[Keeping Fit All the Way by Walter Camp]@TWC D-Link bookKeeping Fit All the Way CHAPTER IV 4/22
4 in., after just completing ninety days' training, marched at the dedication of the Artillery Armory over four and one-half hours without physical discomfort. Now, war or no war, the man of over military age would like to be fit, would like to feel that glow of youth which comes even to the man of fifty when he is physically in condition. Nine-tenths of the men over forty-five can accomplish this, and they can do it by the expenditure of only three or four hours a week if they will follow with absolute care the rules demonstrated by a scientific experiment upon a company of one hundred men over a period of ninety days.
This company of New Haven professional and business men included the president of the Chamber of Commerce, the editor of the largest evening newspaper, the dean of Yale University, the director of the gymnasium, the president of Sargent & Company, the owner of the Poli Theater Circuit, the ex-mayor of the city, two judges, the treasurer of the savings-bank, the registrar of Yale University, four professors, three doctors, and many leading corporation officials. At the end of this period these men were not only able to march for over four hours without discomfort, but without losing a man.
Moreover, they all gained in spirits, recovered their erect carriage, and found themselves enjoying their tasks. COMMUNITY PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT The plan developed by the National Security League, under its committee on physical reserve, of assuring physical fitness for the nation, is capable of endless possibilities in application and development. The plan treats each as a separate unit and allows it to adapt the physical-fitness scheme to local conditions, favoring the appointment of neighborhood groups for instruction in physical drill and the "Daily Dozen Set-up," assuring such conditions and applications of diet and hygiene as are particularly demanded by the individual community's conditions and demands. Every individual detail and local development is left to the committee which each mayor or town or borough official appoints, on invitation of the league. [Illustration: WALTER CAMP, PRESIDENT, AND JOSEPH C.JOHNSON, SECRETARY, OF THE ORIGINAL SENIOR SERVICE CORPS ESTABLISHED IN NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, IN THE SPRING OF 1917] The ideal toward which every community is working is the establishment, as an integral part of it, of a local fitness plant.
This includes first, playgrounds laid out for all recreational sports, in their season.
The ideal playground system will have enough room in walks and landscape-gardening for park development--sufficient to meet the community's maximum needs. Community physical-fitness centers are growing up in which an adjacent lake or river provides facilities for rowing, canoeing, and recreational enjoyment through breathing the fresh air, while taking regular physical, conditioning exercises. Such an ideal community plant has proven by no means a vision incapable of realization.
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