The Fists of Teddy Roosevelt

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who served as the 26th American President at the beginning of the last century, is a great example of someone who completely transformed himself through exercising.

As a child, Teddy had frequent asthma and his stomach troubles necessitated frequent days of bed rest.

His father was afraid that he was becoming too accepting of his illnesses and frailty. One day, he took his young son aside and told him: “Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.”

Teddy responded immediately, giving his father a solemn promise: “I’ll make my body.”

The boy threw himself into a strict regimen of strength and endurance training; week after week, month after month, he lifted weights and pulled himself up on horizontal bars. Methodically, he sought to “expand his chest by regular, monotonous motion—drudgery indeed.”

Years would pass before the potential of these labors would be actualized in an adult capacity and physique that made him an exemplar of energy and stamina.

In commenting on Roosevelt’s very active lifestyle, historian Patricia O’Toole offers a most interesting observation: “Look at photographs of him. Whenever he’s seated, if he has a hand on a desk or a hand on his knee, it’s always in a fist. There’s all that coiled energy. It’s not—it’s not anger, it’s just energy coiled, waiting to be let loose.”