Athletic Sports (extract)

Physical Characteristics of the Athlete a grand total of 675.2. At the close of the summer term of the present year (1887), the highest strength-test recorded was 1272.8, and there were over two hundred men in college whose total strength-test surpassed the highest test of 1880. This general gymnasium work is therefore re­ ducing the one-sided development once so common with athletic specialists. It must not be forgotten, however, that there isa development peculiarto the run­ ner, jumper, wrestler, oarsman, gymnast, ball-player, heavy-lifter, etc.; and any one familiar with athletics at the present day can easily recognize one of these special­ ists. The same training that produced those matchless specimens of human de­ velopment embodied in the statues of the Gladiator, the Athlete, Hercules, Apollo, and Mercury of old, would produce the same results under similar circumstances at the present time. With every kind of physical exercise, the qualitiesat first required are the quali­ ties at length developed. Speed and en­ durance are required of the runner, and these are the qualities that come to him by practice. In a like manner, skill and activity come to the gymnast and ball­ player ; and strength and stability to the 60