HOW TO GET STRONG
gether that he who has a large biceps is practically sure to have the adjoining pectoral correspondingly large.
But there is other work which tells on them besides biceps work. Whenever the hands push hard against anything, and so call the triceps muscles into action, these muscles at once combine with them. In the more severe triceps work, such as the dips, the strain across these chest muscles is very great; for they are then a very important factor in helping to hold up the weight of the whole body. This fact suggests the folly of letting any one try so severe a thing as a dip, when his triceps and pectoral muscles have not been used to any such heavy work. Many a person who has rashly attempted this has had to pay for it with a pain for several days at the edge of the pectoral; where it meets the breast-bone, until he concluded he must have broken something. But muscle-aches end in two or three days.
Working with the dumb-bells, when the arms are extended at right angles with the body, like a cross, and raising them up and down for a foot or so, is one of the best things for the upper edge of the pectorals; or that part next to the collar-bone.
This brings us to a matter of great importance, and one often overlooked. Whoever knows many gymnasts, and has seen them stripped or in exercising costume; must occasionally have observed that, while they had worked at exercises which brought up these pectoral muscles until they were almost huge, their chests themselves had somehow not been enlarged accordingly. Indeed, in more than one instance which has come under our observation, the man looked as though, should you scrape all these great muscles completely off, leaving the bare framework, he would have actually a small chest; much smaller than many a fellow who had not
200
