A Program For Physical Fitness

Medical science and experience, then, have taught that a definite daily health program is absolutely essential for success and happiness. Physical fitness cannot be achieved without real and continuous effort. It requires a lot of willpower to carry through on a rigid unexciting health program day after day, year after year. The reward, however, is great, and once you have really felt the pleasure of physical fitness, tasted its immeasurable rewards, you will never again be willing, for long, to suffer the discomfort and weariness of physical unfit-ness. I know whereof I speak, for I have practiced daily exercise since the days of my youth.

The following program for physical fitness has been developed over a period of almost fifty years. It started in September of 1912 when I became a student in the preparatory department at Grandview College in Des Moines, Iowa, at that time a Danish-Lutheran College and Theological Seminary. Physical fitness was a matter of prime importance at Grandview. We were taught the vital importance of body care - in all its aspects - and an hour a day of Danish gymnastics was required of all students, men and women, unless excused by doctor's orders.

After five years at Grandview, the basic elements of Danish gymnastics - thoroughly drilled into me by expert teachers from Denmark - were an integral part of my daily routine, and I have practiced a simple program of bodily fitness quite faithfully ever since.

Here, then, is the program for physical fitness which I have followed down through the years; a program which has done so much for me in my efforts to keep my body healthy and vigorous.

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