For my sins, I enjoy writing articles. I probably do it more often than I should for my eternal damnation.
I’m currently writing an article on the evolution of the back squat, a history I’ve previously discussed on this website and elsewhere. As part of this research, I’ve been deep-diving the history of squat stands, and the squat rack. While most of this history has been covered in drips and drabs by me, I wanted to share a discovery while my enthusiasm is still flowing. I present to you, one of the first squat rack prototypes I’ve come across which dates to 1932.
Ref: ‘Try This’, The Strong Man, 2, no. 6 (1932), 19
What is It?
Put simply it was a design submitted to Mark Berry in Strongman in 1932 by readers Frank Gibson and Wayne Harold. Created to ‘aid flat foot squatting’, the design shows a simple, but very effective, set of squat stands. This came roughly about a decade before squat stands, and later squat racks were sold on a mass scale by Bob Hoffman of York Barbell which, for new visitors to the website, was America’s biggest equipment manufacturer of the mid-twentieth century.
It was no surprise that Gibson and Harold submitted their sketch to Mark Berry. During this period Berry was popularising, and promoting, the use of high-repetition squats, combined with a gallon of milk a day, in one of the first, and most effective, bulking routines that the fitness world has ever seen. Its effectiveness was solidified in the pages of Strongman and Strength magazine when Berry received a letter from American trainee J.C. Hise who claimed to have gained 29 lbs. of bodyweight in one month using Berry’s bulking routine. Now, this was not all muscle gain and, in fact, Berry often argued that a bulky and strong body was more desirable than a lean and slender one.
As Randell Strossan outlined in his later book about 20 rep squats, Hise’s story was the catalyst for innumerable American men to strap a heavy barbell on their back and begin squatting. The early squat stands, shown here, were a physical indication of the method’s impact.
What Problem Did the Squat Stands Solve?
I am always fascinated by the creativity of gymgoers. As a proud home gym owner (picture me saying that as smugly as possible), I have realized that one of the few things I have in common with the lifters of yesteryear is that I, like them, have to come up with solutions for my lack of equipment. Don’t have a lat pulldown in your home gym? Invest in a pull-up bar, resistance cables, and/or a pulley system. Impossible to do leg extensions or curls at home? Invest in resistance bands and spend 10 minutes setting up the most precarious, and somewhat effective way to do curls. No preacher curl machine? Stick a foam roller under your armpits and stand up while curling.
Some of these solutions are god-awful but as the kids used to say YMMV. Some individuals design solutions that change the fitness industry (like when Bob Peoples built a power rack in the 1940s out of timber). Others, like me, come up with half-assed and questionable solutions. That being said, I was clever enough to invest in sandbags and playground sand during the COVID-19 pandemic before it became impossible to find anything heavy. Likewise, I bought a set of adjustable dumbbells before everything went shut. That last purchase resigned me to leg workouts consisting solely of sandbag squats, sandbag over-shoulder throws, and Bulgarian split squats so maybe I was a fool on that one.
I digress, fitness inventions exist for a reason. In the case of Gibson and Harold, the issue was that Berry, unlike others promoting high-repetition squats, encouraged lifters to use as heavy a weight as they possibly could. At that time people had just begun to squat with their feet on the ground – the previous method was to squat on their tippy toes.
They thus had two solutions. Number one, they could do a Steinborn Squat, as shown below
Or they could clean the bar up to their chest and then military press it overhead to bring it to their back.
Admittedly I think the fitness space would be a much better one if we were still forced to clean and press every weight we wanted to squat. This ‘hot take’ was brought to you by years of half-assing the Olympic lifts and also reading an excessive amount of Dan John books. If you are going to radicalize yourself on anything, John’s no-nonsense and considered writings are probably the best thing you can do.
Alas I, like many others, am too lazy to use either of these methods. Instead, we use squat stands and racks. The squat stand shown here was an early, and very creative means of allowing individuals to squat as heavy as their heart desired.
Whether or not that was a net good for society depends largely on how much, or how little, you enjoy leg day.
As always… Happy Lifting!
Discover more from Physical Culture Study
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Yep, th’ pivotal 1930s.
In my thirty+ years of researching iron history, the early 1930s keep ending up to be the latest point by which virtually every apparatus and training method had been invented. Everything since is promotion, non-essential variation, honestly coincidental invention, unwitting re-invention, or uncredited appropriation (usually using different labels) of what had been invented by the end of the early 1930s.
And, I suspect, the early 1930s merely represent the introduction of those inventions to the iron public, via magazines, manuals, and other publications, as well as seminar-type instruction by trainers and gym owners. I expect some unknown trainee somewhere, whose idea never went beyond his personal use so remained unknown to others, had the idea to, for example, build a rack for his squats long before these submissions of Gibson and Harold of 1932.
Honestly I’m blown away by how critical the 1920s and 1930s was in shaping both Iron Game sports and also equipment/practices.
Absolutely there was someone doing this before Gibson and Harold. There’s actually a great anecdote about JC Hise using tree branches – which is such a simple but obvious solution!
The tree-branch anecdote reminded me of my own solutions for dip and pull-up/chin-up stations.
Owning ample rural acreage, and always having preferred workouts solo in my home gyms (there’re ways to maintain safety even alone, as you know) for most of my 52+ years of training, I keep most of my training equipment and do most of my workouts outdoors year-round.
I have heavy self-constructed treated-wooden squat stands with safety catchers astride a concrete pad I poured: two Oly bars: a cart axle with steel spoked rims which accepts Oly plates: over a ton of Oly plate as well as some Standard plate; a power rack which I modified with heavy wooden angling slides for doing a sort of hack/Smith squat: utility stands: an Oly cambered bar: an Oly dumbbell bar for one-arm rows; a prone leg curl bench which I modified for better effectiveness; a self-made SEATED leg curl unit; plate racks; and a back extension bench, all permanently outdoors. I use tarpaulins and plastic sheets to cover some of it, spray oil on some of the metal surfaces which are never gripped. I don’t mind the mild rust which has accumulated through the decades (makes for surer gripping, actually, lol).
But, the trees. I also wanted to do weighted dips and to do weighted pull-ups, hanging leg raises, et cetera, so needed stations for those. Twenty years ago, I attached a pipe to span two nicely-spaced trees for the latter. Same time, I attached a pair of pipes to a triangle of three other trees, enabling me to easily vary hand-spacing along the gradual V formed by the pipes, for the former. Customizing for my own stature, I attached all the pipes at the exact heights best for me.
I keep a self-made standing calf-raise unit employing a hip belt indoors; I have the balance of my equipment, mostly several pairs of fixed and adjustable dumbbells, in a simple roomy shed I built for the purpose of workouts involving those. I ran electricity to the shed, for a heater or for an electric fan when needed.
But the most of my training is done outdoors, year-round, at below-freezing and snow in winters, 90-Fahrenheit and high humidity and mosquitoes in summers, and pouring rain, regardless (I only preempt for lightning!)
Where there’s a will and a little ingenuity, there’re ways. I expect iron addicts have employed both since before Sandow led the first popular wave circa 1900.
Haha well I am a big fan of this Joe and I know we’ve spoken about our home gym inventions in the past. These are far more inventive than my creative solutions – which have included rigging up a strap system to do one legged hamstring curls using a barbell and a t-bar row. No issues with the chin/dip bar?
You’ve actually given me flashbacks to the Covid lock down when I bought a god awful pull up bar for a door frame. It lasted 2 workouts before I was on my ass! With you on open workouts, I spent 2 years training in my garden in the Irish weather and now have a home gym. I’ve taken to mixing up my training so half indoors half outdoors and find it much more enjoyable.
I actually think we miss a lot of equipment innovations with how standardised everything has become
This was informative! For the past 60 years (almost!) I had been under the misconception that Mark Berry himself was the inventor of the squat rack. Live and learn!
I am still digging on this because I’m equally of that impression Jan. I think he helped popularise it, although Rader credited him so the search continues!
I have had both hips replaced. One of my rules now is that if I can’t get it off the floor and onto my back, I don’t squat it. It’s just a boundary I gave myself for my own health.
You also need some reps in reserve, because I can’t dump the weight.
I really like that rule Ken. Funnily I was having a conversation about this yesterday with someone. I mentioned that Roger Eels had people do relatively light 20 rep squats in the 1940s and had huge results. I think there’s something to control and focus, as well as all round athleticism to your approach