Why Did Bronze Era Lifters Have Flat Chest? A Serious Answer to a Stupid Question

Why did the first era of bodybuilders have flat chests?

Two common explanations I see online are that lifters in the 1890s and early 1900s considered large chests to be feminine and thus wanted to avoid it or that lifters modelled their own physiques on Ancient Greek statues and, thus, wanted to build their physiques accordingly. A lesser used, but incredibly obvious explanation, is that the bench press didn’t exist. Today I am going to explain why points one and two are wrong or wrong-ish and point three is somewhere close to being on the money.

Just as a proviso, I am generally very quiet on the content and histories done by people on the internet. A lot of it is god-awful. These truly terrible takes from people who don’t understand history or are monetizing it for their own purposes (hello Mike Mentzer revivalists). There are some amazing public historians and I will continue to celebrate their works. The reason I typically avoid criticizing public historians on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram etc. is twofold

1. It costs nothing to be nice and they are trying to present historical research to the masses

2. There is so much of it that I simply don’t have the time

There is also a broader issue that trained historians (like myself) are often dismissive, snobby and elitist when it comes to amateur (as in non-University trained) historians. So I try not to be a hater. Problematically social media thrives on rage-bait titles and anger. Thus a very easy approach for me would be to call out different online accounts and deconstruct what they are getting wrong. Again not my circus, not my monkeys. If I include accounts in this post I want to make it clear that I am not attacking the individual, or criticizing them, but using their content as illustrative of broader issues with public histories.

Why Social Media Sucks for History

There are some wonderful public historians, mainly of whom I have spoken about, or spoken with. Marcus Kment at Barbell Films, Carlos from Golden Era Bookworm, Eric Helms when discussing history as opposed to science, Shawn Stone‘s writings and podcasts, the Home Gym History podcast and many more. They do research, read historical accounts and generally put together very informative pieces. Other great websites include Greg Meritt’s The Barbell, Muscle Memory, Ironhistory and you’ll often find first hand accounts from legends in various interviews around mainstream fitness sites. So good content exists. Also shoutout here to The Tight Tan Slacks of Deszo Ban and the Strongman Project.

What does suck, however, is the lack of verification online. Take, for example, the Katie Sandwina myth. According to legend, Sandwina earned her name by defeating Eugen Sandow in a weightlifting contest. I wrote this in my biography of Sandwina many years ago but there was just one problem. There is no record, whatsoever, of Katie Sandwina competing against Sandow. When I wrote the article (here) I was a University student who relied solely on online sources. I repeated an unverifiable myth, as have countless others since (including several published authors). Years of archival work and looking at writings from Sandwina’s age have shown no evidence for this event yet it is presented with such sincerity by people today.

The ability to study historical materials, or at the very least rely on historians who do so, is vital for accurate retellings of the past. I typically avoid criticizing public histories because I’ve made sloppy mistakes (like the Sandwina legend) in the past. Heck, my friend and mentor Jan Todd spent several years teasing me for once naively writing that George Hackenschmidt invented the bench press.

Both mistakes on my part are illustrative of a much bigger issue in online histories. People are relying on what others have written online rather than from what they find in old magazines, archives, correspondences etc. It is thus very easy for cool, but ultimately untrue, explanations and legends to slowly become presented as fact. And with that in mind…

Old School Lifters Didn’t Think Big Chests Were Feminine

The ‘Bronze Era’  (and I will unpack the benefits and disadvantages of using this term in a future post) is typically understood to mean the period 1890 to 1920. So when I refer to bronze-era lifters I am discussing those physical culturists like Eugen Sandow, George Hackenschmidt, Arthur Saxon and Louis Cyr among others. Because the internet tends to forget women exist in strength histories, also included here are Katie Sandwina, Minerva, Vulcana etc.

With that out of the way, let’s address explanation number one – big chests = feminine.

Look, I’m aware the median age for a lot of people on bodybuilding forums, subreddits, social media etc. tend to be under the age of 30 so I’m going to be kind when discussing this idea. The general narrative is that bronze era lifters thought big chests were too feminine and therefore didn’t train chest. This is one I find quite a lot, or some variation thereof on subreddits and generally lazy YouTube/Instagram comments.

They purposely neglected training chest back then because they believed that a big chest was feminine.

Source in comments.

There is no evidence whatsoever of this being the case. Sandow sold chest expanders and developers during this period and his books included chest workouts. See his chest expander workout here.

In fact, it is worth noting that there was roughly a century-old old practice of training the chest as a means of improving health and lung capacity. In 1824 Indian club swinging became promoted partly to open the chest muscles and improve breathing. In his first book, Sandow on physical training he linked narrow and underdeveloped chests to poor health. So let’s put an No beside this myth and keep going.

Greek Statues Didn’t Have Overly Developed Chests

Ah… we’re beginning to move into the realm of historical accuracy. There are several YouTube videos which claim that Bronze Era lifters modelled themselves on Ancient Greek statues. See the below for one example

There is certainly some truth in the idea that Eugen Sandow and others looked to Ancient Greek statues for inspiration when it came to modelling and displaying their physiques. We do, however, have to take this with two pinches of salt. In the first instance, linking your body, or your fitness pursuit, to Ancient Greece in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a very easy way of getting support. Put another way, it was cliched and something every fitness writer relied on. It is difficult then, to distinguish between genuine sincerity and marketing.

I have seen some videos where people claimed Sandow traveled specifically to see Greek statues but this was part of his character backstory rather than actual fact. It is telling that Sandow’s early biography shifted from being an athletic kid to being a sickly child who reformed his body having seen ancient statues. Charles Atlas, incidentally, used a similar storyline in the 1920s.

So we have a sincerity question and we also have a practical question. I modeled my body and my training on Arnold for about a decade. Do I look like him? Nope. Sadly … nope. So just because someone models their body on someone doesn’t mean they can prevent whatever their genetics has in store. This is a smaller point admittedly but something to consider.

The Bench Press Didn’t Exist Yet

Far too many stories brush over the fact that the bench press didn’t exist during the ‘bronze era.’ What lifters had in their arsenal was the push-up, the pullover and press, the pullover and, occasionally, you may have found early versions of the dumbbell fly. So in the first instance, these lifters had flatter chests because the literal equipment people use nowadays was different.

We need to be careful with this one, however, because the pullover and press – which was the forerunner to the bench press – did exist and individuals like George Hackenschmidt lifted hundreds of pounds in this form of pressing. But yes, a very important fact was that the machinery needed to develop a large chest didn’t exist.

Now to move onto three important, but rarely discussed issues.

Strength Standards Were Different

If you look at strength competitions between the 1880s and really the 1930s, pressing overhead was the greatest indicator of strength. This could be a bent press, a two-handed overhead press or a one-arm press. These movements require little chest involvement and are all about the power of the shoulders, the arms and the back (lifting the weight from the floor). Bench pressing, as a movement, wasn’t popularised until the interwar period (1918-1939) and bench press competitions didn’t truly become a ‘thing’ until the 1950s.

John Fair’s wonderful article on the decline of military pressing made clear that for several decades, strength was denoted largely by one’s military press. So if a large portion of the strength world focuses on a movement that doesn’t involve the chest, its likely chests will be underdeveloped to a certain extent. The competitive context matters.

This is covered in one of the few good histories of this phenomenon by Golden Era Bookworm below.

Influencers Were Liars and Training Was Different

A very long time ago, the fitness industry was run by charlatans who said whatever they could to sell products to unsuspecting consumers. Thankfully such a thing would never exist in today’s climate…

More seriously, another thing to consider in ‘bronze era’ physiques is the mass workout programs marketed during this era. Many strongmen and women sold workout programs to the general public who didn’t have access, or the inclination, to go to a gym. The most popular workout equipment during this era was lightweight dumbbells, chest expanders and bodyweight exercises. People like Sandow marketed light weights with the promise that they would help turn people into perfect muscular specimens. So bronze era physiques were potentially underwhelming because training knowledge and approaches were shrouded in smoke, mirrors and lots of lies. So the vast majority were not lifting heavy enough to develop overly muscular physiques. You know what builds big chests? Big weights.

Aside from this, training was very different back then than it is today. Few people lifted heavy weights – for fear it may hurt them – and those on standarised programs were often forced into doing strength lifts. This meant lots of pressing, rowing and curling of various degrees. Training splits, training for aesthetics, and worrying about the rep or set volume were not a concern back then. Our advances in understanding training and exercise science have had a clear role to play in how physiques look/looked.

The Fitness Pool

Fitness was not popular during the Bronze Era. Well, not fitness as we know it. A very basic, but seriously neglected point, is how unpopular strength training was during this era. The most popular form of fitness in the nineteenth century, as I’ve written in my latest book, was bodyweight gymnastics. The Bronze Era lifters represented a very small pool of individuals. Most were professional strongmen and women – hence the privileged pressing overhead – and none of them really trained for aesthetics.

The only famous aesthetic performer was Eugen Sandow and if your sample size is one, there is something wrong with the study. Phrased differently. When people talk about bronze era lifters they are comparing a tiny pool of strongmen and women – who were not bodybuilders – with silver-era bodybuilders. This is a completely unfair and wrong comparison point to make. If you wanted accuracy you would compare them to Olympic weightlifters and, even then, it is silly to compare a large cohort from the 1950s – where we can pick from a larger group of physiques – with a much smaller cohort of individuals.

There are thus two fundamental flaws with these comparisons

1) You’re comparing literal physique athletes (silver-era) to strength athletes (bronze-era)

2) You can choose far more examples from the Silver or Golden Era than the Bronze Era.

Another issue never considered is the fact that there were thousands of bronze-era lifters whose photographs were never taken. We thus don’t know if they all had flat chests because the fitness industry at that period was a more restrictive place in terms of publicity.

It is almost as if history is nuanced and not simplistic.

So Why Did Bronze Era Lifters Have Flat Chests?

I don’t care for a lot of fitness history online. It is often written without sources (a huge red flag) and is done for quickly-produced content. History is complicated and we should respect that.

But, sigh… to engage with this stupid question. Bronze-era lifters had flat chests for the following reasons

1) They didn’t train primarily for aesthetics.

2) The bench press didn’t exist

3) There were thousands of bronze-era lifters whose photographs were never taken. So who knows, maybe they all did.

4) They were strength athletes

5) The BENCH PRESS DIDN’T EXIST

6) They modeled themselves after Greek statues

But… to be clear

The majority of ‘bronze era’ lifters did not train for aesthetics, they were professional strength athletes whose main feat of strength was pressing overhead and not off the chest.

Stop comparing them to bodybuilders from later decades because they are completely different things.

I doubt this article will change some of the crummy histories being made but at least I can sit easy knowing I tried.

As always… Happy Lifting!