Exercise in education and medicine / by R. Tait McKenzie.

  • R. Tait McKenzie
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Exercise in education and medicine / by R. Tait McKenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of nerve force, and we instinctively admire a difficult exercise performed with thrifty ease just as we unconsciously censure the nervous prodigality of the unskilful tyro. The distracting influ¬ ence of mental excitement or worry is seen in the broken shoe-lace of the hurried man and the failure of the nervous pianist before a critical audience. When a certain degree of skill or coordination is learned, the interest passes on to what is more difficult, and this is one reason why any course in physical training should begin with simple and easily learned coordinations, progressing to those more difficult and complicated feats that serve to keep alive the attention and interest of the pupils. Exercise should also be designed to develop and educate movements that are peculiar to the limb, the lower limb for support^ locomotion, and leaping; the upper limb for grasping, striking, throwing, and catching. It is because this great principle is so much neglected that the interest is difficult to maintain in formal gymnastics. In free play this takes care of itself. Exercises of strength and skill train that alertness of mind so necessary in ordinary life. They shorten the period between thought and action, and give that condition known as “presence of mind.” This cannot be done without a corresponding mental strain. The man who is held alert too long on the starting line before a race, tense and straining for the signal, finds such a rapid exhaustion of his powers of concentration that in a second or two the strain becomes intolerable. The alertness required at first in learning to box, rapidly exhausts the nervous system, and it is only when the movements of countering, ducking, and side¬ stepping become habitual that the exercise can be continued for any length of time. Football is a game of the same nature, and “getting the jump” on an opponent is a matter of mental concen¬ tration and alertness rather than of actual strength. Much of the exhaustion of a game is due to this brain-fag, for the actual play¬ ing time in an hour’s game is only four or five minutes at the most. In gymnastic exercises imitation is a cheap form of instruction from the standpoint of nervous expenditure, because the pupil