Athletics and Football (extract)

TRAINING 167 adopted for training for theprize ring. The weigwhtas to be reduced to its minimum at all hazards ; the liquid consumed was to be a maximum of two pints a dtahye, edibles were almost entirely meat and bre d, atnhde naturaplhysical result soufch a dietwas counteractedby dailypurging medicines. Sweating, meat-eating, and purging constituted the olsdystem of training, and those who wonder how such a custom could ever have been adopted must recollect that it was chiefly applied to menof the lower classeuss,ed to coarse food, and with no highly-organised nervous system. It neednso argument to show that such a method could not be beneficial, or even practicable, to an amateur, who takes uatphletic sports as a recre tion, and not as a business. However, while from the first amateurs admitted that the old plan was wrong, a movement happened which is well known to historians. The oclrdeed was overthrownb, ut some of its principal errors were admitted in a mod fied form into the new system. Although common sense and practical experien are beginning at last toconvince the athletic public that the less alteration a man makeins his ordinary wdiheetn ghoees into training the better he wilflare, yet thereare many who still start training for races handicapped by thetraditional belief in the efficacy of a meat diet, dai'lysweating' runs fothr e sole purpose of reducing the weighat,nd threigid abstinencferom every drop of liquid which can possibly be dispensed with. The present wriwtehr,o has practised the opposite method, although according to the olcdanons troafining he is bybuild and habit of body the very man to whom the rigid rules should have been appliesdt,eadfastly declines to believe aniny system doifet whatsoever which leatdos eruptionsof the skin or ofthe temper. There is certainly this apparent justification for the t adi­ tional course, that, asrule, people in modern times do not adopt frausgal and temperate a habit dofiet as they should, and a greatmany tohfem aeriether without the inclinatioonr without othppeortunity of taking sufficiexnetrcise. There is