It's changed how I look at actors' physiques in movies, for example. Physique aesthetics and training methods change over time. As you learn more about exercising, seeing shirtless actors becomes sort of like watching a fashion show made of meat.
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I like to look at old-time weightlifters and bodybuilders in part because their physiques, while great, are more approachable in a way. They're less exaggerated, more attainable, give a better sense of what people can be if they work hard. Even without the latest drugs.
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Old-school guys like Grimek and Steve Stanko (the first man to lift 1000 lbs in a weightlifting meet -- ie, combining his totals for press, snatch, and clean & jerk) are often held up as examples of great oldtime drug-free lifters.
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Though it is worth noting: I'm reading Randy Roach's two-volume history of bodybuilding, MUSCLE, SMOKE & MIRRORS, and one of the fascinating tidbits in it is just *how insanely early* the first performance-enhancing drugs came along.
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Dianabol (which the Muscle Beachers in Arnold's day gulped like candy) came out in the late 50s, but androstenedione, in the scientific literature in 1938, was recognized as a potential athletic performance enhancer by the Health Organization of the League of Nations in 1939!
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By 1940, you could get testosterone supplements. Seriously: testosterone propionate (injectable) and methyltestosterone (oral). Paul de Kruif (author of MICROBE HUNTERS) brought the mass audience's attention to testosterone supplementation in his 1945 book THE MALE HORMONE.
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And Randy Roach blew my mind by noting that there is a surviving letter from John Grimek to a doctor, in 1943, asking about methyltestosterone.
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In his day, John Grimek was the most dominant bodybuilder of the era. The rules on the Mr. America contest were actually changed to stop Grimek competing because Grimek was so far ahead of everybody else that nobody could catch him.
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Grimek's workouts were famously intense. He liked breathing squats, and he liked supersetting them with chest exercises. He *started* his workout with a set of 20 to 25 squats, and each subsequent set would decrease reps and pile on weight. A hell of a worker.
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But one thing that struck me: how likely is it that the king bodybuilder of the day and the first weightlifter to total 1000 lbs -- John Grimek and Steve Stanko -- would both come from the same town: Perth Amboy, NJ? Maybe it's a coincidence. But maybe they also had an edge.
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.