Muscles Rippling, Students "Look More Like Men," Cajoling Conditioners Crow

After a year of tightening their collective gut, Harvard students "look more like men standing up there," according to the instructors that have been doing the tightening. Norman Fradd, assistant director of physical education, and his gleaming knights of the bicep are satisfied with results so far, and most of them are impressed with the spirit they get from their classes.

Fradd is the power behind the pushup. In charge of the whole conditioning program, he has been laying the plans on which each day's exercises are based. In conferences with the individual in structors, he points out what he wants emphasized each week, and the men have a certain amount of latitude in devising their own pet contortions to achieve the desired effect.

One Year Old

The program all started almost a year ago, when conditioning was approved. Getting under way the first day after spring vacation, 1000 men reported for what was a soul-searing innovation in a college that had looked on compulsory athletics as a Freshman chore.

Fradd himself takes the 12:15 class, Tony Lupien guides the 2 and 4 o'clock men, Adolph Samborski runs the 4:30 group, and boxer Henry Lamar pounds away at 5:30, taking Lyal Clark's place. Baseballer Lupien's classes are in the Special Exercise Room, the others in the gymnasium.

Pre-Army Toughening

The purpose of the program is obvious enough: to get men in condition before the Army breaks them into it. Harvard men needed it badly, and students in service have been thankful for the training.

Exercise are designed to toughen and build up every part of every student's body, and to do this most attention has to be put on the abdominal muscles, Samborski, who is Director of Intramural Athletics, explained. "All of us use our legs and arms every day, but it's flabby stomach muscles that we have to work on." Result: a marked affection for gutstraining, leg-raising mayhem and belly grinds.

Lamar, whose eat-footed shadow boxing astounded conditioners all summer, likes his mammoth, 250-man 5:30 class. "The larger the class, the greater the feeling of accomplishment you get from leading them," he says. Noted for his jazzed-up cadence counting and melodramatic exhortations, he is impressed with the cooperation he gets. Upperclassmen, he feels, are improving as well as Freshman, 1300 of whom are being tested regularly by the Brouha step test to record the effects of the program.

No Duliness

"Just counting isn't enough," he says, to make a man keep it up when he's tired, the only time time exercise is really effective. And so he tries to "lead the men instead of forcing them," and usually injects enough humor into his commands to take men's minds off screaming tendons.

Students who get low scores in the physical exams are advised to work out in Lupien's class, where they have the advantage of apparatus to go through even more thorough drill. From 20 to 40 men, not all command performers, come to each of his classes.

All the fundamental exercises, Samborski pointed out, have been used for a long time, and it's usually a question of deciding with Fradd what general points to work on, with each man using the proper methods for the purpose. Experimenting with rope-climbing and the obstacle wall in his 4:30 class, he's found that variety makes for more enjoyment, and has kept his classes longer without apparent over-fatigue. Several men even reached the top of the rope yesterday, and that's hot stuff