YOUTH KEEPS FIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 235, 3 October 1936, Page 11

YOUTH KEEPS FIT.

PHYSICAL TRAINING. TECHNICAL COLLEGE GYM. EXERCISES FOB. CRIPPLES. Pupils of the Seddon Memorial Technical College are fortunate to have the use of a newly-built gymnasium, under the able care of. Mr. H. P. Leeves, in which they can exercise under sympathetic and scientific conditions. From a health point of .view the boys are well looked after. There are frequent examinations by doctors, dentists and opticians to discover any form of ill-health or malformation. In the gymnasium they are carefully put through series of exercises which vary from week : to week. A boy is not allowed to specialise in any particular form of muscular exercise until he is at least 17 or 18 because his muscles would be unequally developed. A chart of every boy's -health-is kept and his progress noted. The gymnasium is a big, airy room on the top of the building where the manual training classes are held. It is equipped with vaulting horses, ladders, parallel bars, horizontal bars, badminton court and net, skipping ropes, dumb bells and boxing gloves. Mr. Leeves has been in charge of the gymnasium for the last eight years and has trained many gymnastic champions. There are former pupils who still come in the evenings for exercises and he hopes to train more young men who will win championship honours. One feature of the gymnasium is that there are special facilities for cripples to exercise under the expert guidance of Mr. Leeves, who prescribes remedial measures, which gradually bring into play muscles which are deformed and useless. Mr. Leeves believes in trying to interest such boys in games such as badminton. A game, he said, gets them interested and in their excitement they are likely to forget their handicap and so make the movement automatically which they might otherwise strive ineffectually to perform. This, coupled .with exercises^gradually fbrings. them.-to

some state approaching normal. It is a curious fact, remarked Mr. Leeves, that cripples seem to be possessed of great determination to light their affliction and strive to be physically fit. Indeed, they were keener to attain a normal condition than a normal .boy is to develop his strength. The gymnasium is designed' to meet the needs of all kinds of boys, and one only needs to see the classes in, action to realise that it makes an important contribution to the health of the youth of Auckland.