Gymnastics

CHAPTER III.

EXERCISES OF STRENGTH.

Frequent Intervention of Effort in Exercises of Strength-Why it is Impossible to have "a Smile on the Lips" in practising an Exercise of Strength-Charles Bell on the Facial Movements-Intensity of Breathlessness in Exercises of Strength-Wrestling-Advantages of Exercises of Strength. Their superiority to Exercises of Speed for Increasing the size of the Body-Inconveniences of Exercises of Strength. Danger of Effort: Frequency of Hernia; Frequency of Rupture of Blood-vessels-Overwork and Exhaustion in Forced Labours.

I.

WE call exercises of strength those in which each movement represents a great quantity of work, and brings into play the contractile power of a great number of muscles.

The lifting and carrying of heavy burthens is the type of works of strength, and it is really in the hard manual professions that we can best study their effects.

Evidently the movements of gymnastics, whose usual object it is to displace the body in various directions, cannot give rise to muscular efforts as intense as those of a man who displaces at the same time a heavy burthen and his own body. And, in fact, gymnastic exercises are rarely exercises of strength. There are, however, movements performed with the aid of apparatus, which seem at first to need an enormous expenditure of force, owing to the unfavourable positions in which the bony levers act; but we soon see that muscular effort in these movements is in direct ratio to the inexperience of the gymnast. By practice we are always able to discover a process which facilitates the performance. The human

machine represents an articulated system made up of a great number of movable pieces joined together. Hence there is an infinite number of combinations of attitudes. Often an imperceptible variation in the direction of a limb totally changes the conditions of the work. An undiscoverable variation in the performance of a breasting movement diminishes by nine-tenths the expenditure of force. Thus an exercise which at the outset seemed athletic, only needs, after some months' practice, very moderate work.

Exercises of strength may be better studied among wrestlers than among gymnasts. They form what may be called athletic gymnastics, and wrestling is perhaps now the only bodily exercise which can be placed in this category: skill and trick have, however, a great place in this sport.

The exercises in which a man must employ his whole strength need the intervention of two factors: the muscles and the will. It is especially in these exercises that we can understand the importance of nervous energy as an agent of work. Two men who are equally well endowed in the matter of physical conformation, and completely equal as regards their muscles, will often show a very considerable difference in exercises of strength. We may predict with certainty that the advantage will lie with the one whose will is most energetic, for this energy is manifested, on the physical side, by a more intense stimulation of the muscles, and hence by a more powerful contraction.

The exercises of strength demand the simultaneous action of a great number of muscles. They demand, further, that every muscle in action should bring its whole force into play: for this it is necessary that the muscle should take a very firm attachment to a fixed point of the skeleton. Now the bones of the skeleton being movable on each other, it is necessary, as a preparation for athletic movements, that all the bony pieces should be strongly united by a vigorous pressure to make up a rigid whole. This necessity of soldering

together, as it were, a number of movable pieces to make a resistant whole, is a very characteristic point of the physiology of exercises of strength. Athletic gymnastics implies the frequent intervention of the action called Effort.

We described effort at length in the second chapter of the first part of this book, and explained the modifications of respiration which result from it. Effort may be called the characteristic sign of exercises of strength. It is impossible for a man to use his whole strength without the production of that violent contraction of all the muscles of the trunk whose object it is to render the ribs motionless, and which results in the stoppage of respiration. If a man has to raise from the ground a very heavy burthen, we are struck by seeing the whole body stiffen from head to foot, and all the bones pressed together by the energetic contraction of the muscles attached to them. Each limb, made up of two or three segments, seems now to form one rigid piece; the trunk, neck, and head, share in the general rigidity, and even the muscles of the face are violently contracted during an effort, though it is difficult at first to account for the share, for instance, of the eyelids and cheeks in the action of lifting a bale of goods on to the shoulders.

The drawn face of a man momentarily using his whole strength is a matter of common observation. We remember hearing the boast of a strong man at a fair that he would hold out a heavy load at arms' length " with a smile upon his lips." He did it, but the pretended smile was merely a grin in which the eyebrows and eyelids took no part, being contracted in association with the effort. The physiologist, Charles Bell, long ago gave a reason for this association of the muscles about the eyes, with effort. During effort, the flow of blood in the orbital vessels causes them to swell up, and to project the globe forwards. The muscles in front of the orbit contract instinctively in order to support the globe, and to check its protrusion.

The first effect of an exercise of strength should be to induce quickly fatigue of the muscles from which enor

mous work is suddenly demanded. But breathlessness precedes fatigue in the course of these exercises. However slow the movements, respiration is very quickly embarrassed, and the wrestler or the porter with a heavy burthen must often stop for breath, long before their muscles are fatigued.

We explained at length, in the chapter on Breathlessness, the mechanism of this respiratory distress after great expenditure of muscular force. The muscles in action produce carbonic acid in proportion to the intensity of the work done. In the exercises of strength there is produced in the system at every movement, more carbonic acid than the lungs can eliminate, and the surcharge of the blood with carbonic acid induces dyspnoea.

Further, effort has a very powerful influence in inducing respiratory distress in exercises of strength. This action causes a stoppage of breathing during the whole time occupied by the muscular contraction: it thus hinders the elimination of carbonic acid just at the time when this gas is being produced in excessive quantity. It further leads to violent compression of the great veins of the thorax, of the great arteries, and of the heart itself, and produces profound disturbances in the pulmonary circulation, the regularity of which is an essential condition of aëration of the blood.

Among bodily exercises there is one which may be considered as the type of exercises of strength: this is wrestling. If two wrestlers who understand each other are making a pretty looking play before the public, wrestling is rather an exhibition of agility and suppleness than an athletic exercise. But if the adversaries, using all their strength, seek to overthrow each other, there is an enormous expenditure of muscular force. Very considerable muscular efforts may be made without apparent work, that is to say, without the bodies of the wrestlers making any movement. The thrust of one of them is paralysed by the resistance of the other, until the stronger, maintaining his most powerful contraction, causes weariness in the weaker, who, at the end of his resources, yields and falls.

At this moment we observe in both men an extreme degree of breathlessness. A wrestler who is beaten has respiratory disturbances as intense as those of a runner who stops for want of breath. Wrestling is not merely an assault of brute force; it has its feints, attacks and tricks. But the characteristic of this exercise is the necessity of throwing into the movements of attack and defence a man's whole strength, so that, even for the cleverest wrestlers, this exercise always demands a great expenditure of force, and is the most brutal of all bodily exercises. It is the exercise in which the quantity of muscle is the essential element of success. It is thus the one which has most tendency to develop muscle and to increase the weight of the body, for every exercise tends to give to the body the conformation which makes this the fitter for its performance.

II.

Exercises of strength demand great muscular expenditure, but they produce all the conditions necessary for energetic tissue-repair. They need very little work of co-ordination and do not demand a frequent repetition of movement. They occasion less disturbance in the nerves than exercises of speed, and do not demand, like exercises of skill, great brain work.

Forced labour is nearly always performed by the aid of slow and sustained contraction. The muscular fibre of a wrestler is tense in one direction for sometimes an entire minute; the muscles of a fencer are changing every moment from repose to action, and moving the limbs in the most varied directions. Powerful and sustained contractions favour the nutrition of the muscular fibre. The nutrition of muscle is more intense in slow contractions, because the flow of blood is more regular and more prolonged.

Exercises of strength and forced labour, in spite of the great quantity of work they need, have little influence on the brain, they affect the functions of nutrition much more than those of innervation. The energetic and sustained muscular contractions which