Page:Tumbling for Amateurs.djvu/20

4 can participate in some form of tumbling, either individual or combination; the greatest progress for adults being attained in the latter, where two or more men exercise together. 5. No expensive appliances or apparatus is necessary in introducing or teaching tumbling, the mats absolutely essential in any gymnasium being all-sufficient for ordinary class work. But if tumbling is to be made a feature, then a large mat, 15 feet long by 6 feet wide and 2 feet high and stuffed with straw or hay, will be found a very attractive addition, as it can be used to great advantage with any gymnastic apparatus.

6. For boys, tumbling is the most natural exercise in the world, as they are easily interested and held in this form of exercise when a dumb-bell drill would run them away. Besides the development, they get co-ordination and control to a remarkable extent, which will be invaluable to them in any exercise that they may engage in later on.

7. A tumbler easily adapts himself to all gymnastic apparatus, and will usually be found to be more graceful than an exclusive apparatus worker. If teachers who have never used tumbling would introduce it, it would do away, in a great measure, with that stiffness which is so distasteful to many; and, if as systematically taught as their apparatus work, would change the product of their gymnasiums from the top-heavy type to a symmetrical whole.

8. It is the one universal exercise used by the whole human family from the earliest times to the dawn of the twentieth century, and will continue in use as long as the world lasts. The millions of babies tumbling in the world to-day, learning