What Makes the Oriental Strong? The Indian Dands [1911]

For adopting position 1, keep both arms parallel to each other, as shown in Fig. 1. Push your body back as far as possible by pressing your palms on the ground, and raise your head as high as possible; don’t look downwards, but straight up.

After adopting this position push your body (Fig. 2) gently forward and bring your chest between your hands as near to the ground as possible, keeping your legs quite straight. Never let your chest or knees touch the floor.

After performing this operation again, push your body forward as far as possible… Now gradually rise higher and higher, so much so that you adopt [the position in Fig. 3], i.e., head quite up, chest coming out, arms quite straight, and a curve in the back.

From this position you must quickly take yourself back to position 1, and repeat the operation again and again.

Keep your mouth shut when performing the exercise, always breathing through your nose.

The best method for a beginner is to start with five dands the first day and go up to ten at the end of the first week… You will be quite surprised to hear that when last year I went to see Gama performing this exercise I began to count, and saw that he went on doing over 2,000 dands within three hours time.

• T.M. Alexander, “What Makes the Oriental Strong? The Indian Dunds” Health & Strength, July 8, 1911.

Note: The original article uses spelling “dunds” – we changed it to more common “dands”.

Great Gama Protocol: Dands साधारण दण्ड aka Hindu pushups | SIMPLEXSTRONG