Athletics and Football (extract)

76 ATHLETICS kind whichwould hardly be suspected by the uninitiated. It is to have a rubber. We do not mean that the sprinter should cultivate the study of whist (although we are sure that, if he is sensible, he will do so), nor do we mean that he should wear a goloshand use the Americanname for that article. A rubber is a man, occasionally a friend, usuallya hireling,generally one's trainer, who sometimes witha glove or towel, but mostly with his horny hand, rubs you all over the body,but chieflyover the legs and back, until you are as muscular as a gymnast and as smoothed-skinned as an infant. Well can we recollect the vigorousrubbings of Bob Rogers and the cast-iron hand of old Harry Andrews at Lillie Bridge and the delicious glow and feelingof ' jumpiness' with which we used to stride out of the dressing-roomafter the operation wasover. Well also can we recollect how a kindly fellow-undergraduate, now a muscular Christian, and himself, we hope, in training for a bishopric, essayed to keep the present writer in trainingwhen laid up for a fortnight by a sprain, by vigorous vespertinal rubbings. But your amateur rubber is too perfunctoryin his ministrations,and cannot viewith the professional exponent of the art. The old professional trainers were strongly prejudiced against the use of coldwater applied externally. A bath they thought weakening and relaxing, but though we cannot alto­ gether agree with them in this dogma, we thoroughlyconcur in their belief in the efficacy of the 'dry rub.' It prevents any chance of stiffness,minimises the liabilityto catch colds, and its effect in hardening the muscles can only be known by those who have tried it. Most well-advisedathletes now take their shower-bathfirst and have their rub afterwards. Some men wehave seen combiningthe maximumof rub with the minimum of washin the following manner : The rubber fills his mouth with water from a glass, blowsit in fine rain over a portion of the victim, and then proceeds to polishthat portion first with a toweland then with his hand. The process may be efficacious, but we never felt inclined to try it. Although a hundred yards takes a very short time in run-