How did people in ancient times train?

[Alan Tseng]

I've always wondered about this.  Do people like Ancient Greeks etc. (eg. Spartans) train like gymnasts?  Did they do a lot of press handstands etc?

[Tristan Curtis]

I don't know, but would imagine they'd get strong just handling the swords and shields.

A Google on the matter would be interesting.

[Biren Patel]

Well, I can't speak for all cultures here, but I know that the Spartans would train boys to become extremely strong and ripped through SL PE1. And to gain passage to become a man, every Spartan boy had to claim mastery of the infamous SL PE2.

In seriousness, I imagine that wrestling was a pretty big thing. In places like Greece and India.

[Rajan Shankara]

I know abit from reading the Discourses of Epictetus that around his time folks were strong. Being athletic seemed to be important. He used words to describe people like pancratiast and pentathlete.

“A Pancratiast was one who united the exercises of wrestling and boxing: a Pentathlete, one who contended in all the five games of leaping, running, throwing the discus, darting, and wrestling. "

And another admirable passage...

"

FIRST say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do. For in almost everything else we see this to be the practice. Olympic champions first determine what they would be, and then act accordingly. To a racer in a longer course there must be one kind of diet, walking, anointing, and exercise; to one in a shorter all these must be different, and to a pentathlete is still more different. "

Born 55 AD

[gravy]

with rocks. lots of rokcs

[Mikkel Ravn]

I'm also wondering if the physiques depicted in ancient greek statues where the Photoshop of the day; Did the greek athletes really look that way, or did the artists refine the physique in their artistic rendering?

 

Unless the greek physique is sort of an latent ideal within us that the artists where mediating into a work of art, I guess that the greek athletes must have really had that appearance.

 

Knowing today the amount of energy and dedication it takes to build a physique like that, imagine how rich a society ancient Greece must have been, to have athletes basically dedicating their lives to having a magnificent appearance.

[Brian Li]

I'm also wondering if the physiques depicted in ancient greek statues where the Photoshop of the day; Did the greek athletes really look that way, or did the artists refine the physique in their artistic rendering?

 

Unless the greek physique is sort of an latent ideal within us that the artists where mediating into a work of art, I guess that the greek athletes must have really had that appearance.

 

Knowing today the amount of energy and dedication it takes to build a physique like that, imagine how rich a society ancient Greece must have been, to have athletes basically dedicating their lives to having a magnificent appearance.

I think there were ancient Greeks who looked like that otherwise there wouldn't have been statues with such accurate looking muscular physiques. 

[Jon Douglas]

If they were typical, they probably wouldn't have been worth immortalising in statues.

The freaks and elite, one imagines. Built by people heavily into manual labour, feasting, soldiering with heavy metal equipment, and no Internet.

(Depending on who you read )

[Guest]

Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield, a book about the battle of Thermoplyae, shows how the young boys trained. Not sure how accurate it is, but it is very, very, very, very vivid...

[Connor Davies]

Greece is the only place I really know anything about their training, but I can tell you that the spartans basically invented calisthenics (and were openly mocked for it, right before they killed everyone) as well as employing rope climbing in their training.  Actually, the still rings are rumoured to have been based on rings the ancient romans used in their training, but I can find no evidence to back this up.

 

Also there's the fun story of Milo of Croton, who won gold in the olympics wrestling 7 times in a row.  After every olympics, he would find a baby cow an walk around with it on his shoulders every day until the next olympics.  For perspective, a modern adult cow weights around 600lbs.

 

Some form of weightlifting must have been employed, as evidenced by scottish strongman contests.  For example, deadlifting these giant rocks they happened to find (which I believe became a precursor to kettlebells) as well as the caber toss event.

 

Of course in the east you have yoga, which is a few thousands years old.  It probably has the closest resemblance to modern gymnastics, with flexibility and balance being the main focuses.  Who knows when the planche or the manna was discovered, but I'm sure some of the old yogis could pull it off.

 

And then there's things like chinese pole and the indian wrestling pole.  Again, it resembles gymnastics, but I don't know how old these events are.

 

Oh yeah, and my favourite sport of all time, bull leaping.  That's supposed to date back to ancient greece.  I'm not sure if it's training, per se, but it's awesome!

[jl5555]

It's times like this that I really miss the old forum and contributors like Slizzardman.....

[Connor Davies]

It's times like this that I really miss the old forum and contributors like Slizzardman.....

He liked a post of mine a couple weeks back, so he's still around, even if he doesn't post much anymore...

[Karl-Erik Karlsen]

Yeah, I think fighting, running, rowing and the above mentioned olympic diciplines would be done quite a lot.
But all the different societies had different aspects to them, so it would probably differ a lot between the various cities/areas as well.
In Athens, you could probably expect the warriors to be farmers - so a lot of manual labour involved, whereas the Spartans relied a lot on their slaves for the manual labour and basically stayed away from women and home, living in barracks or in the field most of the time.

One shouldn't take all the stories at face value though. There is not a lot of raw material left from ancient history - compared to modern history and most historians analyze the same stories over and over and over again. So a lot of the meta-history is created by more modern historians and might be accurate or it might not. Also, a lot of statues depicting greeks and romans are made hundreds of years later, sculpted off the same stories and a lot of imagination has likely been used by the artist. Perhaps they have even used athletes as models for the warrior's and statesmen's physiques to make them look more impressive, who knows. The same way we today airbrush models in advertisements or create freakishly ripped and muscular characters for video games and such. What would future generations think of the avaerage physique today if all they found were some dusty old xbox games? It wouldn't be very accurate, to put it mildly!

This interplay in history is pretty interesting, I remember a yogi in one of the threads here mentioned that a lot of the "ancient" yoga exercises were inspired by the gymnastic exercises performed by British soldiers during their occupation. So while we think that the greeks invented gymnastics, perhaps they just gave us some ideas which we developed further and then, later on credited back to them much more than what was really the truth.

I'm curious as to how much muscle mass these people could realistically have, considering that their societies didn't have the absurd amounts of food available that we have today. For them, having a steak dinner would be a rare opportunity indeed (unless they were royalty or extremely rich) and slaughtering a cow or an ox they used to sustain their families would be something reserved for a special occasion or a very revered guest.

[Biren Patel]

Of course in the east you have yoga, which is a few thousands years old.  It probably has the closest resemblance to modern gymnastics, with flexibility and balance being the main focuses.  Who knows when the planche or the manna was discovered, but I'm sure some of the old yogis could pull it off.

Hmm, but you are taking yoga out of it's philosophical and religious context from that specific school of HInduism. The yoga we think of today is only a fraction of what the religion actually is. Also, in those "ancient" times, the teaching of yoga would have been kept secretive between vedic priests due to the caste system. So, not really everybody had access to this kind of training.

Hah, as for planche and manna, I'm not so sure! I would wonder if they thought it was possible. Especially to the technical degree of modern day gymnastics. Then again, you might be on to something. There are quite a few impressive skills in yoga. I have seen a high straddle L once, not the kind of legs resting on upper arms stuff, either. But, building off of what Kage said, I have no idea what exercises were introduced at a much later period.

To add something more to the discussion, check out Girolamo Mercuriale. Lived in the 16th century and wrote a book on the art of gymnastics. Here is one of his depictions: http://www.bkneuroland.fr/img/churchill/deartegymnastica/mercurialisartegymnastica2.jpg

Those exercises are very similar to the kind of stuff people like Sandow, KV Iyer, and Louis Atilla who come a few centurys later.

 

[Karl-Erik Karlsen]

Very interesting that Girolamo Mercuriale! Never heard of him before.
Either there is some very interesting early weightlifting going on, or they are cleaning the place up....

[Parkerson Seward]

If they were typical, they probably wouldn't have been worth immortalising in statues.

The freaks and elite, one imagines. Built by people heavily into manual labour, feasting, soldiering with heavy metal equipment, and no Internet.

(Depending on who you read )

 

 

I think some of them definitely did, but I remember from undergrad art history classes where they talk about how the artists would exaggerate the physiques for statues of guys like Zeus and Hercules to make them even more impressive.

[Matthew Proulx]

Well according to the historian Vegetius the romans were said to have marched 18.4 miles per day, perform long and high jump, vaulting, march with weighted packs, swim in the summer, practice  with sword/shields, spears of double weight. Gymnastic rings were originally called roman rings, and I have heard that the greeks and romans used rings for physical training, Gymnastic type exercises has been used in military training for thousands of years of course not to the same degree of difficulty. The word gymnastics derives from the greek word gymnastikos which means skilled in bodily exercise.

Edited November 24, 2013 by MattProulx

[Craig Mallett]

Of course in the east you have yoga, which is a few thousands years old.  It probably has the closest resemblance to modern gymnastics, with flexibility and balance being the main focuses.  

 

It's hard to say that yoga practices are thousands of years old.  Most of what shows up today in modern yoga is simply a mish mash of popular physical traditions and yoga philosophy.  The very oldest yoga texts mostly talk about development of spirituality through meditation practices and various other practices of mind and habits.  Some of the texts talk about physical practices as well, but they are certainly far removed from what we know today.  During the 1920s especially, the boom in popularity of yoga in both India and the west saw it being merged with popular physical practices of the time, and western gymnastics has a huge influence here. It's not so mystical and old as people make out, basically just some postures taken from common physical practices and having a particular mindset and philosophy pasted over the top.  Not a bad thing at all, in fact its super awesome, but no more ancient and mystical than gymnastics itself, in fact its probably much newer.

 

You can read stuff about it below:

http://yoganonymous.com/where-yoga-poses-come-from-are-we-making-this-shit-up-asana-yoga-practice-krishnamacharya-pattabhi-jois-ashtanga-hatha-vinyasa/

http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/2610

http://blog.gaiam.com/are-yoga-poses-ancient-history/

http://yoga.about.com/od/beginningyoga/a/History-Of-Modern-Yoga-Asana.htm

[Craig Mallett]

More related, this book here has some interesting stories about old strongman and gymnastic practices, well worth a read if you're interested.  I dont know anyone who's attempted the protocol but the author appears to have made some good progress with it.

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Secret-Great-Body-ebook/dp/B008C2MRUO/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1385349035&sr=8-14&keywords=body+building+sandow

[Connor Davies]

 

You can read stuff about it below:

http://yoganonymous.com/where-yoga-poses-come-from-are-we-making-this-shit-up-asana-yoga-practice-krishnamacharya-pattabhi-jois-ashtanga-hatha-vinyasa/

http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/2610

http://blog.gaiam.com/are-yoga-poses-ancient-history/

http://yoga.about.com/od/beginningyoga/a/History-Of-Modern-Yoga-Asana.htm

Oh cool, I was looking for something interesting to read today.

 

So shot in the dark here: How long ago do you guys reckon the first handstand was?

[Tristan Curtis]

First handstand... hmm are we counting evolutionary ancestory? Perhaps man was handstanding before we became homo erectus.

[Connor Davies]

I've never seen any other primates handstand, although that might just be ignorance on my part.

[Craig Mallett]

Pretty sure handstands would pre-date modern humans!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXjapm9s2fo

[Briac Roquet]

I've seen dogs do handstands, so yeah, primates can definitely do that.^^

 

 

Maybe not all of them though, can't imagine gorillas doing this.

[Karl Kallio]

Supposedly the average rower guy in Athens would be an elite athlete today.  Modern Athens, with a population of 800,000  would have trouble filling the benches of 1 trireme (if  they wanted it to go as far/fast as the ancient greek ships went).  Athens from 500 BC had a population of maybe 100,000 and had about 200 triremes on the water with about 170 guys per ship.

 

http://www.fbs.leeds.ac.uk/research/bulletin/index.php?id=112&show=all

 

I seem to remember similar studies about long-bowmen in medieval England. - you just couldn't find enough people capable of firing a bow as far/fast/long as they did if you wanted to mount a comparable army, even though the population is much larger today.  Archaelogical excavations have suggested that aristocrats who went around on horseback in dark ages Europe had incredible thigh muscles (adductors) compared to anything you can find today.

 

I bet that as soon as "civilization" reduced the evolutionary advantage of being super fit or agile etc the human population started going downhill.  When reading glasses and cars and guns came into play this probably got more pronounced... at least in the first world.  A few weeks ago some nice ladies guided me through washing a weeks worth of laundry by hand - my forearms and shoulders were almost paralyzed the next day.  It made me wonder what life 500 BC might have been like.