Magic of the medicine ball

[samurai69]

Magic of the Medicine Ball




by Gene Tunney
1926-28 Heavyweight Champion

Munsey's Magazine
June, 1929


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Often the simplest things do us the most good. That is, if we know how to use them and teach ourselves to use them faithfully. There's the rub.

We all want to be perfect, or as near perfection as human nature will let us be, but we expect to make a difficult job of it and we are apt to shy away from the simple, easy work and play that will build up and fortify us for the business of living. A fat friend asked me what was the best way for him to get rid of his fat.

I replied:


'It doesn't matter whether you diet it off, or walk it off, or swim it off, or ride it off with a horse, or get it off by sawing wood. First you have to get it off up here'

and I pointed to his forehead.

I might have pointed to his heart, too; for it is the combination of what we find is right and our heart to go and do it that builds us up, helps us to do the best work and have the most fun. And many a time we can do wonders for ourselves with something that looks easy, looks like mere play.

Take the medicine ball, for example. Two men, or boys, or girls, if they will not play too hard or too long, can make robust athletes of themselves with such a simple thing as the medicine ball. You don't need to have a fancy gymnasium, crowded with expensive machines - just take a simple medicine ball and a clear-cut plan, and go through with them, The results will surprise you.

Strength, suppleness, skill in balance and a great increase in endurance will come to all who use the medicine ball properly. Exercise in moderation always, especially at first.

When you think how many centuries this easy way of training mind and body has been known, you can't help wondering why all the people of the world are not using it to-day and making themselves strong with healthy play. You may be surprised to find that the Arabs knew the principle of the medicine ball long before our ancestors were civilized, although they may not have used the ball itself in the form in which we know it. But they had the idea and used it.

I found the story long ago in the first chapter of The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, a careful translation by Oriental scholars, published in 1877. It tells of an ancient ruler of Persia,


'King Yoonan, powerful and rich, but afflicted with leprosy, which the physicians and sages had failed to remove; neither their potions, nor powders, nor ointments were of any benefit to him.'


Here is what happened, according to the chronicle:

At length there arrived at the city of the king a great sage, stricken in years, who was called the sage Dooban: he was acquainted with ancient Greek, Persian, Arabic, and Syriac books, and with medicine and astrology; as well as with the properties of plants, dried and fresh, the injurious and the useful; he was versed in the wisdom of the philosophers, and embraced a knowledge of all the medical and other sciences.

Dooban said:


'O, king, I have heard of the disease which hath attacked thy person; and I will cure thee without giving thee to drink any potion or anointing thee with ointment.'

When King Yoonan heard these words, he wondered, and said to him:


'How wilt thou do this? By Allah, if thou cure me, I will enrich thee and thy children's children, and I will heap favors upon thee, and whatever thou shalt desire shall be thine, and thou shalt be my companion and my friend.'

He then bestowed upon him a robe of honor and other presents, and said to him:


'Wilt thou cure me of this disease without potion or ointment?'

He answered:


'Yes, I will cure thee without any discomfort to thy person.'

And the king was extremely astonished, and said:


'O, sage, at what time and on what day shall that which thou hast proposed to me be done? Hasten it, O, my son.'

He answered:


'I hear and obey.'

He then went out from the presence of the king and hired a house, in which he deposited his books and medicines and drugs. Having done this, he selected certain of his medicines and drugs, and made a goff-stick, with a hollow handle, into which he introduced them; after which he made a ball for it, skillfully adapted; and on the following day, after he had finished these, he went again to the king, and kissed the ground before him, and directed him to repair to the horse-course, and to play with the ball and goff-stick.

The king, attended by his emirs and chamberlains and viziers, went thither, and, as soon as he arrived there, the sage Dooban presented himself before him, and handed to him the goff-stick, saying:


'Take the goff-stick, and grasp it thus, and ride along the horse-course, and strike the ball with it with all thy force, until the palm of thy hand and thy whole body become moist with perspiration, when the medicine will penetrate into thy hand, and pervade thy whole body; and when thou hast done this, and the medicine remains in thee, return to thy palace, and enter the bath and wash thyself, and sleep; then shalt thou find thyself cured; and peace be upon thee.'

So King Yoonan took the goff-stick from the sage, and grasped it in his hand, and mounted his horse; and the ball was thrown before him, and he urged his horse after it, when he struck with all his force; and when he had continued this exercise as long as was necessary, and bathed and slept, he looked upon his skin, and not a vestige of the leprosy remained: it was white as clear silver. Upon this he rejoiced exceedingly; his heart was dilated, and he was full of happiness.

On the following morning he entered the council chamber, and sat upon his throne; and the chamberlains and great officers of his court came before him. The sage Dooban also presented himself; and when the king saw him he rose to him in haste, and seated him by his side. Services of food were then spread before them, and the sage ate with the king, and remained as his guest all the day; and when the night approached, the king gave him two thousand pieces of gold, besides dresses of honor and other presents, and mounted him on his own horse, and so the sage returned to his house.

And the king was astonished at his skill, saying:


'This man hath cured me by an external process, without anointing me with ointment; by Allah, this is consummate science; and it is incumbent on me to bestow favors and honors upon him, and to make him my companion and familiar friend as long as I live.'

There you have the medicine ball idea, even though the Arabian romancer conceals it under the queer name of 'goff-stick.' You will notice that, although he hit with the goff-stick, the game that King Yoonan played was really polo, which originated in Asia so far back that the wisest scholars can't tell when it began.

Too bad there is not space here to tell how Devereux Milburn revolutionized that prehistoric game by making a mid-iron shot with his polo mallet, thus lofting the ball over the heads of those who tried to stop it and shooting as many goals as he liked, and making Americans the polo champions for years. The point we are interested in is that King Yoonan really was cured by hearty exercise, while the Arabian romancer invented all the stuff about drugs in the hollow of the stick just to make the story more mysterious and therefore more fascinating.

What makes the medicine ball attract all of us is that it combines work and play perhaps in about as high a degree as any other exercise. If you have never had fun with a medicine ball, this may surprise you.

Any game becomes fascinating if we play it in a spirit of fun and for all it is worth - even such slow stuff as dumb-bells and chest weights. The spirit is the thing. And with the medicine ball you can find more amusing things to do than I can begin to set down here.

While we are on the subject, let me beg you to be sure you are having fun, no matter what kind of exercise you are taking. Once your mind drops down to a mere mechanical routine of ten swings this way and ten swings that way, your work becomes deadly dull and depressing. But keep yourself and your partner keyed up with the spirit of play as well as the spirit of competition, and you will profit by everything you do.

You will notice that the sage Dooban did not give King Yoonan slow and uninteresting work to do. He put him into a game of polo, which is one of the most exciting sports in the world. I wish you could see the picture of that health-giving game in my old book, with King Yoonan on a dashing white steed walloping the ball for a goal in spite of the efforts of the other side to ride him off.

If the king had been set at some slow, monotonous job, he would never have got much benefit out of the exercise. Dooban was a wise old man, and they did well to call him a sage; for he knew his psychology, knew that the mind and spirit of man have more to do with good health than mere toil with muscles and tendons. That is why he took pains to provide the sick king with sport that swept him out of himself, so that he forgot all about his troubles. That is the sort of thing we should always try for in our exercises - for the great American reason: it pays.

Pick your medicine ball to suit your strength - then take one that is a pound or two lighter than that. It is a natural ambition that prompts us to tackle a task too heavy for our strength, but we must hold that ambition in check or it will do us harm. When I was a youngster, a teacher of athletics caught me one day lifting a fifty-pound bar-bell.

He mockingly asked me:


'What are you training for - to be a piano-mover? Use light weights and work for speed. That heavy stuff will make you muscle-bound. Go lively with light weights, speed them up, with plenty of turning and twisting, and you'll develop strength in your heart and insides that will last all your life.'

I have never forgotten that wise advice.

Most of you know the principal plays with the medicine ball: to pass it with a full-arm swing, as they used to pass a football awhile ago; to push it from the shoulder, as you put the shot; to raise it overhead as far as you can stretch your arms, swoop down and throw it backward between your knees; to raise it high as possible overhead and shoot it from player to player by pushing the hands from the wrists; to swing it back over the head, full-arm, and throw it as far as possible. Every one of these exercises flexes the abdominal muscles, and those that make you twist around are stimulating to the liver. The medicine ball is great for sedentary workers.

That high wrist shot with the ball is a dandy. Whether two or three play it, or half a dozen in a circle, you'll find it one of the greatest laugh provokers. To keep your arms away above the head is easy at first, but it grows harder by the minute - yes, by the second.

Then watch the fellows wriggle and twist and make funny faces as they try to keep their arms on high and thus stay in the charmed circle. If you could see yourself in a mirror while doing this, you'd laugh for the rest of the day. The man who keeps his arms up to the finish, when all the rest have dropped out, is, of course, the winner. And every player has fortified his stomach, inside and out.

Did you ever stand erect, grasp a medicine ball with your ankles, kick up your heels backward and up as high as the knees, so as to toss the ball up in the air and straight forward over your head? Try it some time, but be sure to have a soft mat in front of you the first few times, for in the effort to throw the ball forward you are apt to throw yourself flat on your face.

Don't let a few falls discourage you; keep on practicing, and you'll soon catch the knack. Then you will have an exercise that develops your sense of timing and coordination, and will make you spry as an acrobat, to say nothing of the benefit to all your internal machinery.

When you have become so used to catching the ball that you never miss it - nor have to trot after it while the others laugh - when you are as good as that, try to catch and hold the ball when some strong man stands fifteen feet off and does his best to knock you down with it. There's a lot of fun in that game, although you had better keep out of it until you are in good practice; for if you don't stop the ball with sure hands, it will knock you for a goal.

The knack is to stop the big medicine ball just as you would catch a hot one in the baseball field: reach far out for it, and draw in the hands as soon as they touch it. You sidestep a little at the same time, and if necessary let the force of the swift ball swing you all the way around. Once you get the skill, no man can throw the ball fast enough to knock you over, and you have all the joy of an expert canoe man in fast white water or of the airman cheating destruction in the sky. It is a great thrill.

Your own and your friends' imagination will think up a dozen new ways to play with the medicine ball. You can do it indoor in winter and outdoor in warm weather, and you can get endless amusement out of the queer things that happen, besides the great gift of good health. How easy and amusing it all is, if only we put our minds on it!

- The End -

Supplied by the Lydon cousins