Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/210

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HOW TO GET STRONG

Don't ride by fits and starts; take a steady gait and keep it up.

Don't keep your eyes on your front wheel, look up and enjoy the beauties of nature. Come back from your ten-mile spin with a panorama, ten miles long, permanently photographed on your brain. The average cyclist sees nothing but his wheel and a few yards of road.


Hardly any of the muscles are so useful and valuable as these on the front of the thigh. One may have weak arms and trunk; yet with strong thighs he can walk a long distance daily; and not be nearly so fatigued as those much stronger elsewhere and weaker here, and, as many men have little or no other exercise than walking; they are often contented with fair development here; and practically none of any account elsewhere. It is astonishing, too, to notice how a man, accustomed for years to a poor shambling sort of a gait, will, with strict attention to taking a clean and strong straight-kneed step over a certain distance daily; with a determination to take no other sort of gait; soon improve the strength and shape of his thighs.

As hopping on one foot is a swift way to develop the calf; so frequent stooping down as low as possible, and rising again, daily; at first without weights; but eventually with them; is the sure way to speedily enlarge and strengthen the thighs.


TO ENLARGE THE UNDER THIGH

The muscles of the under thigh do not get nearly so much to do as those in front, in many persons seeming almost not to exist. A bad walk, with the knees always slightly bent, is partly accountable for this; and a man accustomed to such a walk, and trying suddenly to walk erect, with his knees firmly knit, and bowed