Why? The Science of Athletics

126 WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS master, who, by reason of his own enthusiasm and unflagging interest in athletics, or any other game for that matter, literally forces the athlete, or athletes, com– mitted to his care to eat, sleep, drink and live athletics. In which circumstances it is not surprising that they go stale. If ·a coach intends to keep his charges from going stale he must study each one of them individually. The trend of modern civilization makes for the production of highly strung, temperamental__people, and the coach's lot will be made the harder by that circumstance. Nor is it enough for him to get to know the psychology of each athlete. He must ask them about their feeding and their sleeping and he must get right down to the very core of their confidence. In the old days coaches believed, simply, Staleness can that the only thing to be done if an athlete be Cured went stale was to cut down his work, or to lay him off altogether. That old time system still holds good .; the policy, as Lawson Robertson states it, "must be to lie low and give Nature a chance to build up the nerve reserve". But even that is not enough. At the root of the matter is the funda,mental fact that brain and body cannot both be worked at top pressure at the same time. I have proved that often enough by keeping graphs of the work -of boys preparing for an examination and a big athletic contest at the same time ; and so it follows that if an athlete is_worrying unduly about a forthcoming competition he is bound to go stale, _ simply because his organism will not tolerate the worry– strain he is putting on his brain and the work-strain he - is putting on his body. To cure staleness the coach must get at and efimi;nate the source of the athlete's worry, which may not have anything at all to do with athletics. In any case the athlete probably needs a complete rest from training, and maybe it will be .necessary to divorce his interests from athletics altogether for the time being. The finest