HOW TO GET STRONG
grandparents alike having been in-door people, at light employment; and never trained and toughened by persistent invigorating work. And it shows in the small quantity of blood in each child; and of poor, pale blood at that.
And there is another matter of importance here. These famous teachers, Maclaren, Sargent, Roberts, Hitchcock, Richards and Anderson, Seaver,—Sandow—and many others who have done good work have gone in for using the larger muscles, and at heavy work. Take for instance, "dips," a word laymen may not understand, but which all gymnasts know. Place two chairs two feet or a little less apart, and back to back. Stand between them with one hand on the back of each, gradually bend your elbows, and with your feet off the floor lower yourself till your elbows will bend no more. Now steadily rise—your feet all the time off the floor—till your arms are straight again. This is a dip.
And this is a "pull-up." With both hands catch hold of any bar or the rung of a ladder about as high above your head as you can reach. Steadily pull up till your chin touches your wrist. In both of these exercises you have lifted your entire weight; the backs of your upper arms doing the chief part of the dip; and the flexors of the arms, and those of the body near them and working with them, doing the lifting in the pull-up. And in work upon the parallel bars; high bar; horizontal bars; suspended rings; the trapeze; in going up poles, ropes, and ladders, with your hands alone—in these and many other exercises, your arms, or rather parts of them, lift about your whole body.
In heavy dumb-bell work, and in weight lifting, you raise far more than your whole body. Nearly all of these exercises are spasmodic—taking but a moment
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