Other YMCA facilities in North America began including gyms and pools as well as hotel-like dormitories to house men coming into the cities looking for work.īoston YMCA physical education director Robert J. The first YMCA building to construct a gymnasium opened in Boston in 1869.
#Vintage gay men swimming manual#
They weren’t receiving the natural muscle strengthening that came from farm work or manual labor jobs. In their own buildings they could meet the general need for physical fitness among the many young men whose office jobs kept them at their desks all day. With expanding programs the YMCAs outgrew the church facilities they rented in their early years and saw their need for buildings of their own. While not everyone in the Associations was on board with the new direction of promoting bodily fitness, the YMCA evolved from a Bible study fellowship group for young men to become a major youth organization dedicated to physical, mental, and spiritual fitness as well as a social center for young men.
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Adult gymnastics club performs a group stunt on the parallel bars at the Rochester, N.Y., YMCA at the beginning of the 20th century. These movement exercises were adopted by the British Army and became staples of British and American physical education. Ling’s “light gymnastics” (as opposed to Jahn’s “heavy gymnastics”) was based on body movement (Ling had been a fencing instructor) that Ling developed into calisthenics and tumbling. The other form of gymnastics to come out of the early 19th century physical culture movement was Swedish, as developed by Pehr-Henrik Ling. Following the Greek ideals of the physical culture movement in Prussia, exercise with heavy equipment was often done in the nude in the YMCA. Turnverein (gymnastic associations) sprang up in many German cities and were brought to the U.S. Because of his development of this form of gymnastics Jahn came to be called the Turnvater (father of gymnastics). Jahn developed the use of heavy equipment to shape and strengthen bodies, especially of the Prussian military which had suffered defeats by Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars. The YMCA became a major promoter of the physical culture movement that began in Prussia in the early 19th century under the influence of Friedrich Jahn. See Clifford Putnam, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Theodore Roosevelt, like his father, was a strong promoter of muscular Christianity in his book, The Strenous Life. Its aim was to counter the feminine image of Christianity by providing fit bodies for missionaries and ministers working in foreign mission fields and urban inner missions. Responding to unhealthy living conditions as well as the lure of morally questionable activities in the cities, the YMCA aimed to put Christian principles into practice by developing in young men a “healthy body, mind, and spirit,” as emblemized in the Y’s Triangle.īy moving in this direction the Y tapped into the Muscular Christianity movement that emerged in England and came into the U.S. After the war single young men again began drifting into the cities looking for work, which were also burgeoning with the massive influx of immigrants. was interrupted by the Civil War (1861–1865) in which many young men fought and died. Very quickly the concept caught on and Young Men’s Christian Associations sprang up throughout the far-flung British Empire and in the United States. The objective was to provide male Christian fellowship to keep young men away from the lures of pubs and prostitution. It specialized in helping with employment searches, providing a place of accommodation, and offering Bible study and prayer meetings. It was intended to be a place of refuge for those seeking employment in the commerce and industry of the city. The Young Men’s Christian Association was founded as an evangelical organization by George Williams in 1851 for young men who were migrating into the city of London from the countryside.
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So it is worth writing more about the YMCA and the cultural and religious background of its physical education programs. Many men over fifty experienced this when they were boys. But the Y played a big role in naked swimming in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere.
![vintage gay men swimming vintage gay men swimming](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/04/fd/b9/04fdb93ef432269960a2164e48be8bae.jpg)
I included information about the YMCA’s swimming program in Frank Answers About Swimming Naked. Many older men say they experienced swimming naked at the YMCA.