Natural Method of Physical Training by Edwin Checkley, (10) Some Hints and Suggestions, Notes

Post date: May 18, 2017 12:25:12 PM

Natural Method of Physical Training

X. SOME HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS

• • • If one man’s food is another man’s poison, it is also true that a prescription for exercise for one man or woman may be less or more than another man or woman may require. Rules must be applied to individual needs and length and duration of specific exercise prescriptions depend on how we adapt individually.

    • A busy person will benefit from 15 minutes of exercise in the morning before fully dressing and 15 minutes in the evening before retiring, with another period of special exercise in afternoon if possible.

    • If the practice tempts rather vigorous movements prolonged for some time, wait to have a meal. Fatigue might not improve the appetite and is scarcely beneficial in other respects. Light exercise before a meal is of no detriment.

    • 10-20 reps of each of the exercises outlined does not occupy very much time and leaves the whole body pleasantly glowing with little fatigue. No exercise should be practiced any more frequently than is is rendered feasible by the muscular condition of the parts called into play.

    • The carriage and management of the body between periods of exercise is of more importance than the exercises themselves. Above all, proper breathing is the very cornerstone of physical strength.

    • Our habits do more to form our bodies as well as our minds than the conscious efforts at improvement. If we can get in the habit of taking long breaths, and then gradually increase the length of our respiratory movement, and the volume of air thus taken in at a breath, we shall obviously do more than if we arrange to merely exercise the lungs at stated times.

    • Any exercise that gives special movement to muscles and organs not commonly brought into play have value. However, exercises are unnecessary to a person who lives a life of such physical activity that all the muscles and organs are certain to be called upon in the course of a day. Strive to become one of these very few people. Until then it is the individual’s responsibility to determine our own deficiencies that have grown out of previous and present habits in life. It is our duty to set about building up what remains unbuilt or tearing down defective elements. Banish weak spots and remove imperfections in the system through special effort to protect general health.

    • Be graceful in everything. Carrying and using the body habitually well along with the union of highly perfect organs leads to good health with little apparent activity. Quiet activity produces much the same effect as outward activity.

    • Take pains. Bad habits are generally stronger than good habits, and control of the muscular system of the body will in many cases mean a lively struggle with long established habits. The will must be brought to bear upon the injurious habits of walking, of standing, of sitting and of breathing.

    • What is recreation for one is not recreation for the other. Head tired people will shrink from the very exercise they should seek. Head weariness produces the tendency to avoid all initiatory movements. The exercise taken up by a person who has been exercising the brain without the body should be exercise that animates the body without taxing the brain. Exercise taken by a person who has been undergoing no serious tax on the brain system might profitably keep up a lively union between the intelligence and the muscles. For a mind that has performed a great deal of detailed labor sleep is much better.

    • Walking is in every respect a beautiful exercise, especially when the walker walks as he should, breathing slowly through the nose. Running is an exercise of the highest value to the lungs. Running in a proper way keeps the body trim and never breathless.

    • Stair climbing, in any kind of moderation, is highly beneficial. Nothing can be better for the lungs. People who are not strong might make it an admirable means of building up strength. In all such movements take the exercise without sudden or taxing motions. Step firmly and carry the chest free so that long, full breathing may buoy the body in its journey.

    • The shoulder should not be held back so far as to be brought out of line with the hip joints. To carry them as far back as possible and at high tension, does not improve the force or beauty of the figure. The chest must be given prominence on its own account, and the shoulders, when held far enough back to give the chest free development, find a natural and comfortable centre.

    • To counteract the tendency to develop one side to detriment of the other cultivate the habit of alternating the use of the hands and arms. Watch for tendencies toward right or left sided movements in sitting. Endeavor to adopt a changed position. Endeavor to develop firm and self reliant shoulders. There are many muscle in the upper back, shoulders and chest of which we must discover ownership of.

    • The simplest stretching of the body is a great boon. How delightful to extend all the limbs and arch the back after long confinement. Stretching movements are very serviceable in preserving suppleness. Practice reaching, first with one hand, then with both, avoiding of course, harsh straining.

    • The best kind of exercise is the exercise the body receives in performing some useful service. The more good we get out of our work, the more enjoyment we have in that work. Work done without interest strains the body more than work enthusiastically performed. Cultivate the habit ourselves of performing little physical tasks that might ordinarily be relegated to servants or hired assistants. Any task done with reasonable caution and without rashly overusing our strength is taking exercise in a practical and valuable way.

    • Exercise by rule need only supplement natural exercise, which is better if we can manage to get it. Once the body is ‘alive,’ when all the muscles are healthy and control of the entire system is complete, very little exercise is sufficient to keep a person healthy and strong. The tendency of hard exercise is hard muscles, and hard muscles are bad. The body should remain firm, but pliant and most parts soft. It is in the conservation of energy , and not in prodigal dissipation of energy, that the greatest strength and endurance of the body will always lie.

    • Those who wish to take their efforts beyond the system provided would be wise to take up tumbling. Tumbling comes closest to the gamboling of animals and children, ‘the natural state.”

    • More vigorous gymnastics should be trained under the tutelage of a coach to ensure the training is symmetrical. Any form of training can produce as well as cure deformities, and must be thought out. Special exercise must be considered to give the left side a harmonious relation with the right. Boxing is fine exercise and gives balance and harmony to the whole body (if not performed in a slugging manner) but it still necessary to train both the right left hands to both block and punch.

    • That which is exercise of strength, or speed, for one person, becomes for another, stronger or better trained, a simple exercise of endurance.

    • “Staying Power” is directly related and directly regulated by the strength of the lungs. There can be no endurance in a weak lunged person, and strong lungs are thus the pre-eminent requisite in one who wishes to keep strong enter to undertakings of any kind that tax the physical system. The chest must be enlarged by the expansion of the lungs, and not by muscular distension. Do not talk of big chests unless also talking about big lungs.

    • Young people of ordinary health will profit by quick exercises--exercises of speed. Old people, or people suffering from debility or breathlessness, should cultivate that which slowly arouses their system and does dot tax their systems. Running is good for all who can safely accomplish it, but a long walk is much better for a person debilitate by age, illness or excesses. All exercises taken by such person should be slow and firm rather than lively, persistent rather than vigorous.

    • Nature refuses to tolerate surprises. We are what we are, and every system of training must begin with us as we are before it can make us anything better. Build up the human system on the basis of what it already is, By making the best of what the system already is, instead of ignoring its limitations, to build up something more enduring.

    • All are fit for training. If weak today, let our resentment of the fact give us the mental strength to make ourselves physically sound and strong. If we are what we are we can become what we wish to be.

    • The repugnance to exercise arising from mental fatigue, or long inaction, is something that must be carefully fought. What is often mistaken for physical fatigue is nothing of the kind, but rather an opposite effect, the numb pain of inactivity. The weariness is of the head and only of the body by reflex action. Once aroused from this condition a person who starts his blood at a quicker pace feels greatly stimulated.. The body becomes alive again, and all the functions of the body and mind give a sense of enjoyment.

    • No magic ever worked more agreeable results than the quickened action of the blood. The body becomes warmer, and with increased warmth comes increased strength, courage and perceptions. The machinery of the brain turns out more ideas to the minute under a quick pulse than under a slow one. This relationship of a quickened circulation to the powers of the brain is frequently overlooked.

    • Take advantage of blood influence by introducing exercise when the brain force grows weak. In prolonged mental effort recesses filled with good general exercise, that starts the entire blood system, will always be a better method of alleviating the tension and tiding over dangerous places than the use of any kind of liquid stimulant.

    • When stimulants aid they aid by giving heat and artificial activity to the circulation. Exercise will supply heat in the safest manner and leave no drafts to make good on the bank account of strength. Stimulants are borrowed heat. Exercise is earned heat.

    • Clothing (Dr. Felix L. Oswald) Between May and October man has to wear clothes enough to keep the flies and gnats from troubling him--whatsoever is more than this is of evil. The best head-dress for summer is our natural hair; the next best is a light straw hat. The human skull is naturally better protected than that of any other warm-blooded animal, so that there seems little need of adding an artificial covering. Those least liable to diseases are the ones who are not guarded from the access of fresh air by too many garments.

• • The physical regeneration of the human race could be had if trained for a yearly assembly to compete in. Leaders should be running for something besides office and we should all be seeking paradise on this side of the grave. Physical health must become something more than a mere fad before our race do itself justice in the eternal struggle for higher ideals. The first step is to acknowledge the danger of allowing modern ignorance of the human body to long continue its dangerous effects.