Keeping Fit All the Way

Keeping Fit All the Way

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Camp
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Title: Keeping Fit All the Way
Author: Walter Camp
Release Date: October 1, 2004 [eBook #13574]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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KEEPING FIT ALL THE WAY
How to Obtain and Maintain Health, Strength and Efficiency
by
WALTER CAMP
Illustrated with Many Photographs Taken under the Direction of the
Author
1919

[Illustration: THREE PIONEERS IN SENIOR SERVICE WORK
Left to right: Colonel Ullman, President, Chamber of Commerce, New
Haven, Connecticut; Ex-President William H. Taft, and Walter Camp.]

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION AN AMERICAN CITIZEN'S CREED

PART I. KEEPING FIT ALL THE WAY


CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II


CHAPTER III


CHAPTER IV


CHAPTER V


CHAPTER VI


PART II. THE DAILY DOZEN

CHAPTER VII


CHAPTER VIII


CHAPTER IX


CHAPTER X


CHAPTER XI


CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

INTRODUCTION
The number of men who "keep fit" in this country has been surprisingly
few, while the number of those who have made good resolutions about
keeping fit is astonishingly large. Reflection upon this fact has
convinced the writer that the reason for this state of affairs lies partly in
our inability to visualize the conditions and our failure to impress upon
all men the necessity of physical exercise. Still more, however, does it
rest upon our failure to make a scientific study of reducing all the
variety of proposals to some standard of exceeding simplicity. Present
systems have not produced results, no matter what the reason. Hence
this book with its review of the situation and its final practical
conclusions.

AN AMERICAN CITIZEN'S CREED
I believe that a nation should be made up of people who individually
possess clean, strong bodies and pure minds; who have respect for their
own rights and the rights of others and possess the courage and strength
to redress wrongs; and, finally, in whom self-consciousness is
sufficiently powerful to preserve these qualities. I believe in education,
patriotism, justice, and loyalty. I believe in civil and religious liberty
and in freedom of thought and speech. I believe in chivalry that protects
the weak and preserves veneration and love for parents, and in the
physical strength that makes that chivalry effective. I believe in that
clear thinking and straight speaking which conquers envy, slander, and
fear. I believe in the trilogy of faith, hope, and charity, and in the
dignity of labor; finally, I believe that through these and education true
democracy may come to the world.

Part I

KEEPING FIT ALL THE WAY


CHAPTER I
It has long been a startling fact regarding Americans that so soon as
their school-days were over they largely abandoned athletics; until, in
middle life, finding that they had been controverting the laws of nature,
they took up golf or some other form of physical exercise.
The result of such a custom has been to lower the physical tone of the
race. Golf is a fine form of exercise, but in an exceedingly mild way.
No one claims that it will build up atrophied muscles nor, played in the
ordinary way, that it will induce deep breathing; nor, except in warm
weather, that it will produce any large amount of skin action. Hence it
is easy to imagine the condition of the man who at the end of his 'teens
gave up athletics, and then did nothing of a physically exacting nature
until he took up golf. Now if in addition to his pastime and relaxation
he will do something in the way of setting-up exercises to open up his
chest and make his carriage erect, thus enabling his heart and lungs to
have a better chance, he will more than double the advantages coming
from his golf. He will then walk more briskly and will gain very much
in physical condition.
NATURE A HARD MISTRESS
One thing that our middle-aged men, and in fact many of us who have
not yet reached that way mark, have entirely forgotten is that Nature is
very chary of her favors. Our primal mother is just and kind, but she

has little use