It happened at Caesars Palace in December 1983. Fifteen women competed in a bodybuilding contest that did not really exist. It was conjured up for a film crew, mixed professionals with amateurs in flat contravention of the sport’s own rules, and sitting on the judging panel, scoring them, was one of the men who wrote… Continue reading The Explorer Who Became a Judge: On The Life Of Charles Gaines
Conor's Comment: The following article first appeared in Powerlifting USA in June 2010 and tells the strange, sprawling story of the original Westside Barbell Club in California. It is part lifting history, part Hollywood folklore and part oral history, with Joe Di Marco’s memories providing much of its backbone. I've so often ranted about the… Continue reading Marilyn Monroe, The Rat Pack, Robert de Niro And… The Westside Barbell Club
I went looking for a hole and found Paul Anderson hanging upside down. The hole belongs to one of the great stories in strength history. Anderson, so the tale goes, wanted to overload his squat beyond what he could manage through a full range of motion. He dug a hole, stood inside it and performed… Continue reading Forgotten Exercises: Paul Anderson’s Upside-Down Deadlift
In the late 1990s, a Belarusian strength coach helped persuade American lifters that one of the most useful tools in modern training was a cannonball with a handle. His name was Pavel Tsatsouline, and if you trained seriously in the early internet era, especially if you were bored by bodybuilding magazines, chrome machines and commercial… Continue reading The Evil Russian: Pavel Tsatsouline and the Performance of Strength
Most people in the gym today are looking for the answer. The program, the split, the system that finally works. A hundred years ago, Britain’s strongest men had already encountered that problem and, in effect, ignored it. In How to Use a Barbell (1925), William A. Pullum, a coach, promoter, and a central organiser of… Continue reading The Strongest Men in Britain Didn’t Train the Same Way
What teen or young lifter hasn't been seduced by the idea of bigger biceps? Indeed in the bodybuilding universe of both males and females, no pose is more iconic that the front or back double bicep pose. A difficult set of muscles to grow, except of course for the genetically gifted, the biceps have been… Continue reading The History of 21s
In 1949, at the age of eighty-one, Bernarr Macfadden parachuted into the valley below his hotel in Dansville, New York. The jump was reported in the press and presented as proof that decades of disciplined living had preserved his vitality. It was spectacle, but it was also marketing. Macfadden had spent half a century telling… Continue reading The Hotel Where Weakness Was a Crime
I did not go looking for F. A. Hornibrook. He turned up while I was chasing something else, which is usually how these things happen. A name in an advertisement. A reference that did not quite make sense. A photograph that looked familiar in a way that was hard to explain. He never arrived all… Continue reading When Did Everyone Start Looking Like This?
I lift therefore I am. Or ... something like that. I've been training in gyms and with weights in some capacity for two decades (this year in fact!). I've yet to win a major bodybuilding, powerlifting or weightlifting title. Neither will my lifts, sacred though they are to me, ever be something to write home… Continue reading Why Do We Train?
The following excerpt comes from Dan Lurie’s Body Building System, a mid-century mail-order course that reflects the commercial and cultural ambitions of the American Physical Culture movement. Lurie, a one-time Mr. America contestant and tireless self-promoter, occupied a peculiar space between showman and health educator. His system, like those of his contemporaries, blended moral advice,… Continue reading How To Lose Weight Fast And Make Your Muscles Stand Out
