It's 1902. You're reading the Saint Paul Globe. You come across the very thing you've been waiting for: the secret to fitness. Even better, you already have the equipment.
Roll out the barrels
The answer? A set of challenging exercises with a common home barrel. This article explains:
"Corpulent people may now rejoice, for this latest acquisition to the catalogue of health and figure improvement methods has been proven to do everything claimed for it. Thin, sickly people may also join in the chorus, for it not only reduces flesh with fleshy individuals, but makes flesh and muscle, improves the breathing apparatus, invigorates the action of the heart and brings about a graceful carriage."
The picture above shows you just what to do with your barrel. Who doesn’t want an improved breathing apparatus and graceful carriage?
Lift a piano
The ideal shape for women seems to change all the time. Every paper you read now seems to offer advice on how to keep up with each trend. It’s 1907, and now it’s acceptable for you to have ruddy cheeks and a flat stomach.
A Los Angeles Herald piece from 1907 contains two excellent recommendations:
"An indoor exercise that will help you keep fit is the imaginary motion of lifting a piano and the other of drawing a cork from a bottle...Both of these contract the muscles of the abdomen, which in most women are flaccid and fall, giving them a balloony appearance."
I would be happy to lift an imaginary piano if it might prevent a balloony appearance.
Join the Follies
You make it through the early 1900s. Times change once again. Now, women are becoming more athletic. You spot this beauty in a 1915 article in The Day Book of Chicago.
"Exercise that gives the spine and the abdominal muscles something to do are best and America's famous 1915 beauty, Kay Laurell, of "Ziegfeld's Follies," is pictured in the accompanying illustration in one position of a good stretching exercise."
She was probably exercising so much in rehearsals and performances that simply sticking her legs in the air was more of a break than a fat burner. But you imagine donning some exercise garb, closing the door to your room, and lifting your legs to emulate her Edwardian form.
The photo raises your eyebrows, but also tantalizes.
Get to it!