Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/39

Rh Breaking Training.—One hundred and twelve athletes quit running abruptly, and all but one of them are in vigorous health to-day, apparently having experienced no ill effects, either from breaking training suddenly or from that overdevelopment of heart and lungs which is supposed to result from athletics. This seems to indicate, first, that unnecessary emphasis has been laid upon breaking training gradually and, second, that abnormal development of the heart and lungs leading to serious affections of these organs is not to be feared.

The entire physical organism is developed by training to a condition of unusual efficiency in order to meet the demands made upon it. It is generally believed that when these demands cease suddenly—through abruptly breaking training—tissue degeneration follows, inducing physical ailments of greater or less severity. There is, undoubtedly, an alteration in the tissues when the organism is no longer called upon for vigorous activity, but the theory that this change is a pathological one is not sustained by the facts, in so far at least as distance runners are concerned, save when it is aggravated by bad habits, dissipation or close confinement. It has not been sustained in my experience with school-boy athletes, for in fifteen years I can recall but two cases of indisposition after the season, both temporary, both in football men, big and full blooded, of the type that require an active life. I think it is not sustained by the experience of the vast majority of athletes graduated from our colleges year by year, who from choice or necessity engage in business activities which deny leisure for indulgence in sport, for, if so, it should by this time show negatively in the national health statistics, whereas, on the contrary, the spread of athletics in the past generation is believed to have raised the standard of national physical efficiency. It seems to me likely that the ordinary activities of life are sufficient to bridge over the transition period, especially as men who have been accustomed to a great deal of exercise, and who feel the need of it, will, as a rule, manage to get more or less of it into or in connection with their work. I am of the opinion that, save in rare instances, the development produced by college athletics is not abnormal—as is that of professional strong men, weight lifters, acrobats, etc., in whom vitality is sacrificed to muscular development—but that it is normal, and constitutional as distinguished from muscular development, for none of the college sports, except perhaps the hammer throw, develop great muscular strength. The character of the athlete's training supports this belief. He trains hard for a season or two (twelve to thirty weeks), but during the intermittent periods and the summer his exercise is much less severe, and is engaged in solely for pleasure. He works during the training season and plays in between, the mid-seasons in this way providing just the type of letting down that is supposed to be