MUSCLE CULT

A PRO-EM
TO
MY SYSTEM

BY
K. V. IYER
DIRECTOR
HERCULES GYMNASIUM AND
Correspondence School of Physical Culture
BANGALORE CITY
(INDIA)
 Preamble
-------

The day for physical culture to fulfill itself has at last

dawned.
From Crop which butchered magnificent
specimens of perfected Muscle Cult – unsure passed
to this day – at the foot of a frail woman, through
Sparra, smug in her content of her own strength,
blinding herself in the safety of her City state to
National danger, and aesthetics soused Athens a
factory for curly locked, curvy limbed animate
Appollos who strutted her streets as men whilst
peace prevailed but belied their ser when the Homan
eagle battered her talons on the gates of Greece,
passing on to the Eternal city whose once boasted
delight in the perfected physique of her home born
son degenerated in her decadent day to vicarious joy
in the inhuman spectacle of enslaved Both gladiators
steeping the arena with their gore to feast the
ghoulish eves of Imperial home and his Wife on their
holiday, - we find later Europe hiring or buying
outright physically developed man to play a Cain in
settling her mooted questions of creed or
conscience, land or lucre.
 In later day Europe, despite the advent of
the gunpowder arming physically weak man against
his muscular oppressor, physical fitness has
nevertheless been recognized and insisted upon by
modern nations in their armies, dieted, drilled and
disciplined to prove that Might spelt height in matters
of coercive conversion or aggressive
aggrandizement of land and the five year carnage
that rained human blood in Christendom but
yesterday, has rung down the curtain on a blood red
twilight of the day of human Physical Culture and
ushered in a dawn which with the Nations of the
today world, wrangling religiously for peace, eternal
peace, in the human world, precurses, for the
Physical Culturist a chaste, bright blue-roofed day to
fulfill his Cult in its Purport and Purpose: Service and
Succour to brother man.
THE ARCHER
Notice the classical development of the entire torso.
 THE SOWER
Notice the development of the external obliques.
THE DISCOBOLUS
 THE PENSEUR
‘One of the superb poses I have ever seen’ writes Mark. H. Bern
Editor, ‘Strength’, U.S.A
“Iyer has got the grace of an ‘appolo’ combined with a Herculean
development” says ....... H. Berry, Editor, ‘Strength’, U.S.A.
Observe the massive development of the entire ‘torso’
 Eight Years Before.

Taken on 15th June, 1921 after 6 months of vigorous training.

What I measure then.

Neck ... 13 inches Fore-arm ... 8 ½ inches

Normal Chest ... 32 inches Upper-arm ... 10½
inches
Expanded 33½ Thigh ... 19½
Chest … inches inches
Waist 26 inches Knee ... 13 inches
Wrist 6¾ inches Calf ... 13 ½
inches
Age – 21; Height – 5 ft. 3 inches; Weight; 118 lbs.
 Eight Years After.

Taken on 15th June, 1929, What I measured then.

Neck ... 17 inches Thigh ... 23 inches
Normal Chest 44 inches Calf ... 15½
... inches
Expanded 48 inches Wrist ... 7 inches
Chest …
Waist ... 30 inches Force-arm ... 13½
inches
Hips ... 33 inches Upper-arm ... 16 inches

Age – 29 years; Height – 5 ft. 7 inches; Weight – 160 lbs.

Observe the extraordinary development of the “Trapezius Muscles’.
 MY SYSTEM
CUTTING out the customary cackle of the now-abroad
purveyor of Physical Perfection to his more moneyed brethren, I feel,
I must confess at the outset that the ‘MY’ in ‘My System’ on the
cover design of this brochure is a misnomer. I have invented no
System of my own. Bat as one who has been a pony but physique-
loving youth and having followed many ‘SYSTEMS’ some of which
whilst benefiting me – the rest have, to my sorrow, happily left long
behind, worked havoc with my money, mind and body, I justify my
right to the ‘My’ in ‘My System’ as bar the sum of my experience-
guided selection of whatever has leaded to the making of my
physique what it is, as recorded by the photographs I append, with
the original ever open to being run over with foot rule, tape and
stethoscope.
I must warn you that you might perhaps waste your money
and waste my time too, if you are not clear as to what you might buy
and what I offer to sell. If as I take it, it is your ambition to acquire a
body sound enough to congenially lodge your sound mind, it is best
for us both that you realize that YOUR part of our bargain is WORK
– HARD WORK and mine the lighter part of indicating to you the
lines of your Work; they very lines on which to become what I am, I
worked and worked hard too.
With me but the architect in the abstract, you are the real
builder of your own body as I was of mine. I can at best supply the
design, but it is YOU who have to bear the brunt of the work from the
building of the basement to the fixing of coping stone of your
perfected body, and your reward, the delectful feeling that you built
your own body.
In brief, I lay but the plans, whilst it is you who lay the bricks
you yourself will have made under my eye. The System you will buy
from me being one by correspondence will detail a confidence
between us as learner and teacher. This is religiously essential in the
yellow light of the curse that every human in heir to some all of flesh
or other. In my blindness of you and your habits born of your want of
confidence in me, my course while benefitting a fellow-pupil of yours
whole in body, might work havoc with you in your weakness or vice
which your fear of breaking the eleventh commandment “T
S N B F O ” gave me no inkling of.
With this proviso which entails not only a heart to heart
understanding between us and no intervening veil of shame,
pretension or respectability on your part and entailing too your
realizing the rugged track of work – hard work which you will have to
tread as patiently as I trod it myself, I will now proceed to spread out
my wares with the confession that if you are after becoming a
SANDOW in six months for six dollars and out-wrestle a GAMA and
out box a TUNNEY for an additional three dollars, with NURMI’S,
Mercury’s feet thrown in for an odd dime or two, it is beyond my
achievement and you had best enrich the other purveyors of
Physical Perfection who bombard you with booklets emblazoning
bodies better than mine. Printing is cheap. Faked negatives cover a
multitude of positives. Fiction now-a-days fetches where truth fails.

THE COURSE YOU WILL BUY

YOUR return in kind for your investment in coin will lie in your strict
adherence to, and scrupulous following of, the instructions I will lay
down modified from time to time after the honest reports of your
progress.
In my assumption that I have interested your thus far in my
brochure, I invite you to earnestly peruse and ponder over my ideas,
as shown in the following pages, in my hope of our further relationship
of buyer and seller. Your work will in the main fall normally under the
beads; Exercise, Bath, Food and Repose.

EXERCISE, BATH, FOOD AND REPOSE

‘EXERCISE’ to my mind has ever been but a book smacking make
shift to high sound our common or garden old friend and enemy
‘WORK’.
 When we ‘EXERCISE’ we do no more but work, be it work
of brain or of thews and sinews, we ‘EXERCISE’ and the work of the
human body is almost, if not quiet on all fours, with the work of
bodies non-human, say, on auto-car, a steam-engine or an
aeroplane; only, what spells Exercise, Bath, Rest and Food with
humans are termed Working, Cleaning-up, Cooling and Fuelling with
an auto. I shall now set out to speak under these various heads on
the comparative basis whenever I think fit, of Man and Engine.

EXERCISE OR WORK
From mechanics we gather that work is the resultant of energy in
action. That this assumes the negotiating of an opposing force goes
without saying a food pound of work which connotes the amount of
energy expended in the lift of a pound of weight vertically through a
space of a foot connotes too, an overcome opposition of gravity
gauged in this case at one pound of weight.
Among human workers the navy’s game is to get his wages,
working, only of the foreman is about; while the Muscle-builder’s
reward lies only in his making the most of his work. In fact it pays him
to go even out of his way to enhance effort to oppose his muscles,
while the navy loses nothing by slackness of effort if his wages are
ensured. To the physique-enthusiast maximum of opposition to
muscles negotiated, spells maximum of development of muscles
effected.
The devising of a systematized means of Opposition or
Resistance to muscular effort to effect muscular growth constitutes a
system or course of Muscle Culture. The multifold forms and
methods, mechanical, manual or otherwise, this Opposition or
Resistance takes through the inventive brain of map, embody the
various ‘Systems’ adapted and held up for sale. And mine is but one
of them.
Comparing our Culturist at work with an auto in action, whilst
the analogy holds good in point of both using up their energies the
analogy bolds good in point of both using up their energies in
negotiating their respective oppositions; the one of weight, rubber-
strand or metal-spiral, the pet device of his purveyor, the other the
time-honoured resistance, the friction that road-metal puts up against
tire, it ceases in view of the after-effect that the human is the bigger
for his effort whilst the auto at best is itself in efficiency. In fact, in the
light of my experience that I have put a whole inch on my pupil’s
neck in a fortnight when he has scrupulously followed my exercises
for his cervical and tracheal regions, a daily growth of a fifteenth of
an inch is a not too sanguine prospect I can confidently hold out for
you.
It is but the limited confines of this booklet that preclude my
dilating on this subject ‘Exercise’ at greater length than I have, as it
might entail the risk of other subjects of equal importance being
crowded out of your notice and consideration; but in the light of the
physiological truth that muscular tissue when functioning
disintegrates (Kataslates) requiring replenishment (Anastates) and
Repose to regain fitness to resume efficient functioning, this subject
treated so cursorily at this stage will not escape attention while I deal
with its allied subjects: Bath, Food and Rest.

THE BATH
To the casual as well as the day-in and day-out votary of the daily
Cold-bath, if uninitiated into the rationale of its magical virtues, his
ablution beyond making him feel ‘clean and refreshed’ holds no
further interest to provoke his curiosity as to the why and wherefore
of his renovated manhood as it were after the Bath, shutting out of
his ken the whole galaxy of Physical, Mental and even Emotional
mutations his bath has set up in his being, well justifying its attribute
‘MAGIC’ given to it by that pioneer Culturist of Konigsberg, the
peerless EUGEN SANDOW in whose death the world has lost what
his motto proclaimed him, and “AMICUS HUMANI GENERIS”. The
vital importance of the heating that the Bath has on the Cult of the
Muscle constrains me to impress upon you that any seeming of
under technique or ‘Shop’ in my discourse should be viewed in the
light of the ominous paradox that the Cold-Bath is both the maker
and the breaker of the human frame.
 To start with, when I speak of a Bath I mean a Bath in water
– liquid water as soft as you can obtain if, hot, tepid or cold, each
with the own advantages and shortcomings to be touched upon later.
With deliberateness I eschew talk of other Baths; steam-baths, sun-
baths, hot-air-baths, mud-baths and the rest of the precession of
baths so dear to the enterprising explorer of unbeaten tracks on his
journey to a Mecca, which, do not forget, is yours as well as mine,
‘ALL PATHS LEAD TO THE INNER SHRINE” – only some meander
as the river whilst others wend as the eagle.
To reconcile the meager space this booklet allows with my
ardour to interest you in the subject, I resort to the viewing of the
effects of a Bath on the human body from points of its external and
internal tectonic components.
Before doing this it is as well to arm you wish such facts
concerning the effects of Exercise on your muscles as will help you
see the need for a Bath in its immediate wake.
The processes of disintegration already touched upon
summarily (Page 18) affect the functioning or Exercising, muscle-
tissue by breaking it down and effecting material not only of no
further use to the body but of serious detriment to it every moment of
its retention. These deleterious products of the catabolism of the
Exercised muscle (Excreta) whilst awaiting argents in the human
body specially told off to see to their ejection without the human
frame, have a good part carried out by a partner of their genesis:
SWEAT or perspiration, the egress of which through the pores of the
skin lands it at its surface laden of dissolved and suspended excretal
contents. Sweat being water with dissolved and suspended material,
its disposition on the human skin exposes it to the air, and robbed of
its water by evaporation the remnant-contents encrusted as solids
block the skin pores against egress of further sweat; hence the fact
that the solubility of a liquid is directly as the temperature of the
solvent should naturally decide us to plump for the Hot-bath if in
actual experience we did not suffer the inevitable enervation a Hot-
bath imparts to an Exercise-tired body, - surely the least preparer to
the Repose indispensable in refitting the muscles to at least its
original efficiency.
 The analogy of the human and the machine on the
comparative grounds of Bath and ‘Cleaning up’ apply here and stop
here: a ‘Clean-up’ spelling but the clearing away of deleterious
products of the engine’s functioning without any changes, chemical
or mechanical, brought about in its intricate mechanism by this
cleaning up.
‘Exercise’ spelling to the muscles issue an upset of its
chemical contents with ‘Repose’ assuring their set-up or restoration
refitting the tissue for further function, with, I must add its confrere
‘DIET’ the loss of Repose that an exercised-body sustains at the
hands of a Hot-bath gives it a back seat among the trio.
In respect of its not enervating its votary, the virtues of a
Tepid-bath are entirely negative; and this advantage over the Hot-
bath it loses by its less ready solubility of the salty encrustations on
the skin which, whilst blocking exudation of excreta-bearing sweat,
act toxically on the skin every moment they are left unremoved.
Before eliminating outright our consideration of the Hot and the Tepid
from the trio of Baths I must impress on you the comparative safety
of the warmer two to your well-being in the light of the capers of the
Cold-bath which, with one hand holding out boons of Body-building
to the initiated, deals out with the other, devastation of Brawn. Bone
and Brain to triflers of its intricate injunctions. And I adduce my own
body now as advocate of the former and my own experience as
warning of the later when seven years ago I, a physique-mad
stripling, enthused by SANDOW’S encomiums on the wonders of the
Magic-Cold-Bath rushed headlong into its arms without guide,
philosopher or friend and found myself a helpless target for ailments,
Rheumatic and pneumonic, providing a bean-feast for doctors and a
treasure-trove for quacks. How it was given to me to wriggle alive
through their fingers is another story; but my condition as my
portraits evidence and my experience as I shall recount in detail to
any reader interested, will, I am sore, convince your of the religiously
circumspect manner in which one ought to approach what I
emphatically hold as an Essential to body-building-the Cold-bath.
When breath is taken in as sudden gasp, there is an equally
sudden filling of the lungs which swell. This, apart from straining the
costal walls of the Thorax and its floor the Diaphragm depressing the
entrails it roofs, also impinges so forcibly upon the heart as to set it
off at violent speed to avenge itself by kicking back at the lungs in its
surcharge of its Pulmonary Artery; this very while it brings about an
abnormal blood-pressure throughout the human Vascular system by
a wildly working Aorta. This sudden intake of breath which inevitably
follows your plunging your Exercise-heated body in a Cold-bath,
exposes your heart and your whole system to a vascular-strain; your
fitness for this can be ensured only by the pronouncement of your
family physician, my sole guide in my prescribing of the Magic-Cold-
Bath for you. As for the means and methods to insure my pupil
against it hazards and ensure for him its ‘Magic’ assets in the
building of his body, a count of them here whilst drawing on the
gravamen of the course I purpose to sell you, would swell this
booklet beyond its purposed scope.
 B. K. SAMPATH
Notice the extraordinary display of his upper-back muscles.
C. ROBERTSON, MADRAS
Notice the splendid development of chest, pectorals and arm.
 MOHAMADALLY M. ABDULLABHAI
SHARAFPURA-SIDHPUR, N. GUJARAT.

If he got this huge development through correspondence

instructions,
Why not you?
 OOI TIANG GUAN
PENANG, FMS

Read what he writes in his letter to me.

 K. SUBRAMANYAM
A pupil who has mastered my science, and now engaged in training
others.
 A.T. KANNABIRAN
A pupil possessing the qualities of a great Athlete, an all-round
sportsman and an enthusiastic Physical Culturist.
 H.V. SHANKARIAH
A ‘Medico’ who is a perfect Physical Culturist. “ ‘Physical Culture’ is
the biggest doctor” that is what he says.
Observe his deep-chest and massive arms.
 P.S. NARAYANA RAO
A student developing his physique on graceful lines.

REPOSE
TURNING our eyes from the Bath to the seemingly less important
but in the building of the Muscle an equally essential factor, Repose
which, If assured of food to replenish material lost in the exercised
muscles, restores it to a state of grown efficiency since its last effort;
the integral metamorphosis of the muscle through exercise is
explained in the pronouncement of the Histio-Chemist, that
‘Exercise’ converts the carbo-hydrate Glycogen in the muscle into
the chemically identical but toxic ‘Lactic-acid’ wanting but Repose to
reform it into Glycogen to fit the muscle to almost its original
efficiency, ‘almost,’ because of the loss involved of a fraction of itself
in energizing the process of this restitution of the acid to the original
Glycogen.
Herein I am but elaborating the definition of Repose I have
already stated (Page 20) that Repose sets up in efficiency, muscles
upset integrally through Exercise, aided, I need hardly add, by Food.
The Irishman who drank at one draught the whole bottle of
medicine, meant by the doctor to be taken spread over a whole day,
with intent to getting better all the quicker was in no wise more
foolish than many an enthusiast I have known, who, in his mad belief
that Exercise and Exercise alone was the way-all to development,
religiously went through the course he had dearly paid for, twice,
nay, thrice and even, in some cases, four times a day, finding himself
within a month or even less, a total wreck, realizing too late that
Nature even as in her recurring calls of man’s functions of hunger
and excretion once every twenty-four hours, exacts too a Repose of
at least like period for worked muscles to sleep and wake again fresh
for work. My insistence on even a forty-eight-hour-rest of muscles for
my more advanced pupils while I graduate their lessons for their
SUPER BUILDING COURSES, should, I feel, convince you of the
importance of Repose to take its place to make up the basis of
Physical Perfection, the quartette: Exercise, Bath, Repose and Diet.
------------
DIET
ONCE again cringing under your eye, non-human engine alongside of the human
worker, my assertion that the working, cleaning up, cooling-down and fuelling of an
engine correspond to exercising, the Bath, the Repose and the Feeding of the
human body, recalls my statement that ‘Whilst the engine is at best itself in
efficiency after its work, the human is the bigger and stronger for his.’
This difference in the after-work-cleaning-rest-fuelling condition is size
and efficiency between Man and Engine lies in that, whilst fueling but just supplies
material to the engine to refit it to turn out its limited amount of work, the feeding of
the exercised human helps not only to make good broken down tissue, but also
builds up more tissue assuring greater turn-out of future work by the now bigger-
built muscles. Hence it is obvious that the dieting of the Physical Culturist which
spells but the supply of material to replenish tissue lost through Exercise and
tissue to be built for development must be based on the selection of such and only
such food-stuff as by its ingredients contains all the elements identical with those
that made up the human muscle-tissue before Exercise broke it down.
Average man feeds and drinks but to appease a gnawing stomach and
allay a burning throat and tongue little caring for the nature of the solid and the
liquid he consumes so long as these are as palatable and non-injurious as he can
command for the moment.
But in muscle-building an identity of food and drink ingested, with the
human muscle to be built, in point of chemical constitution is imperative and it
behaves the Culturist to inform himself of the chemical components that make up
the human muscle in general to help him select such food-stuff as, on absorption,
will make up for the tissue he lost through Exercise and also effect a growth of the
muscle, at a rate, I estimate, at a sixteenth of an inch for every twenty-four hours
passed in Exercise, Bath and Repose, provided the pupil is not past his prime.
The human muscle, physiologist will have us know, is three-quarters of it
just water; the solid quarter, seventy-five per cent of itself containing Protein,
seventeen percent Fat and insoluble Sugar and eight percent of Phosphatic Salts.
In selecting food as identical in constitution with the above as practicable,
the fifteen percent of Protein in meat, whilst qualifying as food for our Culturist
gives us over twice too much of Fat besides burdening the human alimentary
system with thirty-two per cent of Refuse-and ashy-matter to be ingested and
excreted with no profit to the body and wasteful indent on body and wasteful indent
on bodily energy.
 Thus “GIVES US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD” when answered only with
bread will find the absorbed bread will find the absorbed bread crediting the
Culturist’s muscle directly with no more than a modicum of the five per cent that Fat
and Carbo-hydrate find place in the human muscle, the soupcon of the Gluten in the
bread hardly coping with the fifteen per cent Protein-demand of the muscle.
Pitching vegetables against meat, we find beans, ‘Kidney’, Single’, or
‘Double’, laden with half as much again of protein contents as the muscle wants,
meager of water which a draught can amend and Carbohydrates enough to supply
the muscle adequately can yet spare enough sugar to generously contribute to the
human granary of sugar-supply. Glycogenising Liver, and no refuse-matter to prey
upon alimentary energy.
I am mentioning this at the risk of drawing around my head a veritable
nest of hornets in the shape of vegetarian and non-vegetarian faddists stinging me
to land myself within a maze of dietetic controversies; and my having in all my life
never partaken of flesh, fish, fowl or egg, might stigmatize me as an insufferable
dogmatizer forcing my fad down the throats of my pupils. With Tolerance the
keynote of outlook of life and the living world around me, it is late you have to
concede in the day of my life to force any personal fad or penchant of mine on my
fellow-creatures. When I have told you what the muscle you want to grow is made
up of and hence wants as diet to grow bigger, I have told enough. It is up to you
and you alone to make your free choice from the list of diets, vegetable or animal,
my course will open to you, to suit your own taste and sentiment without
weakening in the least the only bond that will link you and me: MUSCLE CULT.
Seriousness apart, any burning curiosity of your regarding my weakness
for spinach and spud. I can only allay at the risk of rousing your risible. I have
always wondered why meat-eaters slaughter for their food only animals which
themselves are vegetarians.
Arguing, flippantly I know, Panther-soup, Filleted-Shark Roast-Lion, Tiger-
Cutlets, Coyote-Curry, and Wolf-Pudding should, one would think, rationally make up
the menu of the would-be strong man. But carnivore-man, except the cannibal, has
ever been marking down herbivorous animals for his food, for the reason I take it
of the guarantee of the wholesomeness that a grass-and-greens-fed animal’s meat
holds out, as against carnivore-meat, built of flesh, fresh or foul, healthy or
putrefying, wholesome or diseased and vermin-sodden.
My personal adherence to vegetable food with the single exception of milk,
cow’s milk well boiled, I attribute to my whimsical avidity to satisfy to myself, that of
my muscles I have worked up and weaned from their erstwhile stringiness to their
present lissome litheness and bulging bulk, not one fibre of them was at an time, part
of the rump of an ox, the shoulder of a sheep, the breast of a fowl or the middle
piece of a fish!
They are all wonderfully getting on with their great friend
‘Physical Culture’.
 MOHAMMADALLY M. ABDULLABHAI
ANOTHER POSE I AM PROUD TO PUBLISH
Notice the symmetrical development ‘Cap-a-pie’. A proof to show
that
distance is not hindrance at all for me, to train my pupils on the very
lines – I trained myself.
 N. C. PATIL, HUBLI
Another substantial proof of the efficacy of my correspondence
course.
A wonderfully developed pupil, who has founded ‘The Karnatic
Vyayama Sala’ at Hubli, S. India.
S. SUNDARAM. As exponent of Hata-Yoga performing “Uddiyana
and Nasli”
P.S. SREENIVASACHAR B.M. ARJUN
 C. ANNAMALAI
DURBAN (S. Africa)

Says: Distance was no hindrance to me in getting the advantages of your

instruction.
Y.V.K. MURTHY
Who is ever fit.
 S. SARVOTTAMA RAO

A Police Officer, who has well realized the necessity of a perfect condition.

N. GUNDU RAO
A keen enthusiast on physical fitness.
 T. VENKATAKRISHNIAH
Sixty years and still going strong, to whom the author
owes his respects as his ‘Guru’.
HATA-YOGA
HATA-YOGA, the ancient system of body-cult particularly its phases of tissue-
constructive, disease-resistive, and ailment curative properties, having had more
to do in the making of me what I am to-day than all the bells, bars, steel-springs
and strands I have used and used with benefit too, my conscientious incorporation
of what I might term this INDIAN SPECIALITY as an organic part of My System, is
less a favour than a loyalty I owe to my pupil, who in opening the extent of his
nurse to me, commands me in his honest trust in me to unfold to him with equal
honesty the utmost extent of the wares I hold up for sale filtered through personal
experience.
Eschewing for the nonce the details of the details of the Indian System,
the dissimilarity between the Hata-Yoga Cult and the Western Cult of Body-
building lies in the very goal that these two systems aim to achieve, Longevity of
life – a life healthy and free from ailments functional and organic, to fit the
individual human unit to fulfill his obligations to himself, his home and the society
he is part of, succinctly sums up what Hata-Yoga imparts to the worldly man.
Europe, - ancient, mediaeval and modern – in her cult of the human body,
has ever been aiming at the symmetry, bulk and strength in the developed man
and what benefit his internal viscera derived from his Cult has been more
incidental than intended. To take the edge off any smack of flippancy in my fore-
going seemingly sweeping estimate of Western Cult of the human physique and
substantiate my comparative estimates of the methods and results of the Systems
of the East and the West, I resort to a somewhat lingering view of the purpose,
method and result achieved in the developing of the Human Chest as tackled by
the East and the West.
In the West from ancient Troy through Greece, Rome and Carthage to
modern Europe, from Trojan, and Spartan Gladiator and Goth to the modern
SANDOW or SAXON, the best developed chest bas ever spelt no more but the
thickest layer of pectorals; and these at best have evidenced their worth by the
weights they negotiated and the chains they burst, their girth spelling but well-brought-
out pectoral and latismi, tended, bred and kept taut by regular Exercises, Bath, Diet
and Repose with the ever-hanging sword of Democles over them of loss of size,
strength and symmetry if diurnal discipline was the least bit relaxed. In contrast with
what I may term this ‘SUPRA-costal’ development of the West, Hata-Yoga
guaranteeing longevity of a healthy life and power to combat disease, converges its
attention on ‘INTER-costal’ culture, ensuring a greater capacity of chest to house a
correspondingly greater amount of air in the Thorax the nascent oxygen of which
burning out the least traces of cold, fever and other bacilli lodged in the lungs, insures
the human against pneumonic and allied ailments. Thus whilst the Western
Culturist boasts of a chest covered with strong beautiful muscles, the Hata-Yogi
with perhaps a flat ‘Supra-costal’ development exhibits a marvelous expansion of
chest whose costae are bewilderingly apart, through the special culture of ‘Inter-costal’
muscles.

My ideally developed man whilst having both the symmetry and strength
of a SANDOW shall be immune to disease through his devout following of the
dictates of Hata-Yoga. To insist on my unveiling in detail the how and why and
wherefore of Hata-Yoga would be the right only of my pupil. My dwelling at length
on this Indian specialty is but to show my reader that, far from being a mysterious
oriental ‘Black-magic’ secret of the East, Hata-Yoga is a rational scientific course of
human Mental and Physical discipline, based on a rationale as cogent and
convincing as any proven truth in modern Western science. Its utility to present-
day humanity is its practicability in the evolving of a PHYSIOLOGICALLY perfect
human in marked contrast with the achievement of the Western Culturist: a man
physically perfect in points of outward shape, size, symmetry and strength but with
no guarantee against pneumonia snuffing out a SAXON in his prime and cerebral
and cardiac strain blinding a SANDOW to the eve of his life.
My aim in MY SYSTEM is to reconcile these two great systems, to assure
the future Culturist, of robustness of health and beauty of limb and trunk and
immunity from Physical disease and Mental decline in fulfilling the purport of
purpose of Muscle-Cult: service to fellow-man.
AN EXPLANATION
MODESTY as an asset in commercial dealings is played out now-a-days being
looked upon with suspicion as a camouflage for cunning of chronic conceit! So
with no risk of being thought egotistic, I recount the following incidents in my life
from skin-and-bone worshipper of SANDOW and SAXON to muscle-laden
purveyor of the Cult.
To insure you against boredom, I am stringing loosely together such
incidents of my life involved in the Cult of my muscles as, while assuring the
puniest of my readers of future hope of a good Physique, will also plead excuse for
my presumption in offering My System to Europe and America, bristling as they
are with specimens of Physical Perfection superior in size, sinew and symmetry to
my humble own. Born of early motherhood, puny boyhood, SANDOW’S pictures,
earnest emulation, unguided head-long rush into bells, and cold-baths, small
reward of sprouting muscles and stern reprisals of recurring colds, fevers and
chills – a depressing period of no gain in bulk or strength, - a baffled mind steeped
in Western Physical Culture turns to Hata-Yoga, India’s heritage – blending of the
two Systems, the reward, a more than passable well-proportioned body –
enthused anxious friends initiated into “MY SYSTEM” with success, materializes in
the Institute I have been sole director of, these eight years – my travels about the
country to rouse present-day youth to the Cult of their body, - the correspondence
course I had of necessity to devise for pupils outside my town. This résumé sums
up my career which finds me to-day the head of a big School of Physical Culture
chock-full of pupils to be personally attended to every day and hundreds of others
scattered all over the East to be individually cared for through correspondence.
And yet no smug-self-complacence on my part could have fired my presumption to
the pitch of offering “MY SYSTEM” to Europe and America bat the inundation of
hundreds of applications for my course, incited as I take it by the parental
solicitude with which trans-Indian magazines and journals have included my poses
and particularly the ‘STRENGTH’ of U.S.A. which to my delight and dismay
classed me as one of the few most symmetrically built men of to-day.
 A FEW OF THE UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIALS.

67, Malay St.,

Penang, 6-6-1929.
M D T ,
I have now come to the last lesson. I can honestly say that your course is
the best, because it is not mere muscle culture. The internal organs too are
strengthened and nerves are toned up. It unfolds to me the precious and vital
secrets of life “The Yogic Culture’ which accounts for the long and healthy lives of
the Indian Sages.
With love
(Sd.) OOI TIANG GUAM

----------

My Health, strength, All-Round Development, I owe to Your Postal Course.

N. Gujarat,
Sharafpura, Sidhpur,
12-04-1929
Dear Teacher,
I feel it my duty to thank you most heartily for the health and all-
around development which I have obtained by following your postal course which
has costed me but little. It has made me a new person in a very short time. The
results of your System upon me are wonderful. Everyday I feel stronger than
before.
Your Pupil
(Sd.) M M. A .

---------

Medical Officer for the State of Chamba says:

‘I have improved a lot through your System’
Pangie Dispensary,
16-9-1929.
Dear Sir,
I and a friend of mine who was merely skin and bones as to say, have
improved a great deal within 6 weeks and I am much pleased with the systematic
exercises, with which, each and every muscle develops to its zenith soon.
Sincerely.
(Sd.) D . J M M ,
L.S.M.F.P.,
Pangie, Dr. Chamba
 A Pupil aged 58.
Alluvgal. S.T. Travancore.
14-9-1929
My Dear Guru,
Cannot describe my joy when I feel the benefits I am deriving day by day
from the Exercises of your course. I never thought the exercises to be so very
beneficial for me who has long passed his prime.
Your most obedient pupil,
(Sd.) B.S. S I .
--------
I improved 3 inches in chest within 3 weeks; 8 lbs, more in my body weight.
Malla Dario,
Almora,
th
28 August, 1928
Dear sir,
I have made vast progress, 3 inches around the chest, 1 inch around the
neck. I inch in the arms and 8 lbs, in my body weight during these three weeks and I
am very highly satisfied.
Truly yours,
(Sd.) J C P .
--------
2 inch is chest and ½ inch in the neck within a fortnight
Bararala
Mundya Tq., Mysore Province.
19-2-1929.
Dear sir,
I have not yet begun the Lesson 2. Already my chest has improved by 2
inches and my neck by as inch. I have great faith in your system.
I am, Your obedient Pupil,
(Sd.) B.N. S ,
--------
One and half inches in chest and ½ inch in neck in eight days.
Maddahi Wali Gali,
Jalli Mahaila, Ferozpore,
Punjab, 15-6-1929
Respected Sir,
Kindly dispatch the Lesson 2., I have secured this vast improvement within
eight days.
2nd June. Chest Normal, 33½ inches On 10th June, 34½ inches.
,, Neck normal, 13½ inches. ,, 13½ inches.

Your obediently,
(Sd.) H R ,
 C/O Jagannathji Agrawal.

Your Course is the best in the world.

10 F, Larnt Rd.,
Penang S.S.
nd
22 April, 1929.
Dear sir,
I have taken many courses from famous P.S. experts. I should say yours
is the best in the world as it teaches not merely exercises but the proper method,
concentration, control of muscles, dietetics. Above all, your methods are based
upon the principles of Physiology and Yogic methods.
Yours for health & strength,
(Sd.) I.M. M .
--------
1 inch in chest and I inch in neck in fifteen days.
Post Office, Keggalle,
Ceylun, 28-7-1929
Dear sir,
Your second lesson to hand, thanks. I have great pleasure in recording
the improved measurements in my chest and neck at the end of a fortnight.
Sincerely yours.
(Sd.) G.T. T .
--------
2 inches more in arm and 2 inches in seek in thirty days.
VHE Victoria Institute,
Kuala Lumpur, 10-7-1929
Dear K. Y. Iver,
I have put on 2 inches in my arm and 2 inches in my neck after
completing my second lesson and I feel much stronger than I ever was.
Your faithful pupil
(Sd.) S.M. R .
--------
Life-long Indigestion and Constipation Overcome in thirty day.
Rly-Quarters.
Trichy, 19-10-1929.
My dear sir,
Since many years I had been constipated and my digestion was also
poor. After I get your special Exercises my constipation has vanished. My digestion
has reduced. My best wishes for your success.
Yours faithfully,
(Sd.) A P .
 CURRICULUM
---------------------------

A COURSE of three months, graduated and based on periodic progress of pupil,

essential solemn binding on the part of the pupil to abide by my injunctions in
detail of Exercise, Diet, Repose and Bath. Re the last, a certificate, from the family
Physician, of cordiac normality imperative, a report of all the internal organs
diagnosed by a medical man helpful to me and my pupil, an honest avowal of all
peculiarities of habits, weaknesses and ailments of body and mind will obviate
dangers of mis-prescription and irreparable injury to be pupil with poor consolation
to me that I got his money anyhow and the responsibility of his ruination is his own.
Detail of terms on personal correspondence with

DIRECTOR, HERCULES GYMNASIUM

AND CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL
OF PHYSICAL CULTURE
BANGALORE CITY S. INDIA
AMICUS HUMANI GENERIS