Бонни Прудден: Пионер физической культуры и альпинизма в США

American physical fitness pioneer, rock climber and mountaineer (1914–2011)

Bonnie Prudden (
Ruth Alice Prudden; January 29, 1914 – December 11, 2011) was an American physical fitness pioneer, rock climber and mountaineer. Her report to Eisenhower on the unfitness of American children as compared with their European counterparts led to the formation of the President's Council on Youth Fitness. Prudden authored 16 books on physical fitness and myotherapy for all ages and abilities including two best sellers, How to Keep Slender and Fit After Thirty (1961) and Pain Erasure: The Bonnie Prudden Way (1980). She produced six exercise albums, hosted the first regular exercise spots on national television, had a syndicated television show, and wrote a regular column for Sports Illustrated. Schools, prisons, summer camps, factories, hospitals, clubs, YMCAs, universities, geriatric homes and facilities for the physically and emotionally challenged all used and benefited from the many physical fitness programs she provided for them. Prudden also designed the first fitness fashions and developed numerous pieces of exercise equipment that could be built in the average garage and used by the family. She also coined the term and developed the practice of myotherapy in 1976, described as, "A method of relaxing muscle spasm, improving circulation, and alleviating pain. Pressure is applied, using elbows, knuckles, or fingers, and held for several seconds to defuse 'trigger points.' The success of this method depends upon the use of specific corrective exercises of the freed muscles."

Born Ruth Alice in New York City, Prudden began her climbing and dance career at age four when she ventured out the second story nursery window of her Mt. Vernon home to go night walking. After three such escapades a doctor told her mother, "There is nothing wrong with this child that discipline and exhaustion won't cure. Put her in the Russian Ballet School." During her growing up years she trained in the Koslov, Magna and Alviene Schools of dance, drama, elocution and gymnastics. She attended German Turnverein gymnastic clubs and Finnish exercise, took piano, violin, voice, riding, and writing lessons and studied anatomy. In 1931 she was enrolled at Horace Mann School where she excelled in English, art, sports, music, and drama, and taught dance to her classmates. After graduating in 1933 she took extension courses in art at the Grand Central School of Design and journalism and psychology courses at Columbia University. At the same time she began studying modern dance with Charles Weidman and Doris Humphrey and became part of the Weidman/Humphrey concert/theatrical dance group performing on Broadway.

After watching her daughter's gym class in 1947, she started "Bonnie Hirschland's Conditioning Classes" for her two daughters and ten neighborhood children. In a matter of weeks the class size had grown to 75. The schools offered their gyms for classes as long as she accepted all applicants. In 1949, new students entered her classes. To gauge the effectiveness of her program she borrowed and applied to practical use a fitness test devised by Kraus and Sonja Weber of New York Presbyterian Hospital. The Kraus–Weber test involves six simple movements and takes 90 seconds to administer. To her surprise, 58% of the new students failed the test, while only 8% of the students who had been in the program failed. For the next seven years Prudden and her volunteers tested 4,458 children between the ages of 6 and 16 in the United States. The failure rate was 56.6%. While climbing in Europe, Prudden and Kraus arranged to test children in Europe. In Italy, Austria and Switzerland, the children tested exhibited an 8% failure rate, averaged over the three countries. In 1952, Bonnie (still known as Ruth Hirschland) and Kraus began writing papers for medical and physical education journals concerning their findings (e. g., "Role of Inactivity in Production of DiseaseHypokinetic Disease"), and various media outlets began to pick up the story. Prudden bought an empty elementary school in White Plains, NY in 1954 and after renovating it opened The Institute for Physical Fitness. It housed three gyms, two dance studios, a Finnish sauna, a medical unit, two massage rooms, lockers, showers and an office. Taking classes barefoot was a requirement. Equipment, painted in bright colors, was designed after curbs, boulders, fences, railroad tracks, and walls of a less mechanized day. Chinning bars were built in every doorway. Every child used the 42 stairs between basement and top floor for conditioning, discipline and special muscle building. Outside was an obstacle course that included America's first climbing wall, cargo nets, hurdles, parallel bars, ladders, ramps, balance maze, tightrope, slalom poles and a rappel roof. In 1955, armed with statistics and a personal invitation to the Eisenhower White House, Bonnie Prudden and Hans Kraus presented their findings on the fitness level of American public school children compared to that of their peers in Italy, Austria, and Switzerland. This became known as "The Report that Shocked the President" or the "Shape of the Nation" and was the beginning of a change in American attitudes toward physical fitness. Kraus's presentation followed with the medical implications of insufficient physical activity, including elevated risks of obesity, back pain, high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, psychiatric problems and muscle tension. Following this, President Eisenhower issued an executive order establishing the President's Council on Youth Fitness (now the President's Council on Physical Fitness, Sports and Nutrition). Prudden served on the advisory committee for three years. Prudden and Kraus are credited as co founders of the council. In 2007, Prudden was awarded the council's Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. The YMCA decided to adopt Prudden's methods of teaching exercise and follow her advice to admit women to their buildings for morning classes. Representatives were sent to Prudden's White Plains Institute to be taught Kraus–Weber testing and exercise teaching. They went back to their respective states and set up the Prudden Program in their YMCAs. Prudden became a much sought after speaker, and the YMCAs became the place to go for the Prudden Programs, with "diaper gym and swims", pre natal classes, and toddler , mixed teen and family oriented classes. Is Your Child Really Fit? was published in 1956. It enlarged on the President's report and outlined the solution to the problem. From 1957 through 1960 Prudden served as a columnist for Sports Illustrated, introducing her fitness program and appearing on the cover in a full length leotard of her own design. Fitness fashions were born. Attracted by the fitness fashions, The Home Show with Arlene Frances and Hugh Downs booked her for a weekly family fitness TV spot. Following the end of The Home Show, she moved to the Today Show with Dave Garroway, where she remained for two and a half years. She left the show when they started advertising a diet pill in connection with her spot and watchers thought she was endorsing it. At the same time she had regular spots on two radio shows, Tex and Jinx McCrary and Arthur Godfrey. From 1955 through 1975 Prudden continued her crusade for better bodies. She wrote 13 books, countless manuals, set up pilot programs, designed fitness clothing and equipment for home and school, lectured nonstop throughout the country, made six records, two films, and one film strip, established five day training workshops, and wrote and taped 35 half hour segments of The Bonnie Prudden Show. These last were so successful that she was contracted for 165 more segments. In 1962 Reader's Digest began underwriting the Prudden Program. This partnership lasted through the mid 1980s.

In an interview in 1997, Prudden said, "Every once in a while I have a conversation with God. I say I'm tired. This work is just too hard. Can I retire? The answer is always no. The reason is that whatever I have in here", she says, pointing to her head, "to give about the importance of fitness, must be given until I can't give anymore." Prudden died in 2011. A eulogy for her in the Arizona Daily Star reads, "Despite suffering a bone crushing accident, joint replacements, cancer and heart bypass surgery, the international fitness pioneer, TV personality and adviser to presidents remained healthy and active for all of her 97 years. She was still exercising from her hospice bed, just days before her death, December 11, six weeks shy of her 98th birthday." Prudden died in Tucson, Arizona.