TRAGEDY OF EXERCISE

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 April 1927, Page 9

TRAGEDY OF EXERCISE

WARNING TO MIDDLE AGED. Spurred by the tragedy of a man of 45 dropping dead on a golf course, Mr George Jean Nathan, the famous American dramatic critic, penned this message to those middle-aged folk who strive to rejuvenate themselves by any more athleticism than is involved in a walk to work. More and more, it seems to me, it is dawning upon people with common sense that physical exercise is not the valuable thing it is cracked up to be. That exercise is valuable to a man in his younger years —up to the age of 25 or even 30 —may be argued with some conviction. But that it is good for a man beyond these years is, if statistics and observation prove anything, another story. x For example, out of 56 men whom I knew intimately, in my college days, 38 were athletes and the rest, 18, cared no more for* exercise of any sort than a Zulu cares for French perfume. Of the 38, 14 died from natural causes between the ages of 25 and 42. Of the remaining 24, three to-day are invalids six have periodically suffered serious breakdowns, and one is able to work not more than five hours a day because of a weakened heart. Of the 18 who did not believe and have not since believed in exercise, two were killed in the war, two died from natural causes, and the rest are to-day as thoroughly healthy, active, and alive as to many fighting cocks. I expect to receive several hundred letters from golf fiends, rubber apparatus pullers, gentlemen who touch the floor with the tips of their fingers 50 times every morning and night, and others arguing that I am first cousin to the jackass for exposing such a contention to the public gaze. But the facts, as they have presented themselves to me, still remain. And these facts bring me to conclude, that many of those who believe that exercise is benefiting them are actually being benefited very little, and, further, that they would, in all probability be a lot better off if they hung their golf clubs over the mantelpiece as mural decorations, and devoted the time they spend at present in touching the floor with their finger tips to reading La Vie Parisienne.

When a man finishes 18 holes of golf he may feel like a lion; but a man feels no less like a lion for that matter, when he has finished six cocktails. Exercise imparts a superficial feeling of health, but keep it up, and in time it will give you the biological delirium tremens. There are certain men, of course, whom exercise of one species or another benefits, but, for every such man there are half a dozen who, whether they know it or not, are hurt by it. Yet the propaganda is so insidious and widespread that most men never stop to investigate whether exercise is good for them or not, and never take the precaution to learn from their doctors whether it is helpful or not helpful to their health and well-being. These, consequently, take for granted that what is good for Gene Tunney is equally good for them. I went into a gymnasium the other day, and I’ll lay a bet of £5O against a photograph of Michael Arlen that three particularly portly gentlemen between 45 and 50 whom I glimpsed heroically turning somershults, will be complete wrecks years before they would otherwise be.

Every man of course, takes a certain amount of exercise unconsciously, and this, as I see it, is enough for him. Whether he believes in exercising or not, he still walks more or less, lifts weights of one sort or another during his daily round, jumps on and off □uses, street cars or trains, pushes doors open, and shut, and otherwise loosens up his muscles. There are people -who make so magnificent a ritual of “taking care of themselves” as the phrase is, that they almost botch themselves in the doing. ■ Who shows age the more —the farmer whose daily life is a round of exercises, or the city business man whose exercise, if he takes it at all, comes in relatively homoepathic doses? The average farmer at 40 looks 60. The average city business man at the same age generally looks it and little more. Athletics are for athletes. The great work of the world is not done by men with biceps as large as hams, or willowy pole vaulters and water, polo players, but by men who let their bodies quietly store up enough energy that their minds may exercise themselves to their infinite content.