Niels Bukh - Primary Gymnastics

by

NIELS BUKH

PRINCIPAL, GYMNASTIC HIGH SCHOOL, OLLERUP, DENMARK

Translated and Adapted by

FRANK N. PUNCHARD

MASTER OF METHOD AND CHIEF LECTURER IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION, SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION, GLASGOW; EDITOR, JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SCHOOL HYGIENE

and

JOHAN JOHANSSON

ASSISTANT ORGANIZER OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION, FREDERIKSBERG, COPENHAGEN LATE LECTURER, SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION, GLASGOW ENGLISH VACATION-COURSE LEADER, GYMNASTIC HIGH SCHOOL, OLLERUP, DENMARK

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED

NEILS BUKH

THIS book, now in its fourth revised edition, is dedicated to the Danish gymnastic club leaders. From the outset they accepted this form and application of gymnastic practice with the greatest confidence and understanding, and so prepared the way for the establishment of Primary Gymnastics throughout Denmark, while their skill and bodily culture have earned the respect of many foreign nations for Danish gymnastics.

In the first three editions Primary Gymnastics was submitted to the club leaders as a new type of training, necessitated by civilized Mans incomplete and defective bodily development, and aiming at eradicating defects and leading the Youth toward physical perfection. The club leaders were given free choice of different exercises, of which a fairly rich collection was provided, and mode of application.

As a result, Primary Gymnastics has passed through its experimental stage and proved itself, and though it was not claimed as a new system of gymnastics, such a claim could be well maintained.

The reasons for, and the aims of, Primary Gymnastics should remain firm, but the methods of application need to be more settled.

For more than twenty years the work has undergone a thorough trial at the Gymnastic High School, Ollerup, and in clubs and schools throughout the country. Many of the exercises and applications have proved so valuable that they ought to have more definite place in Physical Education than they have had so far. Hence, in this fourth edition, they have been compiled and systematized under the name Danish Primary Gymnastics.

I hope that this form of gymnastic practice will never be rigid in its composition, but always be open to desirable modifications, in order that gymnastics may be all that it ought truly to bea good basis for sports and games, and a medium for forwarding the development of a healthy and efficient people.

However, gymnastics is not only the basis of physical education, and we should not be content with breaking and turning over the soil which is the first physical aim of the training, but the soil must be regularly cultivated so that, by persistent exercise, abilities and vigour which have been made more effective may continue their improvement.

Here, sports and games will be helpful. Even the best trained gymnast must have opportunity and good conditions for practising sports, games and athletics, usefully and correctly.

Gymnastics, sports and games can, separately, serve the physical development of Youth and strengthen character, but it is better when they work in conjunction. Therefore, I hope that the club leaders will in future actively promote and conduct the practice of games, swimming and kindred activities, utilizing these valuable means for the advancement of Youth and the welfare of the people, in the like excellent manner in which they have led and promoted gymnastics.

I offer my thanks: to Miss Ingeborg Olsen, teacher of gymnastics, for her good help in compiling the programmes for little girls; to Alfred Andreassen, headmaster, Frederiksberg, and Richard Pedersen, teacher of gymnastics, Copenhagen, for the programmes for boys; and to my teachers, Kristian Krogshede and Mads Nielsen, for the programmes for adults.

Further, I acknowledge Kristian Kroghedes valuable assistance in taking the photographs for the illustrations and in compiling this book.

NIELS BUKH

HERR NIELS BUKH began the development of Primary Gymnastics in 1915, when he was already a renowned teacher and the leader of the Danish Olympic Gymnastic Team.

The special rhythmic form which he imparted to gymnastics was directed towards the young adults of his country, through the Folk High Schools for adults which are a feature of Danish national and educational life.

He brought to bear on gymnastics his exceptional skill as a teacher and organizer, a marked enthusiasm, a high sense of national pride, and a remarkable intuition in devising valuable gymnastic movements and methods.

After over twenty years of testing, the results of his gymnastic efforts in the direction of Primary Gymnastics are presented in simple form. This book entirely supersedes his earlier published work.

As the book was written for Danish Youth and its leaders, we have retained this direction in the early pages, for it supplies the social background. To omit it from the translation would be to rob Niels Bukhs work of its essential setting.

The gymnastic method and its movement-forms enjoy world-wide practice to-day. In Great Britain the influence, and much of the material, are to be noticed in official publications on gymnastics and physical training, while individual authors have drawn freely on Niels Bukhs work.

The book is arranged for the teaching and practice of clubs, groups and classes, but the personal Keep Fit movement and national Physical Fitness campaigns make it desirable that simple explanation of suitable exercises, as here presented, should be available for individual practice. The original was written for leaders of recreative gymnastic groups and classes, and that characteristic has been preserved in this English edition.

F. N. P.
J. J.

PRIMARY GYMNASTICS

IN the years 1885 to 1915-20, there existed in Denmark a very live interest in the system of gymnastics which the Swede, Pehr Henrik Ling, created and so well advocated.

The gymnastics was termed rational, it being implied that the practice of the exercises would provide a well-founded, systematic and purposeful influence on the human body.

The main reason was the great need for bodily development and culture, whose lack was revealed in the posture and conduct of Youth.

The purpose of the planning was that gymnastics through its all-round exercises should counteract the one-sided influence which daily life and vocational work had upon Man; and, further, that the gymnastic lesson or practice should be conducted without overtaxing the heart and respiratory organs.

The basic aim was a healthy and beautiful body, as the abode and instrument of a sound mind.

When gymnastics gained so much interest in this country, quite a generation ago, it was particularly due to the Danish Folk High Schools.

It was men such as Ernst Trier, Vallekilde; Poul la Cour, Askov; N. H. Rasmussen, K. A. Knudsen, and others of their circle, who first appreciated that in physical education great national values were hidden: and it was these men who prepared the way for rational gymnastics into the Danish work for the Youth, first in the Folk High Schools and later, from there, out into the Rifle Clubs, Elementary Schools and into the Army.

But Swedish Gymnastics, as it soon was called, did not, in the long run, satisfy the gymnastic need and interest of Danish Youth.