Indian Clubs:
The Riverside Magazine For Young People
An Illustrated Monthly - Vol. 3, 1869
By C.R. Treat
(continued)
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...What exercise, then, will
most benefit the stomach and lungs, and best enable them to perform their functions
properly?
Will it be the form of exercise that touches the parts nearest, or that
touches the parts most remote; that, in short, which uses the arms, or uses the legs?
Remember that I am not going to recommend the exclusive use of arms, but only to
represent its advantages. You will agree at once that the best exercise for bodily
health, must be that of the arms. Take, for instance, the process of digestion; it is
very much aided by an active circulation of the blood, and is very much retarded by
a sluggish circulation. It is also aided by the movement of the broad muscles that lie
over the intestines. |
What will the use of the legs do for these great objects?
It will
make the circulation active, and will call into play the broad muscles of the
abdomen. But, on the other hand, if these muscles are used in holding the body in
its place while carried by the legs in walking or running, they are used much more,
when to its own weight is added the weight and motion of a pair of Indian Clubs.
As
to increasing the activity of the circulation, a form of exercise that will make the
blood flow as fast, and make you breathe as hard as the fastest running, while it
makes the chest itself grow larger, and so makes the capacity of the lungs greater,
must be better than exercise which leaves the chest unchanged.
If the blood flows
faster than the lungs can provide passage for it, you would better stop running, and
in future run more slowly. Of course, in time, by walking and running, the chest
would share in the general growth of the body, and the lungs would provide passage
for a more rapid circulation; but the club-exercise with the arms reaches this point
at once and always.
It has all the advantages of leg-exercise, as to helping the great
functions of the body, and more, because it does the work better.
The club-exercise will do much to develop the proper outlines of the shoulder, chest,
back and waist. The man who uses the clubs diligently will never need to have his
coats "built out" on the shoulder, or padded in front or rear. He will have the form
of a man, as his Maker intended him to be. The club-exercise will do more, perhaps,
than any other, to check the bad habits of body, so easily contracted by students,
professional men, business men and all who have to bend much over books and
desks.
It will cure such habits more quickly and thoroughly than any other exercise.
Like the wand of some kind of fairy, the Indian Club transforms all whom it
touches. It makes the crooked straight, gives a manly fullness to the narrow chest,
gives breadth and massive power to the rounded back, puts firm knotted muscle in
place of flabby impotent matter and fills every vein with bounding life.
One word more, and I am done...
Most that has been said in favor of the Indian Club
will be true of the faithful use of any good, honest exercise. There remains one last
advantage, which few other kinds of exercise possess; it is convenience.
Many a
man has given up active exercise because he cannot spend time enough to go to the
gymnasium, or to the river, or to the ball-ground; and often it has been impossible
to avoid the sacrifice.
A boat needs a roomy sheet of water; a ball-ground, to avail
much, needs the enthusiastic cooperation of fifteen or twenty kindred spirits; and a
gymnasium cannot be sustained in every town. To be sure one can put up a single
bar, or a pair of bars, almost anywhere, although it is not easy to find a suitable
place that can be used in all weathers and seasons. But the Indian Club can be used
out-of-doors, if the sun shine, within doors, if it rains, in the wood-shed, if the
weather be warm; in the study parlor, if the weather be cold. It can be used by the
merchant in his counting room, the mechanic at his bench, the lawyer in his office.
It can be taken up for a moment's relief from labor, or continued for half an hour's
sharp practice. Odd moment, or solid time, may alike be devoted to it, with the
certainty of a rich return.
The Indian Club stands always ready to furnish health
and pleasure for the strong and the weak, for young and old, for man, and woman,
and child.
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