A youth who desires to build muscular strength goes about it carefully and slowly. Remember that all staying powers, brain or muscle, must be built up slowly. The tough and hardy oak does not grow like the weak poplar――quickly. Its growth is steady, regular and slow, but in the end it is powerful, long lived and richly reproductive. Make haste slowly is one of the fundamental laws of nature.
Brain and nervous system always come first in starting to build muscular power that is to last and be always at your command. The basis of power depends upon the rapidity with which the muscles respond to mental impulses. Properly developed muscles are finely-fibered, and react instantly to the impulse of the motor cells of the brain――the cells which tell the muscles to shoot out at once. Now let anything such as alcohol, tobacco, loss of sleep or immoral habits, fasten on the youth and all attempts to get the full strength out of muscles, no matter how big they are, will be useless. The reason is that the brain cells have been affected――they cannot act as they should and so the muscles cannot respond to the impulse. This is the cause of so many first-class boxers taking the final count. Success has made them careless; they neglect the rules of the physiologic game, they drink a little, smoke and indulge in other habits which affect their nervous system. They go on the stage breathing the foul and poisonous atmosphere while exhibiting, are necessarily late to bed and while still keeping up their MUSCULAR training neglect the fact that every day they are injuring their nervous motility. It is so little noticed that no attention is paid to the matter. But when it comes to a battle after such a career――even if careful training has been done weeks before the contest――the effect is shown, and down the champion goes before a less experienced boxer, one not so strong in the muscles but one whose full brain and nervous force has remained uncontaminated. Then, sad to relate, THIS champion goes the same way.
So you see that mere gross muscular structure is valueless――except it is needed for daily labor, where it exists as mere animal automatism――unless it is under the immediate control of a highly-organized nervous system free from disease and abuse.