As a West Side kid fooling around with boxing gloves, I had been, for some reason of temperament, more interested in dodging a blow than in striking one.

The man who has allowed his body to deteriorate cuts a pitiful figure - chest collapsed, stomach protruding.

But I do say that, if you will regularly devote 15 minutes a day, preferably before breakfast, for 60 days to the simple set of exercises that I devised for conditioning men in the navy, I guarantee that you will enjoy increased physical buoyancy and mental vigor.

Fat is one of the chief enemies of the heart because it has to be plentifully supplied with blood and thus needlessly increases the pumping load that the heart must sustain.

Normally, I could hit hard enough, as anyone who studied my fights might have known. But the impression was that I was essentially defensive, the very reverse of a killer, the prize fighter who read books, even Shakespeare.

Ever since boyhood I've made a religion of keeping in shape by regular, conscientious exercise.

My own ambition in the ring had always been skillful boxing, speed and defense - on the order of Mike Gibbons.