MODERN ATHLETICS.* Now that, fortunately or unfortunately, international games are
an established fact, we are sure to have many works on the science of training, and special treatises on the various branches of athletics. We have before us two books which are an early crop of the great harvest that will be gathered in before the Olympic Games in 1916. It is common talk that British athletes are adopting many of the methods of the United States. We are told that in the United States they know bow to think a sport out from first principles and to apply to its development every sort of mental, moral, and pathological law. There is nothing haphazard about their ways over there. They are out to win; and if you object that • (1) The Complete Athletic Trainer. By S. A. Mussabini, in collaboration with Charles Ranson. With 30 Illustrations. London Methuen and Co. [5s. not.]-12) Athletics in Theory and Practice. By E. W. Iljertherg. Edited by S. S. Abraham.. With over 70 Photographs from Life. London Ilutchinscm. and Co. [Is. Cd.]
even victory is not worth while if the means of attaining it become a nuisance or a mania, you are told that in that case Great Britain should never have entered for the Olympic Games. We must not be drawn, however, into discussing the wisdom of international sport. All we want to do now is to glance at the best that is being said and thought about the preparations of athletes for their great efforts. The two books before us represent what may be called roughly the American view and the anti-American view. Possibly the American view will triumph ultimately all along the line. At present English athletes are inclined to take over some American methods and leave the others alone. There is so far no such overwhelming capture of our citadels as was seen some years ago when American jockeys first arrived here and taught us the " monkey seat." There is no going back upon that success. True, a jockey riding in the American manner has little control over his horse, and there is more boring and bumping on English racecourses than there ever was before; but the facts that a horse's propelling machinery (his hind legs) are more free to do their work when the weight of the jockey is brought forward nearly on to the withers, and that the crouching seat reduces the wind pressure, cannot be denied. The American theory in athletics is still to some extent in suspense in this country, It will be interesting to watch how it works out. Meanwhile the English reader must feel an instinctive sympathy, even though his convictions may drive him in another direction, with the championing of old-fashioned English ways which is to be found in Mr. Mussabini's book.
Before saying anything further, however, about this gratify- ing corrective, we will see what that well-known advocate of American methods, Mr. Hjertberg, has to say. Mr. Hjertberg is a Swede by birth, who made a great reputation for himself in the United States, first as a runner and then as coach of Columbia University and of numerous individual athletes. Mr. Abrahams in his introduction says that no one ever failed to benefit by Mr. Hjertberg's "almost magic analysis of athletic movement." In 1910 when the Swedes began to train for the Olympic Games of 1912 they sent for their countryman, who came in answer to the patriotic call and certainly did wonders with them. Their success in taking the second place in athletics was the most creditable achievement in the Games, for Sweden has only the population of London. In this book Mr. Hjertberg deals with every athletic event in the Olympic programme. Englishmen hold track events in greater esteem than field events, but Mr. Hjertberg remembers the practical consideration that the latter are more numerous in the Olympic Games. He applies himself to the serious business of scoring marks. He has no romantic prejudices in favour of some sport which particularly appeals to him or in which he himself excelled. All events are of the same importance that can score the same number of marks. As to diet Mr. Hjertberg's advice is perfectly rational. A man must follow his taste within reason. What is good for one is bad for another. Raw beef steaks are as obsolete as the gunpowder which prize-fighters used to eat once upon a time to give their blows an explosive force. The regulation of food for training nowadays might be described as a higher power of the normal. But Mr. Hjertberg insists very strongly on massage for everybody. He lays it down that a man who is prevented from practising for days at a time may keep himself fit by massage alone. He is also intolerant of the old method of starting in sprint races from a stand-np position. Whether he is right or wrong in all he says his explanations are extremely clear, and we should think that, although it is not often that one can learn athletics from books, a would-be sprinter could learn with precision from this book the carriage of his body. The sprinter has to keep his back and head in a straight line, both slanting forwards, and to conceive of himself as a kind of human projectile. Once let the head be thrown back, or an upright position be adopted with its consequent " up and down movement," and speed vanishes.
Mr. Mussabini, who is infinitely more British than his name, boldly says that no physical culture anywhere in the world surpasses or even equals the old-fashioned English training.
His prescription for success in international competitions is simply to revive the days that have been. He remarks that most of the qualified English trainers have gone out of the business. They have been absorbed by other countries or other occupations ; some have gone to America and some, though still in Great Britain, are training professional football teams. A comparison of Mr. Mussabini's advice with that of Mr. Hjertberg on two salient points—the use of Massage and the crouching method of starting in races—yields a very curious conflict of opinion. Writing of the " crouch " start, Mr. Mussabini says :—
" The old English style of standing up while awaiting the crack of a pistol (and under which style we developed such a school of sprint-runners as found no equals in America and Australia) has given place to the crouching-on-all-fours importation. The crouching-down style has been responsible for more bad and unfair starting than the average lover of athletics may be induced to give credit to. Just because some foreign sprinters came over here and made some fast times and displayed abnormal speed 'off the mark,' it was taken for granted that their style was the most serviceable. Getting a move on the gun' (as the Americans have it), or 'beating the pistol' (as we used to know it here in England), was made simple. By putting his hands beyond the allotted mark and moving forward at the call of ' set ' (an almost imperceptible movement known as body pressure) the practised runner could depend upon getting the better of the start over any but the most eapert of pistol-firers. If nicely on the go forward, his advantage could be estimated in yards. . . . The great draw- back with the rank and file of amateur sprinters in the pre- crouching-down days was their woeful ignorance of the proper way to stand. To watch an amateur sprint handicap in those times was to see the majority of the competitors swaying about or falling down on their hands and getting over the mark. Their inability to stand steady had not a little to do with the wholesale acceptance of the crouching-on-all-fours style, apart from its (then) allowing them to put their hands beyond their marks. Yet, had they taken a little pains, and observed the attitude of the steady standers-up, it would have come home to them how much more comfortable and assured is the erect posture as com- pared with the cramped and tiring crouch. I am thorough in the support of the old-fashioned standing-up stance at the start, both as regards effectiveness and fairness."
Even when he describes the holes for the feet from which the crouching start is made he does not agree with Mr. Hjertberg as to how they should be dug. His treatment of massage as a regular practice is contemptuous :—
" The fashion of the day is to massage before and after his exercises. Is this tapping, rolling and kneading of the runner's limbs and body in conformance with the cane of Nature P Does it serve to further his prowess or assist the nerves, muscles, thews and sinews to bear their strain P If anyone supports this view, may the writer be permitted to ask for proofs. May he not also urge the contention that the use of oils and grease on the body of a man who has undergone a more or leas severe physical test, and the pares of whose skin are open, and often oozing perspira- tion, is a direct incitement to ill health P"
We can only hope that what Mr. Mussabini says will stand the test of time and not turn out to be obscurantism. We should like to believe in his methods rather than in those of the highly deliberate and business-like Mr. Hjertberg. The spirit in which the latter writes is—not to use the word in its technical sense—rather too professional for our taste. His book seems to image forth that type of man who uses the Olympic Games as a means of making a reputation in order to become a coach with a pretty salary for the rest of his life. We remember seeing an American jumper who went through bodily contortions and a sort of ceremony of visible mental concentration on his object, that suggested a leopard in the undergrowth of a jungle preparing to spring. The ordinary English amateur would have been too sell-conscious to go through these performances in public. The recollection remains in our mind as something representing the difference
between strictly scientific sport and sport that retains an engaging air of insouciance. We prefer the latter. But will
it justify itself in future Olympic Games P
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