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CHAPTER VII.

PHYSICAL CULTURE FOR THE MIDDLE-AGED.

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It is scarcely necessary for me to say that the benefits to be obtained by conscientiously working upon my system are by no means confined to the young and vigorous. On the contrary, it is particularly suitable for the middle-aged, who are all too apt to suffer from the effects of the period of physical indolence which has succeeded their youthful activity. To such, the system should prove invaluable. It is quite a false notion to suppose that when once youth is passed exercise is no longer necessary. So long as life lasts, if an individual wants to keep healthy, exercise is just as necessary as food. It is through neglecting to recognise this that so many men become aged before their time. When a man begins to get into middle life he has a natural tendency to “take things easy.” He lives more luxuriously, devotes more time to the pleasures, of the table, and exerts himself as little as possible. Is it anything to wonder at that his health suffers, that he grows fat and flabby, and that his digestive apparatus quickly gets out of gear? If in his youth he has been an athlete the more will his changed mode of life tell upon him; it is indeed better never to have exercised at all than to exercise for a few years and then drop it entirely. It is for this reason we hear of the health of so many athletes failing them at a comparatively early age. And this failure is, as a rule, erroneously ascribed to the effects upon their constitution of their early efforts. Once and again errors in “training” may be responsible for poor health in middle-age, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the complete cessation from active bodily work, combined with the greater indulgence which naturally follows, is alone responsible.

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