V UC-NRLF SB MD 10 ^3" r- CM o AMERICAN PHYSICAL EDUCATION REVIEW THE PHYSICAL TEST OF AM AH; DR. D. A. SARGENT, CAMBRIDGE, One of the strongest of the natural forces with which man is constantly ivity, or the tendency of his body to be attracted and held to the surface of the earth. The infant first crawls, then creeps on its hands and knees, and finally by the aid of crib or tir or mother's assistance, gets onto his feet. The raising of the head, the jhtening of the spine, grasping with the hands and feet, and striking out and kicking with the arms and legs are only preliminary movements necessary to pre- pare for the standing position. All the twisting, rolling, wriggling, squirming, crawling, creeping, and occasional stiffen- ing and straightening of the trunk and limbs an infant can be induced to do, the better it will be for his future develop- ment. A child must first get a footing in the world and be able to move in the erect position before the adult may properly function as a human being. In other words, the child must pass in a few months from the animal stage of its existence where all its organic inher- itances for thousands of years had fitted its body to resist the force of gravity in a horizontal plane, to a vertical posi- tion where gravity acts in a perpendicular plane. Is it any wonder that over 75 per cent of our youth of both sexes have a bad posture, and that so few ever attain the ability to meet this compar- atively new strain the ability to sit and stand erect? If there is any doubt as to the serious- ness of failing to measure up to this test of young manhood, ask your physician as to the fundamental causes of the follow- ing list of physical imperfections : spinal curvature, knock knees, bow legs, flat feet, drooping head, round shoulders, weak backs, varicose veins, hernia, sag- ging of the abdominal organs, misplace- ment of the pelvic organs, and many other physical weaknesses and defects which afflict mankind. These prevailing weaknesses are mainly due to the failure of the body to make provision to resist this constant force of ravity to pull us down irom our top- lofty, vertical position to a horizontal plane. We pay our respect to this natural force by availing ourselves of every op- portunity to lean, sit, and recline at our work throughout the day, and we finally yield to it completely by assuming a horizontal position for sleep at night. Many of these bodily weaknesses and imperfections to which I have refe have arisen largely from civilized man's neglect to care for the form and sti of his bodily mechanism 'as an African Zulu or Sandwich Islander would do. Instead of priding himself upon his ity to sit straight without support for !.. spine and legs, as, shown by many of the savage tribesmen, civilized man It riates in upholstered chairs and loun^ moulded to his physical defects, and then wonders why he has a weak back and can not stand in a vertical position. Yet the ability to stand erect, thereby relieving the arms and hands from sup- porting the body, and conserving their strength to be directed into self-chosen activities constitutes man's supreme in- heritance. How is this ability attained? By gradually strengthening and developing the muscles all up and down the front and back of the trunk and legs. These muscles hold the body balanced in perfect equilibrium over the two feet, which, in length and breadth taken tog< '' erage about one-sixth the perpendicular height. When the body is thus accurately balanced on the bones of the le"^ - spine, gravity is acting parallel with th< bones, and consequently the strain is taken largely from the muscles and thrown onto the bones and ligaments. If one relaxes from this vertical posi- tion, and stands with the body flexed or bent forward at the knees, hips, back, and neck, the strain is then brought upon the muscles and after a little while the ef of standing becomes intolerable. But strain or pain means loss of power and energy. This is the reason why a perfect poise in standing or sitting is the most 78X689 economical-position th.-i.r can be main- tained. Although; the. ability of a man to stand on hjfsvi$Sfe awd maintain perfect poise is of vital importance, it is not the only requisite. He has other things to do. iod of youth, wnne one is acquiring ms siaiui should be used so as to stimulate the growth force, not to retard it, as is often done by keeping children too long on their feet either in working or playing. It is better to continually fall and try to rise again than to remain standing too long. A young man having acquired full stature, and learned to stand and sit cor- rectly in defiance of the laws of gravity, must generate still more force and let gravity act in harmony with his phys- iological necessities and his mental and physical desires. In other words, he must add to his weight as well as his height be- fore he can cut any figure in the world, bear his own burdens, fight his own bat- tles, and render service to others. This means that he must extend his growth force and developmental energies into body breadths, depths, and thicknesses as determined by given measurements, as well as into lengths or vertical directions. The only way of adding effective weight is through the development of the mus- cles which constitute nearly 50 per cent of all the tissues of the normal man. and determine to a large extent the size and function of the other organs. By this use of the term muscle, I do not refer to the large superficial voluntary mus- cles only, but to the muscles of digestion, circulation respiration, glandular organs, special senses, etc. The only way that any muscle tissue may be developed is through the activities ; and our respon- sibility for the proper training, nutrition, and consequent development of this part of our anatomy is great indeed. The primary object of all the efforts of physical education through athletic games, sports, plays, and general gym- nastics, is to add to the power and ef- ficiency of mind and body through the agency of the muscular system. This efficiency is determined largely, I shall hope to show, through the intimate re- lation of body height and weight. These two factors are always taken into con- sideration in publishing the names of players on the great football teams, boat crews, and in other athletic organizations. Why? Simply because in a vague way. there is thought to be a correlation be- tween the height and weight and a man's physical efficiency. Up to the normal sd to increase with his height and weight. Men are matched in boxing, wrestling, and tug-of-war contests according to their weights, such as lightweights, 135 pounds; middleweights, 160 pounds: heavyweights, 175 pounds; etc. In box- ing and wrestling, at least, this weight classification is further refined by hav- ing a bantam-weight class of 115, a featherweight class of 125, a welter- weight class of 145, and a heavyweight class for all men over 175 Ibs. No team, crew or individual contest- ants would be considered well-matched if they had to give or accept much dif- ference in weight from their opponents. So we find in studying the characteristics of different types of athletes and gym- nasts that variations in stature or total height, sitting height, height of knee, and relative length of trunk and limbs, tend to favor different classes of athletic per- formers. As a rule, the oarsman is favored by having a long body and relatively short legs ; the middle distance runner, jumper, and hurdler by having long legs and a relatively short body ; the gymnasts by having short arms ; and the heavy lifter by having short thighs. And so through the whole range of athletic specialists, each gains some mechanical advantage from the development that is peculiar to him. Woman's incapacity for certain kinds of physical activities as compared with man's arises largely from the fact that she is on* the average 25 pounds lighter and five inches shorter than he is. The whole Japanese race averages only five feet four inches in stature, due largely to their relatively short legs that have undoubtedly been made so by their long- continued racial habit of sitting on their heels with their legs sharply bent under them. These facts and many more have come to us through our studies in an- thropometry and the classification of physical measurements. Age. sex. and race are rightly con- IMEKIC.-IX PHYSICAL EDUCATION REVIEW sidered the dominant factors in evaluat- ing any body measurements, and the height, weight, and chest girth are ad- mittedly the most important of these measurements. Moreover, there is a probable standard of height, weight, and chest girth for every age, each sex and all the different races. These facts are known in a general way by those whose business it is to make physical examina- tions, such as surgeons in the army and navy, life-insurance examiners, and physicians who examine school and col- lege students, candidates for civil service, and employees in all the different trades and industries where physical conditions are now being taken into consideration. So. in theory at least, it may be well said in support of the relationship of bodily measurements and vital functions "that the greater advance we may make in inquiries of this nature, the more per- fectly is the law of proportion that gov- erns the typical man demonstrated ; ren- dering it equally apparent how undue or imperfect development of any one organ or function throws the remaining or- ganism out of gear, and constitutes a greater or less tendency to disease." In popular estimation it takes so many inches and so many pounds and a certain size chest girth to'make a man, and this estimation is borne out largely by expe- rience. Hence, the universal interest in the physical measurements of the human body. However, those of us who are engaged in making physical measure- ments of men by the thousand soon learn the limitations of the information which comes to us from this source alone. While it is true that the strength and functional capacity of a part generally increases with the size of that part, other things being equal, the number of cases where other things are not equal is so numerous that the generalization should be greatly modified. The measurements alone do not tell us anything of the texture and quality of the parts covered, i.e., how much is fat or bone, and how much muscle, nor do the measurements alone give us any informa- tion of innervation of the parts, upon which power and efficiency so frequently depend. Even if we accept the physical measurements of a man as an indication of his potential power, as so many of us almost intuitively do. we are soon taught by experience that there is in many men an unknown equation which makes lor power and efficiency which has never been determined and which can only lie measured by an actual test. The important question is, what is this unknown equation and how can it be simply and practically tested and nu- merically expressed ? "With a good many others, I have been wrestling with this problem for years by the way of strength tests, endurance tests, speed tests, eU\, but have never come across any one that satisfied me or quite met the demands of the situation. It is said that every pioneer or inventor or discoverer, if he fives long enough, goes through three stages in his career. The first one is where his prop- ositions are unfounded and absurd; the second stage is where if proven true, they are not original ; and the third stage is where they are so self-evident that any fool ought to have thought of them. I have now arrived at the third stage in my career, and want to share. what seems to me the simplest and most effective of all tests of physical ability with the other fools who have been 'looking for one. I have dwelt at some length upon gravity as a constant force to be overcome and its relation to the height and weight and other measurements of the body. The new test that I offer consists of using the constant factors of height and weight which one always has with him. in a little different way than is commonly thought of. It is so simple and yet so effective for testing the strongest man or weakest woman or child that one feels almost like apologizing to the general public for mentioning it. THE NEW TEST. The individual to be tested stands un- der a cardboard disk, or paper b*ox cover, heavy and stiff enough to hold its form, about twelve inches in diameter, held or suspended from ten to twenty or more inches above his head. He is then re- quested to bend forward, flexing the trunk, knees, and ankles, and then by a powerful jump upward, straightening the legs and spine, to try to touch the card- board disk with the top of the head. Swinging the bent arms forward and tip- E PHYSICAL 7 OF A MAX ward at the time the legs, back, and neck are extended, will be found to add to the height of the jump. When the disk has been placed at the highest point above the head that can be just touched in iumping, this height is measured. The difference between this height and that of the total stature is of course the height actually jumped. Xow, if this height is multiplied into the total weight of the body at the time of making the jump, it will give one some idea of the amount of work done in foot pounds as usually calculated. But it will be observed, no credit is given for lifting the full weight of the body from the deep knee or squatting position to the per- pendicular standing position, which difference represents about half the height. The total work depends upon how heavy and how tall the individual is. Thus, if a man weighs 150 pounds and is 70 inches tall, one-half of that height would be 35 inches, which, multiplied into the full weight and divided by 12 (to reduce inches to feet) would equal 43? foot pounds, thus : Formula A = Weight X Half the Height - -43. P.P. In estimating work done outside of the body, this amount of energy expended is not always taken into consideration as power expended. In the new test, how- ever, an individual must not only do a certain amount of work in physical effort in rising from the crouching attitude to the perpendicular position, but he must generate force enough to project his body 10, 20, or 30 inches into the air, above the height attained in the standing posi- tion. If this person weighing 150 pounds should jump 20 inches above his height, this weight multiplied by 20 and divided by 12 would equal 250 F. P. thus: Formula B = Weight X Height Jumped _ 12 This amount of work done would be acceptable according to the usual meth- ods of estimating man power. Both the A and B formulae are frequently used for tests of the physical basis of effi- ciency. The height jumped will depend deal upon the length of the leg: an exact ratio of the height jumped to the stature would seem to make the test more equitable. Thus, if the man weigh- ing 150 pounds was 70 inches tall and jumped 20 inches above his head, the ratio of 20 to 70 would account for this advantage in height. This ratio may be obtained bv the following formula : Formula C Height Jumped >; 100 _ Total Height Although the formulae A, B. and C are interesting in enabling one to account for his efficiency or deficiency in the test, these formulae may be dispensed with in favor of one including the three impor- tant factors which we are considering. If then, in the new test we multiply the total weight by the height jumped' and divide this product by the total height of the person in inches the result will give a fair index of the effort made in the small- est number of figures. This is always an advantage in making a test and handling the data for statistical purposes. Thus if the individual tested weighed 150 pounds and jumped 20 inches above his head and was 70 inches tall, the formula for his efficiency index would be as follows : Index Weight X Jump _150 X 20 _ ^ ^ Height or Stature" 70 As an example of the way this formula works out in practice, I have selected the first ten pupils graded according to this test from the Sargent School of some four hundred pupils. It must be borne in mind that none of the girls had any pre- liminary practice for this particular test, other than that which comes to them in their regular school work. \Yith the freshmen at least it was largely a ques- tion of natural ability. < See Table I.) Xo. 1 is a vigorous athletic girl, being fit.r> inches in height and 152 pounds in weight. She jumps >( inches above her head which is .300 of her height, does 253 foot pounds of work (as shown by multiplying her weight by the height jumped and dividing that AMERICA* PHYSICAL EDUCATION REl'lEW TABLE I. FIRST TEN* OUT OF FOUR HUNDRED TESTED AT THE SARGENT SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. Ratio Jump to Height 1. L.V. M. Jun. 20 20 !. M. N. G. Sen. 3. M.E.W. 4. M. J. O. Jun. 5. H.W. Sen. 15.3 6. M. E. F. Fresh. 1' '. J.I.J. Fresh. 14 8. E. M. B. Sen. 9. H.A. B. Fi 10. B. S. Fresh. 18 17.5 Average &* "* product by 12) and has an energy index of 45. No. 2 has an energy index of 43.2. Although she is shorter and lighter than some of her mates and does less foot pounds of work than four others in the group, she lifts her weight higher in pro- portion to her height, and therefore gets a high score. She is an earnest student and a good all-round athlete, but not a star. No. 3 is the star athlete of her class, excelling especially in running and jump- ing. In this test she jumps 20.5 inches above her height, but she is 4.5 inches taller than No. 2 and does not lift her weight as high in proportion to her height. No. 4 although of the same weight as Nos. 2 and 3, and jumping the same pro- portion of her height as the girl above her, does not jump as high and therefore gets a little lower index. No. 5 jumps nearly five inches less than those who have preceded her, but she is a strong husky girl weighing 176 pounds and to raise this weight a less height requires a high index. No. 6 has the same index as No. 5, al- though she is 3.i> inches shorter and weighs 31 pounds less. She makes up for this difference in weight and height by jumping an inch and a half higher, and jumping a greater per cent of her height. Xo. 7 is the heaviest girl in the school, weighing 196 pounds, and is 68 inches in height. As might be expected she jumps the least height of any in the group, and the least percentage of her own height. But she projects 196 pounds fourteen inches above her head and thereby does 240 foot pounds of work, which 'makes her the second strongest one on the list. No. 8, although she lac 1 - * u ~~ ^* ical advantage in height thai a gin ui u< or 68 inches would possess, and has the least advantage in weight of any in the group, still manages to project her 117.5 pounds 20.5 inches above her head, which is the highest ratio of her < of any in the group (.333). quite strong for her hei^ very energetic she also has the distinc- tion of being the highest ranking scholar in her class. The records of Nos. 9 and 10 are self-explanatory. They are girls of fine natural physiques, ^good athletes, superior to the average in height and weight, and will show a much higher in- dex after a little more training. I have commented upon the variations in physique as shown by the height and weight in these seven individuals, be- cause these variations illustr; pensating nature of the t< variation of 7.4 inches in height and 78.5 pounds in weight, there is little dif in their physical ability as showi test, as all were able to make ten in the school. 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CHICAGO, ILL. height and length of limb, she makes up in strength, speed, and energy ; what an- other lacks in weight she makes up in height and energy ; what still another one lacks in energy and speed she makes up in superior height, strength, and "weight ; while still another who lacks both in height and weight has to make up for this deficiency by greater determination, will power, nerve force, or some other unknown quality, that makes for physical efficiency. If any one of the factors chosen for the formula had been adopted as a standard, it would have brought a little different type of girl to the front. This is shown by the following table : TABLE II. STANDING OI 'IRST TEN ACCORDING TO OTH WEIGHT, ETC. ACTORS AS, JUMP, HEIGHT, . V. M. 2. M. M. G 3. M. E. W 4. M. J. O. 5. H. W. 6. M. E. F. 7- J. I. J. 8. E. M. B. 9. H. A. B. 10. B. S. 1. M. E. W 2. E. M. B. 3. L. V. M. 4. M. M. G 5. M. J. O. 6. B. S. 7. M. E. F. 8. H. A. B. 9. H. W. 10. J. I. J. 1. J. I. J. 2. H. A. B. 3. L. V. M. 4. M. E. W 5. B. S. 6. H. W. 7. E. M. B. 8. M. M. G. 9. M. E. F. Ratio of Jump to Heigh 1. E. M. B. J. M. M. G. 3. M. E. W 4. M. I. O. 5. L. V. M. 6. B. S. 7. M. E. F. S. H. W. 9. H. A. B. 10. J.I. J. Foot Pounds 3. M. E. \V 4. H. W. 5. M. M. G, 6. M. J. O. 7. H. A. B. S. B. S. 9. M. E. F. 10. E. M. B. AMERICAN PHYSICAL EDUCATION REVIEW It will be observed by referring to Table II, that, if the height of the jump had been the only factor considered M. E. W. and E. M. B. would have come to the front as 1 and 2 ; or if height and weight had been the prime factors, J. I. J., who was 10 in the jump, would have been put in the first place. If the height jumped in proportion to her own height had been accepted as the final test, E. M. B. would have reached first place, though she ranked 10 in weight and strength. Then again, if foot pounds of work done, as usually calculated had been adopted as the standard, J. I. J. would have come up from tenth place in height really jumped and ratio of height jumped to second place. The foot-pound formula is perhaps the best test for real strength and gives the taller and heavier girls a decided advantage. It must be admitted, however, that the three girls who come the nearest to the front in all the factors that make up the test are those that stand 1, 2. and 3, ac- cording to the index adopted. What this index as thus obtained really indicates is a question that may well engage our at- tention. First, no one would deny that- the abil- ity to project one's weight 20 or 30 inches into the air, against the force of gravity requires strength on the part of the muscles engaged in the effort. No one would deny that the effort would have to be made with a certain degree of velocity or speed in order to create impetus enough to carry the body twenty inches above its own level in the standing position. Further, no one would deny that back of the requisite strength of muscle fibers and rapidity with which they are made to contract there must be energy, "pep," "vim/' vitality, or what- ever it may be termed which drives our internal machinery. Overlapping all, qf course, is the skill or dexterity with which the jump is executed. v I think, therefore, that the test whole may be considered as a momentary try-out of one's strength, speed, energy and dexterity combined, which, in my opinion, furnishes a fair physical test of a man, and solves in a simple way his unknown equation as determined poten- tially by his height and weight. It will be observed that the parts tested, namely, the muscles of the feet, calves, thighs, buttocks, back, neck, anterior deltoid, chest, and biceps are the muscles most used in all forms of athletics, sports, track and field games, setting, up ex- ercises, posture drills, etc., and are of fundamental importance in all the active industries. For this reason, I think it should precede any other all-round phys- ical test in basic value. In presenting this paper for discussion, I have intentionally narrowed myself down to a consideration of the factors in- volved in making the test, omitting the experience that has led up to it, and the application that may be made of it, and the method of conducting it. To those who wish to try the exper- iment, I would suggest that the jump be made in gymnasium slippers or at least in shoes with low heels, and as the fac- tors, weight, height, and height jumped are to be multiplied and divided in the calculation, that all the measurements be made with the greatest accuracy. If the test is of any- value, then the standardization of it, and the collection of different data concerning it will, of course, be of the greatest importance, and follow naturally for the benefit of those who want to make use of it.