HOW TO GET STRONG
who did it; and he is confident that he can do it. He sets about it, takes much and severe physical work daily; warmly clad; perspiring freely; while he subjects his skin to much friction from coarse towels. He does without certain food which he understands makes fat; and only eats that which he believes makes mainly bone and muscle. He sticks to his work, and gradually makes that work harder and faster. To his gratification, he finds that not only has his wind improved; so that, in the place of the old panting after a slight effort—walking briskly up an ordinary flight of stairs, for instance;—he can now breathe as easily and quietly, and can stick to it as long, as any of his leaner companions. By race-day he is down ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds, or even more, as the case may be. While he has thus reduced himself; and is far stronger and more enduring than he was before; he is not the only one who has lost flesh, if there have been a number working with him, as in a boat-crew or football-team. Notice the lists of our university crews and their weights, published when they commence strict training; say a month before the race; and compare them with those of the same men on race-day, particularly in hot weather. The reduction is very marked all through the crew. In the English university eights, it is even more striking; the large and stalwart fellows, who fill their thwarts, often coming down in a month an average of over a dozen pounds per man.
We have seen a student, after weighing himself on scales in the gymnasium, sit down at a fifty-five pound rowing weight; pull forty-five full strokes a minute for twenty minutes; then, clad exactly as before, weigh again on the same scales; and find he was just one pound lighter than he was twenty minutes earlier!
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