Arm training can be more complicated than larger body parts such as legs, back, or chest. If you think about it, your arms are relatively small in comparison to the rest of your body. When I first started training, I thought that in order to have great arms I needed to life as heavy as… Continue reading Guest Post: Colette Nelson, “The Ultimate Arms: Pro Training Secrets,” Reform, Issue 6 (June 2003).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0cYsrptV5c Earlier this year I had the pleasure of speaking with Marcus Kment of Barbell Films about Eugen Sandow's Curative Institute of Physical Culture. Marcus has previously made just a wonderful short film about Sandow's 1901 documentary that is a thing of beauty to watch. For those who don't know, Sandow created a series of… Continue reading New Sandow Documentary!
Given the current vogue for Mike Mentzer and high-intensity training, I thought it would be cool to look at John Little's 2008 interview with Iron Man magazine. Little is a Mentzer expert, and has written several books on his training methods. Here we get a unique insight into Mentzer as a person, and as a… Continue reading John Little, Heavy Duty: The Wisdom of Mike Mentzer, Iron Man, August (2008), 267-269.
The following post is taken directly from Thomas Inch's 1920s work, On Strength. Inch, as we have previously discussed on Physical Culture Study, was one of the early and influential British physical culturists. Inch was a weightlifter, weightlifting organizer and a prolific writer. He wrote for several decades with Health and Strength magazine, likely contributed… Continue reading How Do You a Single Handed Dead Lift? 1920s Style
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIIPv2TqXZ8 The internet can be a truly wonderful way to occupy one's time and recapture childhood memories. As a child of the 1990s, who grew up with television shows from the 1980s, I had two twin loves, wrestling and the World's Strongest Man (WSM) competitions. Sadly for me, television broadcasting in Ireland during that time… Continue reading Two Worlds Collide: Bill Kazmaier and Cactus Jack
For those of us whose bodybuilding heroes are from the IronAge, finding our place in the land of modern bodybuilding has been tough. We feel out of place. Our heroes and our IronAge ideals often seem incompatible with the world of bodybuilding. As we struggle to reconcile bodybuilding's past with its changes, it is our… Continue reading Robert Paris, ‘Defining the Iron Age’, Ironage.us (c. 2003)
For anyone skeptical of the weird and wonderful modern gym equipment found in the dark recesses of the internet, it's important to note that unscrupulous salesmen and women have long sought to capitalise on people's better nature. For every individual willing to spend months and years working out, there's two more seeking to get fit… Continue reading Machine Training in the 1940s
For many years serious athletes and bodybuilders have known that free weights build muscle size, strength and power faster than any other form of resistance training. Today's smart bodybuilders are also acutely aware that the process does not take as much time as many have erroneously believed and that, by using dumbbells (because they DO… Continue reading Randall M. Taylor, 18-Min Home Dumbbell Workout, Planet Muscle (Volume 4, Number 1, 2001)
I have, I believe, been fairly open about my love of the World's Strongest Man, specifically the opening decade of the competition. Whereas today's competition is professional, modern and scientific, the contests of yesteryear were undoubtedly more tongue-in-cheek. This is not to say that the contests were no less contested and the competitors impressive but… Continue reading Deadlifting Cheese at the World’s Strongest Man (1983)
The following post is taken directly from Thomas Inch's 1920s work, On Strength. Inch, as we have previously discussed on Physical Culture Study, was one of the early and influential British physical culturists. Inch was a weightlifter, weightlifting organizer and a prolific writer. He wrote for several decades with Health and Strength magazine, likely contributed… Continue reading How Do You a Single Handed Dead Lift? 1920s Style
