From a 400-year-old weighing chair to the fitness apps that track our every move. This month I had to download a gym app to buy a day pass to work out. In the gym’s dark mood lighting and techno music, I struggled to find the squat racks and found it even harder to find someone… Continue reading Measuring Ourselves Sick
Historians can fall in love. It’s true. I’ve seen it countless times and have, on rare occasions, fallen in love myself. The problem for historians is that the people we fall in love with are often dead, and in many cases, often very cranky and contentious people. Simply put, they’re the most interesting in the… Continue reading Vince Gironda Was Right About Almost Everything: Except Possibly the Liver Tablets
So, recently I was interviewed about supplements and how the supplement industry has changed over time. It was a pleasant chat, albeit one I doused with a sprinkle of cynicism. At one point, I was asked a fairly straightforward question. What supplements do people actually need? My answer was none. When pressed, I summoned all… Continue reading Why Aren’t Supplements Regulated Like Medicines?
The Velocity Diet broke my compulsive eating. It was also, almost certainly, a sophisticated marketing operation. Both of those things matter, and sitting with that contradiction is the only honest way to write about it. I was a teenager eating without thinking, reaching for food out of boredom, anxiety, habit, without hunger ever really entering… Continue reading What a Protein Shake Diet Taught Me About Online Culture
How many times do you eat a day? Do you eat carbs after 3pm? Post-workout protein shake? Such are the questions faced by the modern day strength enthusiast. Are we overthinking the way we eat? In a world faced with a growing obesity epidemic and continuous production of low quality foods the answer may appear… Continue reading What did Eugen Sandow Eat?
Few bodybuilders are remembered solely for their individual body parts. The collective entity? Certainly. But the individual sections of the body? This is a far rarer phenomenon. While Dorian Yates may be remembered for his towering Lat spread and Tom Platz for his Quad sweep, Frank Zane holds the distinction of being remembered for his… Continue reading Frank Zane’s Ab routine
One of the few things to unite meat-eaters, vegetarians and even vegans, peanut butter is perhaps the great leveller of the fitness industry. High in calories, fat and protein, the delicious substance has been a go to option for muscle fanatics over the past century. Some use it as a spread whereas others, myself included… Continue reading The History of Peanut Butter
Describing himself as Arnold's Seminar Nutritionist, Balik opened his short pamphlet on gaining muscle with the often forgotten law that 'nothing beats persistence.' Produced alongside a pamphlet on gaining muscle, which we'll be discussing in a future post, Balik's Total Muscularity represents a great insight into the training philosophy of 1970s Muscle Beach bodybuilding. Sparing myself… Continue reading John Balik, Total Muscularity: SuperStar Nutrition (Santa Monica, 1979)
Gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time is often held up as the Holy Grail of body recomposition. A desirable goal, that advanced or even intermediate trainees are now told is only possible for beginners or those using chemical means. Today's post examines the rather lengthy sounding Anabolic Burst Cycle of Diet and Exercise… Continue reading Gaining Muscle and Losing Fat: The ABCDE Diet Experiment
Kolar Venkatesh Iyer, or K. V. Iyer (1897-1980), is one of the most fascinating Indian physical culturists of the twentieth century. Someone I have studied quite a bit in my own career, Iyer was a well-known figure in India, the United States, and Europe. Often submitting images of himself to physical culture magazines, Iyer struck… Continue reading K.V. Iyer on Diet and Health
