The Savannah morning news., 1903-07-19

a., mony with all it's parts, hidden and
visible, is an easy matter. 1t requires
( only common sense and attention.
If you do anything at all-lifting
weights, running, Jumping-and you
| feel that you are losing your wind"
your lungs are warning you that they
are not able to work as we'll as your
muscles. What you need to do at once
is to reduce the amount Of muscular
work to a level where the lungs can
keep up with it.
If your heart beats fast it is a sign
that your muscles are oVer-developing
at the expense of the heart. Call the
muscles in. Every bit of work that
you do under such circumstances is
simply feeding the big, hulking muscle
and starving the heart.
This is one of the most serious dam
gers of athletics, especially when
boys are working without an expert
enced instructor. Many hundreds, prob
ably thousands, of boys sow the seeds
of heart trouble in their youth with
out knowing 1t.
They use their muscles and make the
: heart actually limp along behind. The
heart is such a wonderful organ that
it will work until 1t is killed if a per-
son is foolish enough to let it, Unlike
the other muscles of the body, it does
not need to be driven. 1t will increase
it's labor steadily and ever faster and
faster, as long as the restsof the body
demands it until at last the demands
become too vast.
But ii cannot do this without harm.
No boy would dream of trying to lift
| thousand-pound weight over his
head. But lots of boys and men who
practice athletics try practically such
tricks with their hearts.
Every time such a thing happens the
heart has been hurt, and hurt badly
They may not find 1t out while they
are young, and while the body is still
fresh and active; but when they are
twenty-five or thirty years old, and
their body begins to need the best
work of the heart, they discover that
it is not able to give it to them. That
old strain, incurred perhaps fifteen
years before, begins to show.
Remember, then, first of all, that
whatever work distresses heart or
lungs, is bad work If an engineer
did that with his mere iron locomotive
or boilers he would be discharged.
Don't do it with your UNNECESSARILY
valuable engines and boilers of body.
Yet both lungs and heart must get
work in order to be made strong. No
person is an athlete-rather, no person
is healthy-unless he can use his mus
cles and body to their fullest extent
without having notice served on him
by heart or lungs that they are not
able to keep up with the rest of the
machine.
Therefore, whatever exercise you do,
study that it shall increase the health
of those organs in exact accordance
with the increase of the rest.
For producing such a fine harmony
of heart lungs and muscle, the light
dumb-bells furnish ideal exercises.
| Heavy dumb-bells are just the re-
verse. Use weights that you can han
| die and lift and twirl without feeling
a strain in any part of the body, from
the heels to the ears, and without
making you gasp or causing your heart
to beat too fast. Some boys can use
two or three-pound dumb bells. Others
cannot use any except the very light
/ est of wooden ones. Let your body be
| it's own guide.
Whenever you put your hands on
| the bells, grip them as If you meant
business. Make your muscles tense.
That in itself is going to give you
exercise and increase those pulley
ropes Of yours.
Lift one bell high over head with
your left arm. Don't be afraid that
your arm is going to fly off. 1t won't.
| Stretch it so that the joints creak.
Ten to one you are rusty somewhere,
| and this is going to take the rust out.
Now lean over sidewise to the right.
Make that body of yours bend until
II Is timber. If you are stiff, you are
wrong somewhere. Lean over and
| over until your outstretched right arm
can bring the right hand dumb-bell
down to the ground.
Now swing over the other way,
Keep It up. Don't do 1t fast and don't