Joe Weider, All American Athlete, and the Promotion of Strength Training for Sport: 1940-1969

Iron Game History Volume 12 Number 1 JOE WEIDER, ALL AMERICAN ATHLETE, AND THE PROMOTION OF STRENGTH TRAINING FOR SPORT: 1940-1969 JASON SHURLEY, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY - TEXAS }AN TODD, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN* In the July 1950 issue of Your Physique, Joe Iications the Weider name became synonymous with Weider, publisher and editor, outlined ten predictions for bodybuilding and fitness, and Weider's editorial deci the future. By the close of the twentieth century, he sions helped his predictions become reality. By the end wrote, bodybuilding-by which he meant weight train of the twentieth century, weight training would explode ing-would become an international phenomenon; the in popularity in the United States; it would be widely general public, he proclaimed, would embrace fitness accepted as a necessary part of fitness training; and the training for stress relief and enhanced health; the muscu basic elements of what Weider called the "bodybuilding lar physique would be valued and aesthetically appreci lifestyle" would be followed by millions of individuals ated; and the basic principles ofbodybuilding-balanced around the world.s Weight training as an adjunct to sport diets, adequate sleep, fresh air, sunshine, and regular training would also become so commonly practiced that workouts-would be recognized as essential to healthy a new profession-strength coaching-would emerge in living.l Weider's sixth prediction, however, seems in the late twentieth century, a profession fostered in large retrospect to have been the least likely to be realized giv part by the advocacy of magazine publishers Bob Hoff en the conservative attitudes toward strength training for man and Joe Weider. sport that existed within North America in 1950.2 Wei Surprisingly, Weider's contributions to changing der wrote, "I predict that bodybuilding will become the the culture of America on such matters as muscularity stepping stone to every other sport and physical activi and personal fitness have received only cursmy attention ty."3 by academics.6 Even less attention has been paid by the Over the next six decades, Joe Weider undoubt academic and sport science community to Weider's role edly held these predictions in his head as he published in encouraging the use of strength training for sport. more than thirty different magazines, including the well York Barbell Company magnate Bob Hoffman-who known fitness publications Your Physique, Muscle began publishing Strength & Health magazine in 1932- Builder, Muscle Power, Mr. America, Muscle and Fit has historically been credited as the advocate who ness, Flex, Mens Fitness, and Shape.4 Through his pub- almost singlehandedly championed the idea that barbell training could be used to enhance sport performance.? Correspondence to: Jan Todd, NEZ 5. 700, Kinesiology & Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712; or to: jan@starkcenter.org. While it is true that Hoffman's promotion of strength 4 August 2012 Iron Game History training began with the first 2006 as the president of the issue of Strength & Health in International Federation of an atticle entitled, "How to Bodybuilding (IFBB), the Improve at Your Chosen organization they began in Sport," he was not alone in 1946.11 The Weider brothers speaking out in favor of grew up as part of Montreal's weight training for athletes Jewish community and, as during the middle decades of such, they were often subject the twentieth cenh1ry.s to harassment by classmates Although it falls outside the and others who acted on their scope of this study, from 1960 prejudices against Jews. After to 1965 California gym owner years of taking what Joe Walt Marcyan also played a described in his autobiography, significant role in promoting Brothers of Iron, as "lots of strength training for sport with crap" and periodically getting the publication of his maga into fights, he decided he need zine Physical Power: Maxi ed to learn how to defend him mum Training Methods for self.12 His first thought was to Optimum Physical Efficiency.9 take up wrestling but he was so Far more significant are the thin and gangly that the local contributions of Joe Weider, wrestling coach wouldn't let who not only published him try out because he feared dozens of articles during the he'd get hurt. Not long after 1940s and 1950s debunking that Weider happened upon an the myths that kept many ath issue of Strength magazine letes from training with while at the library. He weights but also, in 1963, recalled that one image pmtic launched All American Ath ularly struck him-a photo of a lete: The Magazine of Cham young weight-lifter named pions, a publication that John Grimek.u To Weider, brought together many of the Grimek's size and muscularity basic concepts of strength conveyed physical power, and training science well before it inspired Weider to take up the founding of the National weight training himself. If Strength and Conditioning such muscularity and implicit Association. power could be manufachlred, he began thinking, perhaps he Becoming a Weight Trainer could transform himself into a Joe Weider was born man who would be respected on November 27, 1920 in and who would no longer have Montreal, Quebec, to Louis to fear the neighborhood bul and Anna Weider, who had Joe Weider practiced what he preached and often used lies.14 immigrated to Canada from photos of himself in Your Physique and his other magazines According to his auto Poland ten years earlier.Io He to inspire his readers. biography, Weider, then about was the sixth child born to the couple, the third in Cana thirteen years of age, attempted to acquire the type of da, and, to that point, only the second to survive past weights he had seen in Strength in his hometown of infancy. Their seventh child, Ben, born in 1923, would Montreal. Unable to find any for sale locally, he con become Joe's life-long business partner and served, until vinced a foreman at a scrap yard to make a barbell for 5 Iron Game History Volume 12 Number 1 him from some small flywheels transformative power of weight and a rusted iron shaft. The set training. It was first used in was caJied back to a shed behind America by George Barker the Weider home and Joe lifted it Windship in an article for the religiously until his strength Atlantic Monthly in 1862.18 In improved to the point that more Windship's version of the tale, he resistance was needed. While was a freshman at Harvard in the teenager didn't have the 1850, weighing a mere hundred funds to buy a new set, he didn't pounds and mocked and picked lack moxie, and wrote a Jetter to \ . ; on by classmates because of his George Jowett, then selling bar small size. Quickly tiring of the bell sets, and asked Jowett to sell derision, Windship took up first him a set over time. Jowett gymnastics and then heavy agreed, and Weider mailed him weight lifting so that by the time fifty cents each week until he he graduated he was known as had paid off the seven dollar "the strongest man at Harvard." price. IS With his new adjustable Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Weider's magazines He then spent the rest of his life set, Weider continued working promoted the idea that barbell training should be proselytizing about the benefits on the Olympic lifts and made viewed as the "springboard to success" in sports. This of what he called the "Health additional gains in muscle mass December 1946 cartoon from Muscle Power graphi Lift."J9 Charles Atlas (Angelo and strength. He even began cally illustrates that idea. Siciliano) similarly marketed his competing, and the heavy lifting transformed Joe from a mail-order training course-Dynamic Tension-based lanky waif to a strong, muscular young man. The evi on the idea that manhood (and strength and courage and dence of this became fully clear to Joe and others when success) was equated with the possession of muscles. So a local bully followed Ben home from school one day. effective was Atlas's advertising campaign that it is Ben had attempted to avoid a beating by telling the larg regarded as the most successful print advertising cam er and older boy that it would lead to a reprisal by his big paign of all time.2o First run in 1929, the advetiisement brother. The bully apparently took it as a challenge and titled "The Insult that Made a Man out of Mac," showed went to the Weider home to confront Joe. Joe later a skitmy teen-age boy and a young attractive girl sun claimed that his weight-trained muscles allowed him to bathing at the beach when a bully comes along and kicks punch the young man with such force that the bully was sand in their faces. Afraid to respond, and embarrassed knocked unconscious.l6 to be seen as a coward in the eyes of the girl, the boy Apparently, weight training had given Joe a new sends away for Atlas's Dynamic Tension course, and in physique, more strength, and new confidence. Weighing the next frame of the ad, a newly muscular young man then about 165 pounds, he and Ben, who also began returns to the beach several months later, fells the bully training, found that those who wished to jeer and make with a single punch, and then walks out of frame with an fun of Jews in their presence had largely disappeared, adoring girlfriend on his arm.21 and as word got out about his strength and prowess, Weider's strikingly similar story and the notion those who chose to challenge Joe paid a price.

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