At the present advanced athletic era there are very few who do not understand that a certain amount of preparation is absolutely essential to success in any physical effort requiring strength and endurance. The matter of detail is, however, not faced until one actually becomes a captain or a coach, and, as such, responsible for the condition, not of himself alone, but of a team of fifteen or twenty men.

Experience regarding his own needs will have taught him the value of care and work in this line; but, unless he differs greatly from the ordinary captain upon first assuming the duties of that position, his knowledge of training will be confined to an understanding of his own requirements, coupled with the handed-down traditions of the preceding captains and teams. When he finds himself in this position and considers what lines of training he shall lay down for his team, unless he be an inordinately conceited man he will wish he had made more of a study of this art of preparation, especially in the direction most suited to the requirements of his own particular sport.

Many inquiries from men about to undertake the training of a team have led me to believe that, even at the expense of going over old ground, it will be well in this book to map out a few of the important features of a course of training. It should go without saying that there are infinite variations in systems of this kind; but if a man will carry in mind the reasons rather than the rules, he has always a test to apply which will enable him to make the most of whatever system he adopts.

He should remember that training ought to be a preparation by means of which his men will at a certain time arrive at the best limits of their muscular strength and activity, at the same time preserving that equilibrium most conducive to normal health. Such a preparation can be accomplished by the judicious use of the ordinary agents of well-being—exercise, diet, sleep, and cleanliness.

One can follow out the reasons for or against any particular point in a system rather better if he cares to see why these agents act towards health and strength.

Exercise is a prime requisite, because the human mechanism, unlike the inanimate machine, gains strength from use. Muscular movement causes disintegration and death of substance, but at the same time there is an increased flow of blood to the part, and that means an increased supply of nourishment and increased activity in rebuilding. As MacLaren has expressed it, strength means newness of the muscle. The amount and quality of this exercise will be treated of later in this chapter.

In considering the matter of Diet, a captain or coach should think of this question not according to the tradition of his club, nor according to his own idiosyncrasies. He should regard the general principle of not depriving a man of anything to which he is accustomed and which agrees with him. Of course, it is advisable to do without such articles of food as would be injurious to the majority of the men, even though there might be one or two to whom they would do no harm. Men should enjoy their food, and it should be properly served. I remember once being asked my opinion regarding a certain team at the time in training, and I expressed the conviction that something was wrong with their diet. The team, as a whole, were not seriously affected, but some three or four were manifestly out of sorts. I heard the coach go over the bill of fare, and it sounded all right. I then decided to take dinner with them and see if I could discover the trouble. One meal was sufficient, for it was a meal! The beef—and an excellent roast it was, too—was literally served in junks, such as one might throw to a dog. The dishes were dirty, so was the cloth. Vegetables were dumped on to the plates in a mess, and each one grabbed for what he wanted. Some of the men might have been brought up to eat at such a table, still others were not sufficiently sensitive to have their appetites greatly impaired by anything, but the three or four who were "off" were boys whose home life had accustomed them to a different way of dining, and their natures revolted. So, too, did their appetites. As it was then too late to correct the manners of the mess, I simply advised sending these men elsewhere to board, and they speedily came into shape. I cannot too strongly advocate good service at a training table. The men should enjoy their dinners, should eat them slowly, and should be encouraged to be as long about it as they will. As food is to repair the waste, it should be generous in quantity and taken when the man will not, from being over-tired, have lost his appetite. Sometimes a team is not overworked, but worked too late in the day, so that the men rush to the table almost directly from the field, and fail to feel hungry, while within an hour they would have eaten with a zest. This course persevered in for several days will show its folly in a general falling-off in the strength as well as the weight of the men. To train a football team should be, in the matter of the diet at least, the simplest matter compared with training for other sports, because the season of the year is so favorable to good condition.

Crews and ball nines have oftentimes the trial of exceptionally hot and exhausting weather to face, while a football team, after the few warm days of September are passed, enjoy the very best of bracing weather—weather which will give almost any man who spends his time in out-door work a healthy, hearty appetite. In order that any captain or coach reading this book may feel that, while it offers several courses of diet, it would emphatically present the fact that there is no hard-and-fast system of diet that must be religiously followed, I submit a variety of tables, showing some old as well as new school diets. None of them are very bad, several are excellent; and I don't think that a captain or coach would be called upon to draw his pencil through very many of the items enumerated.

THE OXFORD SYSTEM.—(Summer Races.)

A DAY'S TRAINING.[A]

TORPID RACES.

A DAY'S TRAINING.

THE CAMBRIDGE SYSTEM. Summer Races (1866).

A DAY'S TRAINING.

H. CLASPER'S SYSTEM.

A DAY'S TRAINING.

C. WESTHALL'S SYSTEM. For Amateurs.

A DAY'S TRAINING.

N.B.—It is added "that the above rules are of course open to alteration according to circumstances, and the diet varied successfully by the introduction of fowls, either roast or boiled—the latter preferred;" and "it must never be lost sight of that sharp work, regularity, and cleanliness are the chief if not the only rules to be followed to produce thorough good condition."

McLAREN'S SYSTEM.

A DAY'S TRAINING.

Summary.

Sleep, eight or nine hours. Exercise, about three hours. Diet, very varied.

STONEHENGE'S SYSTEM.

A DAY'S TRAINING.

SYSTEM OF JACKSON AND GODBOLD.

Breakfast.—Stale or whole-meal bread, or toast, a little butter, plenty of marmalade if you like, but not jam. Bacon and eggs, or chops or steaks, with watercress if obtainable. To those who like it, a basin of oatmeal porridge, properly made, taken with pure milk about an hour before breakfast, is an excellent thing, and has a very beneficial effect upon the stomach, but it should not be taken every day. It is better to miss it every third day, or to take it regularly for a fortnight and then omit it from the next week's diet, as the too frequent use of it is rather injurious to the skin of some persons. Tea—not too strong—is better than coffee. Good ripe fruit is a capital adjunct to the breakfast-table, and is an excellent article of food.

Dinner.—Lamb, mutton, beef, fowl (tender and boiled), varied by fish, of which haddock, whiting, and soles are the best, with potatoes (well boiled, and not much of them), and well-cooked vegetables, followed by a small allowance of light farinaceous pudding or stewed fruit, will be a good, wholesome diet. If you want bread, have it stale. Never eat new bread. Avoid all sauces, or made dishes, and adhere to plain food only. One thing we would particularly impress upon the reader, and that is never to take his exercise immediately before or after meals, nothing is more injurious, or likely to produce indigestion, and its concomitant evils. Some authorities abjure the use of sugar, but taken in moderation it is not injurious. A well-known champion of our acquaintance,

when in the pink of condition, was wont to amuse himself by eating the contents of a sugar basin, if one were inadvertently left near him, and without feeling any ill effects from so doing. Our readers need not follow his example, for although it might suit him, it probably would not agree with them. We have said, take sugar in moderation. Now, in this last word lies all the lectures one can give on this subject. Be moderate in all things, one might say, but above all things be moderate in the use of all edibles not actually necessary to support the increased exertion which a man in training is called upon to perform. No liquid should be taken except with, or just after meals, but we would not advise stinting the quantity too much. In summer three or four pints, and in winter two or three pints per diem would be about the quantity. Never drink just before exercise, and it is better not to drink just before going to bed. In fact, the less one has to digest when retiring for sleep the better, and be sure not to drink tea late at night.

Tea, or supper, should be taken at least two hours before bedtime, and we would allow a small chop, or some light fish, bread, and very little butter, with some ripe fruit. The best meal to take before a race, and which should be taken about two hours before starting-time, is the lean of mutton-chops and a little dry toast. We have said that no liquids should be taken except at meal-times; but we do not intend to state that if a man be very thirsty he may not touch them. If he does so, it must be a very small quantity. Thirst can often be assuaged by rinsing the mouth out with cold water, and this is by far the better plan if it is efficacious.

A COMMON-SENSE SYSTEM.

One author says: "Rise at six; bathe; take about two ounces (a small cup) of coffee with milk: this is really a stimulating soup. Then light exercise, chiefly devoted to lungs; a little rest; the breakfast of meat, bread, or oatmeal, vegetables, with no coffee; an hour's rest. Then the heaviest exercise of the day. This is contrary to rule; but I believe the heaviest exercise should be taken before the heaviest meal; a rest before dinner. This meal, if breakfast be taken at seven or eight, should be at one or two, not leaving a longer interval than five hours between the meals. At dinner, again meat, vegetables, bread, perhaps a half-pint of malt liquor, no sweets. Then a longer rest; exercise till five. Supper light—bread, milk, perhaps with an egg. Half an hour later a cup of tea, and bed at nine."

J. B. O'REILLY.

Seven o'clock is a good time for an athlete in training to rise. He ought to get a good dry-rubbing, and then sponge his body with cold water, or have a shower-bath, with a thorough rubbing afterwards. He will then go out to exercise before breakfast, not to run hard, as is commonly taught, but to walk briskly for an hour, while exercising his lungs in deep-breathing. Before this walk, an egg in a cup of tea, or something of the kind, should be taken.

The breakfast need not always consist of a broiled mutton-chop or cutlet; a broiled steak, broiled chicken, or broiled fish, or some of each, may be taken with tea or coffee.

Dinner may be far more varied than is usually allowed by the trainer's "system." Any kind of butcher's meat, plainly cooked, with a variety of fresh vegetables, may be taken, with ordinary light puddings, stewed fruit, but no pastry. A good time for dinner is one o'clock.

An American athlete, when thirsty, ought to have only one drink—water. The climate and the custom in England favor the drinking of beer or claret; but, beyond question, the best drink for a man in training is pure water. After dinner, rest, but no dozing or siesta. This sort of rest only spoils digestion, and makes men feel slack and "limp."

Supper, at six o'clock, should not be a second dinner; but neither should it consist of "slops" or gruel. The athlete ought to be in bed by ten o'clock, in a room with open window, and a draught through the room, if possible, though not across the bed.

The American football captain or coach should bear in mind, when reading these various systems, that the use of ale and port seems to be much better borne by those who live in the English climate than upon this side of the water.

Also, that stiff exercise before breakfast has not been proven advantageous to our athletes except as a flesh-reducer, and then only in exceptionally vigorous constitutions.

Also, that tea is not as popular with us as with the men who train in England.

SLEEP AND CLEANLINESS.

To come to the third agent of health enumerated some pages back, Sleep. As a rule, it is not a difficult matter to see that members of a football team take the requisite amount of sleep. There are occasions, as in college, when some society event of unusual importance tempts the men to sit up late, but with such exceptions as these there is no great difficulty experienced in making the majority of the men keep good hours. And this is growing more and more simple as athletics become more general, for they take the place of much of the dissipation which was formerly the only outlet for the superabundant animal spirits of young men. In the case, however, of the occasional candidate for the team who comes under the captain's eye as inclined to late hours, there must be the strictest kind of discipline shown. Such a man is the very one whose stamina will be affected after a while by lack of sleep, and that too at a time when the rest of the men are nearing the perfection of condition. Thus he will be found falling off at the very time when it is a most serious matter very likely to fill his position with a new man. Eight or nine hours sleep should be insisted upon, and that sleep should be taken with regularity. In fact, not only the sleep, but the meals and the exercise, should all be made as nearly regular, regarding hours, as possible. Men should have separate rooms, and particularly when off upon trips they should not sleep together. Plenty of fresh air should be admitted to the sleeping-room, but draughts are to be avoided. This is not because every time the air blows upon a man he is liable to contract a severe cold, for the chances are against this, but because there are times when he is particularly prone to such an accident, and if he is in the habit of sleeping without regard to draughts it is not likely that he will take precautions then. If a man has, for instance, played an especially stiff game and upon a muggy and exhausting day, he will undoubtedly turn in thoroughly tired out, and perhaps still somewhat heated. Now if he, when in that state, sleeps in a draught, he will probably find himself very lame in the morning, even though he escape other more serious consequences. Just one more word of caution regarding sleep, and that is in the matter of obtaining a good night's rest just before the important match of the season. To insure this is to do much towards securing the best work of which the men are capable from the team upon the following day.

First and foremost, they should not be allowed to talk about the game or the signals or anything connected with football during that evening. If possible, they should do something to entirely divert their minds from all thought of the game. Nor should they be hustled off to bed an hour or two earlier than usual. Rather ought it to be a half-hour later, for then the chances are that the men drop off to sleep immediately instead of tossing about, thinking of the exciting event of the morrow.

Finally, as to overtrained men, and that restlessness and inability to sleep that almost always comes with the worst cases of this kind. There is but one thing to do with a man when he "goes fine" to this extent, and that is to sever his connection with the team for a time. If it is early in the season, there is some chance of his recuperating rapidly enough to still become serviceable. If it is late, there is no hope of this. In either case he must neither play, eat, nor spend his time with the members of the team. He can do almost anything else; he can go and watch the crew row or the ball nine play; he can study or read; he can, and in fact should, do everything possible to disassociate himself from football and violent exercise for a time, and, unless the trouble has gone too far, it will only be a couple of weeks before he will find himself coming out of it all right, and among the first signs will be good, refreshing sleep.

To pass now to the fourth of our agents for health, Cleanliness. It is fortunately seldom necessary to argue the advantages of the "tub" or "sponge bath" to our football players, because they are usually accustomed to it. A daily splashing has been their ordinary habit. It is well to mention also that a fortnightly warm bath may be indulged in to advantage. But with the present understanding of all these advantages, the wisest remarks that can be made are cautions as to indiscretions in the use of baths. In the first place, one bath a day is enough, and any other should be a mere sponging and rubbing. Men who indulge in a tub in the morning and then spend another fifteen minutes in a plunge after practice in the afternoon get too much of it. Again, the habit of spending a long time under the shower every day is a mistake. It feels so refreshing after a hard practice that a man is tempted to stay too long, and it does him no good. The best and safest plan is to take a light, quick sponge bath in the morning immediately upon rising, and then, after practice in the afternoon, to take just a moment under the shower, and follow it by a good rubbing. This, with the fortnightly warm bath, will be all that a man may do to advantage.

---