New Year’s Reminisces and Resolutions for Physical Culture Study

Well, the New Year is well and truly upon us. To my absolute delight, if not amazement, this year marks the tenth year of Physical Culture Study. You will forgive me then for being romantic and sentimental in reminiscing about its trajectory. While this website has not projected me into some sort of social media influencer who amasses thousands and thousands of dollars each month from the pockets of eager and earnest followers. Nor has it resulted in me losing my job, been embroiled in online controversy or the target of trolls. I’m rather happy following this middle ground.

When I began this website I was a history undergraduate who was trying to figure out what to do next. I tried ‘the real world’ before undertaking a masters, and then a Ph.D., on the history of Physical Culture. Throughout this period this website has been a constant companion. A place where I turned to write multiple times a week or, at the present moment, just once a week. While I am loathe to talk about site traffic and engagements, the website has attracted over 500,000 visitors annually for the past several years. Please accept these ramblings as my way of saying thank you for continuing to come here and indulge a passion which, for me, has never faltered, but rather strengthened, over the years.

Academics and Irish people are terrible at broadcasting their successes. Being both of these things means I have the ability to not only swat away compliments but to cut them off before they are even uttered. Against my best nature, I wanted to list some highlights from the previous year (both for me and for the field of physical culture), and some goals for the upcoming year.

Highlights From 2023

The past twelve months were wonderfully chaotic in terms of work. There were documentaries, books, and off-chance encounters. My ‘top five’ of personal highlights

• Appearing in a BBC/PBS documentary on Arthur Conan-Doyle. Headed by Lucy Worsley, the documentary featured a brief piece on Conan-Doyle’s interest in physical culture. The author of Sherlock Holmes was also a friend of Sandow’s. This was my pathway into the documentary. Check it out below. I appear c. 12 minutes in.

• My short book, The History of Physical Culture won a Publisher’s Prize with Common Ground Research Networks. This was a complete surprise and, alongside the positive feedback it got elsewhere, was a real highlight for me.
• Bloomsbury published my book on the history of Indian club swinging. As regulars here will know, my research on Indian clubs is nearly as old as this website. They were the focus of my 2016 master’s dissertation and my book was an effort to finally create a definitive account.
• I went on the road with the Iron Culture podcast, getting the opportunity to participate in some of their soon to be released documentaries on Irish stone lifting and a visit to the HJ Lutcher Stark Center… as well as the time they met Ronnie Coleman.

• Finally I got the opportunity to speak at a number of universities, industry events and cultural days, including the Bloomsday Festival in Ireland. As someone who spent several years before finishing James Joyces’ masterful twentieth century novel Ulysses, the idea of speaking at that event really was incredible. Shout out to Strong Woman Ireland who did a weightlifting exhibition in an old Georgian house in Dublin to show off strength feats!

Feeling the need to not be an egomanic, this was also a great year for the history of physical culture more generally. Here are some ‘non-Conor’ highlights

• Marcus Kment produced an amazing and entertaining documentary on Sandow’s 1901 bodybuilding show. Yes, I appeared in it but this is a Marcus achievement.

• John Fair’s latest book, on Tommy Kono was published. Kono was one of America’s greatest Olympians… not weightlifters… Olympians. Fair combined personal insights, deep research and his writing flourish to create a fascinating insight into Kono’s career.
• Technically its a late 2022 book, but Natalia Mehlman Petrzela’s Fit Nation marked a great historical overview of America’s interest in fitness. It was highly publicised and promoted on release which helped push more eyes on the history of fitness. Also included in this was Alyssa Ages’ Secrets of Giants book which has already become one of my all-time favorite texts. It mixes historical and sociological insights on the sport of strongman with Alyssa’s own lifting journey. I cannot recommend it enough.
  
• The HJ Lutcher Stark Center of Physcial Culture and Sport continued to update the online fitness archive, Strongman Project. This is an incredible collection of magazine articles, images, personal letters etc. from some of the biggest names in fitness.
• David Keohan, or ‘Indiana Stones’ as he likes to called, continued to discover historic lifting stones in Ireland. Much in the same way that David Webster rediscovered the Dinnie Stones, David Keohan is uncovering some incredible pre-modern lifting stones. I cannot wait to see what David does for the culture this year.

• I discovered the Home Gym History podcast. I have a home gym, and love the history of fitness. May as well have called it ‘Conor’s Favorite Podcast.’

Goals for 2024

With the knowledge that life happens when you’re making other plans I do have a few things I want to do, both with this website, and in my academic career, that I want to do in the next year.

• I have alluded to it previously, but I am currently writing a history of women’s Olympic weightlifting in the United States. The goal for this year is to complete the book and begin submitting it to publishers for publication. Be warned, snippets and brain dumps will be appearing on this website.
• Continue my research on strength and conditioning in English football. I haven’t shared this previously but some years ago I won a FIFA research scholarship to study the history of S&C work in English football/soccer. Knowing that a rolling stone gathers no moss, the plan is to continue this research and get it to a level where I can write a book similar to that wonderful book on S&C in American sport published by Jan Todd, Terry Todd and Jason Shurley.
• To continue my weekly articles on this website and, if possible, bump up to twice a week. Some ‘big posts’ I have planned for the coming months include a history of massage guns, tips and tricks of old strength performers, and some in-depth research on the early steroid-using lifters.
• Remain open to the weird and wonderful of this field. There will be detours studying the history of the back squat, mail-order bodybuilding competitions, the crossover between physical culture and wrestling as well as the history of obesity research. I cannot stay still sadly when it comes to research…

What were your reflections on 2023 and goals for 2024? Let me know in the comments below.

Thank you as always and… Happy Lifting!

Conor

x