WALKING.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 213, 8 September 1923, Page 12

WALKING.

THE LOST ART. COMING Or A LFGLESS RACE. POWER-PROPELLED PEOPLE. Thero was a time wheu trains and tram cars were regarded as conveniences only to be used for long journeys, when men and women scorned to ride a mere mile, or two, and when walking for the love of a walk was the feature of our daily accomplishments. To-day, walking. • at least in the cities, is becoming a lost I art, accomplished only under compulsion, and there are many pecple apparently too tired to even walk down hill when a. conveyance is handy. This opplies not only to the crippled, the elderly and the adipose, but more particularly to the young folk, who are but poor successors to the heritage of physical activity left them by the joyously athletic youth of a generation ago. With the voting people of to-day, walking is mostly confined to a slow parade of the main streets past shop windows, with a few minutes spell at every corner, or the irksome distance to be covered afoot from the home to the nearest tram stop or railway station—■ end "Ma" and "Pa" have a rough time nf it listening to the unceasing complaints ! of the frailer small fry for "living out here in the wilds" if they are any more than a couple of hundred yards or so from the lines of communication. Hence the fabulous rate for house rents anywhere close to tram or rail, I ! THE TEX-MILE TONTC. ,; I The coming of the motor has, with all • i its other advantages, been a distinct ♦ factor in physical deterioration, according to an Auckland physician, who views with grave concern the increasing girth of wealthy patients, whose dyspepsia ' refuses to budge, despite all artificial «id, because they will not accept the assistance of nature in the form of exercise, and particularly of that best of all exercises for keeping fit—walking. It is - a fact, lie declares, that people arc for- 1 getting how to walk, or -when they do get along on their feet, they move with a. slouch, in a tired and reluctant fashion. ! The proper way to walk is with long , steps, heel-and-toe, head erect, chest expanding with long-drawn breaths, and j J _ arm swinging. Then it is that every; eiuscle of the body is exercised, the ' heart pumps in joyous activity, send■lng the- blood rushing through the lungs to be purified by the oxygen, the sweat glands exude toxic impurities, and the | whole body is rejuvenated. A Turkish! .'hath is not in it with a ten-mile walk 'as a cleanser of the vascular and circulatory systems —but how many people are there who cotild, without long and | gradual preparation, take a walk of that distance without danger of a collapse J "A FLABBY" GENERATION. "Half the people of this city would fiflrop dead if they ran top speed for lhalf a mile or walked at full pace for |« league or so —if they lasted that long," "eaid an athletic and scoffing young medico. "It is only the few who nowadays keep themselves lit by constant exercise who can do it. The lollers, who spend every spare moment (when they j are ofc engaged in the fatiguing work of pushing a pen) sucking cigarettes on sofas, or sprawled -over a table, sipping tea, are not the ones to stand a physical strain. Their hearts are llabby and unprepared and would 'drop' them lifter the first flash of unwonted energy. Such people would need months of careful, graduated exercise to make them fit, for their whole muscular systems are I relaxed and their lungs have not the capacity of penny baloons. I have stood 'at the top of Queen Street watching them waiting for a tram to take them to the foot, what time an athletic man could step the distance and be all .the better for it. The lazy habits of this generation, its neglect of all exercise, and particularly that of walking, threatens to produce a fat, flabby, physically useless community, compared with which tlie lethargic Samoau would \>e a Dall of energy." : WHEN WE LOSE OUR LEGS. ■ Tn years agone a walk from Auck- ■ land "to Onehunga, or even a climb to the Waitakere ranges, was reckoned a pleasure, where now it would be counted as a hardship; and there were numerous. bodies of young men and ■women, .who .formed themselves into '■walking clubs of excursion parties for vigorous wanderings on and off the ' lieaten tracks. Now most of the people who venture beyond the precincts of the city do so in trams, trains and motor cars, and when these travellers ' ' . do alight it is merely to stroll a few yards" to work up. a "fatigue" to complain of as an excuse for ■'resting -1 when they get home. The walker along the Toutcs leading from the city to the : numerous * beauty spots surrounding is ' .something to wonder at—an object for ! commiseration, who is dubbed "balmy"' ■when lie is offered a lift by that other rarity,.a motorist pitying a pedestrian. : There are some -who predict that in course of time we sliall lose our legs as we did our tails —through disuse — and that in future walking will be an '' accomplishment as remote to our minds as the tree-climbing feats of our ances- I tors. But the transformation will of I course, be gradual. First we will have motor boots with which to flash about ■when we cannot get an easier conveyance; then, in process of time we j shall have easier and more suitable i arrangements to propel us and ensure 1 that -vra shall rest whilst moving, until, finally, our leps will atrophy altogether, and children born with such useless • appendages will have them removed by surgical operation—just as the surgeon ■would now remove an unsightly -wart.