When the great athletic movement first became popular in England there was much strenuous opposition to it, not only from timid parents but also from the medical profession. Upon whatever ground this latter opposition was based, there is no doubt that the parental prejudice was not so much to the athletics as to the 'training.' To the athlete of early times as well as to his friends and relations the essential part and chief characteristic of training was not the taking of proper preparatory exercise, but the sudden and violent change of diet. 'Going into training' was taken to mean the commencement of a peculiar diet of half-cooked beefsteaks and dry bread and the reduction of the daily drink to a minimum, and not to imply the beginning of the proper training or cultivation of the muscles required for a race. Even to the present day the word 'training' is applied in its popular connotation to the choice of diet alone. It is scarcely to be wondered that, in an age which considered that eating and drinking would do more to make a runner than the practice of running, the system of training adopted would be a mistaken one, and that the mistake should be glaring.

Men going into training adopted a course of diet which did not agree with them, and accordingly became ill in body and ill in mind.

Of the very oldest system of training, which is now thoroughly obsolete, little need be said, as no amateur of recent years has thought of following it. It was a method which may almost be called pre-athletic, as it was in fact nothing but that adopted for training for the prize ring. The weight was to be reduced to its minimum at all hazards; the liquid consumed was to be a maximum of two pints a day, the edibles were almost entirely meat and bread, and the natural physical result of such a diet was counteracted by daily purging medicines. Sweating, meat-eating, and purging constituted the old system of training, and those who wonder how such a custom could ever have been adopted must recollect that it was chiefly applied to men of the lower classes, used to coarse food, and with no highly-organised nervous system. It needs no argument to show that such a method could not be beneficial, or even practicable, to an amateur, who takes up athletic sports as a recreation, and not as a business.

However, while from the first amateurs admitted that the old plan was wrong, a movement happened which is well known to historans. The old creed was overthrown, but some of its principal errors were admitted in a modified form into the new system. Although common sense and practical experience are beginning at last to convince the athletic public that the less alteration a man makes in his ordinary diet when he goes into training the better he will fare, yet there are many who still start training for races handicapped by the traditional belief in the efficacy of a meat diet, daily 'sweating' runs for the sole purpose of reducing the weight, and the rigid abstinence from every drop of liquid which can possibly be dispensed with. The present writer, who has practised the opposite method, although according to the old canons of training he is by build and habit of body the very man to whom the rigid rules should have been applied, steadfastly declines to believe in any system of diet whatsoever which leads to eruptions of the skin or of the temper.

There is certainly this apparent justification for the traditional course, that, as a rule, people in modern times do not adopt as frugal and temperate a habit of diet as they should, and a great many of them are either without the inclination or without the opportunity of taking sufficient exercise. There is no reason why an athlete who desires to get fit should lead other than a natural life, or alter an ordinary natural diet more than is rendered necessary by the increased amount of exercise which he has to take. The ideal diet for a man who is engaged in active training of his body for a race is, and should be, that which under ordinary circumstances would be best for a healthy man who is obliged to take a very large amount of active exercise. What that diet is, is a matter for scientists to decide (or to differ upon, as they usually do in such matters), and a practical athlete can only speak of it empirically; but, happily, scientists and practical athletes are of one opinion at the present day in thinking that no diet which obliges a daily course of physic can be a healthy one.

Physic may be, and often is, necessary during training, to remedy any mistake which has been made in diet; but it should be used as a remedy, and not as a part of the diet.

A further difficulty which arises in laying down any regimen for training is the indubitable physical fact that no two men are alike in their internal economy any more than they are in their outward features; and when proverbial philosophy informs us that 'one man's food is another man's poison,' it becomes impossible to speak merely from practical experience with any absolute confidence. When, however, it is understood that the problem 'What should an athlete eat and drink when in training?' resolves itself into nothing more than this, 'What is a healthy diet for a young Englishman who wants to get his muscles hard and keep his wind good?' it will be seen that it should not be difficult to give some short and simple rules for guidance.

Plain cooked meats, and a reasonable quantity of fresh fruit and vegetables, should form the staple articles of diet. Beef, mutton, and chicken are, no doubt, more digestible than veal and pork, and therefore should be more frequently eaten, as indeed is the usual custom in ordinary life; but to treat veal and pork as so much poison, as some trainers do, is simply silly. Taken occasionally by a man who is accustomed to them, they form a pleasing change, and, where a healthy man has an appetite for any food, one can pretty safely say that he is able to digest it. Fish is light and nutritious, and may judiciously be taken at any meal in the day. Soup is, doubtless, not so strengthening as meat, and not so good for the wind; but if a man is fond of soup, he is much better with it than he would be in vainly attempting to relish the mutton of which he is sick. In fact, as long as the food is plain and simple, and neither too much of it is taken nor too little, the athlete is not likely to go far wrong.