"BEGINNERS' LUCKI"

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 251, 19 October 1912, Page 21

"BEGINNERS' LUCKI"

A PROBLEM SOLVED BY SCIENCE. A mystery that lias puzzled sportsmen in connection with almost every game —the problem of "beginner's luck" —was cleared up recently at the Royal Sanitary Institute Congress at York by Colonel C. H. Melville. R.A.M.C. "Whenever." he said, "a new movement is made, as, for instance, in the performance of a new gymnastic exercise, or in ler.raing for the first time a stroke in a game the executive muscles concerned act at random, their antagonists being at the sa-me time actively relaxed. The result is a free random movement or stroke, both unguided and uncontrolled. "As the education in the new movement progresses new nervous reflexes *re set up, by which, at the same time that the executive muscles or groups of muscles contract, their antagonists' also contract, regulating ami directing the 'movement which it is intended to make. "This process of events can be followed very well in the learning of any bat and tall game. "Every one knows what is called 'beginner's luck' at the.-'c games. The uncontrolled executive muscles of the beginner ens-ure that the movement or stroke shall be frw>, and if only the direction happens to be true, the effect prodnced is often astonishingly successful. "This 'beginner's luck' is more common in those games where the ball is stationary, euch acs golf, than in those where it c in movement. "Following on the early success come •toys, perhaps weeks, in which the beginner finds his strokes cramped and stiff; during these the new reflexes are king established, and it is only when racy are thoroughly established that profeiency and certainty of play are attainCo. There -were rnanj other points of hu?an interest in Colonel Melville's paper, j™ pointed out, for instance, that the "cart, arteries, and so on, of a tall man a " but little larger than those of a "aort man, although they have to do the * Or k of a much larger "body. Iβ this way he raised the question these facts are connected in »"? ay with thp weii.fcnown f ac t that lle greut meu of the world are more commonly small than big, and whether " e 'r great intellectual powers may not J* in some way connected with the fact ™t the demands for nutrition, etc., of Jj*}t executive departments are more «»;ly met in (|,fir case than in those of T r brethren. th *° far ns llie so 'd' er ' s concerned « average-sized man is more valuable J? 1 "! the exceptionally big one. and that ™W because he is'easier to feed, and fan 1 "* '" S '"'' v '""'■ v " 1:l cs lps " _"id on his circulatory, respiratory, "ttvoos systems, and thus leaves a