42694 system 24

?4

What I understand by Exercise, Athletic Sports and Physical Cul turę

By Exercist I understand etery kiml of bodily exerrise. By.!thlehc Sports I understand mosements and exercises whieh are performed for pleasure or amusement, in order to enable one to exccl others in any special branch, or to win in corapetitions. By Physical Culture I understand work performed with the conscious intention of perfecting the body, mind, and soul, and increasing ones individual health, strength, speed, staying power. agility, suppleness, courage, self-com-rnand, presence of mind, and social disposition. Strictly speaking, one and the same cxercise can. subjecth-ely regarded, be sport at one tune and gymnastics or physical culture at another. A man who sits iii a boat and rows, to strengthen his lungs and the musclcs of his back. is performing a physical culture exercise. whereas it is, morę often than not. sport for a so-callcd gymnast to vault the horse as high as lie can manage. or even for him to strive to make the descent in a high jump as faulllessly as possible. Further, when a teacher of gymnastics tries to get his team to perform free excrcises as nearly together as possible, so that they may be able to do better than other teams with which they are to be matched, even when there is no prize nor pubhc mention in prospect. that is often only sport too. ff, after a completed course of physical exercises, the question asked be : " What can the pupils do ?" the thing is sport, but if it be : “ How are they now phy-sically ?'' then it is Physical Culture.

The moment bodily exercises are chosen in such wise that they tend to the improeement and development of the individual in just those particular points in which he is deticient, they are rational Physical Culture. It ensues from this that a system of gymnastics, wrongly applied, may prove in the highest degree irrationai for the individual. even if ever so rational in theoretical form. Tor anremIC boys or girls, skin rubbing, sun baths, and deep breathing will be a morę rational form of Physical Culture than exercises in a drill-hall. even aciording to Father Ling s system.*

Physical Culture exercises can only be rational in tlieir application when they take into consideration the needs of the indieidual For that reason, team exercises and school drill can never be morę than approxiinately rational, and, canied on as they are in most cases now-adays, they are anything but that.

If the above-mentioned rower's comparatieely weakest points w ere his lungs and back, his rowmg might sery well be rational Physical Culture. When a man. in a " Weight-lifting ” Club, holds up an iron bali in the air for the sake of beating the existing record, that is Sport; if he do so for the sake of developing his extensors, it is Physical Culture, and if it be his arms. and in particular the triceps which are compara-tively weak, it is conceuablt that he is performing rational Physical Culture cxercises. Still, I have nevcr seen any man or woman whose arms were weak in comparison with their skin, or their abdominal muscles.

For forty-five ycars I have used my eyes and thought about these things, and I have come to the conclusion that those parts of the human

•Ling, the foBtitler nf Sw* iisb Drill and Gymnastics (1775-1839.