Ronald John McNeill

“ Dumb-bell exercises, therefore, when arranged judiciously and with knowledge, are admirably suited for developing the physique, and are extensively employed in schools both for boys and girls. The bar-bell is merely a two-handed dumb-bell, and its use is similar in principle. The Indian club is also in use in most gymnasia; but the risk of overstraining the body by its unskilful handling makes it less generally popular than the dumb-bell. All these appliances may be, and often are, used either in ordinary schoolrooms or elsewhere outside the gymnasium. ”

“ Except the time devoted to letters and music, the education of boys was conducted in the gymnasia, where provision was made, as already mentioned, for their moral as well as their physical training. As they grew older, conversation and social intercourse took the place of the more systematic discipline. Philosophers and sophists assembled to talk and to lecture in the gymnasia, which thus became places of general resort for the purpose of all less systematic intellectual pursuits, as well as for physical exercises. ”

“ In course of time the Greeks grew more attached to such sports; their free active life, spent to a great extent in the open air, fostered the liking almost into a passion. The victor in any athletic contest, though he gained no money prize, was rewarded with the honour and respect of his fellow citizens; and a victory in the great religious festivals was counted an honour for the whole state. In these circumstances the training of competitors for the greater contests became a matter of public concern ”

“ The gymnasium was a public institution as distinguished from the palaestra, which was a private school where boys were trained in physical exercises, though the term palaestra is also often used for the part of a gymnasium specially devoted to wrestling and boxing. The athletic contests for which the gymnasium supplied the means of training and practice formed part of the social life of the Greeks from the earliest times. ”

“ Plato’s teaching in the Academy has given immortality to that gymnasium; Aristotle conferred lustre on the Lyceum; and the Cynosarges was the resort of the Cynics. Plato when treating of education devotes much consideration to gymnastics (see especially Rep. iii. and various parts of Laws) ; and according to Plato it was the sophist Prodicus who first pointed out the connexion between gymnastics and health. Having found such exercises beneficial to his own weak health, he formulated a method which was adopted generally, and which was improved by Hippocrates. ”

“ But whereas the Greeks received training in the gymnasium for contests which are now designated as athletic sports (q.v.) , gymnastics in the modern sense is a term restricted to such exercises as are usually practised indoors, with or without the aid of mechanical appliances, as distinguished from sports or games practised in the open air. ”

“ International gymnastic contests have become a feature of the revived Olympic Games (see Athletic Sports) , and in those held at Athens in 1906 a team of Danish ladies took part in the competition and proved by their skilful performance that gymnastics may be practised with as much success by women as by men. ”

“ A French medical writer enumerates seven distinct groups of maladies, each including a number of different complaints, for which gymnastic exercises are a recognized form of treatment; and there are many malformations of the human body, formerly believed to be incurable, which are capable of being greatly remedied if not entirely corrected by regular gymnastic exercises practised under medical direction. ”

“ During the first decade of the 20th century more than one commission reported to parliament in England in favour of more systematic and general physical training being encouraged or even made compulsory by public authority. ”

“ The gymnasia built to suit these various purposes were large buildings, which contained not merely places for each kind of exercise, but also a stadium, baths, covered porticos for practice in bad weather, and outer porticos where the philosophers and men of letters read public lectures and held disputations. ”

“ It was in use in England as early as the time of Elizabeth, and it has the advantage that it admits of being exactly proportioned to the individual strength of each learner, and can be adjusted in weight as his strength increases. The exercises that may be performed with the dumb-bell, combined with a few simple drill-like movements, give employment to all parts of the body and to both sides equally. ”