(Webmaster's Notes:  The following book is published for entertainment only.  Although I am quite in agreement with many, but not all, of Mr. Camp's attitudes towards fitness and health, he wrote in the earliest part of the 20th century, and much has been learned since then.  While I applaud his attitude towards physcial fitness, exercise, and health, many of his "facts" have since been provem wrong, or at least not fully understood.  I may make the occasional commen along the way, genernally in parentheses and prefaced by WN, for Webmaster's Notes.

I hope you enjoy the book, but check up on the latest facts before following through on the exercise and fitness tips contained within.  By the way, the original book had quite a few illustrationg, and you may see reference here or there to them.  However, I have omitted them on this website.

Donovan Baldwin April 2009)

AS THE YEARS GO ON

The first thing that a man begins to lose through the inroads of age is
his resistive power. He may seem in perfect health so long as there is
no special change of conditions, but when he is placed in a position
where he needs his resistive forces to throw off disease, he finds that
he cannot command them.

Still another change is continually taking place; as the man goes on in
life, little by little the control of his muscles leaves him. Instead of
running about as does the youth, recklessly and with never a thought of
being tired, he begins to favor himself by walking in the easiest
possible way, until soon he is balancing on one foot and then tilting
forward on the other, making no muscular effort and preferring the
motor-car or the trolley whenever it is at hand. As an inevitable
result, some of the muscles atrophy, and even those that do not
deteriorate speedily discover that they have no master, and they act
when and how they please.

The man who is continually giving orders to subordinates and having
other men do things for him, soon finds that he is unable to accomplish
things for himself; then, if he is thrown on his own resources, he is
helpless. Take a group of men, executives, who for a dozen years have
been ordering other men about instead of obeying orders, and you will
find that for the most part these captains of industry have lost 50 per
cent. of their muscular control. On the other hand, the man who is
taking orders retains command over all his muscles, for he is daily and
hourly training them to instant obedience. A group of privates will snap
into "attention" at the word of command with splendid muscular control;
the same number of officers would find great difficulty in doing this.
Now as the man loses muscular control he loses poise and carriage. His
head rolls about in a slack way on his neck, and has a tendency to drop
forward; the muscles of the neck and the upper part of the back grow
soft from lack of use and control and he begins to become
round-shouldered; his chest falls in as the shoulders come forward and
the chest cavity is reduced. This means a gradual cramping of lungs,
heart, and stomach.

By way of compensation he lets out a hole or two in his belt and starts
in to carry more weight there. In other words, he exchanges muscle for
fat, and as the fat increases he has less and less muscular strength to
carry it. It is as though in a motor-car one added hundreds of pounds of
weight to the body and reduced the horse-power of the engine. Pretty
soon the man becomes so heavy around the waist that he notices his
discomfort, and it produces exhaustion; now he becomes more and more
averse to exercise, and the facia, or fat, having the better of the
battle, begins to penetrate even the fiber of the muscles.          

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If you want to learn how to burn fat, a great book to read is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto