Alan Calvert, The Man of Thirty: Can He Improve Physically?

Three or four centuries ago, some lawyers in Europe decided that a man was legally of age when he became 21 years old. Apparently, the reasoning was that a youth of 21 had acquired sufficient experience and judgment to manage his own affairs.

It is a peculiar fact that thousands of people today believe that a man stops growing physically at the age of 21; that for some mysterious reason he cannot gain in height, weight, or measurements after twelve midnight on his 21st birthday. I am perfectly willing to admit that very few people grow in height after they are 21. Most people reach their full height at the age of 18 or 19; some few continue to grow in height after they are 21, but the percentage is very, very small.

Most youths who have gained rapidly in height between the ages of 15 and 19 will, between the ages of 19 and 23, broaden out and gain considerably in weight. If an individual between the ages of 16 and 23 will take systematic exercise of the right kind, he can greatly aid the natural growth and “broadening-out” process. This does not mean, however, that improvement cannot be made after the age of 23.

Trainers of athletes will tell you that at about the age of 25, a man will commence to lose his speed. Most 100-yard sprinters stay at the top of the heap for three years at most; usually every second summer sees a new set of champion sprinters. (So far as I know, only one sprinter has ever won the 100-yard dash two Olympic games in succession.)

The middle-distance runner will sometimes last four to six years in the championship class. Long-distance runners will go for eight or possibly ten years.

Now let us turn to field sports. A jumper can remain in the championship class eight to twelve years. A weight-thrower, fifteen to twenty years. George R. Gray, of Canada, the first great American shot-putter, won the championship about a dozen years in succession. Big Jim Mitchell was the great hammer-thrower of the nineties, and he won the championship regularly year after year until Flanagan came along, and he lasted about ten years until McGrath beat him. Moreover, Flanagan and Mitchell were both better hammer-throwers and finer athletes at 35 than they were at 25 years.

Formerly, a man was not considered to be in the “prime of life” until he was 40. At that age, he was supposed to unite the greatest physical and mental powers. It is a known fact that a man can, at the age of 40, perform just as great feats of strength and endurance as he could at the age of 25, providing that he has lived an active life.

Of course, a man who sits in an office all day, and cultivates a “bay window,” is not much good physically, at the age of 40.

William Tuerk, of Vienna, was, at the age of 30, persuaded by some friends to take up heavyweight lifting. At first a man of only moderate ability, Tuerk improved rapidly, and at the age of 40, he created a record in the two-arm jerk, which stood for nearly seven years. I have known many other cases where men of 30 have taken up heavy work and not only improved their health but have, at the age of 35, been infinitely better built, stronger, and more active than they were at 25.

Hard work, intelligently directed, is what builds a man up, and it does not matter so very much whether the work is done indoors or outdoors. When I consider the thousands upon thousands of men who have tried to build themselves up by light exercise and have failed, I can understand the current belief that improvement is impossible after a man is 25 or 30 years old. I myself think that a man would have to do an immense quantity of light work to make any appreciable change in his physique after the age of 25. Graded heavy work, however, is a different matter. If you do heavy work regularly, you will soon show Nature that there is a demand for the kind of muscle that can stand heavy work, and Nature will respond by furnishing such muscle.

Suppose a 30-year-old friend of yours, in bad health, was to spend a winter in a logging camp in Michigan. Suppose on his return he told you that he had chopped down trees every day, that he had lived, eaten, and slept in the open air, and that by so doing he had become about three times as strong as he was before, and had gained 30 or 40 pounds of solid muscle. You would undoubtedly believe him—but you might make the mistake of thinking that all the gain was made because your friend lived in the open air. Fresh air alone will not make a man strong. If it did, every chauffeur, every letter carrier, and most farmers would be perfect Samsons. A man who builds himself up by spending the winter in a logging camp builds up because he has done more and harder muscular work than ever before in his life, and the improved digestion and enhanced vigor is due to the hard work rather than to the outdoor life.

If a man of 30 is willing to put in two or three hours a week of good hard practice, he can build up in his own bedroom just about as rapidly as his friend did in Michigan; possibly more rapidly, for the man training in his own bedroom can use his judgment and stop work when he commences to get tired, whereas the man in the logging camp has to keep on working until his foreman tells him to quit.

A man in a logging camp uses all his muscles; he swings a heavy axe; he pulls and pushes at one end of a big two-man saw; he helps roll enormous logs onto sledges; and he carries small logs on his shoulders, or staggers along supporting one end of a big log. That kind of work uses the back and legs and shoulders and is bound to make a man strong all over. Contrast this kind of work with the exercise taken by a businessman in his own room, who for 10 minutes every day swings a pair of wooden dumbbells, or pulls at the end of a couple of rubber cords, and puts almost all the work on his arms and shoulders. Is it any wonder that the man doing the heavier work builds up, and the man who does the light work fails to improve? When will men learn that a moderate amount of graded heavy work will build a man up; that big powerful muscles have to work against big resistance to be properly exercised; that exercises which call into play the big, powerful waist, back, and leg muscles are far more important to a man’s health, endurance, and vitality than calisthenic movements which put only a very slight tax on the muscles of the arms and shoulders?

Frequently men write me and say that they have practiced light work for years, and they are dissatisfied and would like to improve further. To prove that they are in earnest, they state that they don’t smoke, nor drink; that they eat vegetables, fruit, and nuts; that they don’t do this, and they don’t do that; they take long walks daily; and they live as much in the open air as possible. That sort of life may lead to moderate health, but it does not lead to the abounding health and vigor which accompanies a superbly developed body.

If a man is willing to practice hard, I don’t object to his smoking one or two cigars a day, nor to taking a glass of beer or wine occasionally. I most positively do not approve of anyone smoking two or three packs of cigarettes, or a dozen strong cigars a day; nor do I approve of swilling beer all day long, or of taking a dozen drinks of whiskey between sunrise and sunset. But I would rather have a pupil who smoked in moderation, occasionally took a drink, and who was willing to work hard when he did work, and to study the exercises—than to have a pupil who don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat meat, don’t get his hair cut, and who cannot see the value of performing the exercises in any other than a mechanical way.

My greatest trouble is in convincing some of my pupils that taking 15-mile walks three times a week is not the way to build up big powerful leg muscles, and that to get up at the screech of dawn and put in 90 minutes at light exercise before breakfast is not the proper way to build up a superbly muscled body.

But to get back to the man of thirty. Blaikie, one of the earliest authorities on physical culture, cites the case of Professor McLarren, who, in the course of a season’s mountain climbing in the Alps, increased the girth of his calves over an inch, his thighs over 2 inches, and his chest 3 inches. There is no work much harder than mountain climbing. It requires a strong back and legs and makes the lungs work so vigorously that the chest is increased in size. Almost any man of 30 could build himself up by a few weeks’ hard mountain climbing.

Unfortunately, we cannot all spend winters in logging camps, or summers in the Alps. Most of us are lucky if we get a couple of weeks’ vacation; but all who wish can get most of the benefits of a logging camp and a season in the mountains by taking a moderate amount of heavy work in their own homes.

Source: Calvert, Alan. “The Man of Thirty: Can He Improve Physically?” Strength, November 1915, 3–5.