Athleticism

“ Did you ever stop to ask yourselves what the right aim of athletics is—what the chief aim should be? Some of you will answer: ‘That’s easy; the chief aim of athletics is winning.’ Wrong; the true aim of all athletics, the world around, is physical culture. Winning is of small importance; contests are only incentives. We go in for athletics because we wish to attain to a condition of physical fitness that will allow us to make the most of our lives. Athletics without training is useless; it will accomplish almost nothing good. ”

“ While we play we keep our minds occupied by the sport, and at the same time we exercise our muscles and feed our lungs and our bodies with oxygen.
It is unfortunate that in school or college athletics those who need exercise the most are often those who are physically unfitted to play on the school teams. In other words, we select our runners and jumpers and football players from among the stronger boys, while the weaker ones really need the benefit of the sport. Every boy should take part in school games when possible even if he is not as swift or as strong as some other boys. ”

“ The great value of athletic games is the education they give toward essential qualities in our modern, civilized and work-a-day world. A judicious blending of work and gymnastics would probably bring about as125 high a physical development as would the same training supplemented by games; but it would stop there. Only sports, one may say only competitive sports, can bring about the perfect adjustment of hand and eye, the sense of “time,” the quickness of resource, the steadiness under excitement, which mark the successful athlete. ”

“ The Olympic beauty of this game is beyond all praise. It calls into active exercise every muscle of the human frame, and brings into bold relief the supple and athletic forms of the best built people in the world. ”

“ Rowing, running, cross-country work, track athletics, lacrosse, handball, hockey and polo are all splendid and vigorous games, well calculated to develop the best type of physical stamina. For those possessing the requisite strength they can all be highly recommended, though as a rule it is best not to specialize in any one of them but to secure as much variety as possible. Specializing in athletics may win championships and may stimulate interest in sports, but for the average man or woman specialization is not desirable. ”

“ This noble exercise ought not to be judged by the dishonesty or the low lives of too many of its professional followers. Let it stand alone, an athletic practice, on the same footing as boating or foot-ball. ”

“ In addition to the ordinary gymnastic exercises of the palaestra, the athletes were instructed in carrying heavy loads, lifting weights, bending iron rods, striking at a suspended leather sack filled with sand or flour, taming bulls, &c. Boxers had to practise delving the ground, to strengthen their upper limbs. The competitions open to athletes were running, leaping, throwing the discus, wrestling, boxing and the pancratium, or combination of boxing and wrestling. Victory in this last was the highest achievement of an athlete, and was reserved only for men of extraordinary strength. ”

“ Therefore, "exercise unto godliness." "Take up those forms of spiritual athletics which develop and discipline the soul. Keep your soul in training. Be sure that you are in good spiritual condition, ready for the strain and effort which life is sure to demand." We are often told in our day that the athletic ideal is developed to excess, but the teaching of this passage is just the opposite of {16} the modern warning. Paul tells this young man that he has not begun to realize the full scope of the athletic ideal. ”

“ The Advantages Derived from Athletic Sports.—Nothing can take the place of athletic sports to develop strong vigorous bodies in girls and young women. While formal gymnastics have both an educational and corrective value, and lay the foundation for athletic sports, they cannot take the place of outdoor sports to develop organic vigor, physical and moral courage, self-reliance, judgment, self-control, decision, and ethical training, a consideration for the rights of others, and a relaxation, particularly from mental work. Athletics are to youth what play is to children. ”

“ But the college student is prone to adore muscle. The successful athlete is, for a brief period, praised, petted, and advertised far more than is the ablest student or professor in the institution. Scarcely do the noblest achievements of science or philanthropy receive so much notice as a successful full-back on a foot-ball team. The athlete goes up indeed like a rocket, startling the ear and dazzling the eye for a moment—then oblivion, or deserved obscurity. ”

“ There is no finer sight among the long catalogue of athletic sports, more exhilarating and amusing to the true sportsman, than to see a walking-match carried out to the strict letter of the meaning, each moving with the grandest action of which the human frame is capable, at a pace which the feeble frame and mind is totally unable to comprehend, and must be witnessed to be believed. ”

“ This neatly gotten-up book is full of valuable hints to athletes of whatever kind and character, having been compiled with rare judgment, which long years of laborious work in the sporting world has given its author. The unpretentious volume, among other things, contains useful chapters on Training for Rowing, Boxing, Wrestling, and Pedestrianism, in addition to instructions for High and Broad Jumping, Fair Walking, Hammer-throwing, and in fact everything else useful to the professional or amateur athlete. ”

“ You can put on running shorts and a blazer and potter about the grounds, feeling strong and athletic, and delude yourself into the notion that you are training for the sports. Ten minutes at the broad jump, five with the weight, a few sprints on the track—it is all very amusing and harmless, but it is apt to become monotonous after a time. And if the weather is at all inclined to be chilly, such an occupation becomes impossible.
Charteris found things particularly dull. ”

“ Blessed with a strong, symmetrical frame, a quick eye, a sure hand, a perfect constitution, and abundant courage, he came easily by a mastery of the different sports he entered into, and had few equals, and fewer superiors, at cricket, football, lacrosse, baseball, swimming, rowing, and the other amusements of the day. ”

“ He was a fine young fellow, an athlete and a gentleman, but he overdid athletics. You know how the force that controls us gives us a little tweak to remind us when we get off the beaten track. It may be a pinch on the great toe if we drink too much and work too little. Or it may be a tug on our nerves if we dissipate energy too much. With the athlete, of course, it's the heart or the lungs. ”

“ Nay more, in any other contests of strength and endurance, I believe they would more than hold their own against any younger athletes; and would overwhelm any similar number of non-athletes of the same or any other age. As contests I should select a hard day's shooting over dogs, cross-country riding, tug-of-war, boxing, long-distance rowing, or, in fact, any contest in which the special element of racing in light ships has no part. ”

“ Rowing, cricket, football, athletics, and, in a lower degree, gymnastics, bicycling, swimming, and riding, constitute, besides walking, the favorite modes of exercise; and it is impossible to suggest better. I have only to object that, regarded as recreation, there is, both at Oxford and Cambridge, far too much tendency to a specialization of these forms of exercise. Competition dictates practice, and practice entails too exclusive a devotion to the one kind of exercise which is practiced ”

“ It was customary for the young men of all classes in those days to pursue athletic exercises, such as pitching the bar, leaping, wrestling, and the like, these being regarded as the surest tests of bodily strength. Possessing a powerful and active frame, he was ever the victor in those sports; and from his marked success among his comrades in this respect, and his fair and impartial disposition, he was universally the umpire in all disputes growing out of these and like contests for superiority that arose between one and another. ”

“ Each successful champion in the great athletic contests means a large number of men who went through a course of training in which they were wrought up to the highest pitch of perfection not only of muscular development, but also of pluck and endurance. ”

“ The place of physical training and of games in education, the place of athletics in our daily life and in our national life, are questions of present importance to us all, and in considering these questions we cannot fail to learn something from the athletic history of a nation which for a time at least succeeded in reconciling the rival claims of body and of mind, and immortalized this result in its art. ”

“ To the sportsman in training, full of health and strength, and well appointed, it is of little consequence whether there be game or not. The inspiriting character of the sport, and the wild beauty of the scenery, so different from what he is elsewhere in the habit of contemplating, hold out a charm that dispels fatigue! ”

“ Any good authority will tell us, however, that a truly capable athlete will not try to specialize so much in any one kind of contest that he cannot do justice to the others. As an all around well-trained man he will try to excel in the Pentathlon, the “five contests.” Herein he will successfully join in running, javelin casting, quoit throwing, leaping, and wrestling. [*] As the contest proceeds the weaker athletes will be eliminated; only the two fittest will be left for the final trial of strength and skill. ”

“ The years of late boyhood and early manhood say from twelve or fourteen to twenty-eight or thirty, and often until much later are those in which athletic sports prove not only most attractive, but also most beneficial to the individual and the race. In college and in most of the schools which are preparatory for college rowing, foot-ball, base-ball, running, jumping, sparring, and the like have assumed a constantly increasing prominence. ”

“ Indeed, to speak the truth, it is the only sport that properly exercises the legs in all their parts. When you run forward one set of sinews and muscles comes{116} into play; when you jump backwards others have more work to do, and others again when you change direction sideways. In track-running on the contrary, only one sort of movement is necessary and the exercise is unequal, not affecting all parts of the legs alike.
‘And as with the legs so also with the arms, the exercise is very fairly apportioned, for the players are accustomed to catch the ball in every kind of attitude. ”

“ All through the livelong day on Saturdays, and in the afternoons during weekdays, boys in strange-looking running costumes of various designs could be seen diligently practicing at all manner of stunts, from sprinting, leaping hurdles, engaging in the high jump, with the aid of poles; throwing the hammer; and, in fact, every conceivable exercise that would be apt to come under the head of a genuine athletic tournament. ”

“ From this point of view the science of walking will be treated in the present work; for whether a man may have entered in an engagement to run, walk, jump, swim, row, or box, no training can be thoroughly accomplished until the athlete has undergone a certain amount of exercise on foot, and reduced his superfluous weight to such an extent that he can follow up his peculiar forte with fair chance of improvement, or at least so that he may not have to stop short from sheer want of wind or strength. ”

“ They usually know nothing at all of sport, though professing to know a good deal, as in their vocabulary sport is only another name for exercise: they fondly imagine that the man who trots on horseback every morning round the Tier-Garten, especially if he wears English gaiters and carries a hunting-crop, is a sportsman, and consider any game “sporting” where there is plenty of running—even if no demand be made on the courage, decision, quickness or other mental qualifications of the players. ”

“ Now the apostolic doctrine is this: "You do not grow strong in body or in mind without discipline and exercise. The same athletic demand is made on your soul." All through the writings of this vigorous, masculine, robust adviser of young men, you find him taking the athletic position. Now he is a boxer: "So fight I not as one that beateth the air." Now he is a runner, looking not to the things that are behind, but to the things before, and running, not in one sharp dash, but, with patience, the race set before him. ”

“ I think our modern college athletics will some day be looked upon as one of the most ridiculous habits of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That twenty-two men should engage in mortal combat, with anywhere from one to twenty thousand on the side lines,—if you can get anything more ridiculous than that, I should like to know where you can find it. Athletics should not be too severe, however, yet, the boy ought not to have century runs and long halves of football, especially if the heart is still weak. ”

“ Look here, Phil, I’ll tell you something that I’m beginning to get hold of which isn’t to be got from any book, and yet is a fundamental principle of athletics. In every exercise that requires a skilled motion or great speed, you’ll find that there’s a peculiar kind of final snap or twist that gives the motion or the speed; and you’ve got to master this if you want the highest results. Without it a strong man is powerless, and with it a weak man often slips to the front. ”

“ The training of athletes must always be a subject of general interest. If there be an art by which men are made specially strong for some unusual period and purpose, how far can it be applied to the daily lives of average men? Is the training of an athlete a solid building of strength, or is it even consistent with a lasting condition of vigorous health? ”