Book 8
1338b
It is therefore agreed that we should employ gymnastic training, and how we should employ it. For until pubertywe should apply lighter exercises, forbidding hard diet and severe exertions, in order that nothing may hinder the growth;
1339a
for there is no small proof that too severe training can produce this result in the fact that in the list of Olympic victors one would only find two or three persons who have won both as men and as boys, because when people go into training in youththe severe exercises rob them of their strength. But when they have spent three years after puberty upon their other studies, then it is suitable to occupy the next period of life with laborious exercises and strict training dieti.e. compulsion to eat very large rations of prescribed food—the Greek way of training.; for it is wrong to work hard with the mind and the body at the same time; for it is the nature of the two different sorts of exertion to produce opposite effects, bodily toil impeding the development of the mind and mental toil that of the body.
