I’m not sure how interested the rest of the Nation is, but I’ve taken to reading a lot of olde tyme training literature. I’d kind of fallen off the bookworm bandwagon for a month or so, barely even keeping up with the T-mag articles.
Somehow though, I’ve been bitten by the bug, and now I’m slowly working my way through all the pre WWII books on “building vigour” and “reducing flesh” that I can get my hands on.
As I go I can’t believe what people knew so long ago, and what’s being “rediscovered” day by day. Sure, they made some big mistakes along the way, but most average Janes and Joes would be equally well off with a copy of Edwin Checkley’s 1890 booklet on physical training as they would with a modern day muscle rag.
Take this sound advice:
In explaining the importance of good posture and carriage of the body Checkley says:
There are plenty of other nuggets in this dusty old tomes, example, Bernarr MacFadden’s “basic principles for reducing diets” of which he enumerates five and only seems to expound on four:
[quote]First. Fat is accumulated wholly and solely from food eaten in excess of the body’s needs.
Second. Fat can be eliminated from the body only by being oxidized or burned up as fuel in the creation of the usual body heat or in generating muscular energy such as that used in the action of the heart, the action of breathing, and the motions of the voluntary muscles in standing, walking and various physical labors, exercises and sports.
Third. The only time the destruction of the fat can occur is when the amount of the food fuel delivered from the food being eaten and digested from day to day averages less than the amount consumed in keeping up the bodily heat and muscular activity.
Fourth. The only ways to reduce body fat are therefore to either decrease the amount of food fuel or increase the amount of exercise or to both decrease the food intake and increase the amount of exercise.[/quote]
I probably wouldn’t be so impressed if this hadn’t been published some 70 odd years ago!
I’ll no doubt come across more of these, which I can probably find time to post, if anyone’s getting anything out of them.
Here’s a couple citations, in case you folks want to check these out at the local library:
Checkley, E. (1890). A natural method of physical training: making muscle and reducing flesh without dieting and training. Brooklyn, New York: William C. Bryant and Co.
MacFadden, B. (1933). Home health library volume I. New York, New York: Macfadden Book Company, Inc.