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Another mothom Rant?


i feel like discussing something here, but i'm afraid it'd be just too long for ya'll to handle, and not enough space to put it down.
4/19/2017, 12:42 am Link to this post Send Email to mothom   Send PM to mothom Blog
 
Physical Culturist Profile
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Re: Another mothom Rant?


Ah heck get it out of your system.

I typed originally to get it pout of your system which was a typo.

Last edited by Physical Culturist, 4/19/2017, 1:16 pm
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Re: Another mothom Rant?


I will read it!
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Re: Another mothom Rant?


Fire away!
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Re: Another mothom Rant?


I will most certainly read it.
4/19/2017, 6:16 pm Link to this post Send Email to Physical Culturist   Send PM to Physical Culturist Blog
 
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Re: Another mothom Rant?


ok. please bear with me on this.

i read, a couple of days ago, an article about steve reeves written by john grimek. it was about how the former trained for the 1950 mr universe title. grimek tells how reeves came to the york barbell company, where grimek worked, and asked them if they'd send him to the contest. they agreed to do so on the condition reeves got himself in shape. in so many words grimek described reeves as a shell of the man who competed against him years earlier. he said his legs were still good, but everything else wasn't. grimek remarked at how the other people at the gym weren't impressed with reeves' physique, and how that nobody thought he had a chance of placing in the contest, much less winning it. 2 months later he had them all whistling a different tune.

not impressed with steve reeves' physique? i thought to myself his must have been lower than Charles Atlas in order for grimek to say that, as we all know that grimek held Atlas up as a demigod, and the two were a mutual admiration society. so surely grimek was impressed with Atlas' build. or was he?

so i pondered the question "was/is Charles Atlas' physique in his prime an impressive one?" and how does his physique relate to the history of bbing? are these questions even relevant?

so the answer i came up with is yes and no. it depends on who you ask, and what standards you are measuring by.

that iconic picture of Atlas standing on the beach with his arms stretched wide, the one that graces the first page of each lesson in the course, i read once upon a time it was taken in the summer of 1935. if so, Atlas was past his prime at age 42, and the world was in the midst of the great depression. food for most people was hard to come by. consequently, most folks were skin and bones. a far cry from today. so it's easy to see how they would look at Atlas and think he was huge. remember hearing the term "as big as Atlas?" but that build is considered small today. so to the folks in 1935, Atlas was impressive, but not to the folks of today (or isn't he?). the average guy probably weighs more than Atlas. but if you stripped his clothes off you will find that the average guy is a butterball, and if you dropped him down to the same bmi as Atlas' you'll find that today, Atlas' build would still be a "huge" one. of course he's small compared to the mr. Os, but they weren't around in Atlas' heyday. so is it really relevant to compare him to them as far as impressiveness goes?

in 1935, from what i can find, there were only 3 bbing contests in the world: mr Britain, Mr france, mr. france apollo. bbing contests didn't really start popping up until the 1940s. there were none in America until 1938. the aau event that bert goodrich, an Atlas student, won. the next year there were 2: mr America, and mr. new york, and world wide another one was added, mr world(1938). (there was a mr europe in 1937 and 1939). http://www.musclememory.com/male/contests/
so bbing contests in America during Atlas' heyday were all but nonexistent. and the first American one was won by one of his students, whose measurement weren't much different than Atlas'. those early contests were amateur events, and if i'm correct, were run by bob hoffman, so there's no chance Atlas would have entered them, especially for the latter reason. bbing contests were so obscure back then, i doubt most "bbers" even knew they existed. i didn't discover any until i was in my mid teens.

of course there was mcfadden's perfectly developed man contests in 1921 and 1922. but he ended them because Atlas would keep on winning them. (which, imo, is not a good reason for ending them.) and can they really be considered bonifide bbing contests? certainly not in the same vain as what was to hit the scene 2 decades later. and that a man with pretty much the same build of Atlas to win the first "modern" American bbing contest indicates to me that Atlas was still the ideal, and that his physique was still considered impressive by the bbing culture of the day.

there were muscle rags in those days, and thru the '40s to the present time, but i never saw one until my mid teens, and in a somewhat clandestine setting, as if what i was seeing was classed as illegal porn. and i was one of those kids who got chased out of the stores for reading the magazines, yet i never saw one on the rack until my 20s. so, it's quite apparent that bbing was such an obscure activity in the '30s and 40s that the average person thought of Charles Atlas when they thought of BBers, and that they were indeed impressed by his physique.

that Atlas' physique is unimpressive to today's bbing culture is understood, but is it relevant to the question? most guys today find today's bber's builds disgusting, and when you get down to it, not really impressive, especially when you consider all the baggage that goes with it. most people are either scrawny or obviously overweight/obese. most of these guys would be more than happy to trade their sorry builds for Charles Atlas'. that tells me they find his build impressive. and we know what most women think about the matter.
 
so i'd say that Atlas' physique, tho considered small and unimpressive by today's bbing experts, is most certainly indeed an impressive physique.

this ends my rant. i may have omitted some things i was wanting to say, i can't think of anymore else right now. i'm sure i will later on. it is certainly not my final thoughts on the matter, nor should it be construed as being factual. my comments on when the bbing contests began may be wrong for all i know. i hope i didn't bore anyone. if i put anybody to sleep, then i did someone some good. i'm just thinking out loud here. nothing i wrote here is written in stone.




Last edited by mothom, 4/19/2017, 6:50 pm
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Re: Another mothom Rant?


This is a fine rant mothom with some pertinent questions. First of all, we know Grimek had a very high opinion of Charles Atlas and vice versa. The opinion of Grimek concerning Atlas has more weight with me than Weider, Hoffman or any bodybuilder in either of the two camps. It had to be a horrible shot to Hoffman's ego to know Grimek thought so highly of Atlas. Weider and Hoffman were competing for bucks with Atlas and they did not go far out of the way to ridicule him. Hoffman was never an overly successful weightlifter, though he did hold a contest in which he was the only contest in his weight limit and deemed himself the champion lifter of the world on that basis. Weider was nothing extra compared to his contemporaries actually to the point his photos were cropped and his head put on someone else's physique. In the 1921 and 1922 MacFadden contests I believe they should be bonafide based on what we know of them at this point. Antone Matysek and Joe Bonomo were contestants and that would give them validity. It would be absurd to compare Atlas in muscularity to the guys in the late 1950's and afterward. We know much of what went on during that era but I doubt we will ever know completely the total extent of what they were doing. Young people believe that steroidal muscle size is the end all and that is natural as they grew up in that culture. However, not everyone believes that way. When Yates was at his zenith I had my wife compare his photo to that of Charles Atlas found in his Secrets of Muscular Power and Beauty Book to 25 women with a median age of just over 29 years old. Atlas won 23-2. So not everyone considers the behemoths their ideal. Far from it. I'm sure the people in the 30's and 40's were very impressed with Atlas as their weren't as many large people and they had never seen the steroidal creatures that would come in the future. I have a funny way of looking at this I guess but it is like the 3 Stooges. When I was young I thought Curly was so very funny because he was such a fat guy. Today when kids watch the 3 Stooges they do not even associate him with being fat. That is how far this generation has let itself get out of shape. I imagine the young bodybuilders of today do not look at Atlas as anything special because he does not have a steroidal size physique. Yours was a fine rant mothom.

Last edited by Physical Culturist, 4/20/2017, 3:27 am
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Re: Another mothom Rant?


actually, i never was chased out of a store for any reason. but i was yelled at for reading the magazines. and then i put them down and walked out. how dare they treat a customer that way! so, maybe in a sense i was chased out?
4/20/2017, 3:50 pm Link to this post Send Email to mothom   Send PM to mothom Blog
 
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Re: Another mothom Rant?


I probably deserved to be booted out of a few places.
4/20/2017, 4:19 pm Link to this post Send Email to Physical Culturist   Send PM to Physical Culturist Blog
 


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