ATHLETIC TRAINING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Athletic training

... use his fists, as friction was strong between the Irish and English lads at the school he went to. But he did well in athletic sports, and was never beaten in a hundred yards race. He firmly believes that this early athletic training is responsible for the rapid way in which he does everything to-day—be it walking or talking, eating or working, all is done on the hundred yards principle—to ...

— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... three men coming upon him from the alley, the nearest one with an uplifted slung-shot. It was with just a glance from the corner of his eye as he turned that Bobby caught the import of the figure towering above him, and then his fine athletic training came in good stead. With a sidewise spring he was out of the sphere of that descending blow, and, swinging with his heavy wrench, caught the fellow a smash upon the temple which laid him unconscious. Before the two other men had time to think, he was upon them ...

— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester