Evening star. [volume], March 18, 1962, Page 6, Image 130

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
This Week
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Here's the answer to the Sedentary Age— a remarkable, yet simple concept of exercises developed
by the Royal Canadian Air Force to help you feel better and look better now!
OTTAWA
At a time when everyone is talking about physical
fitness, here is the amazing success story of a new
exercise program which is making world news.
Two little booklets with the cryptic titles of
"5 B X” and "X B X,” issued by the Queen’s
Printer, Canada, with no fanfare, have sold a
record-breaking 400,000 copies in Canada alone,
and are heading for world sales in the millions.
The two books are, respectively, an exercise
book for men and one for women, produced by the
Royal Canadian Air Force. Flach is an illustrated
do-it-yourself fitness course. Designed to sharpen
up the silhouettes of armchair personnel in the
RCAF, the booklets have burst out of Canada’s
armed forces into civilian life, spread all the way to
Australia.
The explanation of their phenomenal success in
Canada may be found in a comment one of them
contains: ’’Mechanization, automation and work
saving devices to make life easy are depriving us of
desirable physical activity. Canadians, as a result,
are in danger of deteriorating physically despite a
high standard of living.”
Does that sound familiar? Compare it with
what President Kennedy said recently:
"There is an increasingly large number of
young Americans who are neglecting their bodies
whose physical fitness is not what it should be
who are getting soft.” The hard truth of the
President’s words is underlined by a sobering sta
tistic: one young American in two today is rejected
by Selective Service.
General* like it
Both the President’s Council on Youth Fitness
and his special consultant, Charles B. (Bud) Wilkin
son, are well aware of the RCAF booklets and have
strongly indorsed them. So has General Curtis
LeMay, Commander of the U.S. Air Force. Lieu
tenant General Garrison H. Davidson, commander
of the U.S. Seventh Army in Germany, tried it
himself and promptly ordered copies for personnel
over 40. But even more remarkable, thousands of
U.S. civilians, hearing of the plan, have gone to the
trouble of ordering booklets from Canada.
Because of the importance of the booklets and
to make the fitness method readily available to
Americans, This Week has published the two book
lets in one volume for U.S. distribution.
The authors of the two booklets, RCAF Wing
Commander John K. Tett and his staff of experts,
started work in 1952. Nine physical-education
6
CANADIANS
professors were brought in as consultants; using
RCAF men as guinea pigs, they experimented with
over a hundred exercises in a search for the most
useful. What was wanted were exercises that re
quire no equipment and little time things a man
with a desk job could do without reporting to a gym,
without using machinery or weights and without
costing himself or the RCAF any money. By the end
of 1955 the 100-plus exercises had been cut down to
a dozen. Trials extending over the following year
brought the number down to Five Basic Exercises
whence the booklet’s title, "5 B X.”
Under the Canadian government system all
departmental publications come under the jurisdic
tion of the Queen’s Printer. When "5 B X” came
out, his office gave it no publicity beyond printing
the standard folder that goes out with every staid
report and government document. But word got
out with amazing speed, and requests began flooding
in. So successful was the men’s booklet that Wing
Commander Tett and his colleagues decided to do
another one for women.
PHYSICAL FITNESS makes
us work better, look better,
and feel better. All of us
should have enough self-discipline to
spend a few minutes each day exer
cising. The RCAF program is an
excellent method of attaining and
maintaining fitness.”
Charles B. Wilkinson
Consultant to the President on Youth Fitness
EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE CAN RE A 'HIDDEN EXERCISE”
There are "hidden” exercises in
our everyday activities, the RCAF vfTbi
booklets point out. Instead of do- m or fymg, *mm the Jfl
ing everything the easy way, the * of the abdomen
Lit. .-1- Balance on one foot without Wjf and hold for about six fl
booklets urge us to utilize routine __
, wpport wnwe putting on **■ seconds. Do this a few
activities to maintain muscle tone: rri _ rfrn „ T _ L . ■ «n )L
By ADR! BOUDEWYN
Experimentation showed that women would
profit from a greater number of less rigorous exer
cises so the women’s booklet became "X B X,”
or Ten Basic Exercises. Like the men’s booklet,
it does its stuff without expensive equipment and
without cutting into a busy housewife’s time.
The program, as shown on Page 16, is based on a
very gradually graded system of daily exercises. As
you work up, you completely master one level before
moving on to the next.
Ju*t 11 minute* a day
The key to your progress is repeating a given
exercise more often in the same allotted time. On
the first day, for example, a man does a toe-touch
twice within a two-minute period; after a week, he
may be repeating it six times in the same two
minutes.
Every day you run through all the exercises
the five types for men and the ten for women. But
never does a man spend more than 11, or a woman
more than 12 minutes on one day's exercise period.
You complete your course in physical fitness
when you reach the limit designated for your age
level after roughly six weeks to six months.
Once you have reached your goal, you can maintain
fitness in three exercise periods a week.
The booklets are full of additional helpful tips
on diet, weight control and general health. There
are also tips on how you can get exercise value out
of the plain, ordinary things you do every day
(see below).
It’s all delivered in a good-humored, but straight
from-the-shoulder style. The RCAF doesn’t think
women are overweight; they’re overfat. And men
aren’t fat; they’re flabby. This refreshing frank
ness may help explain why the Queen’s Printer,
Roger Duhamel, finds himself in the unusual posi
tion of having an all-time Canadian bestseller on
his hands.
When the women’s version "XBX” came
THIS WEEK Magaelne / Marek IS, 1»62