Evolution and History
AT THE END of the nineteenth century a new interest in musclebuilding
arose, not muscle just as a means of survival or of defending oneself;
there was a return to the Greek ideal-muscular development as a
celebration of the human body.
This was the era when the ancient tradition of stone-lifting evolved
into the modern sport of weightlifting. As the sport developed, it took on
different aspects in different cultures. In Europe, weightlifting was a form
of entertainment from which professional strongmen emerged-men
who made their living by how much weight they could lift or support. How
their physiques looked didn't matter to them or to their audience. The result
was that they tended to develop beefy, ponderous bodies.
In America at this time, a considerable interest in strength in relation
to its effect on health developed. The adherents of physical culture
stressed the need for eating natural, unprocessed foods-an idea that took
root in response to the increasing use of new food-processing techniques.
Americans were beginning to move from farms and small towns to the
cities; the automobile provided a new mobility. But at the same time, life
was becoming increasingly sedentary, and the health problems that arise
when a population eats too much of the wrong food, doesn't get enough
exercise, and exists in constant conditions of stress were just becoming apparent.
The physical culturists were battling this trend with a belief in overall
health and physical conditioning, advocating moderation and balance in
all aspects of life. The beer-drinking, pot-bellied strongmen of Europe
were certainly not their ideal. What they needed was a model whose
physique embodied the ideas they were trying to disseminate, someone
who more closely resembled the idealized statues of ancient Greek athletes
than the Bavarian beer hall bulls of Europe.
They found such a manin the person of Eugen Sandow,
a turn-of-the-century physical culture
superstar.
Sandow made his reputation in Europe as a professional strongman,
successfully challenging other strongmen and outdoing them at their own
stunts. He came to America in the 1890s and was promoted by Florenz
Ziegfeld, who billed him as "The World's Strongest Man" and put him on
tour. But what really set Sandow apart was the aesthetic quality of his
physique.
Sandow was beautiful, no doubt about it. He was an exhibitionist and
enjoyed having people look at his body as well as admire his strongman
stunts. He would step into a glass case and pose, wearing nothing but a fig
leaf, while the audience stared and the women oohed and aahed at the
beauty and symmetry of his muscular development. This celebration of
the aesthetic qualities of the male physique was something very new.
During the Victorian age men had covered themselves in confining clothing,
and very few artists used the male nude as a subject for their paintings.
This is what made Sandow's appeal so amazing.
Due largely to Sandow's popularity, sales of barbells and dumbbells
skyrocketed. Sandow earned thousands of dollars a week and created a
whole industry around himself through the sale of books and magazines.
Contests were held in which the physical measurements of the competitors
were compared, then Sandow awarded a gold-plated statue of himself
to the winners. But, ultimately, he fell victim to his own macho mystique.
It is said that one day his car ran off the road and he felt compelled to
demonstrate his strength by single-handedly hauling it out of a ditch. As a
result the man whom King George of England had appointed "Professor
of Scientific Physical Culture to His Majesty" suffered a brain hemorrhage
that ended his life.
Around the same time George Hackenschmidt earned the title "The
TIlE EXIUBITS offered a prize of $l,OOO-a small fortune in those days-along with the
title. Both the contests and the magazine were successful for decades. And
Macfadden practiced what he preached, walking barefoot every morning
from his home on Riverside Drive in New York City to his office in midtown
and appearing bare-chested in his own magazine. He was an example
of health and fitness until well into his seventies.
Macfadden probably would not have approved of modern bodybuilding,
with its emphasis on the visual development of the body rather than
athletic skill. However, he and other physical culturists played a big part
in the evolution of bodybuilding. His contests helped to promote interest
in how the body looked rather than simply how strong the muscles were,
and there emerged from these contests a superstar who was to become
one of the most famous men in America for decades to come.
The winner of Macfadden's contest in 1921 was Angelo Siciliano. To
capitalize on his growing fame, this magnificently developed man changed
his name to Charles Atlas and acquired the rights to a mail-order physical
fitness course called dynamic tension. For more than fifty years boys have
grown up seeing the ads for this course in magazines and comic books,
including the one where the scrawny kid gets sand kicked in his face, sends
away for a muscle-building course, then goes back to beat up the bully and
reclaim his girl. "Hey skinny, your ribs are showing!" became the most
memorable slogan of one of what author Charles Gaines calls the most
successful advertising campaign in history.
THE TRANSITION TO BODYBUILDING
By the 1920s and 1930s, it had become evident that health and the development
of the physique were closely connected, and that weight training
was the best way to produce the greatest degree of muscular development
in the shortest possible time. Despite his advertisements even Charles Atlas
used weights rather than the dynamic tension of isometrics to produce
his outstanding body. Training knowledge was limited, but bodybuilders
of that day were learning a great deal simply by comparing their physiques
with those of the stars of the previous generation.
For example, one of the most famous turn-of-the-century strongmen
was Louis Cyr, 300 massive pounds, thick, huge around the middle
and every inch the barrel-shaped strongman.
But by the twenties there
appeared men like Sigmund Klein, who exhibited a physique with beautiful
muscular shape, balance, and proportion, as well as low body fat and
extreme definition. Klein became very influential as a gym owner and
writer on training and nutrition. His physique, compared to Cyr's, was as
day to night. Klein, along with Sandow and influential physical culturists
like Macfadden, gradually began to convince people that the look of a
man's physique-not just his ability to perform feats of strength-was
worthy of attention because the kind of training that produced the aesthetically
muscular body also contributed to overall health. But the era in
which the male physique would be judged purely on an aesthetic basis was
still a few years away.
Strength developed by weight training was still somewhat suspect in
the 1930's, as if weightlifters were not truly worthy to be called athletes. It
was almost considered cheating to build up your body by training in a gym
instead of participating in a variety of sports. In his earliest writing, the late
John Grimek, an Olympic weightlifter who served as the model for so
many aspiring bodybuilders, volunteered the information that his magnif-
icent muscles were created by weightlifting, although you'd think that
anyone seeing that physique on a beach would have realized that no
amount of hand-balancing or water polo could have led to such development.
However, the tradition of physique competition continued, and by the
late thirties occasional shows brought together boxers, Gymnasts,swimmers,
weightlifters, and other athletes. These contestants had to perform
some sort of athletic feat as well as display their physicalness, so it was
common for weightlifters of the day to be able to do hand-balancing and
other gymnastic moves.
In 1939 things started to change. The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU)
stepped in and created a Mr. America contest of its own in Chicago on July
4. The winner was Roland Essmaker. The participants were still not fullfledged
bodybuilders, but came from all sorts of athletic backgrounds and
posed in everything from boxer shorts to jock straps.
But as more and more emphasis was put on how the physique looked,
the weightlifters began to enjoy a distinct advantage. Weightlifting changed
the contours of the body more than any other kind of training, so they
were able to make a very strong and increasingly favorable impression on
the judges.
In 1940 the AAU produced the first real modem bodybuilding event.
Mr. America that year and the next was John Grimek, who trained primarily
by lifting weights in a gym. This served notice to anyone who
wanted to compete against him that they would have to follow a similar
training program. Grimek also put the lie to the idea that men who trained
with weights were muscle-bound and unable to perform well athletically.
During exhibitions, he was able to stay on the stage doing lifting and posing
that involved an extraordinary degree of strength, flexibility, and coordination
AT THE END of the nineteenth century a new interest in musclebuilding
arose, not muscle just as a means of survival or of defending oneself;
there was a return to the Greek ideal-muscular development as a
celebration of the human body.
This was the era when the ancient tradition of stone-lifting evolved
into the modern sport of weightlifting. As the sport developed, it took on
different aspects in different cultures. In Europe, weightlifting was a form
of entertainment from which professional strongmen emerged-men
who made their living by how much weight they could lift or support. How
their physiques looked didn't matter to them or to their audience. The result
was that they tended to develop beefy, ponderous bodies.
In America at this time, a considerable interest in strength in relation
to its effect on health developed. The adherents of physical culture
stressed the need for eating natural, unprocessed foods-an idea that took
root in response to the increasing use of new food-processing techniques.
Americans were beginning to move from farms and small towns to the
cities; the automobile provided a new mobility. But at the same time, life
was becoming increasingly sedentary, and the health problems that arise
when a population eats too much of the wrong food, doesn't get enough
exercise, and exists in constant conditions of stress were just becoming apparent.
The physical culturists were battling this trend with a belief in overall
health and physical conditioning, advocating moderation and balance in
all aspects of life. The beer-drinking, pot-bellied strongmen of Europe
were certainly not their ideal. What they needed was a model whose
physique embodied the ideas they were trying to disseminate, someone
who more closely resembled the idealized statues of ancient Greek athletes
than the Bavarian beer hall bulls of Europe.
They found such a manin the person of Eugen Sandow,
 |
| Eugen Sandow |
superstar.
Sandow made his reputation in Europe as a professional strongman,
successfully challenging other strongmen and outdoing them at their own
stunts. He came to America in the 1890s and was promoted by Florenz
Ziegfeld, who billed him as "The World's Strongest Man" and put him on
tour. But what really set Sandow apart was the aesthetic quality of his
physique.
Sandow was beautiful, no doubt about it. He was an exhibitionist and
enjoyed having people look at his body as well as admire his strongman
stunts. He would step into a glass case and pose, wearing nothing but a fig
leaf, while the audience stared and the women oohed and aahed at the
beauty and symmetry of his muscular development. This celebration of
the aesthetic qualities of the male physique was something very new.
During the Victorian age men had covered themselves in confining clothing,
and very few artists used the male nude as a subject for their paintings.
This is what made Sandow's appeal so amazing.
skyrocketed. Sandow earned thousands of dollars a week and created a
whole industry around himself through the sale of books and magazines.
Contests were held in which the physical measurements of the competitors
were compared, then Sandow awarded a gold-plated statue of himself
to the winners. But, ultimately, he fell victim to his own macho mystique.
It is said that one day his car ran off the road and he felt compelled to
demonstrate his strength by single-handedly hauling it out of a ditch. As a
result the man whom King George of England had appointed "Professor
of Scientific Physical Culture to His Majesty" suffered a brain hemorrhage
that ended his life.
Around the same time George Hackenschmidt earned the title "The
TIlE EXIUBITS offered a prize of $l,OOO-a small fortune in those days-along with the
title. Both the contests and the magazine were successful for decades. And
Macfadden practiced what he preached, walking barefoot every morning
from his home on Riverside Drive in New York City to his office in midtown
and appearing bare-chested in his own magazine. He was an example
of health and fitness until well into his seventies.
with its emphasis on the visual development of the body rather than
athletic skill. However, he and other physical culturists played a big part
in the evolution of bodybuilding. His contests helped to promote interest
in how the body looked rather than simply how strong the muscles were,
and there emerged from these contests a superstar who was to become
one of the most famous men in America for decades to come.
The winner of Macfadden's contest in 1921 was Angelo Siciliano. To
capitalize on his growing fame, this magnificently developed man changed
his name to Charles Atlas and acquired the rights to a mail-order physical
fitness course called dynamic tension. For more than fifty years boys have
 |
| Charles Atlas |
including the one where the scrawny kid gets sand kicked in his face, sends
away for a muscle-building course, then goes back to beat up the bully and
reclaim his girl. "Hey skinny, your ribs are showing!" became the most
memorable slogan of one of what author Charles Gaines calls the most
successful advertising campaign in history.
THE TRANSITION TO BODYBUILDING
By the 1920s and 1930s, it had become evident that health and the development
of the physique were closely connected, and that weight training
was the best way to produce the greatest degree of muscular development
in the shortest possible time. Despite his advertisements even Charles Atlas
used weights rather than the dynamic tension of isometrics to produce
his outstanding body. Training knowledge was limited, but bodybuilders
of that day were learning a great deal simply by comparing their physiques
with those of the stars of the previous generation.
For example, one of the most famous turn-of-the-century strongmen
was Louis Cyr, 300 massive pounds, thick, huge around the middle
and every inch the barrel-shaped strongman.
.jpg) |
| LOUIS CYR |
appeared men like Sigmund Klein, who exhibited a physique with beautiful
muscular shape, balance, and proportion, as well as low body fat and
extreme definition. Klein became very influential as a gym owner and
writer on training and nutrition. His physique, compared to Cyr's, was as
 |
| Sigmund Klein |
like Macfadden, gradually began to convince people that the look of a
man's physique-not just his ability to perform feats of strength-was
worthy of attention because the kind of training that produced the aesthetically
muscular body also contributed to overall health. But the era in
which the male physique would be judged purely on an aesthetic basis was
still a few years away.
Strength developed by weight training was still somewhat suspect in
the 1930's, as if weightlifters were not truly worthy to be called athletes. It
was almost considered cheating to build up your body by training in a gym
instead of participating in a variety of sports. In his earliest writing, the late
John Grimek, an Olympic weightlifter who served as the model for so
many aspiring bodybuilders, volunteered the information that his magnif-
icent muscles were created by weightlifting, although you'd think that
anyone seeing that physique on a beach would have realized that no
amount of hand-balancing or water polo could have led to such development.
However, the tradition of physique competition continued, and by the
late thirties occasional shows brought together boxers, Gymnasts,swimmers,
weightlifters, and other athletes. These contestants had to perform
some sort of athletic feat as well as display their physicalness, so it was
common for weightlifters of the day to be able to do hand-balancing and
other gymnastic moves.
In 1939 things started to change. The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU)
stepped in and created a Mr. America contest of its own in Chicago on July
4. The winner was Roland Essmaker. The participants were still not fullfledged
bodybuilders, but came from all sorts of athletic backgrounds and
posed in everything from boxer shorts to jock straps.
But as more and more emphasis was put on how the physique looked,
the weightlifters began to enjoy a distinct advantage. Weightlifting changed
the contours of the body more than any other kind of training, so they
were able to make a very strong and increasingly favorable impression on
the judges.
In 1940 the AAU produced the first real modem bodybuilding event.
Mr. America that year and the next was John Grimek, who trained primarily
by lifting weights in a gym. This served notice to anyone who
wanted to compete against him that they would have to follow a similar
training program. Grimek also put the lie to the idea that men who trained
with weights were muscle-bound and unable to perform well athletically.
During exhibitions, he was able to stay on the stage doing lifting and posing
that involved an extraordinary degree of strength, flexibility, and coordination
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