Getbig Bodybuilding, Figure and Fitness Forums
Getbig Main Boards => Gossip & Opinions => Topic started by: Sir Bicep on October 23, 2021, 10:11:55 AM
-
(https://www.greatestphysiques.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/charles-atlas-physique.jpg)
-
Atlas may have been the 1st great marketer.
-
Atlas may have been the 1st great marketer.
Yes, nobody was good at it in any year before 1920.
-
Strong hairline, hint of abs and a package wrapped in animal skin underwear that casts a shadow.
How long has this stuff been gay? Forever. ;D
-
Brutal 17 inch quads
-
Brutal 17 inch quads
Leave bhank out of this.
-
What was Atlas on?
-
His 15'' arms are impressive, no?
-
He was a pioneer. Everything that you like now, no matter what it is, is built upon something in the past. Doesn't matter what. The guy got very rich selling courses for many many decades. What have you done?
ps and guess what? Many years after his death and here he still is.
-
What was Atlas on?
the roids and gh buffet plus all the nubain you can eat!
-
;D
-
;D
-
Charles Atlas: Muscle Man
How the original 97-pound-weakling transformed himself and brought physical fitness to the masses
Like tens of thousands of young men and boys before him, Tom Manfre first caught sight of Charles Atlas in the back pages of the comic books he read so voraciously. With a sculpted chest, leopard briefs girdling his hips, a piercing look on his granite-jawed face, Atlas seemed to be jabbing his finger at Manfre as he commanded: "Let Me Prove in 7 Days That I Can Make You a New Man!"
It was 1947, Manfre was 23 years old, and the man in the leopard-pattern briefs was the toast of New York City. He'd helped President Franklin Roosevelt celebrate his birthday at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. He cavorted on radio with Fred Allen and Eddie Cantor and on television with Bob Hope and Garry Moore. He stripped off his shirt at a Paris dinner party tossed by the designer Elsa Schiaparelli. His measurements had been entombed in the famous Crypt of Civilization, the repository of records at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta intended for unsealing in the year 8113. Scarcely a day went by that a newspaper columnist didn't feature an item about Atlas—dropping by to bend a couple of railroad spikes, perhaps, or ripping a Manhattan phone book in half.
Manfre stuck a check for $29.95 in the mail and got back a 12-lesson course of exercises the author called Dynamic-Tension. For 90 days, Manfre did the prescribed squats and leg-raises and sit-ups. He followed the tips on sleep and nutrition. He remembered to chew his food slowly. Pleased with the results, he sent a photograph of his new and improved body to Atlas and was invited to drop by to meet the man himself.
"I felt like a kid in a candy store," Manfre, 86, says today. "I was thrilled! He put an arm around me and said, ‘God was good to me, and I'm sure he'll be good to you.'" When Manfre won the Mr. World contest six years later, the first person he called to thank was Charles Atlas.
Manfre was not alone in his gratitude. During Atlas' heyday—the 1930s and '40s—two dozen women worked eight-hour days to open and file the letters that poured into his downtown Manhattan office. Grateful knock-kneed boys with scrawny arms and sunken chests reported that their lives had been turned around. King George VI of England signed up. Boxers and bodybuilders gave Dynamic-Tension a whirl. Mahatma Gandhi—Gandhi!—wrote to inquire about the course. A 1999 A&E biography, "Charles Atlas: Modern Day Hercules," included testimonials from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jake "Body by Jake" Steinfeld.
This year marks the 80th that Atlas' mail-order company has been in business. Atlas himself is long gone—he died in 1972—and Charles Atlas Ltd. now operates out of a combined shrine, archive and office over a nail salon in the northern New Jersey town of Harrington Park. But the Internet has given Dynamic-Tension a new life. From all over the world, letters and e-mails continue to pour in, testament to one of the most successful fitness programs ever devised. And to its mythic founder.
The man who made history marketing his muscles was an unlikely hero. Born in Acri, a tiny town in southern Italy, he arrived with his parents at Ellis Island in 1903 at age 10. His name was Angelo Siciliano, and he spoke not a word of English.
He didn't look like much, either. Skinny and slope-shouldered, feeble and often ill, he was picked on by bullies in the Brooklyn neighborhood where his family had settled, and his own uncle beat him for getting into fights. He found little refuge at Coney Island Beach, where a hunky lifeguard kicked sand in his face and a girlfriend sighed when the 97-pound Atlas swore revenge.
On a visit to the Brooklyn Museum, he saw statuary depicting Hercules, Apollo and Zeus. That, and Coney Island's sideshow, got him thinking. Bodybuilding was then a fringe pursuit, its practitioners consigned to the freak tents beside the fat lady and the sword swallower. Alone at the top was Eugen Sandow, a Prussian strongman discovered by showman Florenz Ziegfeld. Sandow toured vaudeville theaters, lifting ponies and popping chains with his chest. Atlas pasted a photo of Sandow on his dresser mirror and, hoping to transform his own body, spent months sweating away at home with a series of makeshift weights, ropes and elastic grips. The results were disappointing, but on a visit to the Bronx Zoo one day he had an epiphany, or so he would recall in his biography Yours in Perfect Manhood, by Charles Gaines and George Butler. Watching a lion stretch, he thought to himself, "Does this old gentleman have any barbells, any exercisers?...And it came over me....He's been pitting one muscle against another!"
Atlas threw out his equipment. He began flexing his muscles, using isometric opposition and adding range of motion to stress them further. He tensed his hands behind his back. He laced his fingers under his thighs and pushed his hands against his legs. He did biceps curls with one arm and squeezed his fist down with the other. Experimenting with varied techniques, and likely aided by exceptional genes, Atlas emerged from many months at home with a physique that stunned school chums when he first revealed himself on the beach. One of the boys exclaimed, "You look like that statue of Atlas on top of the Atlas Hotel!"
Several years later, he legally changed his name, adding Charles from his nickname "Charlie."
Holding up the world, however, wasn't a career. Atlas was too mild-mannered to go chasing neighborhood bullies, though on the New York subway he once lifted a troublemaker by his lapels and issued him a stern warning. A dutiful son, he learned leatherworking to pay the rent and support his mother. (His father had taken one look at his adopted home and high-tailed it back to Italy.) But Charlie hadn't built up his chest just to make purses. Eventually, he gave up on the leatherwork and took a $5-a-week job, doubling as janitor and strongman at the Coney Island sideshow, where he lay on a bed of nails and urged men from the audience to stand on his stomach.
And this might have been the last anyone heard of Charles Atlas had an artist not spotted him on the beach in 1916 and asked him to pose.
A boom in public sculpture was coming, and busy carvers were desperate for models with well-built bodies. Among the most prominent was socialite sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who, watching Atlas disrobe, exclaimed, "He's a knockout!" Further impressed by his ability to hold a pose for 30 minutes, she soon had him running from studio to studio. By the time he was 25, Atlas was everywhere, posing as George Washington in Washington Square Park, as Civic Virtue in Queens Borough Hall, as Alexander Hamilton in the nation's capital. He was Dawn of Glory in Brooklyn's Prospect Park and Patriotism for the Elks' national headquarters in Chicago. Photographs of him in classic poses, nude or shockingly close to it and with more than a whiff of eroticism, suggest how much he liked the camera and the camera liked him.
And the money was good—$100 a week. Still, Atlas was restless, and ambitious, and when he saw an ad for a "World's Most Beautiful Man" photo contest, he sent in his picture.
The contest was sponsored by Physical Culture magazine, the brainchild of Bernarr Macfadden, a publisher and fitness fanatic, as well as one of the most bizarre figures in the annals of fitness entrepreneurs. (He would later found a publishing empire with True Story and True Romances magazines.) Macfadden was obsessive about his health. When he wasn't fasting, he ate carrots, beans, nuts and raw eggs. He slept on the floor and walked to work barefoot. Impressed with Atlas' photograph, he asked the young man to stop by his office. When Atlas stripped to his leopard bikini, Macfadden stopped the contest, though he waited for a second visit to hand over the $1,000 winner's check and celebrate with a glass of carrot juice.
Atlas got an even bigger jolt of publicity when, in 1922, Macfadden followed up the contest with "The World's Most Perfectly Developed Man" extravaganza at Madison Square Garden. Seven hundred and seventy-five men competed for the title, judged by a panel of doctors and artists. When Atlas walked away with a second trophy, Macfadden called a halt to any more contests, grousing that Atlas would win every year. Likely, he was merely hyping Atlas' next showstopper: starring in a Macfadden short, silent movie called The Road to Health, directed by one Frederick Tilney, a busy if unsung health and fitness expert. On a ride to the film studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, one day, Tilney and Atlas decided to set up a mail-order business to sell an exercise routine. When, after a few years, their collaboration ended, Atlas went solo.
But an extraordinary body did not translate into a head for business, and, within a few years, the company floundered. With profits lagging, Atlas' advertising agency in 1928 turned over his account to its newest hire, Charles Roman, who was 21 and fresh out of New York University. What the young man came up with so impressed Atlas that four months after they met, Atlas offered him half the company on the condition that Roman would run it. It was the smartest move he ever made.
Roman knew a thing or two about writing ad copy and a lot about psychology, and he'd scarcely sharpened his pencils before he coined the term "Dynamic-Tension." He would do more than save the business; he would turn it into a marketing landmark. It was Roman who would write all the Atlas ads, from the "Hey, Skinny!" strips to the "97-Pound Weakling" and the "The Insult That Made a Man Out of ‘Mac'" series. The ads went straight to the male psyche. They preyed on every man's insecurity—that he wasn't "man enough" to defend his girl at the beach. At a time when the entire country was reeling from the 1929 stock-market crash and its aftermath, Atlas promised to restore a million battered egos.
"When the Depression struck, a characteristic response in America was to blame ourselves," says Harvey Green, a professor of history at Northeastern University and author of Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport and American Society, 1830-1940. "Atlas interpreted the desire to transform ourselves as a way of self-improvement."
The story of the two Charleses—Atlas and Roman— was a marriage of muscle and marketing that permanently altered America's approach to fitness. Before them, exercise had been the habit of a few, motivated by health first with vanity a distant second. Roman's ads heralded a new view of a man's body—as a measurement of success. As people migrated from rural America to cities filled with offices, making an impression became a priority. It was why Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, had won so many readers. But where Carnegie preached advancement through social skills, Atlas evangelized for the body beautiful.
"Carnegie's message was, fit in—Atlas' was to be bigger than everybody else," says Green. "Then nobody would mess with you. The idea that physical size could give you confidence was a powerful message."
Brute size was all well and good, but proportions were what mattered to Atlas. "I don't stress the matter of chest expansion," he told Family Circle magazine in 1939, "because it is not important....I've had a fellow in here who could blow himself up like a frog...but it was just a trick, and he was underdeveloped in every way." Nor did big biceps impress Atlas as much as well-developed abs. In one of his lessons, he wrote, "It is all very well to have strong arms and a grip of steel, but of what use are these unless the abdominal area is in perfect condition?" The paragraph concludes: "The rectus abdomus muscles will stand out firmly like a washboard."
His values were curiously old-fashioned, even quaint. Manfre was always surprised by Atlas' interest in his life. "He'd constantly ask me questions. ‘What did you do yesterday? How's it going? Did you go to church? I've got a new exercise you should add in.'" That Atlas never stopped working to improve his exercise program also impressed Manfre. "He kept studying animals," says Manfre, "and not just four-legged ones. He'd say, ‘See that bird fly? See how he flaps his wings to push out his chest?' I'd sit there amazed."
The personal touch was his hallmark; his lessons took the form of letters signed by the man himself: "Yours for Health and Strength" or "Yours for Perfect Development" or "Yours in Perfect Manhood" or (during World War II) "Yours for a Lasting Peace." Long before personal trainers, Atlas tried to create an intimate bond with his "students." That the exercises could be performed alone at home, without risk of embarrassment at a YMCA or club, was part of their appeal. "You will understand these exercises better," Atlas empathized, "if you read them out loud to yourself in a private room where you will not be disturbed."
Of course, not everyone bought into Dynamic-Tension. Most notably, Atlas feuded with a man named Bob Hoffman, who published Strength & Health magazine and sold York barbells on the side. In a celebrated case filed with the Federal Trade Commission in 1936, Hoffman called the Atlas system "dynamic hooey" and stood on his thumbs before the commission to prove the value of barbells. The FTC was apparently impressed—but not persuaded. In its finding of fact, it declared that Atlas "has employed and developed his said system since he was seventeen years of age and has attained his own great strength by the use of his own methods without relying upon apparatus." The FTC dismissed the suit and issued an order warning Hoffman not to disparage Atlas again.
John D. Fair, author of the biography Muscletown USA: Bob Hoffman and the Manly Culture of York Barbell, says he found articles in old issues of Physical Culture in which Atlas admitted he supplemented his exercises by using weights. But Fair also gives credit to Atlas. "He was an awfully nice guy with a great body, handsome and very strong," he told me. "He was a look, a household name. Hoffman admired him, but Hoffman was a businessman."
Terry Todd, an author and expert in sports and exercise history, who with his wife, Jan, has collected a major archive of physical culture memorabilia at the University of Texas, is also skeptical. "Dynamic-Tension can build muscle only to a limited degree," Todd says. "To build up muscle you need weights. But back then it was hard to make money in weights. You needed something cheap to make and cheap to ship. Atlas wasn't the only one who saw the value of mail order."
In fact, a fellow bodybuilder says he saw Atlas lift weights when they worked out at a Brooklyn YMCA in the early 1940s. "I never saw Angie lift heavy," says Terry Robinson, referring to Atlas by another nickname. "He just did a lot of repetitions." Robinson did not hold it against him. Atlas "was always smiling," he says. "He never showed off. He was a humble guy."
Atlas may have sneaked a few weight curls into his workouts, but as far as anyone knows he otherwise lived the virtuous life. He was an active promoter of the Boy Scouts. Asked for advice, he would say, "Live clean, think clean and don't go to burlesque shows." On the rare occasion when he dropped by a nightclub, usually in the company of Roman, he tried to talk the other patrons into switching to orange juice. And unlike Roman, who spent his growing fortune on luxury cars, yachts and private planes, Atlas had few known indulgences beyond a taste for white double-breasted suits. He lived in a four-room, fifth-floor Brooklyn apartment with his wife, Margaret, to whom he was singularly devoted, and his two children, Diana and Charles Jr. (Charles Jr. died last year of respiratory failure at age 89; Diana, now 89, declined to be interviewed for this article.) The family retreat was a modest home at Point Lookout on Long Island.
But he seemed to love the limelight. There are innumerable photos of Atlas hoisting bathing beauties or horsing around with boxers Max Baer and Joe Louis and golfer Gene Sarazen. He seemed to delight in publicity stunts, most of them engineered by Roman. He leashed himself to a 145,000-pound locomotive in a Queens railroad yard and towed it 112 feet. He entertained inmates at Sing-Sing (prompting the headline "Man Breaks Bar at Sing-Sing—Thousands Cheer, None Escape"). To protest an office dress code, he encouraged all the women on his staff to wear shorts to work in the summer. Then he appointed his private secretary president of the Long Live Shorts Club.
Atlas may have been more canny than he seemed. He never missed the chance to promote his business, whether posing with fans or lamenting the slovenly state of American manhood. A guest "appearance" with former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey on a radio show in 1936, following a trip to England to open a London branch of the company, gives a flavor of Atlas' promotional skills:
Dempsey: Well, Charlie, I am certainly glad to see you safely back in the United States, but thought you might surprise us all by coming back on the German zeppelin.
Atlas: No, but if they ever reach the stage where they have flying gymnasiums I might do that, Jack.
Dempsey: How did you find the English people, Charlie? Did they seem to be in as good physical condition as our boys over here?
Atlas: On the contrary, they appeared in much better physical condition than our boys. The Englishman ... doesn't allow that chest of his to slip down below his belt, where you find most of the American chests. If some of the boys over here don't begin taking daily exercises, they'll be carrying their paunches around in baskets."
As the world prepared for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and the specter of National Socialism grew more alarming, Atlas bemoaned the poor state of U.S. distance running and touted the value of exercise to improve the readiness of American troops. "A study of the reasons for rejection of army applicants made by Atlas," read one syndicated newspaper story, "shows that nearly one-third of the defects are those which could be largely minimized by proper care and training." He was past the age to serve in the military, but he posed for a Treasury Department sale of Victory Bonds.
Though never a zealot like Macfadden, he was single-minded in trumpeting the value of health and the means to attain it. His exercises were framed with detailed lifestyle advice: on how to dress, sleep, breathe, eat and relax. (He urged "Music Baths.") He penned long treatises on various maladies, and his company published books on everything from child rearing to relationship advice. In his view, marriage itself was subject to the vagaries of a robust sense of well-being. "The lack of glorious, vigorous health," he noted, "would prove to be, if the divorce records were analyzed, the most common reason why so many marriages ‘crack up.'" He even counseled on the best way to start the day: "Get up immediately on awakening in the morning....Don't dillydally. GET UP!"
By the 1950s the business counted nearly a million pupils worldwide and the Dynamic-Tension regimen had been translated into seven languages. Ads in more than 400 comic books and magazines brought in 40,000 new recruits each year. Celebrity pupils included comedian Fred Allen, Rocky Marciano, Joe DiMaggio and Robert Ripley. (Ripley once wrote in his "Believe It or Not" column that he saw Atlas swim a mile through storm-tossed waters off a New York beach to tow a rowboat and its panicked occupants back to shore.)
Even as Atlas' days slipped into mundane routine, and he himself slipped into middle age, he would show up most afternoons at his Manhattan office to answer mail and preach fitness to fans who came by to view their idol in person. Dinner in Brooklyn was invariably broiled steak and fresh fruit and vegetables. He often ended the day practicing Dynamic-Tension in the mirror, though he also exercised regularly at the New York Athletic Club, where he was secure enough to offer marketing tips to potential rivals.
"I was working out at the club in the late '50s when I ran into Atlas," remembers Joe Weider, founder of Muscle & Fitness magazine and a former competitive bodybuilder then marketing barbells. "He came over to me and tried to offer me some business advice. He said a 100-pound barbell set was heavy to ship. Then he said, ‘Joe, I just send a course and some pictures, and I make so much more money than you. You should do that, too.'"
Atlas suffered a jarring blow in 1965 when Margaret died of cancer; he was so distraught he briefly considered joining a monastery. Instead, he fell back on what he knew best: tending to his body. He took long runs on the beach near Point Lookout. He bought a condominium in Palm Beach, Florida, and kept up a morning routine of 50 knee bends, 100 sit-ups and 300 push-ups. Occasionally a photo of him appeared, bronzed and flaunting his godlike chest, his measurements almost exactly the same as those enshrined in the Crypt of Civilization. In 1970, he sold his half of the company to Charles Roman but continued on as a consultant. On December 23, 1972, Charles Atlas died in a Long Island hospital of a heart attack. He was 79 years old.
It was the beginning of the fitness boom. The year Atlas died, maverick inventor Arthur Jones introduced his first Nautilus exercise machine, which offered variable resistance; it was joined on the workout floor by the Lifecycle exercise bike, which got its marketing kick from the budding science of aerobics. Other workout routines—Pilates, step aerobics, Spinning—would lure members to ever-multiplying health clubs. Charles Atlas Ltd., meanwhile, was selling the same mail-order course, but without Atlas as living icon and with neither branded equipment nor a franchised gym, the company profile dimmed. One day, Roman received a letter from Jeffrey C. Hogue, an Arkansas lawyer who said he'd idolized Atlas since the course rescued him from terminal insecurity decades earlier—and he wanted to buy the business.
"We met at the Players Club," Hogue recalls. "Mr. Roman told me how much [money] he wanted and I did something I advise no client ever to do. I didn't negotiate. It just didn't feel right."
Hogue declines to disclose the sale price, but he says he had to borrow a considerable portion of the money. The company's global reach surprised him, he says—he recounts that the first letter he opened was from a student in Nepal—but it was making only a modest profit.
And then the Internet brought Charles Atlas back to life.
It turned out the World Wide Web was the perfect marketing tool: cheaper even than the back pages of comics, international in scope, the ideal vehicle for mail- order sales. Seemingly immune from inflation—the course now sells for $49.95, only $20 more than in the early 1930s—Atlas' promise to "Make You a New Man!" was only a click away in banner ads on youth-oriented sites. The company says it now does 80 percent of its business online. "We are literally overwhelmed by the Web site activity," says Hogue, who declines to provide figures on revenue or growth. And such high-profile brands as the Gap, Mercedes and IBM have licensed the Atlas image or "Hey, Skinny!" comic strips for retro advertisements.
Charles Atlas came from a simpler time. His publicity stunts would hardly have interested today's celebrity magazines. He neither drank nor smoked, and his personal life was free of scandal. Steroids, had they been available then, would not have interested him. He sprang from the back pages of comic books and promised every bullied, insecure young man the means to take control of his life.
-
That's not even good for the time. They could easily have found some physical labourer with more muscle and cuts. Dude is skinny fat :D
-
That's not even good for the time. They could easily have found some physical labourer with more muscle and cuts. Dude is skinny fat :D
;D
-
;D
Now these fellas are good. Look strong too. Atlas looked like a sissy :D
-
What was Atlas on?
Bhanky says monkey balls.
I bought his course as a kid but it was cheap. Not as much as they said or no way would I have bought it.
Isometrics was promoted by Bob Hoffman for awhile in the early 1960s which is what Atlas supposedly did.
-
What was Atlas on?
All mulligan stew and horehound candy.
-
;D
Third guy down is diced and peeled, impressive.
-
Third guy down is diced and peeled, impressive.
that's backday, who competed in the mr getbig.
-
Most of the guys here are delusional when they look in a mirror. 7's become 9's. Charles Atlas is better built than 99% of the board.
-
He looks like christopher moltisanti
-
Most of the guys here are delusional when they look in a mirror. 7's become 9's. Charles Atlas is better built than 99% of the board.
Ah, but that 1% of us...
-
that's backday, who competed in the mr getbig.
;D
-
For those criticizing,, please enlighten us with your current marvelous physiques!!
-
Most of the guys here are delusional when they look in a mirror. 7's become 9's. Charles Atlas is better built than 99% of the board.
Many are delusional. But look at the top pic. The guy is about 25% bodyfat with maybe 15 inch arms. Absolutely zero leg development. Zero. There is nothing there. The other guys funk posted are jacked though.
I haven't seen a worse physique than Atlas on this forum, and there have been some pretty bad ones.
-
;D
supreme genetics. Capped delts on a natty
-
;D
(http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=675357.0;attach=1332693;image)
Great build.
-
Great build.
Incredible arms and shoulders for that time period.
-
For those criticizing,, please enlighten us with your current marvelous physiques!!
Especially using only bodyweight exercises, no specialized diets, supplements or steroids.
-
Many are delusional. But look at the top pic. The guy is about 25% bodyfat with maybe 15 inch arms. Absolutely zero leg development. Zero. There is nothing there. The other guys funk posted are jacked though.
I haven't seen a worse physique than Atlas on this forum, and there have been some pretty bad ones.
Oh, really...
(https://img8.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/21165/2116538891d35d70ced8a96b265fe76d4f27a369.jpg)
Clash of the Titans
(https://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=149324.0;attach=167623;image)
Crapped Delts
All the flow of a backed up toilet.
-
Ernest Cadine
https://simplexstrong.com/2017/05/legendary-old-time-strongmen-ernest-cadine-swings-19842-lbs-dumbbell/
-
Oh, really...
Even Goodrum has more muscle than Atlas. They are the same bodyfat though.
-
I was right the guy did have supreme genetics for muscularity and strength
olympic gold medalist and 6 world records in olympic weightlifting.
-
For those criticizing,, please enlighten us with your current marvelous physiques!!
Exactly
-
His 15'' arms are impressive, no?
Wrong:
(https://physicalculturestudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/9f702e3f7e685476ecfaf8a4dd1d8872.jpg)
-
Bhank talking to his own gimmick already? Nice.
-
Many are delusional. But look at the top pic. The guy is about 25% bodyfat with maybe 15 inch arms. Absolutely zero leg development. Zero. There is nothing there. The other guys funk posted are jacked though.
I haven't seen a worse physique than Atlas on this forum, and there have been some pretty bad ones.
He's not 25% bodyfat, more like 15% he just doesn't look as lean because he doesn't have the muscle to shape himself, right about the arms and legs though.
-
Charles Atlas was a fraud, a rich fraud. He was sued, and brought to court concerning how he developed his muscles. He claimed he used Dynamic Tension. When he was asked whether he lifted weights, he stated yes, but only to test his strength. When he was asked how often he tested his strength his answer was over an hour a session , 4 days a week.
-
Charles Atlas was a fraud, a rich fraud. He was sued, and brought to court concerning how he developed his muscles. He claimed he used Dynamic Tension. When he was asked whether he lifted weights, he stated yes, but only to test his strength. When he was asked how often he tested his strength his answer was over an hour a session , 4 days a week.
Debunked myth put out by Hoffman. Hoffman was getting crushed by Atlas in sales because he was selling weights and Atlas was selling a course that needed no weights. Hoffman was always making up stories to get more sales.
A person can get great results using the Atlas course. The real builders in the program are all the pushups and squats. If you skipped the dynamic tension and just did the calisthenics you would get the same results or close to it. A person can get even better results using the Atlas principles with weights.
-
Even Goodrum has more muscle than Atlas. They are the same bodyfat though.
Vincenzo has more blubber and less lean muscle. He is also fuglier, not as industrious and still alive. He beats Atlas only on that last point. ;)
-
Vincenzo has more blubber and less lean muscle. He is also fuglier, not as industrious and still alive. He beats Atlas only on that last point. ;)
What deluded Vince into entering a bodybuilding contest at 30% bodyfat?
-
;D
-
What deluded Vince into entering a bodybuilding contest at 30% bodyfat?
I hate to rag on the guy but it's fascinating, the thought process behind competing at 30% bodyfat. He talked about taking all these gray area supplements and dieting so hard he passed out at work.
-
;D
There were a lot of sexual virility courses back then. Must have been a lot of limp dicks in marriages. Probably gay guys who married women or lesbians who married men because everyone had to get married.
-
There were a lot of sexual virility courses back then. Must have been a lot of limp dicks in marriages. Probably gay guys who married women or lesbians who married men because everyone had to get married.
Without a doubt, the absolutely strangest claim I ever heard come out of his mouth, or anyone’s mouth for that matter, happened during a health food convention in Washington, D.C. Tommy Suggs and I were putting on a lifting demonstration in the York booth when Hoffman showed up and went into one of his endless diatribes about himself, his favorite subject by far. Tommy and I stopped our lifting, for the audience was made up of older men and women who were more interested in what Hoffman had to say than watching us do something they could never possibly do. They seemed transfixed by his droning. Perhaps it was because of his age, but they hung on every word and there were plenty to hang on, believe me. He went on and on about how healthy he was, how he ran a hundred miles a week and was in the midst of a two week fast. Tommy and I looked at one another and smiled, thinking we had heard it all I before. Then he came out with the kicker. He told the assembly he had the world’s most perfectly developed penis. Now Tommy and I exchanged stunned expressions and I whispered, “Did I hear him right?” Tommy’s hearing wasn’t all that keen and he answered softly, “I’m not sure.” It just didn’t seem possible that he would say such a thing to a group of older people, but our doubts were quickly resolved when he repeated himself just in case he had not been heard clearly the first time. As amazed as I was at his ridiculous statement, the reaction of the crowd was even more astounding. Not a soul blinked, frowned, smiled, or showed the slightest reaction at hearing such an absurd remark. It was as if it were totally natural for this old man to say such a thing. After all, he was the world’s healthiest man, so I guess it was logical for him to have the world’s most perfectly developed penis. I half expected one of them to ask him to whip it out. I’m sure he would have been more than willing to comply. :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
-
Without a doubt, the absolutely strangest claim I ever heard come out of his mouth, or anyone’s mouth for that matter, happened during a health food convention in Washington, D.C. Tommy Suggs and I were putting on a lifting demonstration in the York booth when Hoffman showed up and went into one of his endless diatribes about himself, his favorite subject by far. Tommy and I stopped our lifting, for the audience was made up of older men and women who were more interested in what Hoffman had to say than watching us do something they could never possibly do. They seemed transfixed by his droning. Perhaps it was because of his age, but they hung on every word and there were plenty to hang on, believe me. He went on and on about how healthy he was, how he ran a hundred miles a week and was in the midst of a two week fast. Tommy and I looked at one another and smiled, thinking we had heard it all I before. Then he came out with the kicker. He told the assembly he had the world’s most perfectly developed penis. Now Tommy and I exchanged stunned expressions and I whispered, “Did I hear him right?” Tommy’s hearing wasn’t all that keen and he answered softly, “I’m not sure.” It just didn’t seem possible that he would say such a thing to a group of older people, but our doubts were quickly resolved when he repeated himself just in case he had not been heard clearly the first time. As amazed as I was at his ridiculous statement, the reaction of the crowd was even more astounding. Not a soul blinked, frowned, smiled, or showed the slightest reaction at hearing such an absurd remark. It was as if it were totally natural for this old man to say such a thing. After all, he was the world’s healthiest man, so I guess it was logical for him to have the world’s most perfectly developed penis. I half expected one of them to ask him to whip it out. I’m sure he would have been more than willing to comply. :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
-
Without a doubt, the absolutely strangest claim I ever heard come out of his mouth, or anyone’s mouth for that matter, happened during a health food convention in Washington, D.C. Tommy Suggs and I were putting on a lifting demonstration in the York booth when Hoffman showed up and went into one of his endless diatribes about himself, his favorite subject by far. Tommy and I stopped our lifting, for the audience was made up of older men and women who were more interested in what Hoffman had to say than watching us do something they could never possibly do. They seemed transfixed by his droning. Perhaps it was because of his age, but they hung on every word and there were plenty to hang on, believe me. He went on and on about how healthy he was, how he ran a hundred miles a week and was in the midst of a two week fast. Tommy and I looked at one another and smiled, thinking we had heard it all I before. Then he came out with the kicker. He told the assembly he had the world’s most perfectly developed penis. Now Tommy and I exchanged stunned expressions and I whispered, “Did I hear him right?” Tommy’s hearing wasn’t all that keen and he answered softly, “I’m not sure.” It just didn’t seem possible that he would say such a thing to a group of older people, but our doubts were quickly resolved when he repeated himself just in case he had not been heard clearly the first time. As amazed as I was at his ridiculous statement, the reaction of the crowd was even more astounding. Not a soul blinked, frowned, smiled, or showed the slightest reaction at hearing such an absurd remark. It was as if it were totally natural for this old man to say such a thing. After all, he was the world’s healthiest man, so I guess it was logical for him to have the world’s most perfectly developed penis. I half expected one of them to ask him to whip it out. I’m sure he would have been more than willing to comply. :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
A riDICKulous statement.
-
A riDICKulous statement.
A CORNER ON AMERICAN MUSCLE
SI STAFF
NEWS IS ALWAYS FREE ON SI. REGISTER TO HAVE IT DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX DAILY.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ORIGINAL LAYOUT
ORIGINAL LAYOUT
I think I am one of the most modest men around," says Bob Hoffman, the millionaire president of the York (Pa.) Barbell Co., undoubtedly the best-known organization of its kind in the world. "I don't really feel so important, but I do have a reputation as the man who knows more about physical fitness than anyone else. I was born with a desire to be strong. I have even permitted men to place a 150-pound anvil on my stomach and hammer on it with a 15-pound sledge. But I am most renowned as the world's greatest chain-breaker. I have a large chest with little meat on it, and because of this I don't have to worry about the chain cutting me too much. With my amazing chest muscles I have broken chains that lift over 5,000 pounds.
"My first memory in life is of me trying to stand up in bed after I had typhoid," Hoffman continues. "I fell down. I had scarlet fever when I was 3, but at age 4 I ran 100 times around a double tennis court. On my 10th birthday I won a modified marathon. I've always had tremendous endurance, and some of the kids I used to play against would just give up because they knew I would always win. I've been a champion at every sport I've tried, including swimming, weight lifting, golf, handball, football and canoeing. I've won over 600 sports awards."
("When I think back on my childhood," he said a few years ago, "it does not seem possible that today the whole world looks up to me as the most ideal specimen of the human body. It is a great responsibility.")
"Remember, you are talking to the world's healthiest man. I have not been ill in 42 years. The last time I was sick was back in 1919.1 had ptomaine poisoning. I had just got out of the Army and was on my way home. On the train I ate a ham sandwich and that's how I became ill. Before going home I stopped in Pittsburgh to compete in the national canoe championships.
"Even though I was sick I still had such terrific endurance that I was able to win the quarter-mile championship, as well as several other events. One of the others was the canoe-tilting. That's where one man in each canoe tries to knock the other into the water by use of a long pole. I was always pretty smart, and I became champion at this by out-thinking the others. One thing I did was lift dumbbells with my feet so I could stand in the canoe and actually get a better grip with my toes. Another thing I did was chin myself from a bridge and lift a 70-pound canoe with my toes. The paddle and stroke I used were much the same as the Germans used to win with in the last Olympics. I used a scoop paddle and I made a lot of short, fast strokes rather than a few long, slow ones. That helped me win the quarter-mile championship in 1919. I had also won it in 1915, '16 and '17. I was busy in 1918."
Hoffman was busy with World War I. "For 11 days in a row I led the advance patrols in the Argonne Forest. Three times I was the only man to return from patrol. One day I led 17 other men, and one by one they were picked off. I was the only one to make it back. That's why I tell people I am supernaturally lucky. Once I had marks from 12 bullets on my body and uniform and a grenade went off near my face. Another time I captured 38 prisoners singlehanded. I got a lot of medals, including the Belgian Order of Leopold. In some of my early ads I used to have a little write-up about my accomplishments during the war. Joe Weider [Hoffman's archenemy in the muscle field] didn't believe I had won all the medals I mentioned and he demanded an investigation. All it proved was that I had more medals than I even knew about. By the time it was all over I found I had been awarded 11 medals."
The DSC and the Golden Rule
Hoffman does not like to be reminded that a Federal Trade Commission investigation showed that he had never won the Distinguished Service Cross, a claim he also had been making in his advertisements for barbells. Nearly all his life Hoffman has been getting into trouble and making enemies because of things he has said. (Hoffman's defense usually consists of a statement that he lives by the Golden Rule, to which he adds, "Let them take potshots at me. They shot McKinley and Lincoln, and they were both nice guys.")
"It's true that Bob has an awful lot of muscles," says one of his York neighbors, "but it's too bad so many of them are attached to his jaws." On the other hand, it also is true that Bob Hoffman has been largely responsible for U.S. success in weight lifting in the past few decades; indeed, without him this country might never have entered teams in international competition. Hoffman has coached nearly every team we have fielded, including the last four Olympic squads, which won 27 medals. Certainly it is because of his constant lobbying and numerous trips abroad (at his own expense) to promote competition that the world championships were scheduled to be held this summer in Hershey, Pa., just a short drive from York. Hoffman was planning to help pay for the feeding and housing of all participating athletes. A few weeks ago, apparently for political reasons, the championships were shifted to Budapest. Hoffman will pay much of the expense of sending a U.S. team. No recent squad of American weight lifters has competed internationally without substantial support from him.
Hoffman himself still looks and acts like an athlete. He is 6 feet 3, weighs 239 pounds and at 63 he can lift 250 pounds with his right hand; he was 43 when he set the world record of 282 pounds in the one-arm bent press.
It is as the head of seven corporations, including the Aircraft Tool and Engineering Corp., the York Precision Co. and the Swiss Automatic Division that Hoffman makes his money. Although he sold 75,000 sets of barbells last year, he says, "This business is so competitive that it's hard to make any money in it." One of his most profitable sidelines is the sale of food supplements such as Hi-Protein, Energol and Protein-from-the-Sea. He also grows vast quantities of soybeans on farmland near York; these go into the production of some of his special foods.
After World War I Hoffman came to York and joined his brother in the oil-burner business. "We had a swear box at the company," he recalls. "You had to put so much money in the box each time you cursed. When we got enough money together I went down and got a set of barbells for us."
Ads and feuds
Hoffman got the barbells in 1923 and was off on his unique career. In 1932 he began publishing the magazine Strength & Health, the leader in this highly competitive though specialized field. It has never made money (circulation now is about 115,000) but it sells his products. A recent issue contains 21 pages of advertising, 17 of them for Hoffman's own merchandise. Most important, the magazine serves Hoffman as a medium for carrying on his feuds among the weight-lifting and body-building fraternities. Two of the loudest of these have been with Joe Weider and Charles Atlas (SI, July 27, 1959).
The trademark for Atlas' training technique is Dynamic Tension; Hoffman referred to it as Dynamic Hooey. While admitting that Atlas has an imposing set of muscles, Hoffman contended that his rival got them from "a lot of hard work and exercise" and not from any special training method. He wrote in Strength & Health, "Chas. Atlas claims that a physician warned him against walking up stairs when he was 16 years of age.... After 27 years of following his own system of training he can now walk up stairs.... I believe this...." That was about all Hoffman believed.
He took exception to some of Atlas' advertisements, saying, "He cannot run ten miles in an hour and he cannot tow a boat load of hysterical women a distance of one mile against the wind, waves and tide as he claimed to do." Inevitably, the arguments landed in court. There, to disprove an Atlas claim that weight lifters were muscle-bound, Hoffman arranged for one of the most bizarre displays in legal history. He had one of his trainees. Bob Jones, do a handstand in the courtroom. It was not an ordinary handstand. Jones began by conventionally supporting himself on both hands. Then he lifted finger after finger from contact with the floor until he was held erect by only his thumbs. What this or some of the other exhibitions of health and muscle power proved is somewhat obscure, but the judge finally grew tired of the show, suggested that the parties try peaceful coexistence and dismissed the case.
Vituperative journalism
Hoffman's hassle with Weider is still going on and has split most weight lifters and body-builders into two camps, with the weight lifters for Hoffman and the body-builders supporting Weider. (Weight lifters exercise to develop their strength and technique; body-builders to develop beautiful bodies.) After years of squabbling, Weider has instituted an $800,000 libel suit against Hoffman. Part of his complaint concerns a Hoffman editorial in Strength & Health. In it, speaking of Weider, Hoffman said, "A rat is everything that is opposed to goodness, purity, and gentleness; it is debased, filthy, frequently diseased, certainly evil and malicious—yet a rat has friends—at least other rats live and associate with it.... Even the most degraded types of human beings have their friends and associates.... There are humans who are counterparts in every way of the rats.... In our wonderful sport we have a small Hitler, a small Stalin who is a master in all the despicable tactics imaginable...."
Hoffman believes that Weider exploits weight lifters. "They write to us by the score," he says, "and they tell us that they never took his [Weider's] course, never ate a mouthful of his food products, that they have no contact with him, but he goes on making his claims and exploiting them just the same...."
Typical of the Weider camp's rebuttal is an article in Mr. America magazine several years ago called "The Hoffman Expose," which is included in the subject matter of a $2.3 million suit by Hoffman against Weider. In it, Leroy Colbert writes, "There is a self-styled dictator in weight-lifting who has obtained some control in our beloved sport through the slandering scandal sheet he calls a magazine.... Hoffman...has the audacity to imply that bodybuilders are freaks, criminals...[and is] concentrating on a perverted campaign to ruin bodybuilding....
"Fellows whose pictures appeared in Muscle Power and Muscle Builder [Weider publications] stood little chance of placing in the AAU sanctioned contests. Hoffman had brow-beaten the judges...."
Colbert also accused Hoffman of having rigged a Mr. Universe contest, and concluded, "Whoever told this out-of-shape dictator that he has the power to get rid of anything but himself?"
Weider's principal charge is that Hoffman dictates the conduct of weight lifting in this country. He says, "Hoffman thinks that because he spends so much money on the teams that this gives him the right to decide who is going on these trips and who is not going. He has the AAU sewed up and he uses the team as a promotion for his business. He makes the boys wear T shirts advertising his York barbells."
Anteroom electioneering
These are not the only charges against Hoffman. On Feb. 4, 1956 New York Daily Mirror Columnist Dan Parker wrote: "My only contact with Hoffman was in an anteroom at Madison Square Garden one night about a dozen years ago when I was...a judge of a 'Mr. America contest.' ...Mr. Hoffman called each judge aside and, in a few ill-advised words, told us we should cast our vote for [his man]." Hoffman's man won the contest, despite Parker's dissenting vote.
"They have accused me of a lot of things," Hoffman says. "I just do what I think is right, and when I think I am right I think I am terribly right. They have even called me a Communist and an anti-Semite. It's unbelievable how these things get started. Once I said that we had to give the Communists credit for their progress in sport. So right away I'm a Commie. Another time a writer slipped an uncomplimentary name for a Jewish person into the magazine. It got by without my seeing it. That's how I became an anti-Semite all of a sudden."
Speaking up about speaking up
"Then there was the Melbourne thing. I was at the Olympics and one day an A.P. reporter came up to me and wanted to know how I thought the team would make out. I told him we had an excellent team but I doubted we would do well because of the officials. Judges from nations that are Communistic or who fear the Commies have to consider that in their judging, and that hurts us. The next thing you know, the story is all over the world. I almost got kicked out of the Olympics. But someone had to talk up. If I hadn't, Paul Anderson would never have won the Olympic heavyweight championship. He fouled on one of his lifts and a lot of people noticed it. That was after I had spoken out, so the officials let it go by. After I spoke up other coaches did, too. Russia is out to enslave us; we have to speak up."
Obviously, speaking up has never been a problem for Hoffman. He seldom stops, either verbally or in writing. He wrote his first book—more than 500 pages—in less than 10 days. In all, he has written 24, including Why Grow Old?, How to Relax, How to Be Strong, Healthy and Happy and The Big Chest Book. But the spoken word is still his favorite means of communication. Since he is also so often the subject, it is hardly surprising that one of his friends has summed up their relationship thus: "I like Bob, but I can't stand him."
Several months ago Hoffman was invited to join a group of AAU officials who were presenting an award to President Kennedy in the White House. Kennedy shook hands around and had a few words to say to everyone. When he got to Hoffman, though, Kennedy was soon on the listening end. Hoffman began expounding on the virtues of isometric contraction as a means for curing the President's aching back. As he spoke, Hoffman went through the motions of some of the exercises: grasping his ankles and pulling up and later pushing with his hands against an imaginary overhead bar. Kennedy listened patiently until Hoffman was through. When Bob Hoffman starts talking, there isn't very much anyone can do.
SEXAGENARIAN BOB HOFFMAN, STILL IN SHAPE, HANGS FROM A CHINNING BAR
-
hoffman was also the world's healthiest and most modest man.. ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) see above
-
Hoffman used to do exhibitions where he would do 1 arm lifts with fake weights and try to claim almost super human strength. When the US Olympic lifting team won a bunch of medals after Dr. Z gave them Dianabol Hoffman claimed isometrics were the cause of all the strength gains. I got the book from the local library when I was 14 and stopped lifting my weights to do only isometrics like he prescribed in the book. A month later I was skinnier and weaker. :-[
-
Hoffman used to do exhibitions where he would do 1 arm lifts with fake weights and try to claim almost super human strength. When the US Olympic lifting team won a bunch of medals after Dr. Z gave them Dianabol Hoffman claimed isometrics were the cause of all the strength gains. I got the book from the local library when I was 14 and stopped lifting my weights to do only isometrics like he prescribed in the book. A month later I was skinnier and weaker. :-[
when I was in high school the gym teacher Kaiser Wilhelm used to make us do isometrics. even at the time I thought it was stupid and would pretend to exert great effort with the obligatory grunts and groans, I did it pretty convince ably as he used me as an example on how to do the various moves or non moves I should say.
-
Without a doubt, the absolutely strangest claim I ever heard come out of his mouth, or anyone’s mouth for that matter, happened during a health food convention in Washington, D.C. Tommy Suggs and I were putting on a lifting demonstration in the York booth when Hoffman showed up and went into one of his endless diatribes about himself, his favorite subject by far. Tommy and I stopped our lifting, for the audience was made up of older men and women who were more interested in what Hoffman had to say than watching us do something they could never possibly do. They seemed transfixed by his droning. Perhaps it was because of his age, but they hung on every word and there were plenty to hang on, believe me. He went on and on about how healthy he was, how he ran a hundred miles a week and was in the midst of a two week fast. Tommy and I looked at one another and smiled, thinking we had heard it all I before. Then he came out with the kicker. He told the assembly he had the world’s most perfectly developed penis. Now Tommy and I exchanged stunned expressions and I whispered, “Did I hear him right?” Tommy’s hearing wasn’t all that keen and he answered softly, “I’m not sure.” It just didn’t seem possible that he would say such a thing to a group of older people, but our doubts were quickly resolved when he repeated himself just in case he had not been heard clearly the first time. As amazed as I was at his ridiculous statement, the reaction of the crowd was even more astounding. Not a soul blinked, frowned, smiled, or showed the slightest reaction at hearing such an absurd remark. It was as if it were totally natural for this old man to say such a thing. After all, he was the world’s healthiest man, so I guess it was logical for him to have the world’s most perfectly developed penis. I half expected one of them to ask him to whip it out. I’m sure he would have been more than willing to comply. :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Funk,
Bill Starr said that if I'm not mistaken.
Why don't you indicate who you are quoting?
-
Funk,
Bill Starr said that if I'm not mistaken.
Why don't you indicate who you are quoting?
Driving Daddy Hoffman
by Bill Starr | May 24, 2011
driving daddy hoffman
Bob Hoffman was really the heart and soul of York Barbell Club. He, almost alone, supported the sport of Olympic weightlifting in the United States for nearly fifty years. True, he had a motive: money. Whenever a York lifter excelled, it benefited his pocketbook very directly. But the fact remains that without his backing there would never have been such an influx of champions such as Grimek, Stanko, Terpak, Spellman, Terlazzo, Bradford, Davis, Berger, Vinci, Schemansky, Grippaldi, Puleo, Bednarski, Garcy, Marcy, and so many more who wore the maroon and white of the YBC. And for hundreds of others who lived vicariously through the exploits of the champion lifters, he provided another sort of experience.
Hoffman was, by any standard of measure, odd and eccentric. Some believed this was because of all the money he had accumulated, but according to his own stories and from accounts of those who knew him before he became wealthy, he was always odd and eccentric.
Despite his affluence, he did little in the way of enjoyment. He never really went on a true vacation; his only trips were to weightlifting meets or conventions to sell more products. He wore the same clothes for months on end, often not bothering to have them cleaned. His one passion, other than counting money, was dancing the polka. Every weekend when he was not at some contest too far away to get home, he could be found at the Thomasville Inn, which was owned and operated by his common-law wife Alda, dancing until closing. It was the most important part of the week to him, and he would often fly back from some exotic foreign city such as Paris or Rome to be at the Thomasville Inn.
Hoffman made many claims about himself. He was, of course, the Father of American Weightlifting, hence the nickname “Daddy Hoffman.” He actually liked being called Daddy by the lifters, for this reinforced his right to the title. I didn’t know this until I accidentally slipped and called him Daddy to his face one day. He smiled and continued babbling, so I knew I was on safe ground. He was also the greatest Chinese food eater outside of China, the World’s Healthiest Man, and had once been crowned the World’s Strongest Man. There were more, but you get the point.
Few people bothered to challenge these claims, but I found out how he got the title of the of world’s strongest man. Hoffman was never very strong. In fact, he never was able to put 300 pounds over his head, much to his chagrin since nearly every lifter at the York Barbell in the early forties could clean and jerk that much: Terlazzo, Grimek, Stanko, Terpak and even Bachtell who was a lightweight. So he decided he would become a professional weightlifter and not have to be bothered with those amateurs. He set up a contest to determine who was the strongest professional in the country. Only one other person challenged him, a lifter from Erie, Pennsylvania. On the day of the contest, held at the York Y, a blizzard blocked all the roads. Hoffman became the strongest man in the world, professional division, by default. As time went by, the professional part was dropped, and he sucked on this title till the end of his life.
Without a doubt, the absolutely strangest claim I ever heard come out of his mouth, or anyone’s mouth for that matter, happened during a health food convention in Washington, D.C. Tommy Suggs and I were putting on a lifting demonstration in the York booth when Hoffman showed up and went into one of his endless diatribes about himself, his favorite subject by far. Tommy and I stopped our lifting, for the audience was made up of older men and women who were more interested in what Hoffman had to say than watching us do something they could never possibly do. They seemed transfixed by his droning. Perhaps it was because of his age, but they hung on every word and there were plenty to hang on, believe me. He went on and on about how healthy he was, how he ran a hundred miles a week and was in the midst of a two week fast. Tommy and I looked at one another and smiled, thinking we had heard it all I before. Then he came out with the kicker. He told the assembly he had the world’s most perfectly developed penis. Now Tommy and I exchanged stunned expressions and I whispered, “Did I hear him right?” Tommy’s hearing wasn’t all that keen and he answered softly, “I’m not sure.” It just didn’t seem possible that he would say such a thing to a group of older people, but our doubts were quickly resolved when he repeated himself just in case he had not been heard clearly the first time. As amazed as I was at his ridiculous statement, the reaction of the crowd was even more astounding. Not a soul blinked, frowned, smiled, or showed the slightest reaction at hearing such an absurd remark. It was as if it were totally natural for this old man to say such a thing. After all, he was the world’s healthiest man, so I guess it was logical for him to have the world’s most perfectly developed penis. I half expected one of them to ask him to whip it out. I’m sure he would have been more than willing to comply.
The only tangible item that Hoffman spent his money on was a new car every year. Terpak and Mike Dietz also bought new cars every year, for this was a status game among the higher echelon of the company. Terpak and Dietz always went for the fancy Cadillacs, but Hoffman preferred Lincolns. He said they had larger interiors and since he was a big man, they fit him better. For once this was true; he was indeed a big man, standing 6?4? and weighing 270 pounds. His cars also served as his office. He did have an office in his home in Dover, but didn’t have one at the York Barbell. His former office had been given over to the art department. Every night when he was in town, he would go to the YBC P.O. box to get the mail. Then he would strip all the cash from the incoming orders and throw the letters in his back seat. Which, naturally, resulted in more than a few orders being lost. Periodically, Terpak, Dietz or John Terlazzo would clean out his back seat and floorboard and attempt to fill the late orders.
Hoffman was always on the move, going to conventions, weightlifting meets, AAU meetings, exhibitions, and talks to various groups. He always wanted someone to go with him, primarily to have someone to talk to for he dearly loved the sound of his own voice. One of the first lessons at the York Barbell that any new person needed to learn was that when Hoffman asked him to go alone on some trip, he should always insist on driving. For there was yet another title he could rightfully lay claim to, although he never mentioned this one: he was the world’s worst driver. I was unaware of this fact until I took a drive with him to Philadelphia and it cost me a few years off my life.
He asked me to accompany him to an AAU meeting so I could cast a vote for one of his five registered clubs. He kept five so he could stack the votes for whatever he wanted passed. The clubs were all registered under the names of his various companies: York Barbell, York Foundry, Hoffman Labs, Swiss Automatic and Dover Advertising. The last being a shell company supposedly run by Alda which allowed her to pocket a tidy sum each month for all the ads placed in Muscular Development and Strength & Health. Of course, she never did any such thing. It was just a way to keep more money in the family and pay a few less taxes.
I was rather flattered that he had asked me to go along, but when I mentioned this to Grimek, he laughed and said gruffly, “Hell Starr, he doesn’t need your vote. He already has the whole committee in his back pocket. He just wants some company.” Which I discovered was true. But I really didn’t mind for what benefited the YBC also benefited me and my fellow lifters, and I was also curious to see what went on at the meeting. The Middle Atlantic AAU was the most powerful, in terms of weightlifting, in the country.
What everyone failed to mention was the fact that I should drive. This was not an oversight on my fellow workers part. It was all part of the initiation process. He picked me up at the office at 3:45. I knew that the meeting did not start until 7, but figured we were going to stop on the way for a leisurely meal. That would be normal behavior, but I soon learned that Hoffman was not a normal human being.
We roared out of the YBC parking lot like the devil was after us. Up Market Street we flew. Red lights had no meaning for him whatsoever. After zipping through the third one in a row, I mentioned that he was running red lights, thinking that he forgot his glasses, was preoccupied and had missed them or was color blind. It was none of the above. “After all” he replied, “they looked yellow to me.” And stepped on the gas.
Yes, in a pig’s eye, I thought, tightening my seat belt and locking one hand on the dash. Sometimes he was forced to stop because of a line of traffic in front of him. This irritated him to no end. He would grumble under his breath, rock back and forth and gun his engine. If the car in front of him didn’t move the instant the light changed, he blared his horn. On one occasion, when the car in front didn’t move quickly enough, he passed him on the right shoulder. Now I knew I was in a car with a madman.
Once we cleared York, he really let the Lincoln air out. I only checked the speedometer once; it was tickling ninety. He passed on curves, hills, anywhere his heart desired. If he ran one car off the road, he ran off half a dozen. They would shout and blare their horns, but he didn’t seem to mind.
When we finally pulled to a stop in downtown Philadelphia, my knuckles were white and my sphincter had chewed off all the buttons on the passenger seat. I was in a daze. Hoffman checked his watch, smiled and said proudly, “Made good time.”
Now I understood his insanity. It was a game to see if he could better his driving time from his last trip. At that moment I vowed to either drive home or catch a bus. We were over two hours early for the meeting. We sat around a lobby, doing nothing. I was starved, but had no idea where I was so waited it out. Surely he would feed me sometime during the night. After a rather short, uneventful meeting in which I was not even called upon to vote on anything, we left. I quickly offered to drive. Well, actually it was more in the form of begging. I told him I had never driven such a fine car and would really appreciate it if he would allow me to do so. He agreed rather readily and I gathered that breaking the time record from Philly to York wasn’t that important.
It wasn’t, because we made a stop for food. He directed me to a small carry-out, reeking of grease in South Philly. He bought us two huge cheese steaks, which we ate on the road. This, I found out, was standard procedure for any trip to Philly. Cheese steaks were cheap and you got lots of food. Right up Hoffman’s alley.
On the ride to Philly, he hadn’t talked much for he was too intent on his version of driving, but on the ride home he never shut up. It was his habit to talk about what he was currently writing about at the time. Unfortunately for me, he happened to be writing about problems of the digestive tract, so he went on and on about impacted bowels and the amount of feces found in the human body; none of which was helping me digest the greasy food I had just eaten.
That’s when I learned to get him to talk about his younger years. As long as the subject was Hoffman, he didn’t mind switching topics. Some of it was quite interesting. I asked how he got into physical culture in the first place and he said he got bored while living in western Pennsylvania, where his father was employed building dams, so he started running. At four years of age he used to run around and around a tennis court near his home. He of course exaggerated how far he ran, but this I took with a grain of salt. It was common knowledge around the YBC that you always divided any number he told you in half when it came to his exploits and doubled any number which dealt with money. His stories were certainly less offensive than his talk of excrement.
When I reported his wild driving the next day, everyone got a big laugh out of it. “Welcome to the club,” Suggs said. “You’ll learn to always drive when you travel with him or suffer the consequences.”
Which is exactly what I did from then on. Except for one trip. He had just bought a new Lincoln and was in a hurry, so he refused to get out of the driver’s seat. Reluctantly, I got in, hoping the Philly trip had been an unusual experience since we were going to a health food convention in Allentown. Hopefully, there wasn’t any driving record from York to Allentown to challenge. No such luck. Once again he broke the speed limit down Market Street, ignored all the red lights, then shot across the road in front of two oncoming cars into the parking lot of a Dairy Freeze. He asked me if I wanted anything, but I said no for it was only 4 o’clock. He went in, came out carrying a hot dog, dripping with relish, mustard and catsup along with a chocolate sundae. My job was to hold the sundae while he gulped down the hot dog. A good portion of the relish, mustard and catsup made its way to his shirt and suit coat, but he made short order of the hot dog, then disposed of the sundae just as quickly. It was as if he hadn’t eaten in a month.
Once he finished the sundae, he went back to driving with vengeance, the purpose being to scare the daylights completely out of me. I have to say he succeeded nicely.
He never stayed within fifteen miles of the speed limit, and on one occasion passed a semi on a long, steep hill when a car was clearly coming from the other direction. If the truck hadn’t had air brakes, he would have been toast. When we stopped in front of the high school, my legs were shaking and I wondered if I was going to be able to lift anything. That’s why he’d brought me along; to give a lifting demonstration. Then he was to deliver a talk on nutrition.
I didn’t lift much since the audience was all older folks and couldn’t tell the difference between a 200-pound press and a 300-pound effort. Hoffman took the stage and damned if he didn’t surprise me again. He actually stood in front of all those people in this high school auditorium and told them that he hadn’t eaten anything but two of his high protein bars a day for the past two weeks. Oh yes, he also drank lots of water to clean out his system. And ran a few hundred miles a week. He was so sincere that if I hadn’t seen him gulp down all that junk food only an hour earlier I think I would have believed him. Either he was the world’s greatest liar or his brain was so far gone he actually believed what he was saying.
Once again, he allowed me to drive home; it seemed going home was never as urgent as getting to where he was going. This was a new Lincoln, equipped with extremely sensitive power brakes. I had never driven any car with brakes like this and every time I stopped, I damn near sent him flying through the windshield. He would pop his head against the dash over and over. “Sorry,” I mumbled, “I’m not used to these power brakes.”
He didn’t say anything until after the fourth time I sent him flying forward, then he grumbled, “Well after all, Bill, I’d think you’d have the hang of it by now.” For the rest of the drive, he kept both hands planted firmly on the dashboard.
Eventually, I did learn to just barely touch the brake pedal, but he still kept himself braced, just in case. I was still a bit flabbergasted by his remarks about fasting and was dying to ask him why he told such a blatant lie. But I wasn’t sure how he might take the question and certainly didn’t want to offend the man who was responsible for feeding me and my family. When we got back to York, he had me pull into that same Dairy Freeze where he bought another hot dog and sundae. I knew then and there that any idea of broaching the subject was out of the question. He was totally mad.
I had one adventure while driving that helped to elevate my status with him tremendously. We were coming back from a convention in St. Louis. We had left his car at Baltimore Washington International airport and I was driving it back to York on I-83. We were almost to the Mason-Dixon line when smoke started rolling out of the hood. I pulled over, got the hood open and saw there was a fire on the engine. A fire of some size. Hoffman was beside me by this time. He just stood there looking at the flames. “Well after all, I wonder how that started?
I could have cared less how it started. What concerned me was being stranded on the highway late at night. I snatched up some grass from beside the shoulder, thinking it was green, but it was dry. When I stuffed it on the flames, they erupted even higher. Hoffman still did nothing but talk. “Why Bill, that didn’t seem like a good idea.”
I ran down the embankment, dug out some dirt and packed this on the fire. That did the trick. In minutes, the fire was out. I wasn’t sure if the car would run, but it did and got us home safely. For the rest of the drive, all he could do was talk about how I put that fire out. “That was really smart of you Bill. You saved my nice car.”
For several months after the event, whenever he saw me he would tell whoever he was talking to about how my quick action saved his nice car. He never did mention the part about me putting dry grass on the flames; and for once I was happy that he had this way of eliminating any fact that might interfere with a good story. The bad part about the episode from my standpoint was that he would also talk about it every time I was about to try an attempt on the platform when he was announcing. It did little for my concentration.
There were a few times when he preferred to drive himself, usually when he had some meeting that he didn’t want Dietz or Terpak to know about. He had to do many things behind their backs because they would often try to prevent him from doing anything that utilized the companies’ money, even though it was his money. On this particular trip, he was negotiating to buy a candy company and had driven by himself to look over the plant. It wass located in northwestern Maryland and he was coming home on the back roads. Pennsylvania back roads were built following cow paths, and are very hazardous with lots of sharp curves, blind hills and no shoulders. Even those who used them regularly knew to drive cautiously. Not Hoffman. He kept his foot to the gas pedal anyway. On this night, he met with an unexpected obstacle – a long bed truck was stalled alongside the road.
Hoffman sent his Lincoln full-tilt into the back of the trailer and he was taken by ambulance to York County Hospital. It’s really a wonder the collision didn’t kill him, but for all his shortcomings, he was a sturdy S.O.B. He had tubes dangling out of him and he was barely able to stand, but when Alda came to visit him, he persuaded her to take him out of the hospital and drive him back to the site of the crash. His purpose was to change the automatic speed gauge in his car to the legal limit before the authorities checked it. He had Alda change if from sixty to forty-five, then went back to his hospital bed for three days. The scam worked. When the State Police questioned him, he told them he was only going the limit and if they would check his car, they would find out this was the truth
Anyone who traveled with Hoffman can tell a tale or two about his driving, but no other individual spent more time in a car with Hoffman than Bill March, and he can tell lots of stories. Besides traveling to all the meets with Hoffman, Bill also put on as many as five exhibitions a week during the course of the year. He learned early-on that it was important to get behind the wheel and not let Hoffman drive. But even with this precaution taken care of, there could still be problems.
This is my favorite. Hoffman and March were coming home after a contest one night, traveling on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Hoffman had fallen asleep in the passenger seat. Bill had moved up behind a truck transporting a load of new cars. The cars were positioned in the truck backwards with their headlights towards Bill. All of a sudden Hoffman woke up. He sees those headlights coming directly towards him and lets out a blood-curdling scream that almost caused Bill to run off the road; he thought the old man had seen something he didn’t see. Needless to add, both their hearts got a nice jolt on that night.
Traveling with Daddy Hoffman was always an adventure. CORRECT ;D
-
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61SudBkzkaL._AC_SX466_.jpg)
Very Bruce Lee-like physique here.
-
This Hoffman fellow sounds like he has a vivid imagination.
-
Hoffman loved to bang broads, and threatened to molly whop Joe Weider. That makes him pretty awesome in my book.
-
What was Atlas on?
"Injectable" male affection.
-
A young Bob Hoffman. Good, solid physique for those days. This was taken in the 1930s I believe.
-
A young Bob Hoffman. Good, solid physique for those days. This was taken in the 1930s I believe.
Never saw that before. Impressive.
Hoffman born 1898.
-
Hoffman loved to bang broads, and threatened to molly whop Joe Weider. That makes him pretty awesome in my book.
Banging broads pissed his wife off so much she refused to pay for his burial when he died.