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Better Health Exercises

Better Health Exercises is a vintage exercise book with an amazingly modern outlook and a really good mix of exercises. It seems sometimes that the further we get into the 21st century, the more our problems mirror those of one-hundred years ago! For example, Better Health Exercises looks at improving your:

Health, Energy, Vitality and Endurance!

And it doesn’t just talk of health being the ‘physical condition’ either, it accepts that health involves the mental as well as the physical.

Part of the appeal of books such as Better Health Exercises for me is that they are almost early self-help books. They do a really good job of making you nod your head in agreement, but, unlike some self-help books of today, they then give you achievable answers!

Better Health Exercises: Nine laws of Physical Well-Being

I might not be overly fond of the grammar of the Better Health Exercises nine laws of physical well-being, but I can certainly get behind the laws themselves:

1. Right Thinking
2. Right Breathing
3. Drink Rightly
4. Eat Rightly
5. Exercise Rightly
6. Cleanse Rightly
7. Relax Rightly
8. Recreate Rightly
9. Sleep Rightly

Just take a minute to look at those laws – if you managed all of that then I think you’d be pretty well-off!

I’ve said the exercises contained in Better Health Exercises are a good mix, and I mean it. Here’s an exercise from the ‘Cure for Obesity’ section for example:

Recognise it? Of course you do! The human body can only move and twist in certain ways, but over time fitness experts have tried to modify things and put their own ‘stamp’ on them. Get back to basics, move the body nice and easily, and soon you will have a good old-fashioned body ready to do whatever you want it to!

Not all of the exercises involve lying down, there are standing exercises, sitting exercises, and even exercises that need a broom handle (if you have one).

I never ask you to forgive anything in my reproductions (I tend to cut out any language that may be offensive), not fashions, not models, nor the problems that people of the time that people suffered. Maybe the writers were a little over-zealous in their use of the word ‘cure’ at times, but simply add in the extra words ‘help to…’ and they’re not wrong!

As always, you are going to have to read and maybe make your own notes (and use some common sense), but if your great-grandparents could do this, I don’t see why you can’t! I’ve added a little extra text in places to maybe clear up some poorly chosen words. That said, if you get stuck at any point, just give me a holler.

P.S. The book makes mention of Neurasthenia, which simply means nervous exhaustion. It’s a fascinating subject and you can read more about it HERE.

Richie Neville | Director
Internal Force Fitness