Now to many such the idea of using training as a means of merely keeping well is probably novel. They are accustomed to feel slightly unwell--that perhaps is too strong a term--when they are in a town and at work, and having always felt thus have acquiesced in what we may call a vicious habit. But they have always understood training to mean a _régime_ of fixed exercise (founded on beefsteaks), which is as impossible for them as it would also be unsuitable for them; or, in a modified form, twenty minutes or half an hour with dumb-bells every morning and evening. Many have probably tried dumb-bells; some, no doubt, reap considerable benefit from their use, but not a few, and both the present writers are among them, after giving them a good trial, loathe the sight of them. And numbers, in such a case, have abandoned themselves, with more or less content, to continuing to feel slightly below par, and praying for the holidays.
Now the use of dumb-bells and developers is becoming something of a fetish, of a cherished idol, and, backed as it is by well-known names, is a formidable-looking god to throw stones at. But there seem to the present writers to be many grave objections to such systems as are constantly followed, whether they are used by athletes or by the much larger class of those who merely wish to get exercise from them. The _primâ facie_ objection in the case of both is their extreme monotony. It is necessary apparently to raise the arms slowly in turn (bending the elbow till the dumb-bell is level with the shoulder) upwards of a hundred times or more: it is necessary to do the same again with the backs of the hands out, to extend the arms from the shoulder outwards, from the shoulder upwards, to bend the wrists to and fro (still with these infernal implements grasped in the hands), to make motions as if drawing water first on one side and then on the other, to hit out, with the weight in the hands, at an imaginary foe; in fact to push, raise, or pull this weight in practically every direction that it will go, a vast number of times. “Developers” have, as a rule, the same defects; the movements are slow, and a continued effort against permanent resistance, while the greater part of the exercise which they give is not for the greater muscles. Then follow--we are intentionally vague, and wish to show only the general lines of many systems--exercises for the muscles of the stomach and of the legs. For the breathing muscles of the chest, there are also exercises which not being concerned for the most part with these dead-weights we have found generally excellent. The masters of such systems also, as a rule, advocate practising in front of a looking-glass, stripped as far as may be, in order to observe the play of the muscles. This also is admirable advice.