Athletics of To-Day for Women

z 56 Athletics of To-day for Women Success you will achieve far more readily if you jump only for style and only at such heights as you can be perfectly certain of clearing for 8o per cent. or more of your training. The big heights can be reached only by acquiring first perfection of form. For example, a novice, or a careless athlete, is usually inaccurate in judging the proper distance for the take-off. This means that she will either take-off too far away and land on the bar, or too near, in which case she will jump into it. You can usually assess the right take-off spot if you will stand in front of the bar and swing up the free leg, with foot and leg at full stretch, so that the pointed toes mi s the bar by about four inches. In your approach run, watch your take-off mark, and not the cro s bar. The run up should be practised until you can be certain of neither missing out, nor adding in, steps. TR INING For a month and a half b fore the competition for which the training is undertak n practis only four times a we k. During this period strive to get v rything down to a mechani al point of perfection, and, in particnl r, work hard to build up a good lay-out. gin ach day's work with an easy trot and a little half sp d starting practi , followed by some body bending and tr tching, and l g kicking xer- i s. High kicking is sp cially recommend d for er ating hip loos n ss. In Pictur 212 two Am rican girls ar seen prac– tising this exercise. •ollow th one who is ke ping h r head and her hips up, rath r than the other who has her h ad down and her body bent at the wai t line. Hopping al o i good, as it str ngthens and dev lop the 1 g . The amount and tr nuou n s of your work should be much reduced when the comp tition period b gin , y which time it is assumed that you will e p rfectly fit and that you will hav got ast the int n i c work to acquire f rn1, whi h usually impair pring. It will b en ugh, then, if you work Mondays and Tuesdays to correct faults in tyl , jumping only at l w heights, whil Thursday i.h work should onsi t