OCR Text |
Show Veteran Trainer Tails to Athletes, Declares There Are No Iron-Bound Iron-Bound Rules to Follow in Training. Same System Will Wot "Work on Any Two Men Each One Should Study Himself "Books on training make me laugh," he remarked to a party of prominent athletes at the Murray Hill hotel. The Bubject of general athletic training had come up, and the different members o the group endeavqred to support their arguments by well-known books on training, which at last brought forth the above remark from Murphy. "Of course, every trainer, and every competitor, too, for that matter, has his own pet theories as to how preparation prepar-ation for various contests should be carried out," lie continued. "Some of them even go so far as to set down a list of rules which every would-be contestant con-testant Is expected rigidly to follow. But, to tell the truth, It Is simply impossible im-possible to set down the same system even for two men to follow who are training for the very same thing. Every Ev-ery man Is different from every other, and he must be studied In order to find out what particular system will bo necessary to put him Into the proper "There is really not one what you mm might call Iron-bound rule for training, PI except, perhaps, constant practice at IB the particular thing at which you ex- Ipect to compete. If you have a boxing match in view, for Instance, why the ery best thing for you to do is plenty of boxing, and you can be quite sure that you are following the proper course to make yourself fit. Tf vnn want to get into condition for a run-HH run-HH nlng race, spend the most of your time HH In running, and so on in every branch of athletics. "Take boxers, for example. Now, Jef-Pfl Jef-Pfl fries Is what Is known as a hard train- er, so hard, In fact, that he says he WM would rather fight three times than to train once. But this hard work In his case is done for a certain purpose. Principally to take off superfluous fut. Jeffries takes on flesh very quickly, and it is absolutely necessary for him to do the work, otherwise he would enter the HH ring soft and -flabby and in anything j but fit condition. H "On the other hand, take the case of HV Oscar Gardner, one of the best men at H hi8 weight who ever lived. He never trained for a fight that Is, he never followed out any of the many different stunts that the general fighter lnvarl-ably1 lnvarl-ably1 does when preparing for a fight, j It was a common saying among his acquaintances that Gardner trained en-tirely en-tirely by playing pinochle, of which he was very fond. His sole exercise was that of boxing, yet he always showed uyf in good shape for his matches. Grlf-fo Grlf-fo was another fighter who was a con-tradlctlon con-tradlctlon to the theory that hard work is necessary to give a man quickness and endurance. He never did any train-Ing, train-Ing, yet he was noted as being one of, U16 quickest, and cleverest boxers We have ever seen. Many Different Systems. "A 'great many fighters make a close study of training methods, and usually know exactly what form of training is best for them, or think they do. vt In many cases they have exactly opposite opinions in regard to the effect of certain cer-tain exercises and diet. It Is almost the unanimous judgment of American trainers and fighters that a man training train-ing for a fight should never touch a drop' of wine. Foreigners, especially Frenchmen and Germans, on the contrary, con-trary, imagine that It would be utterly impossible for them to work Into the proper condition unless they had wine three times a day. Frank Erne always al-ways Insisted upon being provided-with a certain kind of wine which Is made in Sweden, and thought that it would be useless to try to whip into shape without it: his father used to send It to him regularly. "Another source of much argument is the use of the skipping rope. Erne made It a point to skip the rope 100 times every day of his training.' He cays he does this to make himself quick on his feet, and that no other exercise will produce this quality. Now, Kid McCoy takes just the opposite view; for he thinks that such an exercise Is bound to produce Just the other effect than the one sought and claims that It stands to reason that constant landing on the fiat of the feet when skipping n rope is sure to produce heaviness, and that the result is bound o be Injurious. Injuri-ous. How Swimmers 'xain. "These contrary Ideas In regard to training are not confined to boxers, by any means, for in other branches of athletics the opinions differ every bit as much. Among runners it is the commonly com-monly accepted theory that distance work Is Injurious to a sprinter and has a tendency to slow him up and make him heavy. Bradley Works Hard. "But this theory is completely knocked In the head by Bradley, the great English Eng-lish sprinter, who came here with the London Athletic club team for the great International meet at Berkeley Oval In 1002. He actually took runs of from flvc-to flvc-to ten miles to put hlmyelf Into shape for the sprints. Bradley was not only England's best sprinter, but he was the chaniplon cross-country runner as well. Every winter he took part in contests of this kind, which seemed to get him Into proper condition for the eummer, when he was at his best In the pprlnts. This li not the only lald-down theory that Bradley upset. "The best examples of sprinters who have ever lived "Wefers, Kranzleln. Long and Burke were all long, lithe, clean-limbed fellows, and It has alwayy been tfiouglit that only a man of this build could cover the ground with swiftness. Now, Bradley was always actually fat, with a decided paunch. He way big-limbed and big-muscled, and In general built a good deaL like Jeffriesjust Jef-friesjust the direct contradiction of every tradition as to what constituted the ideal build for a sprinter. When he came on the field for hip contest the spectator not acquainted with him would Imagine that the big fellow was about to take part in a weight-throwing contest: yet he was one of the very few Englishmen who have ever been able to negotiate the century in 9 1-5 seconds. r- : j-cT.:i.ir. mi. "Schick, the present 100 and 220-yard Intercollegiate champion, Is of-tall, frail build, and he Id a strong advocate of the short-work theory for sprinting, contending that long-distance running has a tendency to slow him up, and therefore rarely runs farther thnn 220 yards. Moulton, the great Yale sprinter, sprint-er, on the other hand, who was but a foot behind Duffy when the latter made the present world's record of 9 3-5 for the hundred at Berkeley oval In 1902, Is the best American example of Bradley's Brad-ley's form of training. Every afternoon during the winter Moulton would run from a half to three miles on the track in the Yale gymnasium. But as soon as the outdoor work started he confined con-fined himself to short work, his favorite exercise being to dance along. Notwithstanding Notwith-standing that the training Ideas of these two men were so radically opposed, yet they were nearly equal In speed. "Take swimming, for Instance, which Is one of the hardest games In athletics. Jarvis, the great English swimmer, does all manner of things when preparing for a race. One of his favorite stunts li to swing a 12-pound hammer around his head a hundred times a day to give his arms and shoulders proper exercise. Then he has another practise of putting two chairs about fifty feet apart and carrying a 50-pound weight from one to tho other held at arm's length oer his head. Upon reaching one chulr he puts the bell on the ground, then sits down. . Once more lifting the bell over his head, he walks to the opposite chair,, and he will repeat re-peat this operation a hundred times. Now, this soft of work Is bound to I produce muscle, and the average swimmer swim-mer would be strongly opposed to these forms of training for that very reason. "Swimming Is the one game where muscle Is a decided detriment. Of course, strength and endurance are absolutely ab-solutely necessary, but there is not a single swimmer of any real ability who can pull up his arm and show a bunch of muscle. One illustration of the failure of the muscular swimmer is shown by Ruddy, the New York Athletic Ath-letic club crack 100-yard man. Ruddy Is a muscular wonder, and has a development de-velopment fully as pronounced as that of Sandow. Yet Ruddy must be at bis best to even Just out a hundred yards, and one heat kills him completely. This Man Don't Train. "Richard CavIU, the Australian swimmer, the champion of the world, who can probably beat Parvls at any distance, never does the slightest training train-ing except swimmings, and is opposed to any other form of exercise, being a natural athlete. E. Carroll SchnelTer. our own swimming champion up to 1902,) when he retired, swam constantly when ho was in training for a swimming swim-ming race, and never did anything else except diet himself. He had a, strong opinion to the effect that rowing a boat was bad for a. man training for a swimming swim-ming race. He trained at Trnvers Island, the New York Athletic club's country place, one year for the A. A. U. championships, and during the three weeks he was there took out a working boat each day to kill time. As a fact, he spent more time in the boat than he did In the water. The result was that he not only won all the championships champion-ships at all distances with ease that year, but actually made new records for each one. Fred "Wenck, the best swimmer Yale ever had, never trained for a race, yet he was United States champion at the half-mile for several years. Only last year Wenck made a very poor showing In the different races during the summer, but when a hundred-yard championship was held, although not thought to have a chance In the world, he won It from a big field of good swimmers, among whom was Charles Hobcrt, the record holder for that distance, .who had been conscientiously consci-entiously training all summer. -Wenck however, had not' made the slightest preparation except an occasional sVIm." |