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SOME THOUGHTS on the BODY: “HOW IT MEANS” and WHAT IT MEANS Our Friend, Al Thomas, Sent the Following Thoughts to Us Some Values That Weight Training Confers

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SOME THOUGHTS on the BODY: “HOW IT MEANS” and WHAT IT MEANS Our Friend, Al Thomas, Sent the Following Thoughts to Us Some Values That Weight Training Confers VOLUME 2 NUMBER 5 January 1993 SOME THOUGHTS ON THE BODY: “HOW IT MEANS” AND WHAT IT MEANS Our friend, Al Thomas, sent the following thoughts to us some values that weight training confers. months back. He didn’t intend for us to publsih them; he only The film, it seems, had created the need for explanation to so many wanted to share with us what was on his mind. Even so, we have people that it became a sort of emotional watershed for me. Or, more decided to share his thoughts with you. As some of you know, Al accurately, it was the film, plus the fact that, having passed through has made seminal contributions to our game—particularly in a my fifties and the first year of my sixties, I was faced with retirement series of articles in Iron Man concerning women, strength and from my profession as a college teacher. With the ticking-down of physical development. He made these contributions simply by the machine that is symbolized by such life-changes, I began to focusing his long experience and his agile intelligence on the issue. wonder what truly had become my “value system”: Was the new What follows is a fascinating display of unexpurgated Thomas one that seemed to be a response to my film really as unworthy of a confronting certain ultimate questions. What follows is not for balding college professor with a Ph.D. as it seemed? the timid. What follows is a love song. As recently as a year ago, I would have claimed my family and (This has its origin in three questions posed at the recent Old-timers’ my profession (along with one or two other traditionally acceptable banquet. Since they echoed a similar one that I was asking myself, entities, perhaps) as my emotional and philosophical bases. Hav- I wondered how many other banqueters would find their own feel- ing undergone, however, the emotional wrenching occasioned by ings mirrored in these questions: “The only thing that hasn’t changed many months of contemplating the film’s philosophical intention, in my life is the fun of working-out. My wife says it’s a sign I’m laps- not to mention the lives of its subjects, honesty demanded my admit- ing into my second childhood. What do ting to a realization about myself much you think?’ Another celebrant admit- like the one undergone (suffered, real- ted that, after a long hiatus, he had ly) by a faculty colleague who experi- returned to the gym and that this had enced a deep religious conversion and brought him more happiness than he’d had to “go public” to his secular col- known since he was a kid in the gym: leagues about this religious side to him- “What can you say about a guy, past self that, in self protection, he had never seventy, who gets more fun from a admitted. Smelling blood, his faculty workout than he did when he was a kid mates, needless to say, lost no time in and feels more guilty about missing a pouncing upon him. workout than about missing mass?’ I felt similarly exposed. The real- At some point in life, even the least ization to which I had come, however, introspective people feel the need to was more compromising, intellectual- confront the pattern of preferences and ly, than (mere) religious conversion habits that comprise their value systems. Such a confrontation was which, given the 90s’ conservatism, is easily fobbed-off by the con- thrust upon me when, along with film-maker Curt Crane, I embarked vert with some fast talking about metaphors and symbols. I didn’t upon the creation of a film documentary on some great old strength have such an expedient to fall back upon. athletes: “Growing Old Strong, A Celebration of Strength in Old Once admitted, my realization would inevitably (and rightfully, I Age,” a tribute to men, aged seventy and above, who embody the thought) earn the contempt of thirty-seven years’ worth of academ- IRON GAME HISTORY VOLUME 2 NUMBER 5 ic colleagues. After all, what can be said in defense of the intellec- Show to a probing consideration of the real nature of strength and of tual seriousness of an academic who, as the result of making a film, the body-as-document and artifact. had come to see physical culture and the body (the life and cultiva- It isn’t overly self-conscious to observe that there is a spiritual dan- tion of the body) as one of the main sources—next to family—of his ger built-in to the pursuit of physical culture (the cultivation of the value system (and his pleasure). How suspect, how shattering to an body: its strength, health, and beauty), a danger that is not built-in, academic’s image, such an admission had to be. let’s say, to baseball or tennis, which are, at best, merely distant cousins It is especially shattering, however, when what is referred to is not of classical physical culture. When one learns tennis or baseball, physical culture in the ancient Greek sense, which might carry with he learns how to do something. When he embarks upon the cultiva- it the cachet of magnificent sculpture and temples, but in the nar- tion of the body’s strength, health, and beauty, he doesn’t learn how rower sense associated with our Iron Game, our body-and-strength- to do something: he becomes something. It is his fate, henceforth, thing, an historically maligned subdivision of classically conceived never again to be that which he had been. He may play tennis or base- physical culture. Indeed, decked-out in its Sunday clothes, is even ball, but he is a physical culturist. dignified old physical culture, itself, sufficiently distinguished and The cultivation of the body is different, not in degree but in kind, credentialed to be accorded a placement in an academic’s value from the cultivation of one’s stroke. The body is not a sport. Except system, above many of the hoary abstractions usually honored? among tediously pompous “baseball religionists” (tennis-lovers are To me, it is. And all the more so as my (our) conception of the far too sophisticated to mythologize their sport), serious folks never film on the strength greats evolved from just another Guinness Records misperceive baseball or tennis (or the players themselves) as temples 2 IRON GAME HISTORY VOLUME 2 NUMBER 5 IRON GAME HISTORY VOL. 2 NO. 5 PATRON SUBSCRIBERS TABLE OF CONTENTS January 1993 DR. PETER GEORGE Page: GORDON ANDERSON JACK LANO 1.Editorial . Al Thomas 6. History of Strength Training at U.T. .Terry Todd JOHN BALIK DR .WALTER MARCYAN 14. Launceston Elliot . David Webster DEAN CAMENARES DR. CHARLES MOSS 16. Joe Assirati . Al Thomas JOHN COFFEE BOB & JUANITA PEOPLES 20. Grapevine. Staff MICHAEL DENNIS FREDERICK SHUTZ 22. Roark Report: . .Joe Roark JACK ELDER GERALD M. SMITH Co-Editors . Terry and Jan Todd SAL FRANCHINO FRANK STRANAHAN Executive Editor. Dorothy J. Lovett SAMUEL GALAGAZA FRANK TIRELLI Creative Consultants. Steve Bittick & Joe London ED GLOD HAROLD ZINKIN Subscriptions . Kim Beckwith Editorial Board . John Balik (Santa Monica,CA), Jack Berryman (U. of Washington-Seattle), Vic FELLOWSHIP SUBSCRIBERS Boff (Fort Meyers, FL), William H. Goetzmann (U. of Texas- Austin), John Grimek (York, PA), John Hoberman (U.of ANONYMOUS NORMAN KOMICH Texas-Austin), Joe Roark (St. Joseph, IL), Thomas Ryan BERNARD BRAND DR. WALTER KROLL (Texas A&M Univ.), Al Thomas (Kutztown Univ.). Dave JIM CLARK DR. JOHN LONG Webster (Scotland). GERALD COLES JAMES LORIMER Iron Game History is published six times per year by the McLean Sport Histo- ry Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. Address: Terry and Jan MARTHA DEAL RICHARD MARZULLI Todd, The Todd-McLean Collection, Room 217, Gregory Gymnasium, The Uni- MARVIN EDER DR. SPENCER MAXCY versity of Texas at Austin, 78712. Telephone: 512-471-4890. Fax: 512-443-0381 U.S. Subscription rate: $15.00* per one year, $25.00* per two years, $50.00 STEPHEN GALYA KEVIN O'ROURKE per two year McLean Fellowship membership, $100.00 per two year McLean MIKE GRAHAM JOSEPH PULEO Fellowship Patron's subscription. (Additional information can be found on page 24.) Address all subscription requests to: IGH Subscriptions, Room 217, Gre- JAMES GRAY KEITH & ANGELA gory Gym, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 78712. RNEST ACKETT APISARDI *Canada and other foreign subscriptions add $5.00 (U.S.) per year. E H R Back Issues $4.00 each. HOWARD HAVENER DR. KEN "LEO" ROSA Iron Game History is a non-profit enterprise. Postmaster:Please send address corrections to: Iron Game History, Room 217, Gregory Gymnasium, The DYKES HEWETT JOHN T. RYAN University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712. ANGELO IUSPA FRED YALE 2 January 1993 IRON GAME HISTORY of God or the spirit. They’re wonderful games (and players). sically permits His favored few). The body is created in the image of its Maker (not by its own claim, Try as they do, even the best (read: “most venal”) market manip- but by the Good Book’s claim): it is the focus of the Divine in this ulators can’t really reduce the body-as-body into many of those ulti- earthly realm of shadows. The body, in short, is many things, but not mate abstractionist tokens: dollar bills. That the body doesn’t lend a game (at least not merely a game, however much fun it provides itself to this sort of big-time promotionalism is a blessing. Thank the vehicle for, on occasion). God. And as for those abstractionists in our very own camp, the Even if the notion of the body’s holiness or “temple-ness” is not so-called professional bodybuilders, a master plumber in a big city one that proceeds easily from the self-contemplation of our own bro- makes more in a year than all but a half-dozen of these profession- ken-down bodies, the notion is, and always has been, an inevitable als, and he makes it for a lifetime, not for a bodybuilder’s brief life in one, to wise man and fool alike, whenever the body is contemplated the limelight.
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