'Keep Fit” Classes

Southland Times, Issue 22750, 28 November 1935, Page 12

'Keep Fit” Classes

SLIMMING ON RATIONAL LINES. The demand for gymnastics by girls and women is greater than the supply facilities. Wherever a new class is started the response is immediate, states the London Daily Telegraph. This is one of the facts revealed m an investigation bv the Central Council of Recreative Physical Training. The council was founded some months ago to co-ordinate the work of every type of organization devoted to physical activity. An official of the council told a representative of the Daily Telegraph: 4t A survey we have just completed shows that there are thousands of adolescents and men . and women anxious to form ‘Keep Fit’ classes. ‘•Among the most enthusiastic members of ‘Keep Fit’ classes are a great number of women no longer young. In the classes they find an ideal opportunity of slimming on rational lines. “In a class started recently in a town not far from London,” said the official, “there are women up to sixty years of age. They are quite as keen as are the younger members. “No—these women do not practise on the horizontal bar or the parallel bars. In fact, no sort of apparatus is used in the women’s classes; the usual bodily exercises are carried out, to musical accompaniment wherever possible. “ ‘Use your vigour to keep your figure’ is a slogan that epitomizes the object of many of these ladies in joining our classes.” The council is a voluntary organization. It has the blessing of the Board of Education, as well as of the British Medical Association’s Physical Education Committee. About 130 bodies devoted to some form or other of physical training have been invited to send delegates to a conference that is to be held in London. Tire president of the council, Viscount Astor, is to preside, and the speakers will include Dr Cyril Norwood.