PHYSICAL CULTURE IN FRANCE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 September 1924, Page 9

PHYSICAL CULTURE IN FRANCE

A GREAT REVIVAL. Mr F. A. Hornibrook, spent a week’ or two in Paris during the progress of the Olympic Games (says a London correspondent), and, among other things, has returned with a very high opinion of the physical culture methods of the French. He visited Joinville, which is the Aldershot of France, and studied the military methods of training.

German methods, lie maintains, have • been imported into English military training to some extent,; and now we have the Guards imitating the goose step. In France they concentrate on the slow movements first of all to build up muscle and strength, and then the work is to produce agility. Like the English army they have a good many games in their , training programme, and they are going in for boxing very much. The punches and’guards have been made a matter of drill. There are orthopaedic clinics for the curing of flat chests, flat feet, and the treatment of spinal curvature.

Not only in'the army, but aipong civilians, there seems to have been a great physical culture reviyaj. In the l a Tg. e towns t-lie municipalities have their gymnasia. In addition, there are excellent, journals dealing with every form of sport—boxing, v'restling, swimBiing, road racing, and bicycling. In the restaurants, amongst young men the conversation concerns sport and athletics just as much as it does among the yoiing men of the Dominions. A thing that is very much in favour of ■ the French as an athletic race is their eating and cooking. The proper use of vegetables, and the fact that the midday meal is a cereiyony that is performed leisurely, the drinking of wine instead of spirits, and the absence of drunkenness, are all matters which help to keep the nation physically fit. The French athlete continues to drink light wine during his training. On the other hand the Finns are all total abstainers.

“The French business man,” said Mr Hornibrook, “like the American business man, goes in for physical training a great deal, but whereas the ,former takes two hours for his lunch, the latter swallows it in a few minutes. The result is that the American sw'allows more patent medicines in a day than a Frenchman does in a year.”