ATHLETICS GOOD FOR BOTH SEXES

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19154, 21 August 1930, Page 7

ATHLETICS GOOD FOR BOTH SEXES

WOMEN SHOULD NOT COMPETE WITH MEN. (Contributed by the Department of Health). No one, man or woman, boy or girl, should go in for really strenuous athletic competitions unless he or she has been previously passed as perfectly sound in heart, lungs and joints, writes Dr Turner in “Better Health.” No game or competitive sport can be of real value unless it entails proper, regular and scientific training and preparation. If an athlete, man or woman, attempts any hard athletic sport or competition untrained, he or she runs a very grave risk of permanently damaging the heart muscle or soine other essential part. Training, to be of value, must be gradual. It not only leads to perfection and fitness of the body, but is also a great factor in character formation. An individual in training must be prepared to do many things hard, sometimes unpleasant, and perhaps even painful, if he wishes to excel in sport. This, in the young person, entails “self-reverence, self .knowledge and self-control,” the three essentials which ever lead onwards and upwards in the road to attain the great ideal of the sound, clean, healthy spirit in the sound, healthy body. Athletics for young men are beneficial and good, especially for those whose work is sedentary. With regard to similar competitions and exercise for women, there is still a great deal of misapprehension and misunderstanding. The report of the Commission, which five or six years ago inquired into the question of strenuous games for girls, | came to the conclusion that if girls ! were sound to begin with, were properly and judiciously trained, and did not attempt to overdo it, they might attempt any sport or exercise undertaken by boys of the same age. except tug-of-war and Rugby football. Box-

ing was not considered or mentioned in that report, because boxing for women for many reasons is unthinkable. There is one thing with regard to athletic contests for women on which I am insistent, and that is that women should compete with women, and men with men. If any game such as hockey or lacrosse be played by mixed elevens of men and women, one of two things must happen, either the game or the girl will be spoilt—the game if it is played down to the speed of the woman, the girl if it is played

at its ordinary pace and she is allowed to tear herself to pieces, with that pluck and courage so many women have, in an attempt to keep pace with the men on her side or against her. The athletic woman is not built on lines which conduce to very great speed or extraordinary endurance. \Y ith her own sex she can do very well, and by exercise and competition can improve her health in every way possible, but she cannot compete on equal terms with men, whose bodily formation is far better adapted to great speed, endurance and strenuous work.

The one form of sport in which women can come nearest to men is swimming, because even in these days when Fashion demands of her votaries an extremely unaesthetic scragginess, there is still sufficient adipose tissue left on the swimming girl to help her in contests in the water, because fat is lighter than bone and muscle, and so in that element keeps her up. You will have noticed in the photographs of all the ladies who have, or have not, crossed the Channel by swimming, that they are as a rule extremelv wellcovered.

Throwing the discus and the javelin are excellent exercises for girls, concueing to all-round muscular development and grace and elegance of figure. One thing which is essential to all athletics, if the best is to be obtained from them, is to cultivate good style. Hobbs, with a flick of his wrist, will send a ball to the boundary, which another player without his style, with great action, sends trickling'to silly point.

So long as moderation be observed, a person in training and a person going in for athletic games may eat whatever they may find suits them, whether it he white bread, brown bread, grass of the fields or grass in its later manifestat*on as beef. The same in regard to drink. 1 here is one warning, and a serious warning, which I wish to give, and that is that no person, man or woman, who at any time has gone in thoroughly and wholeheartedly for competitive athletics in any form whatever. and to do so has practised assiduously, and has become quite fit, should, if they have discontinued and dropped the habit of hard exercise, attempt to come back, as the technical expres* sion is in athletics, without verv slow, careful and properly directed training. If such a person, when unfit, rushes into any strenuous game or competition, the chances are that the heart may become seriously damaged, even to such an extent as may preclude anv further, hard athletic competitions for the rest of that person’s life. I have myself seen many instances of this, and it may be laid down as a law of the Medes and Persians that anyone who has retired from athletic competitions must take infinite precautions before they attempt to'resume such exercise.

After many years of practical experience, I have come to the conclusion that the value of athletics to all voung persons is threefold: Physical, mental and moral. If they are undertaken after proper, well-directed training and preparation, the organs of the l>ody are strengthened and improved, both respiratory and circulatory systems, while the muscles are enlarged and strengthened and the nervous system reinforced in its power of muscular and bodily control, so that the individual is in every way improved and strengthened Within my know ledge there are numerous men who could never have done the work they did in the war unless they had behind them a well-spent athletic youth. To get and keep fit and do weJl in athletic competition, it is necessary to keep the body in temperance, sobriety and chastity. It therefore goes without saving that the moral effect in youth is great, and in middle age and old age lasting and beneficial.