Why? The Science of Athletics

THE BUILD OF THE ATHLETE at the stadia ·and wrestling schools, we are fortunate enough to be able to assess, with some considerable degree of accuracy, what was the Greek ideal of athletic manhood in the youth of the world. The Greek Ideal Two periods of Greek athletic culture will best serve the purpose of our present considerations. The sixth century repre– sented an Age of Strength. Organized competition was well in vogue, but strict athletic training was hardly known. In fact, the boxer and wrestler then represented the Greek ideal of athletic excellence. This age, therefore, may well find its epitome in the statue of the bearded Hercules, a man perhaps who may best be likened to the gigantic shot putters, hammer and discus throwers of our times. There is another point of simi– larity, in that those ancient Greeks who trained mainly for the production of great strength found themselves able to maintain their athletic efficiency almost unimpaired for the space of eight, and even nine, Olympiads. That means to say that they were able to remain in competition for a period of more than thirty years. This may sound fantastic at first, and yet in our own times Patrick McDonald, the Irish-American policeman, who has achieved phenomenal success with the I6 lb. shot, I6 lb. hammer 35 and 56 lb. weights, is certainly comparable to his athletic forebears, since McDonald won his first championship title in I 907, his last in I 933, and even in 1935 was still able to take a place in American Open Championship Competition. According to the statues of the Age of Strength, the Greeks realized that real power is-generated in the muscles of the trunk rather than in those of the limbs. Perhaps no description of the athlete of that period can be more apt than that given by Pindar when he speaks of Hercules as "a man short of stature but ·of unbending soul". Hercules, however, was soon to be replaced by the youthful wrestler Theseus, for the ideals of the sixth century were slowly merging at the beginning of the fifth