Muscular strength

“ The tendency of most instructors or athletes, when presenting exercises, is to lay stress upon the production of large muscles, capable of certain performances. Some even go so far as to relate specific feats, which they are able to accomplish by reason of their great muscular power, which, it may be observed, is not necessarily indicative of good health. Oftentimes they have obtained this muscular strength by other exercises than the ones described in their books, or they have been accustomed to hard work from early youth, or are naturally strong. ”

“ Muscular strength provides the joints with more powerful ligaments and better developed bony parts. After long confinement to the bed from disease, the joints have wasted ligaments, thin cartilages, and the bones are of smaller proportions. Duly exercised muscles influence the size of the bones upon which they act. Thus the bones of a well-developed man are stronger, firmer, and larger than those of a feeble person. ”

“ In muscular training, a series of light, quick movements, none of which are fatiguing, repeated fifteen, twenty, or a hundred times, will do much more to build up muscle and increase strength, than three or four violent, heaving strains that tax all your strength. ”

“ When the muscles are exercised the vital, organs are energized and the activity of the entire functional system greatly increased-all clearly indicating that in taking physical exercise the internal organs are aroused and stimulated.
Gigantic strength is not especially needed. It is not necessary for one to strive to eclipse the feats of famous strong men. Unusual muscular development is of no great value in this age, but a normal degree of
strength is absolutely necessary in the struggle for health and vitality. ”

“ You will have a sense of strength in this region, and this is absolutely the case in so far as the external muscles of this part of the body are concerned. But the more valuable gain will be in the strength of the organs themselves. These organs are partly muscular in character, and they are firm and strong, or soft and flaccid, in accordance with the intelligent consideration that they receive and the amount of exercise given them. ”

“ He cannot put forth the full strength of his body without first making a deep inspiration; and by making a deep inspiration, and maintaining afterwards the chest in an expanded state, which is essential to the continuance of his muscular effort, he so alters the mechanical relations of the two sides of his body that the muscles of his right side act with a superior efficacy; and, to render the inequality still greater, the muscles of the left side act with a mechanical disadvantage. ”

“ Exercise is a prime requisite, because the human mechanism, unlike the inanimate machine, gains strength from use. Muscular movement causes disintegration [Pg 136] and death of substance, but at the same time there is an increased flow of blood to the part, and that means an increased supply of nourishment and increased activity in rebuilding. As MacLaren has expressed it, strength means newness of the muscle. The amount and quality of this exercise will be treated of later in this chapter. ”

“ It necessitates careful diet and constant exercise for a long period, and proves equally beneficial to both sexes. This book has been written in vain if the reader has not grasped by now that the activity of the muscles implies the activity of all the organs in the body. Accordingly, the whole muscular system is by appropriate methods given frequent exercise: gentle at first; never exhausting; but constantly increasing as the strength grows. The result is a general development of the organs throughout the body, which will in time work a complete metamorphosis in the individual’s physique. ”

“ The greater the displacement of the line of gravity, the greater the muscular effort required to maintain the equilibrium of the body. Up to a certain extent, exercising the muscle develops the strength and size of the muscle. On the other hand, when a muscle within the body is unused, it wastes; when used within certain limits, it grows. But when the corset splint is applied to the body of the young girl, it supplants the functions of the abdominal and back muscles, which is to hold the trunk erect, and these muscles gradually grow weak and waste. ”

“ All the feats of strength of which we hear and read, are not the result of merely accidental muscular action, but an effort of well-trained muscles and of a desire to accomplish with ease and precision something out of the ordinary course of our action. The man who lifted the two hundred and twenty pounds with one hand in Gilmore’s Garden began, perhaps, with lifting twenty-eight pounds. ”

“ Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; ”

“ We can now go a step further and ask the question, What is there in the blood that thus gives to the muscle the power of contracting, that in other words keeps the muscle alive? The answer is very easily found. What is the name commonly given to this power of a muscle to contract? We generally call it strength. Lay your arm straight out on the table, put a heavy weight in your hand, and try to bend your arm. If you could do it, one would say you were strong; if you could not, one would say you were weak—all the stronger or weaker, the heavier or lighter the weight. ”

“ It is a familiar fact that all muscles become larger and stronger through exercise; but the reason why they so increase is not such a simple matter. The vitality of muscular, and indeed of all other living tissue, is strangely under the influence of the nervous system. ”

“ From these facts, as well as from the great force with which the muscle contracts, one must conclude that the muscle is a transformer of energy—that within its protoplasm, chemical changes take place whereby the potential energy of oxygen and food is converted into the kinetic energy of motion.
Fig. 113—Capillaries of muscles. Plan of Using Muscular Force.—Two difficulties have to be overcome in the using of muscular force in the body. The first of these is due to the fact that the muscles exert their force only when they contract. They can pull but not push. ”

“ As for the weights and clubs and dumb-bells, you feel as if there must be some jugglery about them,—they have grown so much lighter than they used to be. It is you who have gained a double set of muscles to every limb; that is all. Strike out from the shoulder with your clenched hand; once your arm was loose-jointed and shaky; now it is firm and tense, and begins to feel like a natural arm. Moreover, strength and suppleness have grown together; you have not stiffened by becoming stronger, but find yourself more flexible. ”

“ The prodigies of force that astonish us are due to a very simple cause, and can be accounted for under the common law that, of two muscles having the same mass and the same energy, the shorter one is capable of raising the more considerable weight. We may figure muscular fiber as a spiral spring, habitually relaxed, which, under nervous action, flies back upon itself. ”

“ Both evidently derive the principle of the activity that marks them from the same external and internal media; but, while the muscle, a mechanical organ, is limited to the obedient transformation of the force assigned to it, under the form of heat, into a measurable amount of work, the nerve, a vital organ, remains impenetrable and inaccessible to our calculations, and exerts its characteristic and sovereign powers in its own way, through a series of operations that escape all estimates of their force and heat. On the part of the muscular system, every thing can be measured ”

“ In some respects, the increase of muscular power, or rather of the power of special muscles, is even more striking, because it is commonly supposed by most persons that the muscular power depends entirely on the size and quality of the muscles, the state of health, and like conditions, not on the imagination. Of course every one knows that the muscles are capable of greater efforts when the mind is much excited by fear and other emotions. ”

“ It is graceful, healthy, stimulating to the muscles, and it develops in a very high degree the important faculty of balancing the body and preserving perfect control over the whole of the muscular system, while bringing certain muscles into action at will. Moreover, there is this about it which is of especial value: it trains by exercise the power of intentionally inducing and maintaining a continuous contraction of the muscles of the lower extremity. ”

“ When the muscles contract, they become shorter; but what is lost in length is gained in breadth and thickness, so that their actual volume remains the same. Muscles alternately contract and relax, and thus act upon the bones. The economy of muscular power thus displayed is truly remarkable. In easy and graceful walking, the forward motion of the limbs is not altogether due to the exercise of muscular power, but partly to the force of gravity, and only a slight assistance of the muscles is required to elevate the leg sufficiently to allow it to oscillate. ”

“ Of course this possibility of variation is of great advantage in our use of our muscles. It depends upon the very large number of individual fibers of which even our smallest muscles are made up. Whenever any single fiber contracts, it pulls to its full extent; if only a few become active, the pull of the whole muscle will be slight; as more come into action, more force will be exerted; the muscle will show its utmost power when all the fibers are contracting at once. We are conscious of greater mental effort when we make a powerful muscular contraction. ”

“ The fourth state of muscular contraction is when the muscle is doing negative work, i.e. when work is being done on it, as for instance when we go downstairs, or when a descending weight forces down the opposing arm which attempts to support it. ”

“ Indeed, all that I want to bring about muscular contraction is, not a metamorphosis of muscle which issues in the development of muscular force, nor a transformation of heat into muscular force, but simply a supply of electricity during the state of muscular inaction which will counteract the tendency which the muscle always has to contract as an elastic body. ”

“ The well-trained muscles contain only healthy protoplasm, and give off but a small percentage of nitrogenous decomposition products. Let the well-fed person who takes but little exercise, run half a mile, or play a simple game of ball, and the following day the muscles will be stiff and sore; this unusual exertion has caused the breaking down of much loosely organized tissue which could have been made firm and healthy by daily muscular activity. ”

“ The fallacy that lies at the bottom of this dumb-bell and “developer” work, in fact, is that large and prominent muscles imply not only strength but health. That the use of muscles tends to both is undeniable, but for purposes of health the muscles employed are{37} mainly the unimportant ones, while for purposes of strength, valuable chiefly to those who wish to employ muscles with a view to excellence in athletics, the strength obtained is wholly the wrong sort of strength. ”

“ How many of them are aware of the important physiological truth, that the muscular power of a man is no fair guarantee of his vital power? How many of them know that we all have (as a great French writer puts it) two lives in us—the surface life of the muscles, and the inner life of the heart, lungs, and brain? Even if they did know this—even with medical men to help them—it would be in the last degree doubtful, in most cases, whether any previous examination would result in any reliable discovery of the vital fitness of the man to undergo the stress of muscular exertion laid on him. ”

“ The only difference is that in the motions for this training and for the perfect co-ordinate use of the muscles, there must be a certain amount of even, muscular development; whereas although the vigorous exercise for the growth of the muscles often helps toward a healthy nervous system, it more often, where the nervous force is misused, exaggerates greatly the tension.
In every case it is equilibrium we are working for, and a one-sided view of physical training is to be deplored and avoided, whether the balance is lost on the side of the nerves or the muscles. ”

“ Here, again, do we find the richness of feeling associated without exception in races with a fine development of the neuro-muscular and vaso-motor systems. This is related to muscular exercise. When we come to the regal faculty, the will, our modern psychology again tells us that will must express itself in terms of muscular activity, and that power of the will in its origin bears a relation to firmness of muscle, to power of muscular contraction. ”

“ Success in muscle-reading depends upon the powers of the principal and upon the susceptibility of the subject. The latter must be capable of mental concentration; he must exert no muscular self-control; he must obey his every impulse. Under these conditions, the phenomena are in accordance with known laws of physiology. On [Pg 43] the part of the principal, muscle-reading consists of an acute perception of the slight action of another’s muscles. ”

“ These cases are generally accompanied by round shoulders and flat chest, protrusion of the abdomen, and rotation of the vertebræ.
A muscle can be developed only by the active contraction and relaxation of its fibers. Continuous tension quickly tires and lowers its tone, so that exercises given for increasing muscular power should be comparatively quick and frequently repeated, while those that aim at the stretching of muscles and ligaments should be slow and long maintained. ”

“ SPECIAL EXERCISE FOR ANY GIVEN MUSCLES.
While symmetrical and thorough physical development are not at all common among Americans, and undeveloped, inerect, and weak bodies almost outnumber any other kind, the general want of familiarity with what will develop any given muscles, and bring them up to the fulness and strength which ought to be theirs, is even more surprising. If proof is wanted of this, let the reader ask himself what special work he would choose to develop any given part; the muscles of the forearm, for instance, or those of the front of the chest. ”