The Natural Road to the Classic Male Body

Through the ages the classic body has been admired, recorded and pursued…

From Side Show to Main Event

The history of bodybuilding in the United States and England has its roots in the “Strong Man” competitions as early as the 1800s. The competition events required men to bend horse shoes, iron pipes and coins with bare hands, break iron chains across their chests, inflate a rubber hot water bottle by breathing into it until it exploded, and manually lift unlikely heavy objects such as rocks, logs and wagon wheels. Early “Strong Man” competitions were often scripted and staged as the focus of a circus side sideshow or a traveling attraction.

During a typical competition, the master of ceremonies would challenge anyone in the audience to attempt impossible feats of human strength for prize money equal to their annual salary. There were always eager local challengers. Confidence, however, was not enough to take home the prize. Even sideshow strong men had trouble completing all the events. But the professional strong man who had trained for these specific events would step onto the stage, accomplish the impossible and walk away with the prize.  That’s how many early bodybuilders earned their living.

Television has allowed Strong Man competitions to reach a much larger audience than its early days. But today’s events aren’t much different than those of centuries past. For instance, a 200-pound boulder is still being thrown over a 10-foot wall and instead of holding back a horse and buggy, the strong man holds a motorboat or small aircraft from taking off. Pulling a rock-filled wagon is now substituted by pulling a semi-truck. The amateur is still no match for the professional and the professional strong man still walks away with the prize.

One of the earliest professional bodybuilding performers of the 19^th century was Eugen Sandow, born in Germany. It was not uncommon for young men of that time to venture to another country in search of work and an opportunity for a better life.  Therefore, at the age of seventeen he journeyed to England and became an apprentice for a professional strong man.  His employer took notice of Eugen''s natural power and strength and decided to train the boy as his protégé. For several years the young German worked hard to finally develop a superb and outstanding physical appearance. Opportunity knocked when an American show promoter approached him with an offer to travel across the United States exhibiting himself as “The Best Built Man in the World”. He took the opportunity and came to America.  Eugen Sandow then became the inspiration of many young men to become bodybuilders.  In turn, a new type of business began as did investments in bodybuilding gyms.

One company developed a total body workout that required no tangible equipment. Based on the isometric principles of placing resistance of one group of muscles against another, it was marketed as “Dynamic Tension” and sold through a correspondence course. The company sold an estimated one million programs.

In 1974 an adjustable inclined board with a set of cables and slide devices was introduced in the bodybuilding market. Its motion created the action and resistance required for an effective total body workout with undeniable results. The device is called Total Gym.  It revolutionized the personal physical fitness industry by making strength training convenient and affordable.

Calisthenics also gained popularity because it too required no special equipment and lots of people could be organized into large groups to participate. It was the birth of aerobics.

In those days it was neither practical nor affordable to buy all the equipment needed for a personal fitness-training program. So a group of businessmen formed an organization with the idea to rent an entire floor of an office building, furnish it with the appropriate exercise equipment and offer its use to anyone for a predetermined fee. The proprietors not only realized a growing membership but also a substantial profit. It proved to be a lucrative gain for both owner and clientele. So much so that today you probably have a fitness center within 10 miles of your work or home.

Up until World War II several companies had been manufacturing weight lifting equipment but supply and demand was still out of balance. Aspiring bodybuilders were anxious to start competing but without effective equipment available to them they resorted to modifying and customizing their own. As the popularity of gyms increased, iron foundries seized the opportunity to develop and manufacture new exercise weights, dumbbells and bars. After 1945 new manufacturers emerged with innovative ideas and better machines like the Smith, Cable Cross Over, and Peck Deck. They published illustrated catalogs employing pictures of bodybuilders to advertise their product. Some catalogs featured bodybuilding stories, upcoming competition dates, photos of competition winners, and training routine suggestions creating another special interest competitor in the trade magazine industry.

Bodybuilding was becoming a recognized competitive sport and with the growth of competition among foundries it was necessary for the industry to develop standards for the equipment they were forging. Cooperation and collaboration led to the set standard of Olympic Weightlifting Equipment. It’s the same style of weights and bars used in today’s Olympic games.

As bodybuilding contests moved from the circus side shows they were more respectably scheduled with Olympic weightlifting competitions. On the same day athletes were able to compete in one, the other, or both until the two sports became too much competition for one day to handle.

While bodybuilding was being weaned from Olympic weightlifti