Skipping as an Exercise.

Otago Witness, Issue 2623, 22 June 1904, Page 68

Skipping as an Exercise.

Dr Bond, of Gloucester, has lately put forth a pamphlet on the advantages to be cierivcd from "skipping" as p, systematic exercise. He has even gone so far as to invent an improved rope with which the exercise may he most advantageously performed, and has bestowed upon his invention the name of "Girbola." Dr Bond points out the wide range of muscular action which tho exercise requires, the muscles of the arms, legs, said ches-b being called into simultaneous activity; and he dwells also upon the ease with which the required cftoris can be graduated to meet the nceess;ties of the skipper, and to keep pace with progressive irrrprovomonts in his or her condition. Dr Bond strongly recommends that the exorcise bs practised for a few minutes on first riding from bed, or after a bath, aaid speaks from per.-.onal experience of its efficacy in giving vigour to the muscles and tone to the circulation, oven in a subject no longer in the heyday of youth. He specially recommends it in all tho cases of weak heart in which exercises are caloulated to be useful, and recommends it as a daily custom for all persons engaged in sedentary occupations, and especially in occupations requiring brain work, as the best possible means of counteracting the tendency to local congestions which such occupations may involve. The Hospital (April 2), to which we are indebted for a summary of Dr Bond's proposals, aays: — "We cannot but .feel that the. chief impediment to the general acceptance of Dr Bond's views anel the general practice of his recommendations is to be found in their very simplicity; and we think he has done well to bring Gut his 'girbola,' even if only as a means of reaching tho somewhat dull imagLno.tion of the average man. . . . The injunction to 'skip and be well' is fairly comparable with "that to 'wash and be clean,' and deserves at least a corresponding degree of attention."