GYMNASTICS.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 275, 8 June 1860, Page 3

GYMNASTICS.

A well conducted gymnasium the pupil has, on. entering, each exercise adapted to his strength, however indifferent it may be—so that his muscular system' gradually strengthens and developes, as he acquires proficiency. He first accomplishes, after judicious training, one difficult feat, then performs another slightly more difficult, and so proceeds, step by step, until at last he swings heavy clubs, raises weighty dumb-bells, and vaults heights—the easiest of which appeared at the outset to be most difficult—with as much ease as he at first accomplished the simplest exercise. In the Gymnasium, No. 17, Lord-street, there is a dumb-bell weighing one hundred and forty pounds, which Huguenin was in the habit, some time ago, of raising, alternately with the right and left arm, slowly, and without a jerk, from the ground to the shoulder, and from the shoulder to the full extent of the arm above the head; and, indeed, some of the feats of strength performed by his most expert pupils, to the unpractised may seem almost beyond the prospect of belief. ' We have only space to mention a feat. One of the pupils, in trying his strength with some of the most powerful men employed about the Liverpool Docks, succeeded in raising, by the grasp, without having the weights secured to his arm or body, fourteen fifty-six pound weights, or seven hundredweight. Another raised a half-hundred-weight in each hand, one hundred and fifty times in an hour, from the ground to the full extent of the arms above the head. Another secured eight stone nine pounds to his feet, and raising himself by the strength of his arms from the ground, with the weight so attached, passed twice hand over hand, along the horzontal bar.

As an ordinary daily occurrence, several of the pupils are in the habit of raising two dumb bells, each weighing seventy pounds, from the ground to the shouHe*.*, and from the shoulder slowly to the full extent of the arms above the head, two or three times successively, and frequently eighty pounds in each hand are raised in the same way. One hundred pounds and upwards is also frequently raised with one arm. A Hercules, who exhibited a few years ago at the Amphitheatre in this town, measuring forty-five inches across the chest, and fifteen inches and a-halfacrossthearm, and weighing nearly thirteen stone (we perceive that Doctor Winship weighs only 143 pounds) used to astonish the public by raising himself with a finger of the right and left hand' alternately, but he was found to be inferior in strength in a general way to the most, expert pupils at Mons. Huguenin's Gymnasium.— Liverpool Albion.