Similarly when you go back to "TWO" make the Stahara hard, pound it with your fist to test its hardness.
Note: Pound it gently at first.
Perform four times with left leg forward and then four times with right leg forward.
In both positions "ONE" and "TWO" you will feel a tendency to overbalance yourself. This is because you are thinking, by habit, unconsciously, of the usual muscles with which you fight or work, i.e., your leg and arm muscles; and the connecting link between them, the Stahara, is absolutely uneducated.
Practise this movement a few times daily for two or three weeks and you will then be able to keep your balance without difficulty.
At first you must make the Stahara hard by consciously tensing it, but later on it will not be a muscular effort, you will keep your balance automatically.
As a reducing exercise, this movement has no equal, but if stout and full blooded perform it slowly and deliberately at first.
WHAT BENNY LEONARD SAYS ABOUT STAHARA TRAINING
Benny Leonard, Light Weight Champion of the World, was Boxing Instructor at Camp Upton [near Long Island, New York] with the 77th Division when I was there, and this is what he says about Stahara training:
In reference to Stahara training which you introduced in the army. I do not think there is any other method of training so beneficial for the body.
I shall never forget it as long as I live, as it has helped me considerably.
This training teaches men to put their weight into their blows, and to use their body when punching, instead of the arms alone.
Since the armistice has been signed [in November 1918] I have come in contact with a good many of the pupils whom I taught the art of boxing, and they claim that the bayonet man was helpless in a hand-to-hand encounter if his Stahara was not in the best of condition.
PERPETUAL ABDOMINAL CONTROL
Right where you are sitting reading, whether in your own house or in a street car: --
Take a deep breath naturally and without making a noise, hold your breath, then draw in the abdomen as far as possible. Hold this position for a few seconds.
Relax, let your abdomen regain its normal position, exhale, hold your breath, again draw in your abdomen as far as possible. Hold this position for a few seconds.
Relax, inhale naturally, and continue the exercise.
Continue this exercise until you can do it at any time, in any place, whether standing or sitting, whether walking or riding, whether your lungs are full or empty.
CONSTANTLY PRACTISE ABDOMINAL CONTROL
Practise in front of a mirror to make sure you are getting the right movement and that you are sucking in the abdomen to its fullest extent.
Pay particular attention to your expression. Make your face absolutely impassive and expressionless. Do not allow any trace of exertion to appear on the face.
Place the hands beneath the belt on the abdomen in order to feel that you have the right movement.
If you cannot get the movement by this means lie flat on your back, place a heavy book on the abdomen and endeavor to move it up and down.
Do not overdo the matter of holding your breath but simply try to get the knack of moving your abdomen in and out.
The very fat, and those who wish to reduce should practise this, stripped, in front of a mirror, rubbing and kneading with the third joint of the thumbs the fatty deposit on their abdomen.
Vary this by rubbing with a turkish towel. This will redden and irritate the skin at first so be careful in the beginning not to overdo it.
If you have been at your desk all morning do this exercise for a few minutes before lunch and it will help your appetite.
No matter how rushed or hurried you are walk several blocks on your way to lunch practising this exercise as you walk.
Use it when you are reading the papers, when you are riding in the street car, when you are listening to conversation.
Even in after years when you have mastered Stahara control still use this preliminary exercise a few times every day.
It is a splendid exercise for the bowels and if used regularly will correct a sluggish liver.
MAKE YOURSELF HUNGRY
You should at once adopt this training diet, not for a contest, but for life: -- It consists of
Common sense in choosing wholesome food;
Avoiding things that disagree with you;
Temperance in the amount you eat.
The Golden Rule of eating is:
MAKE YOURSELF HUNGRY FOR EACH MEAL.
Practise the Abdominal Control exercise with the same regularity that you wash your teeth.
It creates a better circulation in your digestive track and makes it function more efficiently. It strengthens the muscular tissues of the abdominal organs, and gives them greater power. It massages the intestines and hastens the removal of effete matter.
If you have not recently enjoyed a good appetite this will soon give you one.
This simple rule of making yourself hungry will give you better health, a clearer skin, and a more active brain than the most carefully selected diet would without getting hungry.
If your stomach is soured, drink copiously of water, hot or cold. Practice the Abdominal Control exercise, miss a meal, and your stomach will be washed out, sweet and clean. It will assist if you go for a walk while doing this.
One more caution: Whenever you sit down to a meal for which you have no appetite, eat only half of what you are accustomed to and you will be hungry for the next meal.
The results will be immediate and surprising and will pay you a big dividend in increased "pep" and mental power.
ANOTHER MEANING OF STAHARA
The Great War brought into prominence that ugly but expressive word "Guts." It was particularly popular with the Bayonet Instructors who were always telling their classes to put their "guts" into it.
By this they meant that one should put his whole strength and weight into the thrust or lunge, and put the same strength and weight into the thrust or lunge, and put the same spirit into his effort of "sticking" the dummy that he would into fighting with a real foeman.
In short, they wanted to train, not only the muscular endurance of the soldier, but his morale, or fighting spirit.
Shakespeare said:
He that hath no stomach for the fight
Let him depart.
The bayonet instructors wanted to train our "Stomach for the fight."
The word "guts" then, scientifically analyzed, combines both the idea of putting the strength and weight of your body into any given blow and the idea of putting all your mind and will and soul into any given movement.
The same idea inspired Shakespeare when he wrote the above quotation in classical English, and the bayonet men when they punctuated their instructions with a phrase which many will term vulgar, and which at best is slang.
What Shakespeare and the bayonet instructors dimly visualized this course teaches as a specific principle. The knack of putting your "guts" into it can be learnt, separate and distinct from anything else, and once acquired can be applied to anything.
The Stahara consists of the diaphragm (the large muscle which divides the cavity of the heart and lungs from the cavity of the stomach and intestines) on the top, and the muscular floor of the abdominal region, and all that lies between.
When the body is used properly as by an expert in any branch of sport, the weight of the whole body, the weight of the Stahara, goes into any stroke he may make, as in golf or tennis, thereby distinguishing him from the beginner, who depends largely on the working of his arms and legs.
After a course in Stahara training, with the increased faculty of using the body as a whole, and the automatic realization of the fact that the center of gravity lies in the center of the Stahara, a sportsman will be able to watch an expert play golf, for instance, and will appreciate just how the expert uses his Stahara.
He will then be better able to analyze his own movements and correct them accordingly.
Stahara supplies not only a word that can be used, but also a scientific and complete training for what, up till now, was only a dimly realized, vague idea, not yet developed into a principle.
Stahara simply means "Guts" -- moral and physical.
The Secrets of Jujitsu, A Complete Course in Self Defense, Book II
By Captain Allan Corstorphin Smith, U.S.A.
Winner of the Black Belt, Japan, 1916. Instructor of Hand-to-Hand Fighting, THE INFANTRY SCHOOL, Camp Benning, Columbus, Georgia and at United States Training Camps and Cantonments, 1917 and 1918.
In Seven Books.
BOOK TWO.
STAHARA PUBLISHING COMPANY
Columbus, Georgia, 1920.
***
This electronic version is copyright EJMAS © 2000. All rights reserved.
Contributed by Thomas J. Militello, a 15-year member of Astoria, New York's non-profit Horangi Taekwondo Dojang, which is headed by James Robison.
Readers interested in seeing film images should note the following film held by the National Archives and Record Administration:
NWDNM(m)-111-H-1180.
Title: Physical and Bayonet Training, 1918.
Scope and Content: Recruits at Camp Gordon, Georgia receive detailed instruction in boxing and jiu-jitsu. Wrestling and jiu-jitsu holds are used against a foe with a bayonet. Troops do calisthenics and play rough games calculated to make them physically fit.
35mm film, 15 minutes
FORM A SELF-DEFENSE CLUB
It does not matter what sort of a partner you first practice with. Keep a record of your progress by making a check mark against a trick each day you practice it. The first day a trick may take five or ten minutes, and after that only one or two minutes.
Let your opponent try all the tricks on you, you will learn a great deal from this.
Get at least one friend enthused to the point where he will procure a set of textbooks for his private study and will keep a record of his progress.
After four such practices with one opponent, you should try to practice each trick with as many different opponents as you can get.
Each man has a different style of physique and you have not mastered the course till you can do the tricks effectively on any style of opponent.
Popularize this practice amongst your circle of friends to provide yourself with opponents. Some one of your friends may develop a better style of doing a certain trick than you, and it will be to your advantage to practice it with him.
All this practice must be formal and not competitive. Once you start wrestling in a haphazard way you will hinder the orderly study of the course.
To attack one another with "any old trick" will result in severe falls, and should only be done on a mat after you have learned how to fall. This will be taught in the second course.
It is quite unnecessary to so in this course which is a complete and adequate system of self-defense and can be learnt without such strenuous practice.
LESSON 6
This lesson teaches you --
How to clasp hands when taking hold.
An interesting variation of the waisthold.
The chin shove.
Correct leverage in the chin shove.
Advanced practice in the chin shove.
Name of Partner Date Practice Commenced Waisthold Chin Shove
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Make a check mark against each trick each day you practice it.
In clasping hands behind opponent's back always take the grip shown in fig. 23.
Unless he is a much smaller man, in which case clasp your left wrist with your right hand.
Never use the grip shown in fig. 25.
If your opponent falls on your fingers when they are clasped this way they may be broken.
Again, if he lies beneath you his weight may jam your fingers so that you would have difficulty in freeing your arms while his arms would be free to attack.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Note: Pound it gently at first.
Perform four times with left leg forward and then four times with right leg forward.
In both positions "ONE" and "TWO" you will feel a tendency to overbalance yourself. This is because you are thinking, by habit, unconsciously, of the usual muscles with which you fight or work, i.e., your leg and arm muscles; and the connecting link between them, the Stahara, is absolutely uneducated.
Practise this movement a few times daily for two or three weeks and you will then be able to keep your balance without difficulty.
At first you must make the Stahara hard by consciously tensing it, but later on it will not be a muscular effort, you will keep your balance automatically.
As a reducing exercise, this movement has no equal, but if stout and full blooded perform it slowly and deliberately at first.
WHAT BENNY LEONARD SAYS ABOUT STAHARA TRAINING
Benny Leonard, Light Weight Champion of the World, was Boxing Instructor at Camp Upton [near Long Island, New York] with the 77th Division when I was there, and this is what he says about Stahara training:
In reference to Stahara training which you introduced in the army. I do not think there is any other method of training so beneficial for the body.
I shall never forget it as long as I live, as it has helped me considerably.
This training teaches men to put their weight into their blows, and to use their body when punching, instead of the arms alone.
Since the armistice has been signed [in November 1918] I have come in contact with a good many of the pupils whom I taught the art of boxing, and they claim that the bayonet man was helpless in a hand-to-hand encounter if his Stahara was not in the best of condition.
PERPETUAL ABDOMINAL CONTROL
Right where you are sitting reading, whether in your own house or in a street car: --
Take a deep breath naturally and without making a noise, hold your breath, then draw in the abdomen as far as possible. Hold this position for a few seconds.
Relax, let your abdomen regain its normal position, exhale, hold your breath, again draw in your abdomen as far as possible. Hold this position for a few seconds.
Relax, inhale naturally, and continue the exercise.
Continue this exercise until you can do it at any time, in any place, whether standing or sitting, whether walking or riding, whether your lungs are full or empty.
CONSTANTLY PRACTISE ABDOMINAL CONTROL
Practise in front of a mirror to make sure you are getting the right movement and that you are sucking in the abdomen to its fullest extent.
Pay particular attention to your expression. Make your face absolutely impassive and expressionless. Do not allow any trace of exertion to appear on the face.
Place the hands beneath the belt on the abdomen in order to feel that you have the right movement.
If you cannot get the movement by this means lie flat on your back, place a heavy book on the abdomen and endeavor to move it up and down.
Do not overdo the matter of holding your breath but simply try to get the knack of moving your abdomen in and out.
The very fat, and those who wish to reduce should practise this, stripped, in front of a mirror, rubbing and kneading with the third joint of the thumbs the fatty deposit on their abdomen.
Vary this by rubbing with a turkish towel. This will redden and irritate the skin at first so be careful in the beginning not to overdo it.
If you have been at your desk all morning do this exercise for a few minutes before lunch and it will help your appetite.
No matter how rushed or hurried you are walk several blocks on your way to lunch practising this exercise as you walk.
Use it when you are reading the papers, when you are riding in the street car, when you are listening to conversation.
Even in after years when you have mastered Stahara control still use this preliminary exercise a few times every day.
It is a splendid exercise for the bowels and if used regularly will correct a sluggish liver.
MAKE YOURSELF HUNGRY
You should at once adopt this training diet, not for a contest, but for life: -- It consists of
Common sense in choosing wholesome food;
Avoiding things that disagree with you;
Temperance in the amount you eat.
The Golden Rule of eating is:
MAKE YOURSELF HUNGRY FOR EACH MEAL.
Practise the Abdominal Control exercise with the same regularity that you wash your teeth.
It creates a better circulation in your digestive track and makes it function more efficiently. It strengthens the muscular tissues of the abdominal organs, and gives them greater power. It massages the intestines and hastens the removal of effete matter.
If you have not recently enjoyed a good appetite this will soon give you one.
This simple rule of making yourself hungry will give you better health, a clearer skin, and a more active brain than the most carefully selected diet would without getting hungry.
If your stomach is soured, drink copiously of water, hot or cold. Practice the Abdominal Control exercise, miss a meal, and your stomach will be washed out, sweet and clean. It will assist if you go for a walk while doing this.
One more caution: Whenever you sit down to a meal for which you have no appetite, eat only half of what you are accustomed to and you will be hungry for the next meal.
The results will be immediate and surprising and will pay you a big dividend in increased "pep" and mental power.
ANOTHER MEANING OF STAHARA
The Great War brought into prominence that ugly but expressive word "Guts." It was particularly popular with the Bayonet Instructors who were always telling their classes to put their "guts" into it.
By this they meant that one should put his whole strength and weight into the thrust or lunge, and put the same strength and weight into the thrust or lunge, and put the same spirit into his effort of "sticking" the dummy that he would into fighting with a real foeman.
In short, they wanted to train, not only the muscular endurance of the soldier, but his morale, or fighting spirit.
Shakespeare said:
He that hath no stomach for the fight
Let him depart.
The bayonet instructors wanted to train our "Stomach for the fight."
The word "guts" then, scientifically analyzed, combines both the idea of putting the strength and weight of your body into any given blow and the idea of putting all your mind and will and soul into any given movement.
The same idea inspired Shakespeare when he wrote the above quotation in classical English, and the bayonet men when they punctuated their instructions with a phrase which many will term vulgar, and which at best is slang.
What Shakespeare and the bayonet instructors dimly visualized this course teaches as a specific principle. The knack of putting your "guts" into it can be learnt, separate and distinct from anything else, and once acquired can be applied to anything.
The Stahara consists of the diaphragm (the large muscle which divides the cavity of the heart and lungs from the cavity of the stomach and intestines) on the top, and the muscular floor of the abdominal region, and all that lies between.
When the body is used properly as by an expert in any branch of sport, the weight of the whole body, the weight of the Stahara, goes into any stroke he may make, as in golf or tennis, thereby distinguishing him from the beginner, who depends largely on the working of his arms and legs.
After a course in Stahara training, with the increased faculty of using the body as a whole, and the automatic realization of the fact that the center of gravity lies in the center of the Stahara, a sportsman will be able to watch an expert play golf, for instance, and will appreciate just how the expert uses his Stahara.
He will then be better able to analyze his own movements and correct them accordingly.
Stahara supplies not only a word that can be used, but also a scientific and complete training for what, up till now, was only a dimly realized, vague idea, not yet developed into a principle.
Stahara simply means "Guts" -- moral and physical.
The Secrets of Jujitsu, A Complete Course in Self Defense, Book II
By Captain Allan Corstorphin Smith, U.S.A.
Winner of the Black Belt, Japan, 1916. Instructor of Hand-to-Hand Fighting, THE INFANTRY SCHOOL, Camp Benning, Columbus, Georgia and at United States Training Camps and Cantonments, 1917 and 1918.
In Seven Books.
BOOK TWO.
STAHARA PUBLISHING COMPANY
Columbus, Georgia, 1920.
***
This electronic version is copyright EJMAS © 2000. All rights reserved.
Contributed by Thomas J. Militello, a 15-year member of Astoria, New York's non-profit Horangi Taekwondo Dojang, which is headed by James Robison.
Readers interested in seeing film images should note the following film held by the National Archives and Record Administration:
NWDNM(m)-111-H-1180.
Title: Physical and Bayonet Training, 1918.
Scope and Content: Recruits at Camp Gordon, Georgia receive detailed instruction in boxing and jiu-jitsu. Wrestling and jiu-jitsu holds are used against a foe with a bayonet. Troops do calisthenics and play rough games calculated to make them physically fit.
35mm film, 15 minutes
FORM A SELF-DEFENSE CLUB
It does not matter what sort of a partner you first practice with. Keep a record of your progress by making a check mark against a trick each day you practice it. The first day a trick may take five or ten minutes, and after that only one or two minutes.
Let your opponent try all the tricks on you, you will learn a great deal from this.
Get at least one friend enthused to the point where he will procure a set of textbooks for his private study and will keep a record of his progress.
After four such practices with one opponent, you should try to practice each trick with as many different opponents as you can get.
Each man has a different style of physique and you have not mastered the course till you can do the tricks effectively on any style of opponent.
Popularize this practice amongst your circle of friends to provide yourself with opponents. Some one of your friends may develop a better style of doing a certain trick than you, and it will be to your advantage to practice it with him.
All this practice must be formal and not competitive. Once you start wrestling in a haphazard way you will hinder the orderly study of the course.
To attack one another with "any old trick" will result in severe falls, and should only be done on a mat after you have learned how to fall. This will be taught in the second course.
It is quite unnecessary to so in this course which is a complete and adequate system of self-defense and can be learnt without such strenuous practice.
LESSON 6
This lesson teaches you --
How to clasp hands when taking hold.
An interesting variation of the waisthold.
The chin shove.
Correct leverage in the chin shove.
Advanced practice in the chin shove.
Name of Partner Date Practice Commenced Waisthold Chin Shove
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Make a check mark against each trick each day you practice it.
In clasping hands behind opponent's back always take the grip shown in fig. 23.
Unless he is a much smaller man, in which case clasp your left wrist with your right hand.
Never use the grip shown in fig. 25.
If your opponent falls on your fingers when they are clasped this way they may be broken.
Again, if he lies beneath you his weight may jam your fingers so that you would have difficulty in freeing your arms while his arms would be free to attack.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17