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