A Brief History of Bodybuilding

 Back in the ’50s and ’60s — often regarded as the Golden Era of Bodybuilding — almost all trainees would begin their sessions with high repetition (light weight) squats alternated with light breathing pullovers — because those were the exercises promoted by the publishers of the two leading magazines at the time on the subject — Bob Hoffman of Strength and Health, and Perry Rader of Iron Man. The other leading publications, were those of Joe Weider, who insisted on naming everything after himself — whether it was exercise, a principle, a supplement, a piece of equipment, etc. Obviously, bodybuilding did not begin and end with him, but he made it seem so with his tireless self-promotion of his brand and products.

That was how a lot of people got around to thinking that they had to take a certain supplement if they wanted any gains at all — rather than that the exercises themselves had this transformative power. Many articles on bodybuilding will even claim that bodybuilding is 90% diet and nutrition — and only 10% exercise — or what one is actually doing. And then when people are at the gym, believe that all the resting, talking on their phone, loading and unloading plates, getting the right equipment in preparation for their exercise, takes up another 90% of that time — and wonder why they get zero results, and even putting on more excess weight despite taking so many supplements and drinking so much water — that leads them to believe that “exercise” doesn’t work.

The fact of the matter is that they aren’t exercising — if they actually run the tape of them actually exercising — or what they think they are doing — or are focused on all the wrong things — like weight and reps — rather than the proper form in any movement, and before that, understanding why they are doing what they are doing. The value of exercise is that one is optimizing the respiration and circulation that provides for optimal health and functioning — which is not automatic, but has to be cultivated by understanding, practice, and exercise. Then one inevitably and invariably gets results — and not just does the same thing over and over again with no or little results, and thinks that is the best that can be hoped for — in a life of futility and disappointment.

As soon as one makes any effort, the respiration and circulation will go up — because the body is hardwired to support it. That is the constant; the variable is what one does to change it — which in this case is the exercise. But one does not change the constant — which is the fallacious understanding of that process and relationship. What one has in lung capacity and heart functioning, is what one has to learn to work with and optimize — rather than desiring it is otherwise.

For most people, what they have is underutilized — because it is improperly understood. With such a simple thing as breathing, it is generally thought that that is effected by the action of the diaphragm — which by itself has little impact — compared to the much larger impact of varying the chest volume deliberately and directly — which is what the exercise of the pullover does better than any others — either straight-arm or bent-arm with a light weight that enables the maximum articulation of its greatest extremes. That would be the greatest expansion alternated with its greatest compression of the chest volume — that houses the lungs, because that is breathing, or the exchange of the air within the lungs with the air in the environment — under atmospheric pressure.

Once that exchange is optimized, than the resulting circulation by the heart will have a life and health enhancing effect with all the other organs, tissues, and cells of the body — as much as possible. The most basic understanding of this process is what is achieved in CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). If breathing is caused by the diaphragm, then the obvious approach would be to press on the stomach — affecting the diaphragm more than the chest — but that is not what is done. Instead, we alter the volume of the chest by compressions — and then let the atmospheric pressure refill that void.

No other movement (exercise) does that as dramatically and effectively as the pullover — because that is what it is focused on doing — and every other movement and activity — does it much less directly and deliberately — mainly as an afterthought when the breathing is struggling to catch up with the effort. The far easier thing to do is to adjust all one’s activities to the breathing, and in doing so, the breathing rhythm and efficiency will just effortlessly increase — so that one can continue all day if required to. That is the nature of work for most of human existence — that kind of persistence over time — rather than the one and done of single attempts. That is the classic lesson of the turtle and the hare — or the person still living healthily — as opposed to the reckless young person going out in a blaze of glory — or so they think.

Lots of young people are very competitive — but much fewer are competitive or even viable at an older age — and so the question even the older bodybuilders ask, is how they can still remain at their peak as long as they live, and not just relive their glory years in their memories and fading thoughts? A common report by older bodybuilders that no longer show responsiveness even while exercising as much as they did when they were young, is that they no longer experience “the pump” — and it was the pump that was responsible for their muscle growth during their most productive periods in bodybuilding.

That is largely because over the years, their heads have been crammed so full of extraneous thoughts that they lose the connection to the simple and obvious. It wasn’t the equipment, supplements, or sophisticated explanations or even drugs that produced that effectiveness — but that simple naivety they had as young adolescents picking up a magazine and wondering if it was really true that such simple and basic exercises could actually make such a difference. If it did, they would do it religiously — but then, over the course of the years, it all became more complicated, and many lost their way — in everything marketed to them — the treadmills, the machines, the heart monitors, the supplements, the glamour and of course, the drugs.

But as my friend and mentor Arthur Jones claimed in 1970, you only need two exercises to work most of the major muscles of the body (shoulder and hip girdle) — the Pullover and the Hip and Back machine, but where most people got it wrong using them, was to think that its primary purpose was for lifting as much weight as possible — rather than in circumscribing the positions in which the muscle could be fully contracted and fully relaxed — and that created the greatest pump, or flow — as the objective in itself — and that is what keeps the body at maximal health throughout life. To which I observed, the most important places that one should maintain that optimal flow is to the head, hands and feet — where the human body breaks down first because of this lack of circulatory effect. That is the work not of the heart, but of the muscles at the extremity to clear space for the heart to do its work — easily and effortlessly — in contracting (compressing) the residual fluids (edema, lymphedema, lipedema), out of it. But as he dismissed, you don’t need to build a machine to exercise the head, hands and feet. They already rotate around a single axis.

Understanding Conditioning 2024

  Understanding Conditioning 2024

The most important exercise, is to understand what one is doing — and why they are doing it. The way exercise is usually taught, is just to do this and do that, and if you don’t like it, then you have to do more of it. So this conditioning is coercion rather than understanding — which is like getting a new toy, and rather than first reading the instructions for proper assembly and operation, one forces the parts together and destroys it in quick order — no matter how much force is applied.

The proper understanding of the human body is to note that the features that distinguish a human specimen from all the others — is the large brain, tool-manipulating grip, and feet that enables an upright posture. All human movements emphasize those functioning and expressions — whether they realize it or not. Some forms, have made it a deliberate study and discipline — which is the forerunner of health and healing (medicine).

Contemporary health issues often manifest at the extremities — where the circulation is poorest — as the most distant from the heart. However, the problem is not that the heart is not strong enough to push the fluids out to the extremities, as it is the muscles at the extremities do not help the heart in the circulatory process (function) by contracting in exercise to pump the blood out of the tissues that makes it easier for the always working heart to pump blood into that vacuum — which is the principle of fluid dynamics, or how fluid moves.  That's also how CPR works: you have to push the air out of the body, to allow atmospheric pressure (fresh air) to enter into that vacuum -- and simply blowing more air into an already filled lung, is not going to do much good.

The heart is only a one pound muscular organ — while the rest of the musculature is 40–50% of the total bodyweight in most people. So the purpose of any exercise should not be to work the heart harder and faster, but to make the rest of the musculature aid in more powerfully optimizing the circulation — particularly in inactive and poorly conditioned bodies in which the skeletal muscles are doing nothing especially useful or productive. In that case, an intelligent and insightful person would ask, what can I do to best enhance my health for all other purposes — and that would simply and obviously be, optimizing the circulation that rids the body of toxic waste products (inflammation) and in doing so, create space for new nutrients to enter and keep the body at its highest health.

Understanding that, one would further realize that the greatest priority for doing so, should be at the greatest assets at the head, hands, and feet — and that doing so, implies the circulation through the rest of the body to get there. But that is not the case, if the focus and objective is merely to make the heart work harder and faster, or to focus on the core muscles closest to the heart. That does not recognize that the weakness of the circulation is at the extremities that in time, becomes the dementia and atrophy of the neck muscles, the weakened grip, the unsteady gait and balance which are the characteristic markers of individuals in declining health.

Any and all amounts of making the heart work harder and faster, or developing the abdominals and glutes do not address those problems — directly and powerfully — and in all probability, diverts those resources from where they would do the most good. Unfortunately, that is the popular paradigm of exercise that naturally fails for most people — no matter how much time, energy and effort they put into it — because it is flawed not to do what is most urgent to do as the priority.

Those are the exercises generally not done — if favor of everything else, that makes much less sense to — and will predictably be abandoned when one could benefit from the proper understanding and exercise most urgently — and beyond that, assure their lifelong highest functioning as long as they live. But that understanding is usually jettisoned in favor of some product or service that is more commercially lucrative as the ticket to health.

For this reason, the ancients were closer to the truth than most modern advice and practices for lifelong health and functioning throughout — in their fragmentation and specialization of exercise equipment and practices that head in this wrong direction. What the ancient observers understood, was that the essential pathways and connections to the center of the body, was the health and functioning at the head, hands and feet — which evolved into reflexology, acupuncture, wing chun, dance, rhythm gymnastics, etc.

Those are the fine motor skills of life — rather than the gross. When individuals maintain those fine motor skills throughout life, they remain productive and capable throughout their lives — while those who only cultivate the gross motor skills, lose those fine motor abilities — and become less able to live independent and productive lives. That is the end-game — and not just the “15 minutes of fame” followed by a prolonged lifelong decline — as the familiar pattern of premature and largely unnecessary aging.

So when one observes that the neck muscles are atrophying, those are the muscles that must be engaged and activated specifically and directly — and not simply making the heart work harder and faster. That is also true for the deteriorating grip strength. One must activate and exercise those muscles specifically and directly — and not do more treadmilling or swimming — or anything else. The same is true for foot and balance problems. One must articulate the foot muscles — and not simply do more bench presses, deadlifts, squats or anything else — thinking to achieve the desired results.

The head, the hands, and the feet, are not simply stumps — used to punch, kick and head butt — but are the primary tools of human expression, functioning, and productivity — whether that be art, dance, writing, music, athletics, etc., but modern life has reduced much of those activities to simply watching television or a computer screen requiring very little movement — particularly of the head. Not surprisingly, the neck muscles atrophy — a sign that the circulation is very poor to those areas beyond that. The brain requires all the resources it can get — to take care of the rest of the body — autonomously (automatically) — just as the heart functions autonomously. That is not where the conscious effort should be applied to.

The conscious (voluntary) effort should be specifically and directly directed to where those movements and actions are not automatic and modern life has made unnecessary. That is where one makes the greatest difference in optimizing the circulation and ensures their greatest quality of life and functioning. Everything else is a diversion and distraction from that greatest purpose.