most of all his advantages.
But how often does this happen? Stand by the gate, as the Senior class of almost any college in this country files out from its last examination before graduation; and look the men over. Ask your physician to join you in the scrutiny. If, between you two, you can arrive at the conclusion that one-half, and often even one-third of them, have that vitality and stamina which make it probable that they will live till seventy, or have been taught how to get and keep that vitality and stamina, it will be surprising. A few, the athletes, will be well developed, better really than they need be; though many of these are but partly developed. But this ​over-development may be far from the safest or wisest course. Though physically improved by it, it is not certain that this marked development will carry them onward through life to a ripe old age. But, with others poorly developed, there will be many more really weak. Such men may have bright, uncommon heads. But a bright and uncommon head on a broken-down, or nearly broken-down, body is not going to make half as effective a man in the life-race as a little duller head and a good deal better body. Many bright students in and out of our colleges, secretly think that the month's immortality the athlete gets is all very well: but that the real life-race is with the head, not the body. So they crowd on the study too many hours a day; and forget their bodies. And with what result? That in the middle of the race, often before they are fifty, they are handicapped by a third-rate stomach or a fourth-rate liver, or both; often have to cease work and haul into dry-dock for repairs; or to go abroad, at much expense, to patch up the body they have let ran down, or rather have never built up.
But have these graduates had a competent instructor at college to look after them in this respect? Many have. But instead of building the pupil up for the future, too often little more has been done than to insure present health.
THE WARD BROTHERS
​on almost every one of those days in the hundred in which he is not rowing.
The years roll by till the whole four are over, and he is about to graduate. He looks back to see what he has done. In physical matters he finds that, while he is a skilful, and perhaps a winning oar; and that some of his girths have much improved since the day he was first measured; others somehow have not come up nearly as fast; in fact, have held back in a surprising way. His chest-girth may be three or even four inches larger for the four years' work. Some, if not much, of that is the result of growth, not development; and, save what running did, the rest is rather an increase of the back muscles than of front and back alike. Strong as his back is—for many a hard test has it stood in the long, hot home-minutes of more than one well-fought race,—still he has not yet that grand thing to have—a fully developed, roomy chest. No doubt his legs have improved, if he has done any running. (In some colleges the rowing-men scarcely run at all.) His calves have come to be full and shapely; so have his thighs; while his loins are noticeably strong-looking and well muscled up, as is indeed his whole back. But if he has done no other arm-work than that which rowing called for; his arms are not so large, especially above the elbow, as they ought to he for a man with such legs and such a back. The front of his chest is not nearly so well developed as his back; perhaps is hardly developed at all; and he is very likely inerect, with head and neck canted somewhat forward; while there is a lack of fulness, often a noticeable hollowness, of the upper chest, till the shoulders are plainly warped and rounded forward.
With professional oarsmen, who for years have rowed ​far more than they have done anything else; and who do not think much about their looks; or have no spur to develop evenly, the defects rowing leaves stand out. Notice in the cut facing p. 20 (Fig. 2) the flat and slab-sided, almost hollow, look about the upper chest and front shoulder, and the small upper arms; and compare these with the full and well-rounded make of the figure whose body is sketched on the cover. It will not take long to determine which has the better front of the chest; or which is likely to so carry that chest as to ward off tendencies to throat and lung troubles. Yet these are the most famous oarsmen America has yet produced;—four out of nine brothers,—who rowed down the best two professional crews England could send; and for twenty-seven years hold the rowing-championship of the world against all comers. Better proof could not be presented of the effect of a great amount of rowing alone; and of the very limited exercise it brings to those muscles which are not called on. But do they not teach them now to row with straight backs? Well, Cornell and Yale both found the best men in England rowing on Henley water with backs far from straight. And the most brilliant oarsman of his age yet known in aquatic annals, Edward Hanlan Ten Eyck, a lad of 18, rowed down all comers on that same Henley course in July, 1897. Yet the best way to judge how he holds his back is to look at the picture, Fig. 3, facing p. 22. Would you call that a straight back? Or would hard rowing with it in that position likely make it straight?
EDWARD HANLAN TEN EYCK
Champion Amateur Sculler
​went into athletics with no such zeal and devotion, to stand life's wear and tear, especially when that life is to be spent mainly indoors? When, in later years, with new associations, business cares, and long, hard head-work; accompanied, as the latter nearly always is, by only partial inflation of the lungs; when all these get him out of the way of using his large back-muscles; he will find that their very size, and the long spell of warping forward which so much rowing gave the shoulders, tend more to weigh him forward than if he had never so developed them. Instead of benefiting his throat and lungs, this abnormal development often cramps them.
Here, then, is the case of a man who gave much time, thought, and labor to the severest test of his strength; and who had hoped to bring about staying-powers; and he comes out of it all, to begin his real race in life, no better fitted, perhaps not nearly so well fitted, for it as some of his comrades who did not spare half so much time to athletics. The other men, who worked less than he did, hit upon a sort which, instead of cramping their chests, expanded them; enlarging the lung-room; and so gave the heart, stomach, and other vital organs all the freest play.
If the ordinary play and exercise of the boy do not build and round him into a sound, well-made, and evenly balanced man; if the hardest work he has found, when left to himself to seek it, mostly to be paid for by quite an amount of money;—if these only leave him a half-developed man; can it not be seen at once that an improvement is wanted in his physical education?
Are we not behindhand, and far behindhand, then, in a matter of serious importance to the well-being of the people of our country? Do we not want some system of ​education which shall rear men, not morally and intellectually good alone; but good physically as well? which shall qualify them both to seize and to make the most of the advantages which years of toil and struggle bring; but which advantages among us now are too frequently thrown away? Men too often, just as they are about clutching these benefits, find, Tantalus-like, that they are eluding their grasp. The reason must be plain to all. It is because that grasp is weakening; and falls powerless at the very time when it could be and should be surest; and potent for the most good. Fortunately many ways are at hand, any of which would do much to remedy this evil. Some of them will be looked at later.