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

Exercise should be regarded as tribute to the heart.

I did six years of planning to win the championship from Jack Dempsey.

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.

Many complain of a chronic weariness that sleep will not banish. Their trouble is that too little blood is pumped through the body per minute; this sluggishness, permitting poisonous waste matter to accumulate in every cell, clogs the channels of energy.

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.

In youth, we get plenty of exercise through games and running around, but as middle life approaches, we settle down, literally and figuratively.