Horace Fletcher - Fletcherism

One of the revelations of our experiments worthy of mention here was that occasional long abstinence from food, say two or three weeks, with water freely available, is comparatively harmless, if "Fletcherizing" is carefully practised when food is again given to the body. Nature prescribes accurately what is to be eaten (often the most unexpected sort of food); and if the food selected by appetite is carefully masticated, sipped, or whatever other treatment is necessary to get the good taste out of it, and the mental state at the same time is clear of fear-thought or worry of any kind, the just amount that the body can use at the moment is prescribed by appetite, and the restoration to normal weight is accomplished with epicurean delight, well worth a spell of deprivation.

The tests of endurance, which were conducted by Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale, now President of the Committee of One Hundred on National Health of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and with the co-operation of the famous athletic coach, Alonzo B. Stagg, formerly of Yale, but now of the University of Chicago – on College athletes, students of sedentary habits, and on members of the staff of the Battle Creek Sanatorium – are of prodigious importance in their relation to the possibilities of human endurance through simple Fletcherizing.

The reports include a test in what is termed "deep-knee bending," or squatting on the heels and then lifting the body to full height as many times as possible. John H. Granger, of the Battle Creek Sanatorium staff, did this feat 5,002 times consecutively in two hours and nineteen minutes and could have continued. He then ran down a flight of steps to the swimming-pool, plunged in and had a swim, slept sweetly and soundly for the usual time, and showed no signs of soreness or other disability afterwards.

Doctor Wagner gave his strenuous contribution to our knowledge of possibilities of endurance by holding his arms out horizontally for 200 minutes without rest – three hours and twenty minutes. At the end of that time he showed no signs of fatigue, and stopped only because of the weariness shown by those who were watching and counting the minutes. These statements seem like exaggerations, but they are not.

Both of these tests can be tried by any one in the privacy of his or her own bedroom.

Doctor Anderson, Director of the Yale Gymnasium, taking advantage of the cue offered by the Yale experiments, which he superintended, practised Fletcherizing in all its branches. At the end of six years he put the muscles thus purified to the test, with the result that he added fifteen pounds of pure muscle to a frame that never carried more than 135 pounds before in the half century of its existence, and demonstrated that the same progressive recuperation that I have enjoyed is open and available to others who have passed middle life.

Mr. Stapleton, one of Professor Chittenden's volunteers, grasped the same valuable cue while serving as one of the heavy-weight test-subjects in the Yale experiments. He reduced his waist measurement to thirty inches and a half, increased his chest measurement to forty-four inches; and has refined his physique until his ribs show clearly through his flesh, while his muscles mount tall and strong where muscle is needed in the economy of efficiency. In the meantime, without training other than that connected with his teaching, he increased the total of his strength and endurance more than one hundred per cent.; and reduced his amount of food by nearly, if not quite, half – as have also Doctor Anderson and myself.

These are merely typical cases of distinguished and measured improvement.

How the movement went on from step to step others have told, and I need not follow it further here.

Two years after I began my experiments my strength and endurance had increased beyond my wildest expectation. On my fiftieth birthday I rode nearly two hundred miles on my bicycle over French roads, and came home feeling fine. Was I stiff the next day? Not at all, and I rode fifty miles the next morning before breakfast in order to test the effect of my severe stunt. 6 6 Detailed account of this test is given in The New Glutton or Epicure , New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company.

When I was fifty-eight years of age, at the Yale University Gymnasium, under the observation of Dr. Anderson, I lifted three hundred pounds dead weight three hundred and fifty times with the muscles of my right leg below the knee. The record of the best athlete then was one hundred and seventy-five lifts, so I doubled the world's record of that style of tests of endurance.

The story of this test at Yale, when I doubled the "record" about which so much has been written, is this: Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale, had devised a new form of endurance-testing machine intended to be used upon the muscles most commonly in use by all persons. Obviously these are the muscles used in walking. Quite a large number of tests had been measured by the Fisher machine, but it was still being studied with a view to possible simplification.

I was asked to try it and to suggest any changes that might improve it. I did so, and handled the weight with such seeming ease that Dr. Anderson asked me whether I would not make a thorough test of my endurance. This I was glad to do.

The Professor Irving Fisher Endurance Testing Machine is weighted to 75 per cent. of the lifting capacity of the subject, ascertained by means of the Kellog Mercurial Dynamometer. The lifting is timed to the beats of a metronome.

When I began, Dr. Anderson cautioned me against attempting too much. I asked him what he considered "too much," and he replied: "For a man of your age, not in training, I should not recommend trying more than fifty lifts." So I began the test, lifting the weight to the beat of the metronome at the rate of about one in two seconds, and had soon reached the fifty mark. "Be careful," repeated Dr. Anderson, "you may not feel that you are overdoing now, but afterwards you may regret it."

But I felt no strain and went on.

When seventy-five had been exceeded, Dr. Anderson called Dr. Born from his desk to take charge of the counting and watching to see that the lifts were fully completed, and ran out into the gymnasium to call the masters of boxing, wrestling, fencing, etc., to witness the test. When they had gathered about the machine, Dr. Anderson said to them, "It looks as if we were going to see a record-breaking." I then asked, "What are the records?" Dr. Anderson replied, "One hundred and seventy-five lifts is the record; only two men have exceeded one hundred; the lowest was thirty-three, and the average so far is eighty-four."

In the meantime I had reached one hundred and fifty lifts, and the interest was centered on the question as to whether I should reach the high record, one hundred and seventy-five.

When one hundred and seventy-five had been reached, Dr. Anderson stepped forward to catch me in case the leg in use in the test should not be able to support me when I stopped and attempted to stand up. But I did not stop lifting the three-hundred-pound weight. I kept right on, and as I progressed to two hundred, two hundred and fifty, three hundred, and finally to double the record, three hundred and fifty lifts, the interest increased progressively.

After adding a few to the three hundred and fifty I stopped, not because I was suffering from fatigue, but because the pounding of the iron collar on the muscles above my knee had made the place so pummelled very sore, as if hit a great number of times with a heavy sledge-hammer. I had doubled the record, and that seemed sufficient for a starter in the competition.

As I stood up, Dr. Anderson reached up his arms to support me. But I needed no support. The leg that had been in use felt a trifle lighter, but in no sense weak or tired.