Why? The Science of Athletics

HEALTH ASPECTS AND HEALTH TRAINING 33 forthcoming contest and harass his mind by vain speculation as· to how he is likely to fare. If he is training conscien– tiously and his heart is in the right place, he will do as well as his personal capabilities permit, and no man can hope for more. On the other hand, a man whose mind is obsessed with worries~ athletic or otherwise, will find it hard to get to sleep at all, and, if sleep does· come, it will not be restful sleep, for: his mind will go on worrying away subconsciously at the problems that have been thrust upon it. The first phase of falling asleep constitutes. getting comfortably settled, then follows complete mental and physical relaxation, followed by an induced sensation that one is just upon the point of sinking right clean through the mattress. The room being airy enough to keep the face cool will help, but the body must be suffi– ciently warmly covered, and in some cases I have found ~t helpful to give a man a light Balaclava helmet to sleep 1n. Suggestion, of course, has a lot to do with getting a bad sleeper to go to sleep. Some time ago a newspaper put over a stunt about earth currents aiding a man to get a more restful sleep if his bed was arranged with the head to the north and the foot to the south. I do not pretend to know what scientific justification there was · for this theory, but I do know that a very large number of people told me that they slept better that way-for a week. Then the novelty of the scheme wore off and they were sleeping as badly as before. Light, soothing massage, applied to the spinal column, stroking of the temples and behind the ears are aids to inducing sleep, and I have myself found a somewhat drastic cure for sleeplessness effective. It constituted getting up and hopping into an ice-cold ' bath,, taking care not to submerge the head and face. Then, without drying, one put on a bath robe of thick towelling and got straight back into bed. The result was calm and restful c