Tag: health and fitness

Resources by Conor HeffernanJun 20, 20196:42 pm

Guest Post: Women’s Sports Clothes through History

Throughout history, women have not been encouraged to participate in sports nearly as much as men have. It all started to change in the past 100 years, but it’s important to take a look at how we got here and all the ways the sports – and the clothing we wear while performing it, changed over the years to give us what we have today. This will not only help us understand how we got here, but will also show us what to look for in the future, because the adaptations we made a hundred years ago, just like the ones we are making today, all serve a few basic purposes.

Guest Post: A Brief History of Medicine at the Olympics

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Today, most of the attention at the Olympics is aimed at doping, so it’s very easy to overlook all other medical interventions that happen during the most important sporting event in the world. However, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, diet experts and all other medical staff play a huge role in keeping athletes healthy, safe and happy. So, as thanks to all the work they do, here’s a brief history of medicine at the Olympics.

Resources by Conor HeffernanJun 10, 20195:57 pm

Fridge Racing at the World’s Strongest Man

The World’s Strongest Man competition is undoubtedly one of my favourite events each year. We get to see some of the world’s strongest athletes push, pull and push a variety of objects. As slick as […]

Resources by Conor HeffernanJun 7, 201911:14 am

Robert Fitzsimmons, ‘A Chapter for Women – To Gain Beauty with Strength’, Physical Culture and Self-Defense (London, 1901), 47-50.

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Muscle Building Will Bring Charms that the Toilet Table Can Never Furnish

MUSCLE building brings beauty to woman. This brief statement is sufficient, I think, to I make many women embark upon a physical development course. What will woman not do to become beautiful? They—some of them, at least—powder and paint, and bleach their hair, and do all kinds of other foolish things in an attempt to improve their appearance. If they but knew what a routine of daily, healthful exercise would do for them they would soon forsake their toilet tables for the gymnasium.
There is nothing in this world more lovely than a beautiful woman. There is nothing more pleasing to the eye than a browned, rosy cheeked, fullchested, straight—backed woman. Let her be all these and she is certainly queen.

Resources by Conor HeffernanJun 5, 20197:34 pm

Interview with Wisdom of the Body’s Rob Allen

Many of the early physical culturists stressed the relationship between mind and body, viewing the two as symbiotic. The drive towards the physique above all else is a rather more recent phenomenon. It is for this reason that I am delighted to have had the opportunity to speak with Rob Allen from Wisdom of the Body. As you’ll quickly find out, Rob’s philosophy on training and life encompasses that mind/body holism preached by men like Sandow and Hackenschmidt. No doubt you’ll enjoy reading his responses as much as me. Who knows, you may even learn something!

Resources by Conor HeffernanJun 5, 201911:11 am

Chad Nicholls, ‘The Contest Guru’, Muscular Development, December, 45:12 (2008), 426-432.

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Once again reaching into my mail- bag, I found of couple of interesting questions that may sound like the same old cookie-cutter questions, but my answers put a new twist on two staple parts of bodybuilding — nutrition and off-season weight gain — and my take on the best type of off-season dieting and how to employ it to anyone’s arsenal.

Resources by Conor HeffernanJun 3, 20191:22 pm

Before the Carnivore Diet? Rheo H. Blair’s Meat and Water Diet (1960s)

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The Carnivore Diet – the practice of solely consuming meat products – has grown exponentially in the past few years. As someone who has experimented with a range of diets, everything from all fruit to raw meat, it’s remarkable to see an all meat diet gain traction for the lifting community and the general populace. While Vilhjamur Stefannsson popularised the Inuit’s meat dominated diet in the early 1900s, an all meat diet for athletes or lifters appears to be a new development.

So being the type of individual that I am, I decided to go through the annals of bodybuilding and see if anyone had dabbled with a carnivore-esque diet in the past. Echoing the wonderful ‘nothing new under the sun series‘ produced by Chaos and Pain (definitely not safe for work!), we have a precedent for the current carnivore diet in the form of Vince Gironda and Rheo H. Blair’s ‘meat and water’ diet, a short term weight loss diet used by bodybuilders prior to a competition.

With that in mind today’s post examines the reasons behind Blair’s experiment, the bodybuilders he used it on and what lessons, if any, his meat and water diet holds for present day lifters.

Resources by Conor HeffernanMay 29, 20193:19 pm

Guest Post:Athletic Training Through History

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Every major professional athlete today knows how important it is to have a good trainer. And if you look back in history, you’ll see that their profession, in one form or another, dates back to the Greek civilization and their organized sports competition, which included the Olympic Games. In case you were wondering how those trainers developed into the ones we have today, here is some interesting information for you.

Training by Conor HeffernanMay 24, 20194:20 pm

Henry Downs, How I Trained to Win the Mr. Britain Title (1957)

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December the 11th, 1955, was a date to remember for me, for it was on that day I was placed second in the Mr. Britain contest. I had trained harder for that contest than any up to that time and thought I was in better shape than ever before. Well as you know, I didn’t make the grade, so this year I used a different approach to what I had previously done.

Resources by Conor HeffernanMay 23, 201912:12 pm

Guest Post: The History and Significance of Meal Replacements in Fitness and Beyond

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Everyone enjoys a delicious mouthful of food, but not everyone has the time to fully appreciate it. We are talking, of course, about bodybuilders, fitness enthusiasts, and people who follow strict diet plans in general. Not only that, but being able to cook food on a daily basis has become wishful thinking nowadays, as the fast-paced way of life makes it difficult to find the time to enjoy a hearty home-cooked meal.

You might think that this is a modern trend, but the reality is that people have been searching for a way to make nutrition more efficient for centuries. Concretely, there has always been a need and a desire to reduce the time it takes to prep a wholesome mealwithout skipping on the nutritious goodness. From unsavory high-energy fruit-and-meat blends all the way to today’s “healthy” meal replacements, the history of these foods and products is long and quite interesting. Let’s take a look at how it began, and where it has led us so far.