Ed Coan entered his first powerlifting competition at 16 years old, he went on become one of the best (if not THE best) powerlifters in the world. Here is my candid conversation with The Legend, Ed Coan. POWER: How did you get into powerlifting? ED: I saw Kaz [Bill Kazmier] on TV. That was the… Continue reading Mark Bell, ‘One on One with Ed Coan’, Power Magazine, 1, no. 1 (2009), 28-31.
Earlier this year I had the great fortune to visit the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports in Texas. Founded by Jan and Terry Todd, the Stark Center is a playground for anoraks like me. Containing the collections of Bernarr MacFadden, Professor Atilla, Bob Hoffman and several other Iron Game legends, Stark… Continue reading Sig Klein’s Beginner Workout
As a Weider student you should be interested to know that the Weider System is the most popular and successful bodybuilding course in the world. Because of my 50 years of involvement in the sport, the Weider System is the basis of all modern bodybuilding and weight-training techniques. Literally everything in bodybuilding has sprung from… Continue reading Joe Weider, ‘How it All Began’, Joe Weider Bodybuilding System (Weider Health & Fitness, 1988), 5-7.
If this present volume serves no other purposes, I want it to satisfy every reader in seeking the solution of one problem. And that is to be able to offer a means of arriving at satisfactory understanding on the matter of correct physical proportions for men of all types. So many ideal tables have been… Continue reading Mark Berry, ‘Determining Proper Proportions’, Physical Training Simplified (c. 1930s)
A health shop is admittedly, an odd thing to write about. In today's world of GNC's and stores with fanciful names like 'Vitality' or 'Mr. Pump', modern gym goers are blessed with a wealth of pill peddlers to call upon. This, shockingly, was not always the case. While health stores did exist in some guise… Continue reading Leroy Colbert’s Health Store
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of speaking with Alyssa Ages, an independent journalist who is also a strength fanatic. At the time Ages was working on a novel about the mindset of strength athletes (specifically those competing in World Strongest Man/World Strongest Women style events). The book has subsequently been published and I… Continue reading Book Review: Alyssa Ages, Secrets of Giants
How did you become a strength performer in the early 1900s? It's not a trick question but something that I've become fascinated with in the past two weeks. This was a time before mainstream competitions. This was a time before social media and it was a time when to be strong was to be truly… Continue reading How did you become a strength performer in the early 1900s?
For reasons that I will happily discuss later, I was recently in London with my family and had a to-do list of physical culture-related materials that I wanted to check out. First, there would be a meal at the German Gymnasium. This was one of the first public gymnasiums to open in nineteenth-century London and… Continue reading Why I Wanted to Visit a Dead Man’s Grave
Outside the auditorium, or Pavilion, as it's called, it is a gorgeous Sunday afternoon at the Mountain Park amusement center in Holyoke, Mass. A roller coaster clatters up and down a wooden trestle. Children fly around in little whirly things that look like boats with wings. There are clam bars, pizza stands, dart throws, cotton-candy… Continue reading Charles Gaines, ‘Cutting Some Fancy Figures, Sports Illustrated, 10 July (1972).
Name a more iconic duo than Franco and Arnold. Within the sport of bodybuilding, the relationship between Franco Columbu and Arnold Schwarzenegger was of the most enduring and impactful the sport has ever seen. From Pumping Iron to controversial Olympia wins, they did it all! Okay, that last line was tongue in cheek but, more… Continue reading How Franco and Arnold Changed Hollywood Forever
