Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-10-07
PUGILISTIC TRAINING.

PUGILISTIC TRAINING.
thoughtful Eastern contemporary well
says that " the popular opinion which
finds much that is worthy of praise in the
method of training pursued by the aver
age pugilist is undoubtedly based on a
total misconception of the facts in the case.
It IS true that abstinence from intoxicating
liquors of all sorts is insisted on while he
is preparing for a fight, and that excuses
IN eating as well as in drinking are for
bidden. Early hours, too, both IN retiring
and rising, are rigidly inculcated To this
extent the system to which the prize
fighter is compelled to submit deserves all
the commentator which il receives. Be-
yond this, however, praise can not reason
ably or consistently CO." When we come
20 examine the matter closely we find that
this is true. Training for pugilism has been
going on with us for fifty years, but no one
can point to any beneficial effect it has had
upon our generation. A few men have
been trained to over-exertion and endur-
ance in one direction, at the sacrifice of
vitality and vigor in others; the youth of
the day has not felt because of pugilistic
training any influence that has made its
physical development superior to that of
the grandfathers. The pugillst is trained to
unusual and extraordinary effort, to
monstrous output of muscular strength,
and to endurance that taxes the vital
organs to the uttermost, and these men do
not become noted as long liyers, or as en-
joying the blessings of healthful old age.
On the contrary, the statistics prove that
they break down early and die early. The
old pugilists are those; we find, who ceased
from training before they were thirty
years of age, yet the pugilist is not more
Incorporate than the average of men, in
use of food or liquors, and the average man
outlives him. Physical training has its evil
In the fact that it is not even, general and
proportionately distributed over the man.
The result is that when it ceases, he runs
either to extreme obesity, extreme lean
ness, or wasting of the vital organs, pre-
cisely as unbalanced machinery will wear
down and give way before its time. Pu-
gilistic is, in short, not athletic training.
The latter looks to the even, easy, general
development of all the parts; it takes
special care that there shall be no i'm
pairment of bodily vigor by the over-train-
ing Of any one part. 1t gives as much at
tention to the abdominal muscles, the back
and loins, as to the legs, arms and shoul-
derS, while it is jealous of any tax upon
the heart, lungs or other internal organs
to which, in the subject trained, they are
not fully equal. The athlete is not given
to understand that he can afford to neglect
his brain any more than his muscles. He is
tr aimed, under proper systems, to bring
into healthful and natural play all the
parts of his body, to allow no muscle by
disuse to become useless and an incum-
brance, to put upon no muscle or limb
strain that may not be shared in due pro-
portion with equal ease by all others.
So it is that the gymnasium, under proper
direction, is a school of physical develop
ment, while the boxing ring is, as a rule,
the school Of i'll training. The one gives
us better, stronger, longer lived class of
men; the other gives us phcnomenally and
irregularly developed one-sided men, whose
progeny is almost invariably i'll proper
toned, weak and devoid of vigor, and who
themselves soon decay and rarely
retain any Of the benefits of
their early muscular training. To
those who have been deceived into the
belief that the boxing mania of the day is
excusable or endursble because of physical
compensations, the subject We have barely
one, and the statistics of which will unde-
ceive them. When Muldoon trained Sui
Ivan recently, and brought him up from a
physical wreck to strength and vigor, he
went far beyond pugilistic training. His
system was that Of the athlete, which,
applied in degree to all men, would be
beneficial, as we recently pointed out when
styling him DR.. Muldoon. But in Sulli-
vans case it was rapid and unusual work,
not general and applied for specific pur-
pose. What was done for Sullivan was not
what would or should be done for all but
it served to show what athletic training
may do for the race, when it does not run
to the one sided extremes of pugilistic
preparation. As contemporary has well
said in treating of the subject, and to
which, by the way, the press is now wisely
giving much attention:
The sort oftraining which the world needs is
that which will develop the bodily powers
equally strengthen the brain as well as the
muscles ard enable men to readily, cheeriuiiy
and Satisfactorily meet the requirements ana
obligaIisn which social life imposes; but this
sort of training the pug lists system emphat-
ic,Ily does not and cannot furnish.
THE NEW SOUTH AMAZING.
NJ Al. IL.