Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/190

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

HOW TO GET STRONG

until one thousand strokes became his daily exercise; and, as he says:


"On the morning of December 24, 1896, taking three thousand swings continuously with the twenty-pound bells," and "not exhausted" he "felt that he could have kept on indefinitely—or probably one or two thousand more—had it been desirable or prudent."


Thus lifting sixty tons each morning—which few men of any age can do to-day, were they to get even a dollar a pound for it. He adds:


"While these figures look startling, and to some perhaps excessive and dangerous, I am perfectly sure that I have never received any injury in the least from it, but have always been benefited. When suffering from nervous headache, from an over-worked brain surcharged with blood, I have found the dumb-bell exercise gradually drawing the blood from the brain to the body, arms, and hands, and as gradually and as certainly relieved the headache, so that before the end of one thousand swings it was entirely gone. It never failed, and though under most extraordinary mental strain for the past ten or twelve years, nervous headaches for about that time have been regarded as things of the past."


Asked what other good these exercises had done him, he said:


"They have greatly increased my strength in my back, arms, and hands; making it easier to stand erect and keep straight. They have promoted digestion, expanded the lungs, cured an irregular action of the heart, which was caused by insomnia, and increased and equalized the circulation, so that cold hands and cold feet are not known as formerly. They have improved my health in every respect until it now seems as nearly perfect as attainable, 'thanks to the Giver of every good and perfect gift.' But the crowning triumph was the cure of the insomnia. Like thousands of others, on awakening in the night-time I have spent one, two, three, and more hours vainly endeavoring to secure sleep. At length I limited the time to one hour, and failing, arose, took one thousand swings with success, losing only, at most one hour.

160