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MY BREATHING SYSTEM

The Great Mistake of Swedish Drill.

As already mentioned, we ought to use thc clavicular or upper-chest breathing to a high degree, in order to bring the upper lobes into activity, which is important for preventing phthisis or consumption. But it is a very serious mistake to cndeavour to carry out all the deep-breathing by forward arching of the chest. Xevertheless, you will frnd this mistake both in the text and the diagrams of most books on Swedish gymnastics, or based on Swedish principles. A good carriage of the body is a splendid thing, but the Swedish system proves that it is possible to exaggerate the carriage to such a degree that other things of morę importance are almost forgotten. The upper-chest arching is assumed to improve the carriage, and is, therefore, recommended, while the natural form of breathing is suppressed. And, eveu in generał, rcspiration is thc Cinderella of the Swedish system. Take, for instance, “ Haandbog i Gymnastik ” (Manuał of Gymnastics), compiled by the “ Board of Gymnastics,” Copenhagen (the Board consisting of a professor of the university, tw^ro municipal doctors, a mili tary doctor, two officers, and a gymnastic director, from the institute at Stockholm). The book, which professes to be an improve-ment on the Swedish system, has 476 pages, and all sorts of muscular exercises are abundantly described and illustrated. But the chapter on “ breathing exercises ” consists only of one very smali half-page without a single illustration. In a few lines, a sort of upper-chest inhalation is described, but there is nothing at all mentioned about exhalation; the very word is not to be found in the whole book !

Considering, iirstly, that the breathing is the most important factor of every kind of physical exercise and training, and, secondly, that deep exhalation is of still morę importance than deep inhalation, the above-stated fact is very curious.