New You, the Old Way

New You, the Old Way

C. A. Asbrey

A mosaic in a large Roman villa near Piazza Armerina, Sicily, features girls dressed in what look like bikinis, and they are either playing games or exercising. Most people guess that the latter as a more expanded version shows women swinging weights, throwing balls, and running. Getting into shape, and staying that way, is far from new. In fact, many of us consider doing exactly the same thing at this time of year.

The woman with the palm frond and crown is thought to depict the award ceremony for winners, but the flower-like object held by the woman on her left is less certain. It could be an award she is holding out, representative of a chariot wheel, or it might be a parasol, The woman on the far left in the yellow gown looks as though she is handing out the awards. These games were organised and handed out by older women, while the younger women participated. Men worked out in the nude, but this was frowned upon for women, so what we would now call a bikini made female participation possible.

Looking at the fuller picture you can see that a woman has a discus, two are playing with balls, and one has a hand weight. This weight was not used to tone muscles, but was swung to lengthen a long jump to increase momentum. Ball games are truly ancient, and are recorded in every ancient culture in some form. Balls from the same era were found in an Egyptian tomb, and are remarkably similar to the ball in the mosaic. They are filled with hair wrapped in linen before being covered in string. 

Wrestling is an equally ancient form of sport, with versions going back to ancient India, Asia, and Europe, and beyond. It was wildly popular, and there are multiple variations, but they essentially come down to three elements: strength, technique, and perseverance. The strongest has an advantage, but a superior use of holds and exploring the mechanics of the human body in a way that can render an opponent helpless to overcome brute force. Ancient Spartans were known for their honour in wrestling, where men from Argos were seen as skilful. Sicilians, on the other hand, were famous for their craftiness. Leontiskos of Messene was famous for breaking fingers to get out of a hold.

Sports that emulated, and increased skills in, battle were held in great esteem. Chariot and horse racing, martial arts, and tests of strength all go back to the beginning of time, with stars becoming heroes of their day. This meant the participants had to build strength and suppleness. The British rediscovered some of these ancient techniques when they colonised India. Spotting the strength and the techniques used by the locals they adapted the use of Indian Clubs, and by the 1840s they were widely used in training throughout the British army.

These regimes came from ancient Persia, but were still in use in Asia Minor. The takeover of most of India by the Mughals in 1526, meant Persian cultural influences had become strong in India, with close ties between the Mughals and the Safavid dynasty in Persia. Thus Indian wrestling, particularly in the north of the subcontinent, were influenced by Persian methods of training . Farsi terms for wrestling koshti and pahlevani became kushti and pehlwani in India. Wrestling champions in India are still called Rastem from the Persian epic hero Rustum. 

The principal types of equipment found in modern a Zurkhaneh (House of Strength) are ranges of clubs to be used in exercises, maces, pairs of heavy shields, bow-shaped weights called kabbādeh, and clubs. All of these are used in a mixture of weight training, calisthenics, and dexterity. "Professor" James Harrison, a British strongman began instruction with much lighter versions of the clubs around 1837, and they caught on very quickly.    

The first American to popularise club training in the States was a manufacturer of gymnastic equipment,  Simon D. Kehoe. He had traveled to England, witnessed Professor Harrison's displays with huge mugdars and began making clubs himself on his return. His 1866 book, Indian Club Exercises, were for clubs ranging from four to twenty pounds, smaller than the mugdars used by Prof. Harrison, but much heavier than those used by beginners of modern exponents of the clubs.   

1940s Sauna Suit

The clubs enhanced balance and posture, joint mobility and bilateral coordination like few other forms of exercise. They are still used in physical therapy for shoulder, elbow and wrist strength with fluid, full-range motions.  It wasn't long before the trend caught on, and they were widely used right into the 1940s before the use of Indian clubs in elaborate swinging routines fell out of favour outside of medical rehabilitation.

And the Indian club is not alone in falling out of fashion. Most homes have some kind of old fitness equipment lurking in the depths of storage: all come and gone when the promised miracles didn't materialise, and the novelty of a new gadget beckons. The advent of TV infomercials and selling channels only proliferated the market, and I admit to having my own weights and equipment gathering dust. Large pieces often become clothes driers, and the smaller pieces migrate to the loft or the back of a cupboard. Thigh masters, vibrating platforms, shake weights, toning belts and pads that zap the muscles and contract them back into shape without any effort, ab rollers, vibrating belts, sauna suits, and strange elastic bands are only a few of them.

However, to get throughly weird and wacky you can't beat Victorian engineering for truly imaginative and slightly unhinged contraptions. Most require no descriptions from me, so I'll leave you images from the past that show that we've always been hungry for new ways to get fit easily, and hopefully give you a chuckle as you go into a new year with hopes of your own personal improvements. At least you don't have to find space in the loft for stuff as big as these.

Good luck with those resolutions!