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Assessments for Sport and Athletic Performance First Edition David H. Fukuda Ph.D.
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Foreword
Throughout my coaching career of over 40 years, I have motivated myself to pursue an improved understanding of and continual engagement with all aspects of athletic performance. Being able to understand the why when it comes to helping athletes reach their ultimate athletic potential, regardless of the sport, has enabled me to push athletes to new levels of performance. To that end, through my educational pursuits and applied work, I have developed a philosophy whereby I encourage coaches and athletes to strive for an improved understanding and mastery of all aspects of athletic development.
This philosophy has led me to coaching not only athletes but also coaches, teams, international federations and Olympic committees in a multitude of sports. From my early days as a high school coach at my alma mater, Madison East, I leveraged the leadership of my professors and coaches to influence athletes in ice hockey and girls’ track and field, which resulted in state championship performances. This approach of doing my best to understand everything to do with sport performance moved me to the collegiate ranks at the University of Wisconsin, University of Tennessee and Louisiana State University. At LSU, I was fortunate to lead an extraordinary group of coaches and athletes to five NCAA team championships as head women’s track and field coach in a programme that produced 140 All-American female athletes. These principles helped athletes like Dawn Sowell (10.78 and 22.03) and Sheila Echols (10.83 and 6.94 metres [22 feet, 9 1/4 inches]) garner accolades and achieve medal-winning performances.
During this period I was sometime criticized by other coaches for speaking with my athletes in terms that were too scientific. One day I confronted one of these coaches. I called an athlete
over and asked her to explain a performance concept in biomechanics. To the surprise of the now-confounded coach, the athlete replied with a correct, eloquent and succinct explanation. One of my proudest accomplishments as a coach is seeing many of the athletes with whom I worked choose to pursue a career or avocation in coaching and watching them apply principles they had learned.
In 1989 I ‘turned pro’ and stepped away from the collegiate environment to work in the arena of the professional athlete. Names in track and field include Gwen Torrence, double silver medallist in the 100 and 200 metres in the 1991 IAAF World Championships. More recently, athletes in all three disciplines—the sprints, hurdles and jumps—have had great success. Donovan Bailey, Dwight Phillips, Angelo Taylor, LaShawn Merritt and Tianna Bartoletta eagerly learned while achieving stellar performances and picking up hardware. I am proud that Dwight Phillips has joined our coaching staff at IMG Academy.
Team-sport athletes will equally benefit from the knowledge you will gain and put into practice after pouring over Clive Brewer’s newest publication. I was able to help the Atlanta Falcons when I joined their staff as a speed and performance consultant in 1989, long before many teams had this position. That year the Falcons went to the Super Bowl, partly because they had the fewest number of games missed by starters and the greatest point differential in the fourth quarter. They were fitter, faster and healthier. I have spent time consulting with the Chicago Bulls, Detroit Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars and players such as Hershel Walker, Dorsey Levens, Marco Coleman and Glenn ‘Big Baby’ Davis, just to mention a few Athletic Movement Skills: Training for Sports Performance by Clive Brewer, a world-recognized
expert in high-performance sport conditioning and applied sport science, presents readers with a comprehensive guide to such applied knowledge. I believe that coaches should have the widest possible database to draw on for the eventualities that may come their way. Coaches should be knowledgeable in all fields relevant to performance enhancement, whilst actively seeking new and innovative advancements. This book provides just that type of applied information—material that will engage, educate and inspire readers to prioritize the development of athletic movement skills for widespread success.
I have always believed that the first role of any athletic development practitioner is to be a movement coach. Athletes must be able to get their joints in the right position, at the right time, so that the muscles can work in an optimal manner. Poor movement mechanics lead not only to inefficient actions, but also to injury because muscles, ligaments and joints are subjected to high force or repetitive actions that they are not designed to withstand. After all, what sport doesn’t require athletes to move well? Competent movement techniques therefore form the basis not only for conditioning work but also for physical education programmes and sport-specific coaching. Movement techniques are at the heart of a sound performance development programme.
Throughout this pursuit for knowledge and experience in the field of performance coaching across the developmental spectrum, I have worked with colleagues who share the same passion. We have shared our experiences and expertise to aid our collective understanding of the why behind the what and the how. Throughout my career, I have attempted to do the same for coaches and scientists who have the same thirst for learning so that they can help others achieve more than they thought possible as independent learners. Athletic Movement Skills provides just that learning opportunity.
Clive Brewer and I have been friends and colleagues for more than a decade. Our first meeting in Dublin, Ireland, where I was presenting at the European Athletics Coaches Association Symposium, was memorable. I immediately recognized Clive’s keen interest
in and understanding of some of the most complex aspects of strength and power development, especially as it related to speed and movement. Clive’s path has blended the practical with the scientific, a combination I believe is vital when expressing and justifying what works from an evidence-based and field application perspective. Clive has published numerous articles and peer-reviewed papers on wide and varied subject matter in the areas of human performance that have significantly contributed to the body of knowledge. I have consistently relied on Clive to assist me in the vetting of new ideas and to lend ideas for crafting presentations. Most recently in Birmingham, England, we collaborated again on the stage in a presentation on strength and power as they relate to speed across the athlete’s career from youth and novice levels to the elite international level. This past year Clive has worked with me in Florida, providing strength and conditioning to the national team track athletes I was coaching as they prepared for the Rio Olympics.
Athletic Movement Skills sees Clive take his work to a new level. He shares content on how the body optimally functions and explores the importance of physical literacy and a finely tuned movement vocabulary in chapter 1. This book shows in detail how different sports have commonalities and can draw from a body of evidence and expertise through the use of movement skills to solve a variety of challenges posed. The book delves into how the neuromotor system works and, even more important, how the athlete’s systems change through the stages of age-related development in chapters 2 and 3, respectively.
Chapter 4 focuses on the mechanical functions of athletic movement skills and the effect that forces have on successful execution. Understanding these concepts will aid readers as they guide athletes through a developmental journey towards movement mastery.
An in-depth view on posture and its importance and effect on movement efficiency in chapter 5 is followed by a comprehensive discussion of how to analyse such physical alignment from a static and dynamic point of view. Chapter 6 emphasizes the evaluation and
monitoring of movement skill development, in particular when seeking to correct commonly seen challenges along a development pathway. Armed with this foundational information, readers learn in chapter 7 how to construct an applied and progressive curriculum that generates a designed and personalized stage rather than an age-appropriate progression. This chapter incorporates fundamentals in the areas of speed and agility development and reactive strength that encompass effective take-off and landing movements. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 show how functional strength can be seamlessly integrated into a programme. Readers will benefit from an array of exercises and technique-specific guidance that allow progression towards more advanced drills and exercises that build functional movement skill mastery.
No book would be complete without realworld examples from a variety of sporting disciplines that readers can relate to and learn
from. Athletic Movement Skills presents several case studies in chapter 11 that give readers practical insight into the process of identifying what is needed to solve the challenges through a comprehensive, tailored movement education programme. Links to the foundational principles that the book sets out are recalled to help readers comprehend and fine-tune their delivery of support.
Working with Clive first hand enabled me to experience personally how the content and philosophy advocated by Athletic Movement Skills plays out in coaching sessions. In keeping with my personal philosophy of sharing concepts, ideas and practice, I commend Clive on sharing his expertise so that we as a community can grow together and support the athletes and clients we work with.
By reading Athletic Movement Skills, you will gain further insight on how to help your athletes and clients reach their potential in any of their physical endeavours.
Loren Seagrave Director
of speed and movement and Director of track and field and cross country IMG Academy, Bradenton, Florida
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Preface
When I discuss my role with the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball, I am often asked when I stopped thinking of myself as a coach and began to think of myself as a scientist. The answer is that this transformation has never happened. Coaching is a people business, a problem-solving opportunity to enable athletes to get the best out of themselves. I am first a coach, but I am a coach who practises science. Most people who work with athletes do so because their fundamental desire is to make the athlete better. I wanted to write a book inspired by my passion to help others by providing the why and what of how to coach core movement skills to athletes of different ages and standards. You will find this book useful for identifying where the athlete is in his or her movement development and what he or she might need to do to progress. I have incorporated a practical blend of the what, how and, most important, the why of movement skill development.
This book can be used at any stage of the training programme design. Chapters 1 through 5 provide a practical understanding of how the body works and how it can be improved. Chapters 6 and 7 pull this information into progressive programmes based on observations. Chapters 8 through 10 are full of technical guidance for developing multidirectional speed and power with athletes in any context. The book concludes with a series of examples of integrated programmes in chapter 11.
If you are a coach who wants practical ideas but also wants to understand why these methods are important, or an athletic trainer who understands how the body works but is looking for ways to progress and challenge clients, this book has something for you. Similarly, if you are a student who is looking for examples of
how to engage with science and bring it to life in a meaningful way, this book is an invaluable resource. It provides a shared language that will build bridges between the knowledge of various professionals.
Science is based on organizing and restructuring principles and knowledge to explain, predict or influence certain phenomenon. In my professional life, that phenomenon is movement. Movement is the common theme that underpins every successful sporting performance. It is the basis for the quality we know as athleticism, because athletes use movements to solve problems posed to them in sporting situations. We can identify many forms of movement, and we should study all of them, but when I was the national programme manager for athlete development in Scotland, almost all the sports I worked with required fundamental qualities relating to the ability to run (acceleration, deceleration, change of direction), jump and exert forces rapidly. This understanding has formed the basis of my work with international performers in soccer, American football, rugby, track and field, tennis and baseball ever since. I have worked not just at the elite level; I have delivered coaching programmes for academies such as the IMG Academy in Florida and sport-specific children’s programmes in the United Kingdom to develop movement vocabularies and physical literacy.
Many people collaborate to develop an athlete to his or her potential, and they need to share a common language and principles to support the athlete. One thing that guides my philosophy every day is that the athlete needs to be at the centre of any coaching process. The support professional (scientist, strength and conditioning coach, athletic trainer) or sport coach must not put his or her body of knowledge above the needs of the athlete.
Everyone working with the athlete should be able to access and understand basic principles of how the body works, responds and learns (training always equates to learning) and apply these to the practices we design. This book will empower you to evaluate your current athletic development techniques and methods and consider how you can further personalize the design and delivery of your training sessions.
The body is a complex interaction of different yet interrelated systems, and training must take into account how the motor control system works. This basic principle guides the early chapters of the book. I identify the basic principles of how the body works in sport, how a child grows and develops into adulthood and how the athlete manages forces in three dimensions (front to back, side to side, up and down). We need to be able to communicate this knowledge. Scientists are notorious for writing in a way that is understood only by other scientists. Therefore, the knowledge remains inaccessible to many. My goal is to engage coaches, students, parents, teachers and medical professionals and empower their understanding without dumbing down the science or misrepresenting it in any way. When we understand why something should be done, we are better able to determine how to improve required responses in the athlete. Similarly, if we understand the developmental process an athlete has gone through (or is going through), we are better informed about how we can optimize the athlete’s progression.
I bring concepts to life and illustrate them with real-life examples and case studies across a wide spectrum of sports. This method is an important part of coaching education. A coach who understands that impulse (chapter 4) is the key physical quality to teach his or her athletes also understands the need to optimize strength and power training to cause adaptive change in various body systems (chapter 2). Armed with this understanding, the coach can critically evaluate training methods and ask whether they will develop the desired qualities. If they will not, why should the athlete use them? Ultimately, the objectives we are trying to achieve in coaching will determine the methods we should use. Therefore, this
book teaches the practitioner what the requirements are, how they build into objectives and what can be done to achieve these objectives individually.
Quality movement training develops correct postures and body positioning during any movement to allow effective force transfer and the powerful expression of force through a movement or sport-specific skill. Early in my career, I learned the importance of working with other bodies of knowledge. I studied anatomy with medical students, and my daily work with physiotherapists about injury causes and return-to-training progressions led me to realize that technique is all about getting the right joint positions at the right time so that the muscles can operate with optimal efficiency. This realization transformed the way I approached coaching. I changed my focus from the outcome (How fast did the athlete go?) to the process (How does the athlete move? How can I make the athlete move more efficiently?). By trusting the process and by applying the right amount of effort, the athlete can achieve a better outcome. This message is described in detail throughout chapters 5 and 6, which discuss the importance of posture and describe evaluating posture to identify areas to improve through a coaching plan.
We share a common goal. Sound movement education is based on progressing generic movement competencies into sport-specific movement qualities. Ultimately, rehabilitation from injury is exactly the same process. By building bridges between professional knowledge bases, we enhance the outcome for the athlete. This approach is seen throughout the book. When the athlete’s needs are at the centre of the process, we shouldn’t be able to identify who provides the solution because we have a more holistic perspective to athletic development. I am confident that this text contains an equal distribution of applied learning opportunities and contextual insights for coaches, academics, athletic trainers, athletes and parents.
My aim is to foster an understanding of why things should be done and to use examples to demonstrate how these activities can be delivered with purpose. A wise man once said,
‘Exercise is a doing thing; movement is a feeling thing.’ Every exercise, drill and activity has a goal. Identifying that goal for the athlete gives him or her a target. A goal directs behaviour and helps the athlete move with purpose and focus on what matters. In movement, feeling is essential. A common theme through the book is the importance of the central nervous system as the governor of the musculoskeletal system to produce movement. Athletes who know this can enhance the quality of how they do things.
Chapter 7 builds on the concept of developing competence. This chapter looks at structuring learning progressions when developing athletic movement skills and building on competences. Learned techniques become skills that become part of an overall movement strategy that the athlete can deploy in any sporting context as part of a diverse and independent movement vocabulary. The chapter offers advice about coaching education programmes, such as what to consider when setting up a demonstration and how to use questions to develop understanding in a learner. Another key concept presented in this chapter is differentiation, that is, how a skill can be presented to a group of athletes but be structured to develop both confidence and competence in each individual. This issue goes to the centre of good physical education in any context.
In chapters 8 through 10, the concepts of how the motor system works and how forces can be effectively transferred in and by the athlete come to life in the applied learning of movement skills. Readers will be inspired by the links made between science and coaching. Chapter 8 applies the scientific principles identified in earlier chapters as aspects of speed, a core component of athletic movement. For acceleration, deceleration and change of direction, what does good technique look like? What are the core drills that develop these techniques? More important, how can practitioners who understand the principles behind the drills further develop them when an athlete reaches competence? This approach will enhance the coach’s ability to design and adapt drills.
I find that many people approach jumping and rebounding skills with imaginative drills
and practices but without a fundamental understanding of the relationship between ground contact time and the ability to create and express ground reaction forces. The higher the resultant jump needs to be, the longer the ground contact time needs to be. Many coaches know the buzzwords for jumping (shorter ground contact time), yet they prescribe drills that require exactly the opposite. Coaches need to understand the physio-mechanical qualities that underpin jumping, recognize safe and effective technique and then look at progressing or regressing techniques to challenge the athlete’s competence to achieve specific outcomes. Uniquely, chapter 9 does this and provides a guided progression for different intensities and complexities of plyometric skills, based on the relative challenge they provide.
The application of strength and power forms the basis of all sporting and movement skills. The athlete’s ability to harness and apply power at critical moments is a determining factor in success. Strength is the basis of athletic performance, injury reduction and healthy living. Chapter 10 explores the concept of developing functionality in strength training, which is actually about deploying the spectrum of fundamental movements and challenging the athlete’s neuromuscular system to access and employ strength usefully. I select several key movements central to this idea and illustrate how to progress or regress them to challenge the athlete’s postural and mechanical systems, a fundamental move away from the ‘just lift more and faster’ way of strength training. Yes, traditional strength training has a time and place in an athlete’s programme, and the book does not shy away from it. But the development of athleticism is related to the ability to undertake quality practice of quality movement patterns. Indeed, the first role of any strength coach is to be a movement coach.
One of the hardest things to do in training is to bring all the factors together into a balanced, structured programme that considers the fundamental principles of movement and is effective in enabling the athlete to achieve his or her goals. The final chapter consolidates
the principles and practice of movement skill development into several theoretical case studies. This chapter is important for anyone involved in the development of an athlete. It provides a chance to understand the problem, read an evidence-based rationale for the intervention and see a structured and fully integrated training programme (including sport-specific practices). Most important, the chapter leads the reader to ask the fundamental question, ‘What could I do differently?’
Regardless of your role in the training process, the age of the athletes or your background, this book will help you understand the importance of movement skills and provide fundamental knowledge and ideas to empower you to enhance movement skill capabilities. The best sport performers have one thing in common—they are all great athletes and have at some point been taught the basis of athleticism by someone who knew what to do and when to do it.
CHAPTER 1 Movement Skill Development
Athletes (sport performers in any context) are ultimately judged on their performances. Whether these performances are on the training field, in the weight room or in competitive arenas from the school field to international competition, the resulting and observable actions are a consequence of a complex series of interactions that occur within the body. A reasonable supposition is that a coach’s overall objective is to improve observable performance.
Sport is a problem-solving activity in which much detailed planning needs to occur over both the long term and short term to optimize performance of an athlete (or a group of athletes, in a team-sport context) at predetermined points in time. Indeed, the specific intent of a training or educational programme is to enhance performance.1 This objective may be geared towards long-, medium- and shortterm plans.
• Long term: Developing the performance potential of a child towards a lifetime participation in sport requires the achievement of appropriate training, competition and recovery throughout the athlete’s career, particularly in relation to the important growth stages in young people. This process involves not just developing a curriculum that matches the developmental stage of the athlete, but also managing the transitions that the athlete will undertake when moving from one
programme to another or from one level of performance to the next (figure 1.1). This progression may incorporate multiyear programmes that see athletes progress from collegiate to national to international performance levels or the time frame between major events (for example, the quadrennial, or four-year, plans that run between Olympic cycles).
• Medium term: Developing performance capacity within a specific year or season may be about winning a championship, a cup or an Olympic medal. Medium-term planning may also be about achieving certain personal performance or competency attainment targets that mark key stages in a longer-term progression towards a longer-term aim.
• Short term: Planning in the short term (days or weeks) is about structuring precise training interventions (methods, volume loads) to target specific outcomes that build on each other to fulfil longer-term objectives.
The key to successful planning is understanding which elements of training are to be emphasized at a particular time. Although training programmes should not exclusively focus on specific abilities, a programme should have a specific emphasis. For example, in general preparation (preseason) phases, a basketball player may focus on developing physical
qualities, whereas in-season, the emphasis is on maintaining physical capacities to enable a focus on playing well in games. Similarly, in preparation phases, the objective may be related to developing anaerobic power with some focus on anaerobic capacity or to developing strength with some aspects of speed as a precursor to specific power work.
The defined objective will drive the predominant training methods employed during this period (the emphasis load), and the sequence must build on what has been in place before hand, thus highlighting the concept that planning is about sequencing prerequisites or building on foundations.
For example, strength is the ability to exert forces and power is the ability to exert forces quickly. Therefore, power cannot be developed without speed, but the foundation on which power is built is strength. Similarly, if the programme undertakes to build speed endurance before speed, ultimately this approach will limit the athlete’s ability to develop speed, the prerequisite for speed endurance. As will be alluded to throughout the book, a strong building is built on a welllaid foundation, and building human sporting talent is no different.
Performance outcomes are such a focus for many that what is often missed are the underlying contributors to the factors that made those performances possible. For many years, training programmes have been developed with longand short-term fluctuations in training stimuli, designed to develop the performances of athletes towards a desired objective. These training interventions typically have been designed to target one or more functionally interrelated aspects of training aimed ultimately to influence the athlete’s performances.2
The process emphasizes the role of quality preparation and delivery mechanisms, matched to key criteria based on individual development and focused on episodes and performance over the short, medium and long term.
Traditionally, coaching and coach education programmes have focused on training inputs designed to foster the technical, tactical, physical and mental aspects of a programme. This approach, however, significantly oversimplifies the process and arguably misses one of the aspects of programme development vital to sporting performance: the area of movement (motor) skills. As the Russian sport scientist Verkoshansky identified, the fundamental phenomenon central to all sporting tasks is
Obsessive drive to train to
Figure 1.1 Planning
movement: Sport is a problem-solving activity in which movements are used to produce the necessary solutions.3
All great sport performers have one common and definable quality: They are all great athletes! Athleticism is a simple term that everyone understands and recognizes, but athleticism can be broken down into a number of key characteristics related to movement effectiveness and motor control that form the basis in developing biomotor abilities (figure 1.2).
In educational fields, people have long accepted that foundation movement skills (e.g., catching, throwing and running) are prerequisites or building blocks for participation in all popular forms of sports and games.4 Indeed, the theory of motor control provides a frequently referenced link between fundamental motor skill proficiency and its application to sport-specific situations. Fundamental motor skills are common motor activities that have specific observable patterns (such as running, jumping, throwing, and so on). Most sport-specific or movement skills are advanced variants of a fundamental movement or skill. Motor learning principles are based on a progression that builds on previously learned movements that prepare the athlete to master more advanced
Spatial awareness
Sensory awareness
Produce energy to enable repeat performances
Control total-body movements to execute skills
Maintain joint alignment to preserve joint integrity
Exert necessary force in minimum time to execute desired skill
or situation-specific skills. As this book explores in depth, the ability to move well with stability and well-developed object-control skills underpins most sport-specific skills and actions.
Observable performance in sport is based on the athlete’s ability to move well. Movement proficiency is the basis of all skill, and it must therefore be developed in accordance with, and not in isolation of, other aspects of sport performance. This approach to programme development enables the athlete to integrate all parts of a movement into well-coordinated, mechanically correct and efficient acts.
Table 1.1 illustrates the basic components of movement skills. Note that an integrated approach is not always common in youth sport programmes, in which the emphasis is often on observable skill outcome rather than mastery of the motor skill and posture control processes that underpin the sport-specific skills.
Of these components, stability is arguably the bedrock skill to be developed, because all forceful locomotive and object-control movements are based on the foundations that a stable posture provides. This point is illustrated well in figure 1.3; the basis for the effective execution of the skill (return of serve) is the balanced position and postural integrity (a concept explored in chapter 5) of the tennis player:
Figure 1.2 Physical qualities of successful athletes.
Dynamically change body position to ensure posture is always in position to exert or resist force
Control forces to external objects
Conserve energy through efficient mechanics
Maintain balance by controlling the centre of mass
Table 1.1 Fundamental Movement Skill Themes
Skill classification
Definition
Stability Ability to sense a change in the relationship of the body parts that alter balance and to adjust rapidly and accurately for these changes with appropriate compensating movements. May be seen in static (stationary) or dynamic (active) situations in which gaining or maintaining balance is essential.
Multiplanar locomotion
Total-body movements in which the body is propelled from one point to another, usually with an upright posture, in a direction that has vertical, horizontal or rotational components.
Bilateral object control Manipulation skills that use large body movements in which force is applied to or absorbed (received) from external objects. These skills are essential, not just as the basis for successfully playing many sports but also for allowing a child to interact purposefully with objects in the environment in a controlled manner.
• Stability: The centre of mass is within the base of support, creating a balanced position as the trunk rotates and providing a stable base from which power is generated. Ankle, knee, hip, spine and shoulder alignment provides a stable platform from which power can be generated and transferred.
• Movement: The feet move to the point at which the player can intercept the ball as it moves rapidly at a tangent to the player. The trunk rotates to generate rotational power, and the upper limbs orient themselves to align the racket with the ball.
• Object control: The muscles coordinate to manoeuvre each joint and apply forces through the body to the specific motor task of striking the ball with the racket (i.e., returning the serve) to place the opponent under pressure. The technique should transfer enough force to send the ball across the net under control so that the player can manipulate the direction of the ball, such as by imparting spin to the ball as required (topspin, backspin, and so on).
All athletic training programmes, regardless of the age, stage of development or level of performance to which they are targeted, require the correct balance of each movement skill element to develop successful
Specific skill examples
Posture, static balance, dynamic balance, falls and landings (forwards, backwards, sideways, on feet), rotation (forwards, backwards, sideways)
Walking, running, vertical and horizontal jumping, hopping, galloping, skipping
Underarm and overarm throwing, catching, kicking, bouncing, striking static or moving objects, trapping (intercepting)
Gravity acting through the centre of mass Stability
Figure 1.3 Foundation movement skills are the basis for the application of sport-specific skills.
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performance. Experience tells us that the older the athlete is, the harder it becomes to teach these basic components. Therefore, these basics need to be the foundation for development and training programmes, rather than a remedial necessity at later stages of a person’s sporting career. Peak performance is hard to achieve. At elite levels, peak performance means being
Object control
Movement
more committed, more focused, and more physically and mentally prepared than the competition. Indeed, the transfer of training to benefit performance has been one of the central challenges to coaching and physical education throughout the ages. Integrating all these training factors so that they come together to create optimal performance at the required time takes a great deal of planning and skill by the coach, as well as drive, dedication and skill on the part of the athlete.
Within a training progression, specific elements of the curriculum apply to all athletes, regardless of their age, experience or performance level. The athlete needs a balance of technical, tactical, mental, physical, and movement skills and lifestyle inputs. As illustrated in figure 1.4, if one of these aspects is out of synchronization with the other elements of the programme, the coach will not be able to optimize athletic performance in his or her charges.
Practitioners should note that this difference between training programme content
is not simply related to athletes of different training and performance levels. Indeed, two people within the same training group may have similar performance levels but require very different training approaches to develop their performances. For example, one Olympic triple jumper may have a springy technique, whereas another may have a technique based on forceful impacts. Similarly, world-class tennis players such as Justine Henin or Serena Williams are vastly different physical athletes who need different training stimuli. This concept, known as differentiation, is explained in detail in chapter 7.
The aim of this book is to restructure some of the language of science and medicine and build bridges among the disciplines of coaching, teaching, sport science and sports medicine to answer some of these questions for practitioners, empowering them with tools for practical applications that will improve the athleticism of the athletes with whom they work.
High Jump
The purpose of the high jump is to produce sufficient force to raise the centre of mass high enough so that the trunk and limbs can clear the bar. The high jump is a closed skill; the performance outcome is under the direct control of the athlete (a concept explored in more detail in chapter 7). The objective of the skill does not change regardless of whether the athlete is a novice (for example, athlete 1 in table 1.2) or a performance athlete (athlete 2). Similarly, all the elements of the coaching programme need to be included in the training plan devised for the athlete regardless of the performance level. As illustrated in table 1.2, however, the contents of each training element within the programme are very different, depending on the training age of the athlete and the performance objectives being sought. This idea applies whether the athlete is working in a singular event such as the high jump or in a dynamic and multiskilled context such as a team sport with many skill requirements.
Table 1.2 Approaches to the Training Programme Inputs for Two Female High Jumpers With Different Training Histories
Programme input
Athlete 1: age 12, learning to high jump
Technical Using jumping and movement into jumping combinations to move around a space
Moving body parts in an effective order to aid jumping height and efficiency; basic triple extension of hip, knee and ankle
Tactical Choosing the height at which to enter the competition
Physical conditioning
Single- and double-support body-weight exercises (e.g., single-leg squats)
Multiple speed and power activities in multiple directions (e.g., jumping, hopping and skipping)
Range of small-sided games and multiple terrain activities to develop basic endurance
Movement skills
Maintaining centre of mass over base of support from dynamic situations
Foot and body positioning to enable the transitioning of horizontal movements into vertical movements
Athlete 2: age 22, personal best 1.80-metre high jump
Accelerating approach with an efficient and optimum conversion of horizontal velocity into vertical velocity
Actively drawing the heels towards the buttocks in midflight to cause the back to arch more, placing the centre of mass outside and below the body, enabling clearance of a greater height
Choosing the height at which to enter the competition and deciding when to pass on an attempt
Advanced weightlifting programme of complex multimuscle, multijoint exercises with loaded extensions through ankles, knees and hips
Advanced plyometrics exercises incorporated into total jumping volume load
Advanced rotational gymnastics
Programme input
Athlete 1: age 12, learning to high jump
Psychological skills Clearly defined process and outcome goals to guide practice and competition
Lifestyle factors
Introduction to good nutritional practice; learning that healthy food is enjoyable
Maintaining a balance in sports, school and social life
Physical Literacy
The key to successful coaching is to programme the appropriate coaching progressions to match sequential and developmental progressions. Planning for long-term performance development involves the logical and systematic sequencing of training factors to optimize specific training outcomes at predetermined times.2 Accomplishing this requires the athlete to be able to achieve prerequisite movement (physical) competencies, which can be identified and monitored.
In short, the process is about developing physical education. This process can be related to the academic process of learning to write. A child first learns to write words (single skills, e.g., run, jump, throw, catch). Then he or she learns to put these words into sentences (linking skills, e.g., run and throw, run and jump, catch and run). By putting together sentences, a child can produce simple paragraphs (using the skills in a specific context, e.g., catch, pass and move into space). After a while, the child is able to produce increasingly complex and imaginative stories and adapt the use of prose to a range of academic and everyday challenges.
Sport performance is similar in that as increased physical capabilities develop, so does the child’s ability to express the skills he or she has. The child becomes more physically literate! Similarly, an inability to execute simple skills can significantly reduce a child’s confidence to take part in a range of sporting activities. This deficiency has massive implications for
Athlete 2: age 22, personal best 1.80-metre high jump
Consistent execution of well-defined (vivid) prejump mental rehearsal of the approach and jump
Highly developed focus and concentration on relevant cues (shutting out interference) throughout the competition
Maximizing and taking full responsibility for personal approaches to nutrition, hydration, recovery and regeneration, lifestyle management
Strict liability for antidoping compliance
a coach to recognize, because without confidence a child will not choose to participate in sporting tasks. Large implications for health and well-being will occur in the longer term. Indeed, research has shown that an inability to perform a simple catching task will reduce a child’s confidence significantly enough for him or her to be deterred from taking part in over 40 different sporting activities!5
Elite athletic performance always appears efficient, effective and effortless. People often wrongly assume that elite athletes and performers understand these movements and can perform them correctly, but evidence shows many cases to the contrary. For example, research has highlighted the frustration felt by young basketball players who are able to read the game and determine where a play will go but are unable to respond to these decisions because their motor skills are inadequate. 6 Coaches of elite gymnasts are often frustrated by the inability of their highly skilled performers to produce more force through the take-off in a vaulting action, a function of their learned inability (or rather their lack of developed running technique) to run efficiently and effectively in the approach to the springboard.
A well-developed movement vocabulary is associated with an ability to perform skills in a range of novel or dynamic situations. For example, a golfer may need to adapt to different types of golf courses (e.g., links courses in the United Kingdom versus championship courses in the United States). Similarly, tennis players who have grown up playing exclusively
on clay courts may be extremely successful in tournaments played on clay or even on similar hard-court surfaces, but they are often not able to respond well to the fast and low bounces of grass-court surfaces.
Those without a well-developed movement vocabulary often develop movement limitations or compensations. These deficiencies are explored in more detail throughout the book, but at a conceptual level the coach should appreciate that the limitations should not be overlooked, or, more seriously still, should not be reinforced by a programme that allows—or does not challenge—inappropriate technique. Movement limitations lead to imbalances in muscle patterning, which can also lead to movement compensations. These in turn can distort motor learning, body awareness and movement mechanics. Besides reducing the efficiency of the movement, these movement patterns can also lead to increased risk of injury. Many injuries in sport can be attributed to incorrect mechanics, joint positions or
movement patterns within the athlete. For example, running at top speed and repeatedly contacting the ground with the foot in the wrong place (toe pointing downwards, as illustrated in figure 1.5) may lead to an increased incidence of hamstring or adductor injury because these muscle groups compensate for the nonactivation of other muscles and perform tasks (express forces at inappropriate times in the movement) for which they have not evolved.
Developing appropriate motor patterning requires the development of a progressive curriculum that has the appropriate rate of challenge and variance in stimulation to promote learning (a concept explored in detail in chapter 7). These progressions can take many weeks, months or even years, and they should not be cut short or circumvented to achieve performance outcomes in the short term. The ability to execute basic, skilled athletic techniques at optimum speed and under pressure with power and precision is key to successful physical performances.
At high speeds, the hamstrings flex the knee, something they are not designed to do, often causing injury.
The
rises but the
does not move forwards as far or fast.
1.5 Poor movement skills can lead to movement compensations that might increase the risk of injury.
E5649/Brewer/fig 01.05/546927/mh-R2
Ankle dorsiflexion: As the stiff foot hits the ground, ground reaction and internal forces from the gluteals drive the centre of mass forward.
heel
knee
The heel rises as the knee drives forward. At high speeds, the gastrocnemius flexes the knee.
Ankle plantarflexion: As the pointed foot hits the ground toe first, the athlete lowers to the ball of the foot. Forces are absorbed (lost). The athlete has a longer ground contact time. The athlete’s hips drop then rise again as the hip flexors drive the centre of mass forward.
Figure
As the contents of the following chapters will outline, these competencies are progressive in nature, building on prerequisite physio-mechanical capabilities. Sound movements enable the athlete’s posture to be always in a position to withstand and exert optimum forces against both internal (muscles) and, more important, external forces (such as gravity and potentially contact with opponents).
When performance demands exceed the movement capabilities of the athlete, performance suffers and injuries occur more often. In these instances, a remedial programme is required to both rehabilitate the athlete and eradicate the cause of the injury problem. Not surprisingly, most rehabilitation programmes are based on motor patterning and joint positioning through a movement range.
Strength and conditioning, or athletic development programmes as they should more properly be called, should positively influence the physical development of athletes. Athletic
development is a key term to understand. It differentiates the practitioner’s role from simply getting the athlete stronger or fitter (i.e., having more endurance) into a role that emphasizes increasing the functional capacity of the athlete’s motor system. The term functional has been misplaced in many contexts; it should not mean that anything else is dysfunctional by literal translation. The term should relate to using progressive methodologies (as exemplified in figure 1.6 and discussed in chapter 10) that develop the athlete’s ability to
• control posture dynamically to create efficient movement patterns throughout the kinetic chain,
• exert and resist forces through a controlled posture,
• increase the magnitude of these forces,
• reduce the time taken to exert high-magnitude forces and
Figure 1.6 A progressive approach to developing sport-specific performance.
• produce the required forces through mechanically efficient sport-specific techniques.
All this involves developing the athlete’s motor system: the brain (as the executive director of the athlete’s movement programme); the spinal cord and the motor nerves, which transfer chemical signals from the brain to the muscles; the muscles themselves that contract to exert a pulling force; and the cardiorespiratory system, which enables ATP to be produced to fuel the work undertaken within the body. Many resources have presented exercise regimes for people to follow. Conceptually, however, exercise is a doing thing; the focus is usually on the outcome (Did you lift more? Did you run faster?).
Conversely, the athletic development programme should focus on training movements, and movements are a feeling thing (Where was the bar relative to your body when you
lifted it? What did your foot do when it left the floor that enabled you to run faster?), and this cannot be developed without a focus on all aspects of the motor system.
Therefore, the motor system should be considered a prime focus for practitioners seeking to improve the performances of athletes. Indeed, as shown in figure 1.7, the aim of any physical development programme is to improve the capacity of the athlete’s motor (movement) system to perform work. This may mean being able to do more work (faster, stronger, longer) or being able to work more efficiently (i.e., do the same amount of work for less energy cost). Efficient movement is a manifestation of an athlete’s ability to exert and control forces. Doing this requires a focus on developing movement skills before, during and after a focus on performance.
To have a positive influence on skills, the practitioner needs to understand how to
* The integrated system which connects muscles with the skeleton (musculoskeletal) with connective tissue, supported in the energetic transfer by myofascial tissue and the system of locomotive slings which surrounds the musculoskeletal system
1.7 The motor system comprises a number of component systems that can be manipulated to enhance performance.
Performance
Motor system work capacity
Figure
develop an athlete’s neuromuscular system as a primary source of motor capacity improvement. The athlete will then be able to activate motor units more effectively (see chapter 2) within and between muscles to perform mechanical work in a coordinated manner. The number of motor units, the sequencing of the nervous stimulus to fire motor units in particular sequences and the phasic recruitment and coordination of different muscles during an action can all be enhanced by neuromuscular system improvement.
Similarly, the transmission of forces through the posture relies on the fact that muscles are connected to bones through connective tissues that wrap around, and run within, the muscles. An activated muscle is able to exert a force on the bones attached to it by an inelastic tendon, and this force can be transmitted through the postural chain to result in movement. The body has other connective tissues, such as the fascial slings (for example, the thoracolumbar fascia around the trunk and back, and the iliotibial band in the thigh), that enable groups of muscles that may not be structurally linked but which are functionally linked to have a tissue connection that is relatively continuous. This enables efficient and effective energy and force transfer through a linked system.
Other chapters look at how to evaluate and coach specific movement competencies themselves and provide a progressive curriculum to develop them. Before this is considered, an understanding of how the biomotor abilities combine to contribute to performance is important, because this knowledge enables an appreciation of the movement qualities and the way they can be advanced. Some understanding of anatomy, physiology and biomechanics is needed here.
Anatomy and physiology are the areas of study that combine to provide an understanding of the physical factors contributing to performance. Anatomy relates to the structure and organization of the body, whereas sport physiology is concerned with how the body functions and responds to the demands of the environment, training and competition. Biomechanics explores the laws of mechanics as applied to biological systems, in this case in the
context of gaining a greater understanding of athletic performance.
Many sport science programmes have attempted to explore these subject areas as discreet entities. The best programmes, however, are led by those who look at the problem rather than the discipline, realizing that making movements more efficient ultimately will spare energy so that more work can be done for the same energy cost or the same work can be done for less energy cost.
In essence, a working knowledge of an athlete’s anatomy, biomechanical efficiencies and physiological processes underlying exercise responses allows those working with athletes (coaches, programme directors, support staff and so on) to become better at evaluating the physical competencies, capacities and potential responses of an athlete. This knowledge will assist in the planning and implementation of improved training programmes that link objectives to the development of physical qualities in young athletes, resulting in higher quality preparation either through to high-performance sporting excellence or more commonly for a lifetime of participation in sport.
As this book will illustrate, the human body is a highly evolved and complex organism that will adopt and adapt to the demands of its environment. Dynamic changes will occur in all systems of the body to respond to the tasks demanded of it. The body is able to produce adaptive movements in response to challenges of the situation. The working movements of the body are produced by a system of linkages (muscular–skeletal attachments and articulations) that we refer to as the kinetic chain. Like any chain, a series of linkages forms the connective structure, and, like any series of attachments, the weak point in the chain will limit the functional capacity of the structure.
The articulations within the body change repeatedly with respect to their orientation to each other. The relative angles between joints change simultaneously and in combination, enabling the human body to transfer rotational joint movements to linear or angular movements. The practitioner’s role is to guide adaptations within the kinetic chain in a positive manner, that is, to develop the athlete’s
capacity towards efficiently meeting the challenges of sporting situations. For athletic development aspects (physical conditioning and movement skill) of the athlete’s training, programme variables must be manipulated to achieve a positive adaptation of the motor system to undertake physical work.
Human Adaptation to the Environment
A training programme is a means through which a coach organizes a process of planned exposure to training workloads by manipulating mode, volume and intensity of the training stimuli.2
The ability of the human organism to recognize and adapt to an environmental challenge of increasing demand (figure 1.8) is a fundamental principle that needs to be recognized in the development of basic movement skills. Just as an athlete can adapt positively to a
Neuro-transmitters have a threshold effect, meaning a muscle fibre is either contracted or not; there is no partial contraction of a motor unit. Multiple motor units can be contracted depending on the work required to be done.
The axial skeleton (trunk) is connected to the appendicular skeleton (limbs) via muscles and connective tissues that cross the shoulder and pelvic girdles.
A muscular and connective tissue cube of support increases pressure around organs mostly unprotected by skeletal structures.
Many first-class levers in the body act as pulleys to change direction of forces. For example, the line of pull of the quadriceps is altered by the action of the patella on the condylar groove of the femur.
Connective tissue forms a communication and energy transfer channel through the body.
When the ankle plantarflexes, the gastrocsoleus muscle complex, which runs in series with the Achilles tendon, connecting to the calcaneous, acts as a force multiplier, an example of a second-class lever system.
well-presented training load, the body can also maladapt to an inappropriate training load or stimulus. For example, as illustrated in figure 1.5, poor movement patterns that are not corrected can become learned maladaptations and lead to movement compensations and injury problems later in an athlete’s career.
Similarly, excessive stimuli without any variation may lead to adapted imbalances within the athlete. Conversely, excessive variation without any period of consolidated learning will mean that the athlete is unable to adapt. Both of these potential maladaptations will lead to a decrease in the observable performance or a slowed rate of learning and improvement. Short-term or chronic exposure to a stimulus of excessive volume or intensity (volume × intensity = volume load) may mean that the stressor is not one that the body can tolerate or adapt to, and injury will occur.
Training adaptations are the sum of transformations brought about by repeated exposures
Figure 1.8 The evolved athletic qualities of the human kinetic chain.
The body will adapt positioning to a continuously-present stimulus.
Good posture shows many examples of first-class levers. For example, the antagonistic arrangement of muscles acts to simultaneously balance forces around a joint.
The biceps brachii is an example of a biarticular muscle.
The flexed arm is an example of a third-class lever. A large force is applied to gain mechanical advantage in terms of increased speed of motion.
All major muscles cross more than one joint.
Muscle fibres run into connective tissue that combines into a common tendon attachment, enabling the efficient transfer of forces and energy from the muscle to the skeleton.
Skeletal muscle is striated. The fibres are angled to influence the function.
to stimuli.2 Adaptations may occur through informal play, deliberate practice or repeated exposure to specific training events. In seeking to take athletes (regardless of stage of development or experience) from where they are to where they have never been (the role of any coaching or personal development programme), the practitioner must recognize what biomotor ability needs to be influenced and then provide the relevant training stimulus to cause positive adaptation.
Development of the Motor System
It takes many years of training to be worldclass at anything. A systematic approach to developing athletes over a longer term would ensure that the athletes and those involved in programme delivery and development are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to maximize the potential of athletes at the appropriate stages of their development through appropriately structured and monitored programmes. As chapter 3 details, these programmes should match periods in the developmental life of a young person with training methods that will maximize the effects of this training.7
If long-term adaptation in the motor capacity of an athlete is the longer-term goal, then it is important to consider how the systems that underpin the biomotor abilities (the neuromuscular, musculoskeletal, bioenergetic and neuroendocrine systems) develop. Those equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to structure and monitor training programmes that match the anatomical and physiological development processes of athletes will be able to maximize their potential.
Conversely, because children show considerable and important differences in their bodily responses to exercise (compared with adults), coaches should be aware of the more important differences to avoid imposing undue physical stress on their young charges. In its simplest form, delivery of the athlete development programme requires relating the structure and nature of training to the performer’s
developmental pathway so that he or she is doing the right thing at the right time for longterm, not necessarily immediate, development. This concept underpins almost all the physical and psychosocial models of athlete development that have underpinned sport development programmes in recent years.8
Although not all sport programmes are aimed at children, all are based on developing someone who was once a child. Later chapters in this book discuss the concept of profiling athletes based on their physical competencies. But if the process of how the child (or athlete) develops can be better understood, practitioners can arguably better understand how the end product is (or could be) evaluated.
Development, or coaching, of the athlete should reflect an inclusive process that encourages people to get involved in lifelong physical activity. The process should connect and integrate generic movement (physical) education programmes with specific sport preparation programmes (as identified in figure 1.6). Indeed, the aim of such activities should be child (athlete) centred, based on taking an individual and educational approach, and based on a desire to make a long-term difference to the participants. This objective will be reflected in the programmes that are delivered. This understanding applies not only to the physical aspects of the programme development but also to all areas of delivery. For example, executing many core skills within a sport requires physical size, strength or decision-making ability.
A cursory observational analysis of coaching practices and associated resources reveals that many sport programmes focus on ways in which the same sport-specific skills are delivered and developed with players across the full spectrum of participation (from the playground to the podium). Chapters 7 through 11 look at how progression can be achieved within many movement skills. But delivering the same skills across all age ranges in the same way is developmentally inappropriate, and coming to that understanding is a big step forward.
All human development is facilitated and constrained by an interactive dynamic of biological, psychological and sociological factors
that change as children grow older. Participation motives, for example, likely change over time. Younger children seek excitement and pleasure, whereas older children may strive for achievement and satisfaction. As chapters 2 and 3 show, children’s skeletal, muscular and nervous systems develop at different rates throughout childhood. The variance in rate of development has significant implications for each individual child’s physical development and, consequently, his or her sporting performance and improvement.
Therefore, each child’s perceptions of getting better will have associated psychological implications that need to be monitored and positively influenced. Further, this biological development will have obvious connotations for children’s psychomotor development. That is, each child’s capacity to demonstrate the movement skills fundamental to sport participation (e.g., balancing, travelling, controlling objects) will vary according to the maturity of his or her physical makeup. Hence, because developing these psychomotor behaviours is critical to all children, whether they progress to elite-level sport or lifelong participation, consideration should be given to each child’s individual needs. These needs guide the development and delivery of movement and sportskill programmes.
The developmental process towards performance-based training therefore needs to reflect individual needs. An organized and progressive approach should be used to achieve optimal training, competition and recovery throughout an athlete’s career. The recognition that the developmental process takes many years and is based on the interplay of a number of components is a core feature of many models of athlete development that have been proposed in recent years.8 Many people in sport have pointed out that much of what makes up many of these approaches is not new. Most of the research on which it is based is widely accepted and has been used to underpin quality physical education teaching and coaching practice for many years.
This observation may seem like common sense, but as with many truths, until it is stated, it is apparently less obvious. In addition, we
need to reflect on whether common sense is actually common practice. The obvious point in this case is that any person who commences a sport or physical activity programme, regardless of performance level, has different needs and capabilities for training than someone who has been doing it longer. This contention is true no matter what age an athlete comes into a sport.
One commonality about all successful systems of athlete development is that they acknowledge that athlete development is not, in reality, a simple linear and staged process because events in each person’s life will affect his or her rate of progress. For this reason, many peaks and troughs will occur along the way, so the long-term process will appear chaotic. The role of the skilled practitioner is to manage the athlete through this transitional and chaotic process to optimize the athlete’s potential.
In the athletic development context, the practitioner must realize that these markers of progress take place within different environments and that various influencing agents need to be considered when planning the athlete’s programmes. These transitions mark important physical, social, emotional and experiential opportunities for the athlete. The practitioner must also realize that the athlete will progress through these transitions, or stages of development (although some of these may be definite stages as defined by social or programme delivery contexts).
For example, the progression towards puberty is a gradual process, as is the transition away from being reliant on parents. In contrast, academic domains are clearly defined, in that a child is either in the elementary or secondary school system. Learning in the early stages is very much about associating outcomes with a stimulus or reward. This type of learning gradually progresses towards behaviour choices being determined by conscious decisions made before a logical process of sequencing specific behaviours within specific environments becomes apparent.
Coaches should also consider the different types of ages of athletes when planning a programme. The age of athletes needs to be considered in terms of years since birth,
developmental age (children mature at different rates) and the number of years they have been training, either in athletics or in another sport.
In terms of the physical conditioning of a child, the biological age is the most important consideration. In terms of applied movement skill development, however, the athlete’s training age is the predominant consideration. The biological age determines the anatomical and physiological limitations within which the programme should be developed, whereas the training age may provide an indicator of the movement experiences of a child (i.e., his or her potential physical competence). Regardless of a child’s biological development and potential readiness for certain training stimuli, he or she should not be progressed beyond movement competency in executing a task for a wide variety of performance-enhancing and injury-reducing factors that will become clear throughout this book.
For example, as shown in table 1.3, a child who is an early developer may be anatomically and physiologically more able to tolerate certain training intensities but may (depending on the programmes he or she has experienced) have a smaller movement vocabulary than a child who is less biologically mature but who has more experience within a range of sports. This concept is important when working with athletes of all ages, not simply children. For example, a 33-year-old professional soccer player retires and wishes to take up recreational marathon running because of its health benefits and competitive challenge. He may have a 25-year training age within soccer but 0 years in distance running. But his sporting training age (indicative of his ability to
tolerate the imposition of a reasonable training volume load) may be considered in excess of 10 years for the coach who is beginning to work with the athlete. Compare this person with a 20-year-old who wishes to take up recreational distance running (maybe within the same running club) having not done any real physical exercise since leaving grade school 4 years previously, when he took part in physical education classes. The 20-year-old’s biological age is lower and his training age may be much closer to 4 years than anything else (we can consider the accrued experiences of school physical education, but many of those gains will have been reversed by time away from physical activity).
Similarly, a coach may inherit a physically gifted triple jumper who is 14 years old and can triple jump 13 metres after 3 years of specific training. Although the performance potential of the athlete may be in a bracket with those who have been jumping for 10 years, the person should not use the same training programme as those advanced athletes, because his training age and background will not enable him to have sufficient physical experiences to cope with the imposed training volume load. In short, he would be highly likely to overtrain quickly and be at risk of injury. In this instance, the coach would recognize and nurture the performance potential of the athlete (recognized in technical and tactical progressions, but not with high-volume loading). The emphasis in conditioning training would be on developing a significant base to cope with the imposition of a higher training volume at later stages.
Understanding Biological Age
A central theme of effective training systems is that children do not develop at even rates throughout their development. Some of these changes are obvious and easy to measure. Others are less visible and require some consideration if a child’s potential is to flourish rather than be threatened by inappropriate training volumes or intensities.
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Christmas Day at Cherrywold
’Tis Christmas Day at Cherrywold:
The snow is softly falling, And through the valley as of old The chimes are calling. But I shall wander far away This Christmas Day, this Christmas Day.
A place more fair than Cherrywold— With nature’s gifts more blessed— You may not find, so I’ve been told, From East to West.
But I would not be led that way, On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.
WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.
Lothario in Livorno
George Ardrath had the misfortune to enter his adolescent stage at the same time that he became initiated into the sacred mysteries of poetry-love. As a matter of fact, George was far ahead of most eighteen-year-old prep-school youths in regard to mental development—that is, he had passed the period during which most boys of his age delight in telling of minor moral peccadilloes. He no longer thought that the summum bonum was to be seen in a rather doubtful Manhattan cabaret, or to be able to talk intelligently about the exorbitant price of gin.
George’s appreciation of the finer arts, in its early period of incubation, was limited by the extent of his readings. There were certain intellectual hazards such as Keats’s Ode to a Grecian Urn which George read to find out why they were considered so exquisite; and without being convinced in his own mind as to the merits of those sine qua nons he accepted the judgment of his superiors, and injected an attraction into them by main force. When he was swamped by their intricacies, he memorized them, so as not to be caught napping on any popular masterpiece. George was the kind of fellow who you could be morally certain would remark: “Ah! ‘Rosemary—that’s for remembrance’,” when brought face to face with that poetic flower in the garden in back of Shakespeare’s birthplace. Behind all this aesthetic posing, however, there was a real seeking after beautiful things in George’s heart, trite as that statement may seem, and if the path to a subtle poetic appreciation led through a rather plebeian state of mind, there was no help for it, and in this case the end certainly justified the means.
There was one typically adolescent trait discernible in the adolescent Ardrath, and that was his ambition to be a heart-breaker —a youthful Don Juan, or Romeo, or even perhaps a more mature Paolo. George could be classified in the number of those who smugly exhibit the farewell salutation of a girl’s letter, discreetly
shading the immediately preceding part—the whole process being attended by a certain atmosphere of delightful mystification. So George could hardly be called abnormal—his Relations With Women (awe-full term!) redeemed him to the ranks of gum-chewing, suppressed-book-reading Much Younger Generation.
It so happened that George went abroad with his family, the summer before he planned to enter college. Being a creative as well as appreciative dilettante, he felt it his duty to be inspired by the Atlantic, and composed some rather frightful sea-poems. In this respect George was somewhat of an opportunist; there were certain great occasions, tremendous poetical crises, at which George intended to produce intellectual gems—“Upon Seeing Stratford-onAvon”, “Lines Written at Montmartre”, “At Westminster Abbey”, and so on. Thus it is evident at once that young Ardrath was destined to experience a profound literary Renaissance in Italy. That, however, comes a little later in the story.
George had the further misfortune (in our own critical judgment, though certainly not in his) of meeting on the eight-day boat a girl who really took him seriously—almost as seriously as he took himself. She was older than he, but not much more sophisticated. Irma had studied in a small seminary in California, and had consequently escaped the superworldliness of students in the large Eastern colleges. She saw that George was not an ordinary type of boy, and in his individualistic traits she made out the factors which distinguished him as a future virtuoso, perhaps even a coming genius. Youth often stumbles, through infatuation, upon real truths of significance, and the glamor of a romantic attachment may indeed be but a superficial coating above a genuine appreciation of latent talent. However that may be, Irma liked George immensely, and George imagined that the feeling was mutual.
The enamored pair pursued their literary and amatory inclinations to the full on board ship. They would slip off between dances on the deck by moonlight, and read Swinburne or Dowson to each other, really enjoying themselves. There was a certain zest in believing themselves superior to the common run of couples who merely embraced each other amorously in covert nooks; it seems elevated
to kiss to the music of Swinburne’s Atalanta—to shut the book with a half-gasp of utter emotional exhaustion, and seek each other’s lips. Romeo and Juliet could not have acted out the passion more realistically, with all the stage-craft available.
When George and Irma parted at Cherbourg, bound for different destinations, it was with almost genuine affection, though much of it had been puffed up artificially to merit the setting. They promised to write each other faithfully—George had a visual image of himself sitting down at a desk in the Hotel Palermo in Florence and penning something akin to this:
“D I :
“As I sit here, with the Arno flowing mellifluently far below my lattice window, I cannot help thinking of you in Versailles, that beauty-spot of this prosaic world, walking lightly through the magnificent gardens and estates of the great Louis Quatorze....”
The effects of a catholic taste in literature, and four years of French, are only too evident in this prospective outburst.
It was with intense surprise that George, one bright morning, bumped literally into Irma and her mother on one of the principal streets of Leghorn, on the west coast of Italy. (George preferred the more “mellifluent” name Livorno—Leghorn always reminded him in his subconscious mind of a kind of chicken, and he had an irresistible impulse to laugh, which would have been fatal to all true sentiment). After the conventional references to the small size of the world, after all, George inquired:
“What are you doing here, of all places? You never told me you expected to take in Italy.”
“We really didn’t think at first we would, George, but I wanted to see it so badly that mother finally gave in, and here we are! You don’t look overjoyed to see me, George, or are you overcome by the shock?”
“Nonsense, Irma; you surprised me, that’s all. I was in the clouds just now, reciting Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’ to myself, to the intense annoyances of all the Livornian traffic-policemen (I presume that’s what they call the creatures). Where are you staying, Mrs. Bench?”
“We’re at the Continental, George; do come up and see us some time. We don’t know a soul, and it’s terribly lonely.”
“Then I shall play the rôle of the Friend From Home to you and Irma, and show you with great and unabating gusto all my snapshots. How about that for a dull evening’s entertainment?”
“Splendid!” said Irma without much enthusiasm. George was always trying to be so infernally clever!
“I’ll come up to-night,” said George in a moment of inspiration, “with appropriate guide-books and illustrated slides.”
And he walked off down the street—but in the confusion he seemed to have forgotten the last few lines of Shelley’s lyric.
That evening, after Mrs. Bench had been tactfully dismissed for the night, the young blood Ardrath and his serious-minded companion took a long walk along the bay of Leghorn. “It was on this bay that Shelley lost his life while sailing,” recited George with the air of a very efficient but somehow uninspiring courier. “In his pocket was a book of his friend Keats’s poems, doubled back at the one called ‘St. Agnes’s Eve’. You know—‘St. Agnes’s Eve, ah, bitter chill it was!’”
“How romantic!” offered Irma. “I suppose you’d like to be drowned here too, and be cremated like Sam McGee (blasphemous thought!).”
They walked on in silence for a few minutes. George was trying to remember the next lines of “St. Agnes’s Eve”, as he termed it. Irma was trying to decide whether she really still liked George or not. Somehow the month’s separation which had just ended had cooled their ardor considerably—on her part, at least.
“Shelley, in a way, must have been rather wet,” said Ardrath after the pause. “He was unpopular at Oxford; they threw mud at him one
night when he became particularly obnoxious to the conservative students, and insisted upon advocating atheism to his comrades.”
“Oh, but we’re all wet one way or the other, George, don’t you think? Shelley may not have been the man you are, but he wrote better poetry.” This last with a tinge of irony that did its work.
“You’re making fun of me, Irma. You don’t think I’m a bit sincere in anything I say.”
“Not at all. There were a lot of things you said to me on the boat which I believed were sincere.”
“Don’t you still think so?”
“Not entirely. I have an idea that you were more or less posing when you said them—that you let yourself think they were true, just for the sake of being romantically clever.”
George pondered. After all, there was a certain virtue in being frank.
“As a matter of fact, you’re right—”
“What!”
Evidently he had blundered. George tried another tack.
“I mean, perhaps I said some things that a sensible person wouldn’t have.”
“Then you can’t be called sensible?”
“No. Sometimes I act like a darn fool.”
“And I was a darn fool on the boat to think you meant anything you said. Well, it’s lucky I’ve gotten over it now.”
“Irma, what do you mean?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. There’s no use of our pretending we care for each other any longer.”
George waved his hands in a great gesture.
“But you don’t understand, dear. I care for you in a different way now; I’ve gotten over all my sentimental romanticism.”
Somehow this did not sound sincere or convincing to either Irma or himself. The girl straightened.
“How do I know that this is true, if you were just fooling on the boat?”
They were walking on a ledge that overhung the bay now, and the blue water of the Mediterranean gleamed in the moonlight thirty feet below. Irma looked at it, and a devilish glint came into her eye.
“George, if I jump into the sea, will you come after me?”
Assuredly this was carrying things too far, thought Ardrath. Irma had again taken him too seriously. But he maintained his poise.
“Of course; but don’t be a fool.”
“I hate sensible people,” she replied. “They always do the obvious thing. For a long while I’ve wanted to do something unusual, something quite unorthodox. George, I am going to dive in.”
It was impossible to stop her. Bent like the curve of a bow, her slender body arched as it plunged into the water
There was a big splash as another body hurtled down and struck the waves.
It was unfortunate that George had never learnt how to swim. After he had gurgled around for two breathless submersions, Irma took compassion on him and dragged him out. They have excellent aquatic sports in Pasadena.
“I’m sorry, George, really,” said Irma tenderly. “I never thought for a minute that you couldn’t swim. Will you forgive me?”
“No,” replied George. “Good-night.”
He walked off without further remark. His soggy clothes clung about him; his shoes squirted water from all openings; and he felt damp. Irma followed at a respectful distance. She felt strangely in the wrong.
It was about twelve o’clock when the dripping pair reached the Continental Hotel. To their intense relief there were few people on
the streets to see them. In the lobby Irma forced George to take her hand and say good-night in a pleasant tone of voice.
“It was really splendid of you to jump in like that when you might have drowned. I don’t know how I can ever forgive myself, much less expect you to do it. But I hope you will. I was certainly an awful fool to-night.”
George made a fierce effort and regained his poise.
“‘There’s little comfort in the wise’,” he remarked. “Good-night, Irma.”
When Mrs. Bench caught sight of her bedraggled and rather miserable daughter sloshing into the room, she was naturally surprised and quite wrought up.
“What on earth happened to you?” she demanded.
“I fell off a ledge into the bay,” lied Irma glibly, “and George dove in and pulled me out.”
NORMAN R. JAFFRAY.
Brushwood Rabnon
The bright spring sun made it a different France than we had tramped two weeks before. Then it had been dark; cold rain had made our cassocks cling like gowns of soft lead, half-frozen roads had cut and blistered our feet. But now, the sky was blue everywhere, and the light sparkled from wet leaves and the little pools that lay along the road. I felt reborn into the full flush of youth: I loved the countryside, the Order which had sent me there, the man with whom I was travelling. I loved the ooze of cool mud that squirted between my toes and splashed about ankles tired from walking. Eleven miles that morning had been a pleasure such as we rarely enjoyed. Our spirits were coming out of their hibernation, with all nature.
I turned at last, as we came over the crest of a hill, and broke the friendly silence that had been between us for some time.
“Look, Rabnon, there is the town. I had not expected it to be so beautiful.”
We stopped to gaze out down the road, for it was beautiful indeed, and we were always willing to stand resting awhile. Below us a shallow valley ran from side to side, its furrow lined by the twistings of a small stream which joined at right angles with the sharper twistings of our present thoroughfare. Where these two met, the village spread itself in an irregular T shape, the larger buildings in the center outlining their tops against the sky, while their lesser, peripheral neighbors snuggled unostentatiously into the flattened background of hill and river. Upstream, on higher and less cultivated ground stood the modest fortress of the Lord of Camereau, its round brown walls unremarkable save by a drawbridge which was half up and half down, so that it rested in relief against a light spot in the woods with a curious air of suspense, and a white pennon which waved in the blue its allegiance to the King of France. Like the pools
and foliage at the roadside, roofs and rocks as far as we could see glistened with moisture from the night’s rain and the steaming earth. The stream was a ribbon of alternating coruscance and tree-shaded brown water. The sharp sound of a hammer on planks came distinctly across the intervening mile and told us that some one was repairing his home from the ravages of water. Altogether, everything looked as if in the process of being fixed up and made ready for an event; the valley was as rejuvenated as myself.
“Neither had I,” said Rabnon gruffly, and it was impossible to tell whether or not he felt that immanent something as I did.
It had not occurred to me to look closely at him before this morning, and I turned now as he stood gazing down the road to make sure it was the same Rabnon of a fortnight ago. As you know, this strange director of my dreams appears in surprising forms, and, while matters in dreams are usually matters of course, yet I never began a night’s escapade with him without a little misgiving lest he take some such terrible shape as the pirate who guided my pen in that devastating evening a year back. However, the benign countenance of my fellow-friar could hide no malice to-day, I thought. His grey hood was thrown back over sturdy shoulders, discovering an impressive head of white hair; the face was seamed, and set in a kindly, immobile expression. His eyes alone did not betray his age, for their deep-set glitter was as eager and querulous as I supposed must have come from mine.
We walked on down toward the town, and I began a conversation on a subject which seemed to have been a long time on my mind.
“Rabnon,” I said, “I don’t for a minute doubt the good work our Order is doing, and I feel as whole-heartedly pledged to its cause as in the first days of enthusiasm, but sometimes I grow a little squirmish under its restrictions. I am no longer a boy, but I am still a young man, and it is spring. There is something in my blood that is not as celibate as my body.”
“My boy,” said Rabnon, “love of God and love of woman are as opposite as Heaven and Hell. You cannot serve God and Mammon,
and, to speak in pagan terms, you cannot serve Zeus and Aphrodite.”
“But Aphrodite was both daughter and servant to Zeus,” I replied, perhaps a little anxious to show my learning followed his. He only laughed. “Oh, come! We are neither scholars, nor scholists to argue angels off the needle’s point. I mean that if either of us allowed ourselves a woman’s love, there would be moments when God’s purpose would be farthest from our minds. St. Francis knew it as well as anyone, wherefore it is something you must suffer. My blood was hot enough in my day; I used to consider the dissatisfaction of it a part of my martyrdom.” He laughed again, and so disputing we came at length into the street of the town, and to the inn.
Those who do not know Rabnon and me from before must be told of a feminine face I have never been able to remember for description, there in my dreams without the sanction of my most unconscious sense I am sure, delightfully haunting, agonizingly beyond my control. Imagine, then, my surprise in the light of our travel’s talk when I saw a young cavalier in the courtyard helping dismount a lady with such a face and a familiar figure. Imagine, too, the furtive glances of a rebellious celibate, following them through the gate into the high-raftered room where mine host greeted us all from among his many tables. A significant sleeve-plucking from my friend was necessary to make me leave staring after the pair and join him in a corner, where we ordered an ale. And I did not talk more easily with him because the cavalier and his companion were seated at the head of a long table before us, so that I was to be observing them for the duration of our stay.
While we waited for the ale, I looked at that elusive face, and took up the discussion with Rabnon, at the same time. “Now the pretty waitress,” I pointed to the girl who had taken our order—she was then engaged in repartee with my flashy nobleman—“she has probably had more than one lover, and neither she nor they have taken more than the moment’s concentration from their more serious occupations. Yet the youth and the man in them have been satisfied, and—”
“Hold on,” Rabnon interrupted. “Now you are bringing up a different question.”
“Am I?” said I, disinterestedly The girl’s expression, I thought, was strangely sad, her eyes remarkably wide and frightened, for one in such gay attire and with such dashing company. She should be laughing with her companion, and draining her wine with vigor to mine host, but I saw her fingers tremble as the glass went to her lips, and she sits, quite out of the merriment, her thoughts apparently somewhere beyond the leaded windows.
“You are,” said Rabnon. “The question of passion without love. And it doesn’t work, old man. I can tell you that. It’s a sure way to get into trouble, and more distraction from our work than—”
I cut him short. “Rabnon, you are talking of love, and I am writing of it. Does either of us know anything about it? I have heard that the God of the mystics is perhaps only the effect of psychological actions. Something comes welling up in a man: it is the love of God, whom he sees, as the days go on, more and more clearly through the mists of his own consciousness. Suddenly the idea—is it really God from outside? we wonder—takes the predominant position in his mind; he is in love with God, and he cannot help this. Men have been in love also with other ideas than God. Is it not thus that love of woman comes? Doesn’t it explain ‘love at first sight’? If you had been obsessed by an idea, and it had been forming and churning in your mind for days and days, and suddenly—presto!—there it is in the flesh—” I waved my hand, and turned back to my scrutiny of my lady. “Some day, I am going to remember and write that face,” I finished.
While we were talking, the escort of the lady had risen and advanced to the waitress, who stood before the fire. Everyone in the room could conjecture his intent, and everyone could see that she was frightened; he was big and burly, fitter for battle than for love. Rabnon put his hand on my arm to call my attention to the movement, and we watched silently, with the rest of the room, this sudden dramatic turn of events. It was evident that the man was drunk.
The two by the fire had stood whispering a moment, when the girl, who was strong and buxom, hit her assailant resoundingly across the face. He replied by taking her in his arms, and a struggle ensued for his punitive kiss. The waiting audience roared and clapped, with a great pounding of pottery and dishes. For myself, I was disgusted thoroughly, and I saw Rabnon’s great fist close tightly where it lay upon the table. “I don’t like this atmosphere,” he said presently. “Let’s get out upon our way again.”
But as we got up, the sad lady who had been with the attacker of waitresses rose too, and we stood by our benches, interested in this new complication. She had been watching, I had noticed, with more active distaste than ourselves, her escort’s proceedings. Now she ran lightly to the struggling pair, and laid her hand on the man’s shoulder. “Come Camereau,” she said, “you are attracting a great deal too much attention, and we are late. I did not agree to accompany you on any such doings as these. Let us get on, or I shall go without you.”
I am not fully conscious to what passed during the next few moments. I know that the brute struck her, with an oath, and that she fell back, supporting herself against the table. Rabnon told me later that the maid screamed. I did not hear it; I found myself across the room, with the gallant by the throat. “Were you not so drunk,” I was saying, “I should wad you up the chimney flue with the rest of the waste.”
The man shook himself free, and we stood glaring a moment, while he poured out torrents of abusive threats to me of a more eternal sort of flame. Then he seemed to recollect himself and drew up, straightening the prettiness of his attire. “You should think twice, friend friar,” he said, “before interfering in other people’s affairs. Do you know who I am?”
I stood facing him, my hands on my hips. “I ought to,” I replied. “But you do not know me, Sir Guy.”
“You ought. I am the Guy of Camereau, and my soldiers are everywhere in the village. And why, then, should I be interested in your identity?”
“It seems always necessary,” I said, “to reiterate that I am the author of all these adventures, and that I am the Creator of you all, for am I not dreaming and writing you even as we speak? Great gingoes, man! I notice now that I have forgotten to give you a face, and you prate to me of soldiers and sovereignty! Come now, I shall need to put a physiognomy on you so as to have the pleasure of marring it.”
His hair was black and oily, and hung down about his shoulders in round artificial curls. Black, heavy-browed eyes looked out surlily from above fat bags of dissipation upon his cheeks. His nose was heavy, and seemed turned under at the end, so that he was always smelling his thick mustaches which were curled at either extremity. His lower lip hung down exactly like a grizzled old bulldog’s mouth, and it was there that I hit him while he mumbled more grotesqueries. They were picking him up, unconscious, when I turned about and his lady fell fainting into my arms.
With the feel of that soft arm in silks under my hand, forgotten was Rabnon, and the inn, and the crowd. I picked her lightness up; people were about me, but I shouted, “Make way,” and we two were soon alone by the spring in the courtyard. I was bathing her face with her own small handkerchief, and sobbing. “At last! I have touched you at last, you whom I have seen in so many guises, and who have escaped my grasp as often as you have eluded my pen. Oh, perfection! It cannot be that you are a part of my dreams, for there is nothing within me as perfect as you. Oh, my dear, my dear; I cannot imagine you, I cannot move you, and now, I cannot help you, when, in these hours, it would be my power to awaken anyone else!” And I went on mumbling and mixing my tears with the water I poured on her dainty wrists.
Presently she opened her eyes, and looked at me. “You!” she said. “Why have you always vanished from my dreams just as I was becoming interested in you? I have always suspected you of being not one of my creatures, for I had no control over you whatsoever, and when you were about, my own dream-people did amazing things. You are not at all like anyone of my imaginings, yet I like you far better than the lot of them.”
I would have taken her pretty lips to mine, she was so natural and so weak now, but I remembered my cloth and kept myself kissing her hands. Then I burst out laughing: “The Brushwood Boy!” She smiled. “Were you thinking that too? I’m so glad you have read it. But they had no trouble meeting in their dreams. Look, we must talk this matter out, now, for combined, we can make our evenings bring us together as much as we desire—” And she put her lovely arm about my neck and pulled my head down. “I think I should like to be together with you—in my dreams—forever—”
I had known she would say something of the kind and had steeled myself against it. Women always speak first. “To-night,” I said, “which is todreamday,—I should like to start a long series of dream-days together. And it is true that whatever one wants badly enough may be materialized in a dream; it is thus that we have at last gotten together.
“But to-night I am a friar, and sworn to the observance of celibacy; to-night I have duties elsewhere, so I must see you safely cared for and fare onward into the dusky places of the dream.” She rose, sorrowfully, and supporting her on my arm, I continued, “We can only hope for another meeting at another time. Neither of us can be untrue now to the artistry we have begun. You too must have your destiny to-night?”
“Your Camereau had spoiled it,” she said, as we turned again to the gate. “I was looking, it seemed, for a lover to-night, but he met me on the road.”
I could not help interjecting a smile. “A Freudian pickup!” I laughed. But she would have no levity. “My evening is over,” she said. “I shall stop writing, and awake. Let me precede you into the inn.” And with a vague little glance she turned and went in; I did not see her again.
Shortly, Rabnon came out, and we went on our way again, but my blood was no longer boiling with the spring, and I had no carnal arguments, for I was thinking neither of philosophy nor of Franciscan tenets. After we had walked a mile or so I turned to Rabnon and said, “You are right. A woman will drive our God out of the heart of a
man. For a woman is God to a man who is in love.” Rabnon very seriously and apparently irrelevantly, answered as he looked into my face, “We must travel far to-day, my friend.”
And because I was a maudlin artist I could not help writing a soft breeze into the trees that stood by the wayside so that they sighed and shivered as we went down a hill and left Camereau behind us.
I look up and see that dawn is coming in at the window; dawn is here, and a moment ago I was dreading the sunset. For we must travel far, Rabnon and I, to escape from love and laughter, and to do God’s work....
Yet, I am waiting for another dream on another day, where love only is God.
D G CARTER
Book Reviews
The Boy Grew Older. By H B .
(Putnam’s.)
“The Boy Grew Older” is a tale of paternity told in the terms of a sporting-writer. As a story of paternity it is rather appealing; one cannot help but feel a warm sympathy for this bewildered, clumsy, kind-hearted reporter who takes it upon himself to rear his infant son, after his dancer wife has deserted them. The very theme plays (not too delicately!) on the chords of human compassion. But as a story told in the terms of a sporting-writer, it is not so successful. The style shows lack of careful writing. It often verges on sloppiness. Mr. Broun imposes upon a public which has raised him to popularity, in writing in so slipshod a fashion. Besides, the story in itself deserves a finer exposition.
Peter Neale is the writer of a sporting column in a New York newspaper. He falls in love with Maria Algarez, a dancer, and chiefly by virtue of the fact that he praises her as much as she demands, persuades her to marry him. When their baby is born, she runs away to Europe to have her career, unfettered by the cares of maternity. Peter unselfishly devotes himself to the care of the boy. It is his ambition that he shall grow up to be a Harvard athlete, and finally inherit his father’s column. The war comes, and after it there is a meeting with the mother again—with the final decision of the boy’s career
In an incidental way, Mr. Broun’s often-exercised delight in making Harvard appear superior to Yale comes into the story Father and son help vanquish Yale. We mustn’t mind that, if it pleases him! Besides, occasionally Mr. Broun achieves an amusing paragraph by
his obsession—as when the father, unable to recall the words of a lullaby, sings the baby to sleep with Harvard’s song ending:
“And if any Eli—”
The song had to be cut short; the baby must not learn Harvard men’s words of profanity at such an early age!
Whatever faults the assiduous critic may find, “The Boy Grew Older” is an amusing story—and that’s the greatest reason for buying new novels, anyway!
C. G. P.
Command. By W M F . (Doubleday, Page & Co.)
In writing a review of a sea story it is customary to hail in the names of several other sea-writers—either for laudatory, or for defamatory, purposes; or for no purpose whatever—but to hail them in, nevertheless. The process usually proves little more than the truth of the ancient observation that comparisons are odious—and odiousness is associated with reviewing quite enough as it is.
The name of William McFee is great enough to stand alone, in the world of books. He writes of the sea with a sureness born of firsthand knowledge, for he was a sailor before he was an author
“Command” is a story of the life aboard a ship in wartime. Spokesley, the hero, a British second officer, is called to duty in the Aegean immediately after becoming engaged to a girl in England. There was little love wasted in the betrothal, and therefore Mr. Spokesley has few qualms when he becomes really, passionately enamoured of a girl of the South. This is the barest hint of the thread of the plot. “Command” offers a great deal more—pictures of the torpedoing of a ship in mine-strewn waters, of a collision with a warship at night, of the surging life in sea-ports along the
Mediterranean—so many that the story is in danger of growing tedious with too long sustained excitement.
The characters are memorable. Not so much by their descriptions as by their actions are they impressed. Mr. McFee has taken so much pains, by inserting a preface to the effect, to assure his readers that the story is purely fiction, that one is tempted to wonder which of the characters are drawn from life.
“Command” is, to be dogmatic, Mr. McFee’s best book; though various people will at once proceed to deny that, they will certainly agree that his work has been so uniformly good as to place it very near the top.
C. G. P.
Where the Blue Begins. By
(Doubleday,
C M .
Page & Co.)
To say anything critical about Mr. Morley’s book is like saying anything critical about “Jurgen”—it is impossible—and “Where the Blue Begins” hasn’t even the depths of salacious possibilities which permitted the columnists to fill their columns in the days of Cabell’s first prominence. In fact, it is nowhere so deep as “Jurgen”, yet it is another of those books out of which you may get as much as you bring to it, though you are acutely doubtful throughout whether the author intended half the thoughts he has created within you. But “Where the Blue Begins” is a delightful fantasy for anybody. The whimsical adventures of Gissing are just the disorganized eveninghour adventures in which anyone with a mind is apt to indulge.
“Where the Blue Begins” is an evening-hour book, or rather, a book for several evening-hours. When the fatigued upper-classman has his to-morrow’s Freshman calculus laid aside as a bad job, and has lit his pipe in complete acquiescence to the fact that his brain is in a fog, let him prop his feet against the new University fire-screen and seek happiness with Christopher Morley. But leave a call with
the janitor for chapel time next day You will never know when Morley stopped and your own dreams began.
D. G. C.
Pre-Raphaelite and Other Poets. By L H . (Dodd, Mead & Company. Net, $2.50.)
The unusual imaginative mind of Hearn, through Irish and Greek parentage, and exposure to Japanese culture, combined weird romanticism and realism with a strange mysticism. To this variegated composite, he added a background of concepts formulated in England, the United States, and St. Pierre. These impressions, visual and mental, produced spontaneously literary projections ranging from “Stray Leaves from Strange Literature” in 1884 to “Japan, an Interpretation” in 1904.
Professor Erskine of Columbia University compiled this volume from Hearn’s lectures delivered at the University of Tokyo in 18961902. The major division includes analyses and studies of Rossetti, Swinburne, Browning, Morris, and Meredith. Corollary to this, are notes upon Rossetti’s prose, and Meredith’s “The Shaving of Shagpat”. A consideration of the harsh Scotch conservatist, Robert Buchanan, and the contemporary poet of quiet effects, Robert Bridges, conclude the volume.
Hearn discerns Rossetti’s thoughtful melancholy, sensuous touches, and mystic feeling. The pictorial quality and medievalistic setting of the poet and the painter’s verse are traced artistically throughout the shorter narrative poems, “Rose Mary” and “The Bride’s Prelude”. The technical construction that underlies the poet’s exotic color and temperament, is emphasized by Hearn as a proof of Rossetti’s energetic intellect.
Swinburne is classified as the greatest English verse writer, scholar, critic, and living dramatist. He is a pessimistic evolutionist preaching almost an immoral law, contrasting vividly with George Meredith. As a further contrast the problem of evil is approached by
