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  The Legend Of Chuck Ahrens: Fact Of Fiction?

Joe Roark
May 21, 2020 • 16 min read
Discover the history of quite possibly the strongest man in the world. Journey through a chronological history of the legend, Chuck Ahrens.

Probably no one in the modern world of strength is more mysterious and perplexing to place properly in terms of relative achievement than is Chuck Ahrens. He on no occasion competed in any official contest of strength, nor in any official display of physique. Indeed he most always wore long sleeved shirts even when on the beach in California's sunshine. Most photos show him from behind, and I have seen- and know of- only a single photo that displays his bare arm in anything resembling a flexed pose.

Further, I am unaware of any photos of him performing the one arm lifts for which he is famous. There is, in short, little documentation to present except in the form of witnesses, who unfortunately do not voice a uniform report. Even some who describe the extant photos misreport what the photo clearly presents; to wit, the photo where a 75 pound young girl is being supported on Chuck's outstretched arm, has been described as the girl standing on his WRIST, when clearly she is standing astride his elbow joint, and for those who do not understand the importance of those few inches is where such descriptions particularly stumble.

In addition, Chuck worked none at all on leg development, but that little detail did not prevent one writer assuming Chuck could squat with 800 plus pounds. He also neglected his back during workouts, so that really all he worked was arms and shoulders, and depending on the reliability of reports, perhaps some chest. Perhaps. This lack of leg and back strength may explain why, during his heavy overhead one hand lifts he sometimes held on to a pole or upright bracing.

The very lack of leg and back exercise makes one wonder how those body parts could even stabilize some of the lifts credited overhead.

Below, not exhaustively, but representatively, I have presented some quotes in chronological order over the course of his gym lifting career. I have refrained from intertwining commentary with the quotes except where confusion would have resulted. A summary of lifts may be presented later, and I leave to the reader the decision on merit of those claims.

Some of the claims ascribed to Ahrens border on the fantastic - beyond what would be or could be expected from others in his era. I give more weight to Wilhelm and Merjanian and others who actually witnessed some feats and who are themselves very strong and can therefore interpret what was involved - indeed they used some of the same bars and plates as did Ahrens, so substitution seems unlikely.

But please keep in mind these guidelines as you read what follows:

Who is reporting and is the reporting firsthand, or rumor.
How do the claims compare to other known strength feats from ANY time period? (For example some doubt Arthur Saxon's 370 pound bent press, but accept Ahren's three reps one arm push press with 375 pounds?)
Later, were any retractions necessary because of incorrect reporting?
Notice the discrepancies of height, arm size, etc. some of which could be evolving progress- except for height, or could have been simple guesswork!
The History Of Chuck Ahrens

MUSCLE POWER (May 1955, p 64) - Age 20, 6', 230 lbs chest 51", arm 19".

MUSCLE POWER (Oct 1956, p 63) - Now at 245 lbs bodyweight, age 22, claims he has never been defeated at arm wrestling, and now that Mac Batchelor has retired, he is claiming to be world champ.

Peary Rader in LIFTING NEWS (May 1957, p - "Another real sensation we met out at Muscle Beach the other day was Chuck Ahrens, a 6', 280 lb. giant who has specialized on upper body work until he must have about the strongest arms in the world. With a 57 inch chest and 21 inch arms he has performed a dumbell press with two 170 lb. dumbbells simultaneously and hopes soon to do this with two 200 lb. dumbbells. He does reps in the triceps extension on bench with 355 and swing curls with two 165 lb. dumbbells. He promises to go into Olympic liftingwhen he can press the two 200 lb. dumbbells. He has done very little leg work and will need a lot of this to be a great Olympic lifter. When and if he does start leg work his bodyweight will probably go up to well over 300 lbs. but what a big fellow he will be then. He has the broadest and heaviest shoulders we have ever seen on any man."

Peary Rader in IRON MAN (Jul 1957, p 22) - Photo of Chuck facing camera, caption: "Here is Chuck Ahrens. Iron Man is proud of the fact that they have introduced to the public for the first time such men as Doug Hepburn, then Paul Anderson, and now Chuck Ahrens, among many other great firsts. Chuck has the broadest shoulders of any man we have ever seen. He is simply unbelievable. When he was standing next to Anderson someone remarked that he was the only man to ever make Anderson look small. Chuck weighs 280 at 6 ft. tall, and has a 57" chest and 21" arms. He does a two dumbbells press together with 162 in each hand for 4 reps!

He has pressed two 170 pound dumbbells simultaneously for one rep. He does the dumbell curl 3 reps with a pair of 165 pound dumbbells with a little swing to start them. He has made 3 reps in the triceps press on bench with 355 pounds!! No other man in history has ever performed so much in these lifts. We saw him almost succeed with a one arm press with 210 approximately, which would have been close to military, though he did hold to a post with his free hand. His favorite exercises are curls, and presses with dumbbells and the triceps press on bench with barbell. He specializes on these with heavy weights and rather low reps. He has done almost no leg and back work. He says he will work on the three Olympic Lifts when he can do a press simultaneously with two 200 pound dumbbells, and we believe he will succeed with this soon. We will keep you posted on further progress of activity of this new, fabulous strong man." [So, in 1957 Rader witnessed him almost succeed (that is he witnessed a failure) with 210 lbs]

IRON MAN (Sep 1957, p 28) - Photo of Ahrens performing a triceps press: Chuck Ahrens of growing fame is shown as he drives in 345 in this method. He started this from the bench behind his head and as I recall he did this two reps rather easily and has done considerably more in training. This photo was taken at Muscle Beach by Tom Humphrey, himself a man of considerable lifting ability. We have received a lot of requests for more information on Ahrens and will provide it as often as we get it."- Rader

Peary Rader in LIFTING NEWS (Sep 1957, p 5) - About Ralph Bass: "Ralph recently made a set of calipers to measure certain bodily proportions with and found that the shoulders of Chuck Ahrens had an unbelievable span of 26-5/8". Most of the other musclemen at the beach range from 20 to 21 inches. He [Ahrens] is doing some unbelievable training such as one arm curls with 165, forward raises with 150 while holding an upright with the other hand. He is doing one arm dumbell presses for reps with 280 (hard to believe isn't it?).

He will soon be ready for his simultaneous press with two 200 lb. dumbbells and then will take on dead lifts and squats to build up for Olympic lifts." [Yes, it is hard to believe that though he failed to get 210 earlier in the year, he now is getting 280 for reps]

IRON MAN (Nov 1957, p 38) - Photo: "Here is big Chuck Ahrens doing some warm up dumbell presses at Muscle Beach recently with some very light 115 lb. dumbbells. He pressed these like they weighed nothing, for he uses 165 for reps after a good warm up and soon expects to be doing it with two 200 lb dumbbells. Photo by [Tom] Humphrey."

Then page 39: Rader: "A lot of interest has been created by the advent of Chuck Ahrens, and one of his friends sends us some amusing information about the fabulous fellow. He tells us that his arm is the hugest he has ever seen, as well as the hardest, and it is as dense as most fellows forearms. Chuck is fond of jokes likes to drive his car with his arm resting on the sill of the right front window, making it appear no one is driving the car. One day while doing this he misjudged and ran into a little old lady. Of course the little old lady was in a car so there was little damage, but

Chuck got a good going over from the little old lady, which was probably well deserved. He likes to eat six large steaks per day to maintain his bulk and size (that is one way to get your protein, fellows, if you can afford it). He plans to reach 330 lbs. bodyweight and wanted to remain out of the limelight until he reached that poundage but you can't hide those huge shoulders. He does an overhead triceps press with a 305 barbell and throws it up like nothing.

Our friend guesses that Chuck could do a snatch with 330 right now and without splitting. He does very little leg work but should he ever decide to get serious on leg work he should make records in the superheavy class. We will try to keep readers informed about Chuck and his progress but he is very much against publicity."

MUSCLE POWER (Nov 1957, p 45) - Liederman finally 'secured a photo of him' 6' tall, 270 lbs, age 22, arm 21.5". "He can do standing presses for four reps with a pair of 160 lb. bells, do seated cheating curls with the same 160 pounders, and also one arm rowing exercise with 350 pounds! He owns 21 inch arms too." [note: apparently during that paragraph, Ahrens lost a half inch in arm size.]

Peary Rader in LIFTING NEWS (Dec 1957, p 2) - "Chuck Ahrens is still in heavy training and heavy as ever. He is no longer with Les Stockton (Les now has his gym operating on a key basis- members having keys). Chuck is training at the 'Cave', Tanny's 4th and Broadway gym in Santa Monica. So the roof may come in any day when he drops those monster dumbbells."

Peary Rader in LIFTING NEWS (Jan 1958, p 3) - Includes a photo of Ahrens: "Chuck Ahrens is still training hard and getting stronger and is now doing alternate curls with 160 lb. dumbbells if fairly strict style. He says he will start squatting soon in preparation for the Olympic Lifting. However,

Chuck is not too interested in the Olympic lifts so it is not certain how well he will do, for it takes a lot of hard work and a driving interest to make an Olympic champion. With his immense power he ought to find it fairly easy to approach the world records with a short training period on lifting technique. He is now weighing around 300 pounds."

Then three paragraphs later: "Ernest Anderson just writes that Chuck Ahrens did NOT lift the two 200 pound dumbbells in the dumbell press but that Chuck says he could do it in two weeks training. Wish our reporters would get these things straight. Anyhow we will await the moment when he does this outstanding feat. Wonder if Paul Anderson couldn't do this stunt rather easily?"

LIFTING NEWS (Feb 1958, p 5) - Photo of Ahrens at 290 lbs and Paul Anderson at 355, with Chuck looking much more impressive than Paul.

STRENGTH & HEALTH (Feb 1958, p 54) - Ray Van Cleef: "Ralph [Bass] measured the immense shoulder width of Chuck Ahrens with a special pair of calipers. Found the bi-deltoid measurement to be 26-5/8" (?). This means that this Titan will be needing oversized doors to walk through. Chuck's unequaled dumbell exercise lifts are well known in iron game circles. His present aim is to work up to where he can press a pair of 200 lb. dumbbells overhead standing."

IRON MAN (Mar 1958, p 34) - Rader: "We have just recently received news that big Chuck Ahrens is now doing his two dumbbells simultaneous press with two 200 lb. dumbbells. In other words, he is doing a dumbbells press with 400 lbs. He also does a 300 lb. press with one arm for three reps. This press is mostly a one arm cont. press as he is not an accomplished bent presser. He is now weighing around 300 pounds."

MUSCLE BUILDER (Mar 1958, p 68) - A 270 pound "one arm overhead erect press."

MUSCLE BUILDER (Dec 1958, p 46) - Is down to 270 pounds bodyweight, hopes to gain to 350 pounds to make some world records

IRON MAN (Jan 1959, p 35) - Photo of Ahrens and Paul Anderson - Rader: "HE DID IT! Remember when we reported that Chuck Ahrens, the California giant, was pressing two dumbbells simultaneously and that he expected to do the same with 200 lb. dumbbells? Well, many thought this was humanly impossible, and probably gave it no more thought.

The other day we received the following letter from a friend of Chuck's. 'I am a close friends (sic) of Chuck Ahrens. In the gym last week, during a workout, I saw him press a PAIR of 204 POUND DUMBELLS TOGETHER'. He said this was the first time in the past 3 months that he had done any pressing together but that he has been doing one arm presses with 310 for 3 reps. His body - photo at right we show three of the strongest men in the world, Paul Anderson and Chuck Ahrens with backs to us and Dave Ashman facing us. Note the very broad back of Ahrens in plaid shirt). [note: the text is typed as presented, though confusing] We have been unable to get a physique shot of Chuck, and as far as I know, he has never had such a photo taken and refuses to take off his shirt.

We will keep you posted on future lifts of this great giant. I think he has the broadest shoulders in the world. It occurs to us that if Ashman had the upper body power of Ahrens and Ahrens had the lower body power of Anderson, what a pair of world beaters they would be."

IRON MAN (March 1959, p 45) - Liederman: "Chuck Ahrens the massive powerhouse of California is now down to a mere 280 lbs. and tells me that he is to very soon get right back into hard training again. He wants to surpass his marks of 315 lbs. in a one arm press for three reps, and curl 180 lbs. twice with right arm and once with left. Not bad, eh?"

MUSCLE BUILDER (Jun 1959, p 36) - 225 pounds triceps curls; 135 pound extended arm, then curled it, witnessed by Charles Coster.

MUSCLE BUILDER (Jul 1959, p 58) - At age 25 now and 290 pounds, three reps dumbell press with 315 pounds. Delt width is claimed as 28", chest 60", and he cleaned and pressed a pair of 205 pound dumbbells.

IRON MAN (Jul 1959, p 51) - Bob Hise: "P.S. I bet the cops had a hard time riding (sic) Chuck Ahrens up. Seems as though he had loaned his car to a friend who received a ticket for traffic violation but failed to let Chuck in on the secret. Bruce Conners came to Chuck's rescue and Chuck is once again lifting everything in sight at the Physical Services Gym."

MUSCLE BUILDER (Oct 1959, p 17) - Photo of his back p 47: Seated dumbell curl with 180 pounds, slight cheat, bodyweight 300 pounds.

IRON MAN (Jun 1960, p 31) - Bob Hise "Have heard that Chuck Ahrens can do an almost military one arm press with 300."

STRENGTH & HEALTH (Aug 1960, p 26) - Photo with Bert Elliott, caption: "Massive Chuck Ahrens, the California giant who never shows his muscles, and Bert Elliott, the former national weightlifting champion who is pound for pound one of the greatest bent pressers in the world. The 201-pound solid dumbell at their feet is Bert's pet training bell. They say Ahrens can handle it as easily as an ordinary strongman tosses around a 100 pounder. Wouldn't Dave Ashman's legs under this guy's upper body make some man?"

IRON MAN (Mar 1961, p 56) - George Redpath: "A note on the fabulous Chuck Ahrens tells us that the writer has recently seen Chuck curl 200 lbs. WITH ONE ARM. He does a one arm push press with 350. We hope someone on the west coast will keep us posted on what Chuck is doing."

IRON MAN (May 1961, p 35) - Rader: "Much has been written about Chuck Ahrens and I am sure that many of you Iron Man readers find what you see printed hard to believe. I have seen Ahrens and assure you that he is a very strong man. I think the greatest biceps feats ever performed by man are: right hand curl 185, left hand curl 175, and get this- a forward leaning semi concentration curl with a barbell loaded to 150 pounds. Needless to say, all these feats have been executed by MR. CHARLEY AHRENS and before bona fide witnesses."

STRENGTH & HEALTH (Jun 1961, p 62) - Staff: "Comes now a fresh news item from a California reader who has enigmatic CHUCK AHRENS up to 300 pounds bodyweight and pressing a pair of 270-pound dumbbells ten reps! Same source says AHRENS can press 340 pounds with one hand, Why oh why doesn't this guy get an A.A.U. card and win another world record for Uncle Sam by exerting some of his power in public?"

STRENGTH & HEALTH (Aug 1961, p 9) - A letter to the editor from Steve B. Safran of Englewood, New Jersey: "Dear Sirs: Just finished reading your always interesting and informative 'Iron Grapevine' column in the June edition of Strength & Health. I can literally say that I was stunned by the 'facts' you revealed about a California bodybuilder called Chuck Ahrens. If the prodigious feats of pressing 340 pounds with one hand and handling a pair of 270-pound dumbbells for two reps in the press are true, it would qualify him as by far the strongest man in the world.

I'm sure S&H readers would like to know more about Chuck Ahrens and why he doesn't compete in A.A.U. weightlifting contests. It seems to me that he's a sure bet to qualify for the U.O. Olympic team. I hope we can see some photos of this superman in action!" editor's reply: "The muscle world at large probably never will know exactly how strong Chuck Ahrens is inasmuch as he apparently has no desire to perform in public. What's more, he's reluctant to have his photograph taken, absolutely refusing to pose at all unless full (sic) clothed, including a long sleeved shirt. Ed."

IRON MAN (Jan 1962, p 10) - Bob Hise: Hise mentions in an article about Bruce Conner's Physical Services Gym, 10830 Santa Monica Blvd in west Los Angeles, California, that Ahrens trains there.

Peary Rader wrote in LIFTING NEWS (Oct 1964, p 25) - "We continually receive requests for information about Chuck Ahrens, but unfortunately this is hard to come by for it seems he will not perform lifts on request but only as the whim strikes him and not at any authorized contest or event. An unbelievable report comes second hand from Dave Sheppard that he saw Ahrens clean and press two dumbbells of 550 lbs.(sic) He cleans these from a dead hang, we understand, and probably boosts them up with hip swing. This lift is too fabulous to believe. We wish several fellows could vouch for some of his lifts, weighing them and giving an accurate and factual account of what he does.

It is also said that he never practices sissy lifts like the bench press, but recently bench pressed 400 lbs for 28 reps (he calls them sissy, not me!). We also hear he presses two 185 lb. dumbbells while seated. Now will someone please get together and give us the story on this myth of California. I personally have seen him do some unbelievable lifts some years ago but nothing like this. 550 lbs. is too far above what any other man can press with barbells to make it believable. In fact it is too far above anyone else's jerk. There is your bedtime story for this month."

Now the correction from LIFTING NEWS (Mar 1965, p - Rader: "For those power lifters who have been following our reports of various men around the country, we now hear that the report attributed to Dave Sheppard about Chuck Ahrens' fabulous feats may have been in error. Latest report is that Ahrens hasn't done any bench presses since his high school days and certainly never cleaned and pressed two 250 lb dumbbells.

He is doing dumbell bench presses with 225 on an incline bench that is very steep-almost 90 degrees. He is now weighing 330 and his arm measures 22-3/8. Unfortunately, accurate information on Chuck seems very difficult to come by. He has been seen to do a triceps press with 400 in 1956. We don't know what he has done since then."

MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT (Dec 1966, p 32) - Photo: "The fabulous 350-pound Chuck Ahrens who is reputed to have 24-inch biceps." Then on page 55 "CHUCK AHRENS was mentioned in our November issue as weighing 350 pounds and having a 66-inch chest and 24-inch biceps. We also said there had never been a physique photo of him published but at least we got one with his sleeve rolled up. Our old friend Terry Robinson sent it and it was taken by Chuck Connors at whose gym Ahrens trains." [note- Bruce Conners?] [same photo appears in Feb 1989 p 27 of MD]

IRON MAN (May 1969, p 47) - Rader: Just a mention that 'big Chuck Ahrens is down to 275' in bodyweight.

In PLUSA (Mar 1983, p 74), to begin his series The Pioneers of Power, Pete Vuono selected Chuck Ahrens, and the following info is culled from the one page article: 6', 330 pounds, chest 58", arms 22-3/8", bi-delt width 28". Strict one arm press for three reps with 310 pounds. Standing, with 235 lbs. in each hand, he pressed five reps. Incline board at 90 degrees, 5 reps with 225 in each hand. Lying triceps extension, down to behind the head then back up, in 1956 got a rep with 400 lbs. Standing behind neck press 390. Bench press 28 reps with 400 lbs.

MILO (Apr 1994, p 30) - By Bruce Wilhelm, claims: Herb Glossbrenner, described by Wilhelm as 'a somewhat enthusiastic author', 'has listed him [Ahrens] in the 800-plus squat category, and 600-plus bench category'. Imagine that, no one else, that I have been able to find writing about Ahrens, ascribes any degree or amount of weight to Ahrens in the squat- everyone else who mentions his legs bemoans the fact that he did not work his legs very hard, if AT ALL. So not training legs is the key to an 800 plus pound squat. Mark me down for it too, then.

Then Wilhelm spoke to Paul Magistretti who offered the following info:
Ahrens was 6'1-1/2" tall, optimum weight was 320 lbs, weight in 1994 was 200-210 lbs. Paul claims to have witnessed Ahrens, in good style, 'do a forward one armed lateral with a 200-pound dumbbell'. Other feats: 375 lying triceps extension for two reps from the forehead. Standing triceps press 305 for two reps- all these without warm-ups. Paul says sometimes Chuck would stop training for a while and his weight would drop considerably.

Pat Casey, at age 19, trained with Ahrens and saw Chuck sit on the end of a bench, and do alternate curls with a 200 lb. dumbbell in each hand. One arm press 320.

Randy Strossen offers that Paul Anderson told of seeing Ahrens do a one arm press with 300.

MILO (Apr 1995, p 20) - Steve Merjanian measured Ahrens arms at 23-1/2". Loaded a bent 1" diameter bar with plates, best effort for three reps was 375 lbs. "Charlie could take 150-pound dumbbells and hold them in a crucifix." Steve was born Jul 29, 1935 and says Ahrens was a year older than he, so born 1934? Once benched 405 for 20. Did no leg work. Says Chuck hurt his shoulder in 1960, and Steve doubts that Ahrens reached his potential.

IRON GAME HISTORY (May 1998, p 20) - By Steve Neece.
Steve tells of witnessing Ahrens curling an Olympic bar with a 35 lb plate on each side, no collars. (115 lbs): "He bent down and lifted it clear of the floor with one hand so it was hanging from his hand with his arm fully extended downward. He was bent over with his free hand braced on his knee. No part of the arm holding the weight touched any part of his body. He then curled the weight up to his chin without any body movement.He may have been the strongest curler in the history of the sport."

There you have a summary, without a conclusion. More on him later.

For the best discussion on the net for Iron History visit the IronHistory forums at http://www.ironhistory.com. Joe also writes a weekly IronHistory column on cyberpump.com.

Bill Piche,

[funk51]

  BADDEST MOTHERFUCKERS EVER- ERIC PEDERSEN, THE MOB LEG BREAKER WHO “INVENTED” THE BODYPART SPLIT, PART 1: THE TLDR AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF HIS INSANE LIFE
PUBLISHED ON NOVEMBER 8, 2020BY JAMIE CHAOS
8 year old Mr California Eric Pederson, flexing for the cops and press while under arrest for car theft.
One of the questions I’ve never thought to ask in my pursuit of training knowledge was “who invented the bodypart workout?” as I natually assumed that to be as genuinely unknowable as the first time a human created fire for cooking. It’s as unknowable as the logic that supports being pro-life at the same time as pro-death penalty and anti-mask, or what sort of universe a white hole would deposit the USS Enterprise into, and as such I never gave it a single thought. That said, I would hardly say that I wasn’t curious, as there seemed to be no real watershed moment in bodybuilding that hearkened the change, but I just figured the progenitor of that iconic workout was forever lost to history.

You might imagine my surprise, then, when I randomly saw a pic of an adonis named Eric Pedersen so Germanically beautiful I’m sure his existence caused some messy underpants in Nazis the world over and discovered multiple claims that his workout was the first bodypart workout ever published in a magazine. And yet, I’ve never heard his name and I almost guarantee you haven’t either, because this strapping young blond Hercules once had a pimple on his ass. That, and he was far too interesting to find himself mired in the banality of conformity or to wrap himself in the American flag like it was a blanket that dispensed money and handjobs, so after his pimple sent him packing, Eric Pedersen went on about living the life basically every single high school bro with a love for the iron.

Meet Eric Pedersen, the ultimate bro.


This is the Chevrolet Fleetline, the most popular car in America in 1947. It takes twice as long as a Toyota Yaris to get from zero to sixty (over a third of a minute) and had a top speed of 30mph less than the Yaris. That said, there was only one paved highway in the US, so it’s not like you were going anywhere fast anyway. Plus, when you got where you were going, about the only recreations available were wife beating, hunting for communists (that was the year the proto-Red Hatted creationists began the Red Scare, and it was only months until those pussies ruined comics as well), random racism (that was the first year the kind whites of the South allowed the negroes they so graciously freed to play baseball among whites starting in 1947! The liberal agenda had TAKEN OVER AMERICA!), or America’s old standard, drunkenness.
The United States of 1947 was a considerably different place than it is today. The fastest car on the road would get outrun by your grandma’s Prius, as it topped out at 110 miles an hour and had a zero to sixty of eleven of the longest seconds of anyone’s life (at least if you were trying to merge onto a highway with actual cars on it, rather than livestock and horses or whatever the hell has the gall to move that slowly. The hottest broad in the country was Mae West, a combination of Nikki Glaser, Lady Gaga, and Pink, who travelled the country with her Revue in the company of a stable of bodybuilder “bodyguards” who protected her from the right wing psychopaths who threatened her every action with bullets and hellfire. Well, at least the part with the gaggle of illiterates with extra floppy cocks trying to tell useful people how to live their lives is relatable, but the rest of America was indistinguishable from a developing European nation like Moldova- crime was out of control, people claimed that they were noble but were mostly amphetamine-addicted shitbags with brain damage and mental illness from the lead in their gasoline, air, and paint. It was not, as idiots like to assert, when “America was great” or any such anti-historical, rosy-glasses nonsense.


Mae West was also where Rodney Dangerfield obviously drew most or all of his inspiration, because every line he delivered in Caddyshack sounded suspiciously like lines I’ve seen West deliver in documentaries, just as a short, sexy, platinum blonde thick chick in 10″ platform heels rather than what I’d imagine Joe Biden is like when he’s coked up. Not only that, the chick balled out harder than Puffy- she was the highest paid person at Paramount Pictures and the second highest paid person in the United States (to publishing magnate William Hearst) in 1935; went to jail for ten days for obscenity (which gave her Martha Stewart-esque street cred) and was such a beloved star the warden and his wife took her out to dinner nightly; and was the first seriously badass broad/ sexpot in modern pop culture in spite of the fact she really wasn’t all that hot from a purely physical perspective and she could have easily fit into an airplane’s overhead compartment.

And because rustling the jimmies of social conservatives has always been the favorite pastime of the awesome, Mae West was a big LGTB rights activist before there was even such a thing, and she dated the world colored middleweight title holder “Gorilla” Jones, in what is the most oddly progressive thing that could be said in an otherwise racist-looking sentence.  And when her apartment building refused to let him enter because it was a “white only” building, she bought the building and changed the rule, because she was a boss like that.

As for America, we’d dropped two nukes on Japan two years earlier and ended the “war to end all wars,” but the world was still a pretty messy place. Europe and much of Eastern Europe were in ruins, but life in the US was humming right along. It was that year that a blond-haired 19 year old named Charles Putnam who’d just won the Mr. California title got it into his head to win the prestigeous AAU Mr. America. The sole problem? The event was in Chicago, Pedersen lived in LA, and he had no car to travel the sole highway that would get him here- historic route 66, the first ever paved highway in the United States, had only existed as a means for America’s impoverished to reach the shores of California within the last decade. So, that teenager did was any other red-blooded American would do- he stole a car so slow it’s almost certain you could outrun it so he could take the only highway in America to Chicago.

8 year old Mr California Eric Pederson, flexing for the cops and press while under arrest for car theft.
Upon being arrested, Pedersen did what any of us would do- he popped his shit off and immediately started posing for the photographer working at the station.
As the picture indicates, Pedersen and his buddy didn’t make it out of LA in their stolen car, but Pedersen did make it to the Mr. America stage in time to win the Most Muscular, making him the youngest bodybuilder to ever win a major title at that time (the winner of the most muscular was the best bodybuilder- the winner of the overall was essentially the winner of a beauty pageant of which bodybuilding was a part). Pedersen lost the overall in that contest by a half point to Steve Reeves, who went on to become Hercules in the movies, due to a single zit on his leg (Fair 207), but he was crowned the most muscular man in America (and likely the person with the most serious criminal record to ever cross the Mr America stage). While Reeves wowed crowds onscreen with his flexing and wooden acting, Eric Pedersen went on to become a prolific professional wrestlers and then a collector for the mob in Las Vegas, all before succumbing to throat cancer (which was slaughtering people in that era because of the horrific air pollution when they were growing up- Sammy Davis Jr died of it that year, my dad nearly died the previous year of it, and bombshell Lana Turner, Beatle George Harrison, and a few other famous people all croaked of the same shit within a decade of each other).


Holy shit, what a Hercules that man would have been.
You might think that none of this historical shit matters, but when you consider how hard it is to build a 19″ lean arm with all of the steroids, supplements, convenience, gyms, medical care, and amazing food choices we have, imagine how goddamn hard it was to do when a simple trip to get groceries meant in 1947:

In a best case scenario, you were taking a car so slow it’s hard to conceive of its lack of forward progress, inhaling the horrendously noxious, lead-bearing CO2 it belched from every orifice, banging your spine to pieces over mostly dirt roads to three separate non-airconditioned stores (butcher, green grocer, and wherever you’d buy your dry goods) before returning to your dingy, un-air-conditioned abode to get drunk and beat your kids while listening to the radio, because there were only twenty television stations in the entire United States.

We’re not just talking about someone who built a bunch of muscle using less than a tenth of the untold bounty of financial, transportation, food, supplement, and drug choices you have at your disposal, but a man who did so to the point that at nineteen he was the single most muscular person on the planet, and as such he is a man to whom you should pay attention.


This pic really shows off Reeves’ tiny little baby waist, as that 150lber seems to be leaner, but with the same size waist.
Bear in mind that at this point, there was no Mr. Universe (it wasn’t created until the following year) or Mr. Olympia, and bodybuilding was still in its infancy. The Mr. America title was for all intents and purposes the biggest bodybuilding title in the world, with the Mr Britain contest held by the Health and Strength League (which became NABBA, the guys who held the Mr Universe for years) in a rather distant second, as you can see from the pic above of 6’1″ and 195lb 1947 Mr America overall winner Steve Reeves, who dwarfs the Mr Britain winner of that year, Jim Elliot. So it’s understandable why Eric Pedersen, who was walking around at around 200 pounds at only 5’10”, might think it would be worth stealing a car to take a crack at the title, because he had the mass and the cuts to overpower just about anybody on the planet.


Sam Loprinzi will have his own short article next week, but his 17″ arms were the biggest arms I’ve ever seen on a tiny man.
That’s not to say, however, that everyone was going after the overall title in the Mr. America- in fact, it was quite the opposite. Although Pedersen’s first crack at the Mr America occurred when he was 16 (he didn’t place), the intervening year saw a watershed change in the Mr. America contest. In that year, a 5’7″ 160lb bodybuilder named Sam Loprinzi took second in the overall to the dude who introduced box squats to powerlifting, Alan Stephen. Stephen was thought to be the greatest thing since sliced bread (he was a highly accomplished Olympic lifter, cleaned up in odd lifting as a proto-powerlifter, had a squeaky-clean image, and he was pursuing a bachelors in something- he was the consummate “Renaissance Man”), and no one thought Reeves had a chance in hell of ever unseating him- that’s how fucking good he was. And yet lean-as-hell Sam Loprinzi flashed his carved-from-marble 17″ arms at the judges and they lost their goddamn minds, in spite of the fact that Stephen’s arms were an inch and a half bigger, if somewhat less lean.

Loprinzi had known going into the Mr. America that a short man stood absolutely no chance of winning that beauty pageant, because he’d seen Dan Lurie, the man who essentially invented the crab pose, take second and most muscular four years in a row because he was only 5’6″ and 168lbs. Lurie had spent his career going up against dudes who were much taller, and were thus more aesthetic and graded better for the overall, and when he’d attempted to prove he was the best on the planet the AAU circled their wagons and deemed Lurie a professional (and thus ineligible to compete) to prevent him competing against Grimek.


So after winning his class in the other big bodybuilding contest in 1946, Bob Hoffman’s Most Muscular Man in America (the contest inspired by the Lurie-Grimek beef), Loprinzi entered the Mr. America simply to win the title of Most Muscular Man in America (and basically the world), and was public in his announcement that the Most Muscular was the title that really proved who the real bodybuilders were. And that was the environment that the gorgeous and jacked thug (at that point he had at least one assault conviction under his belt as a juvenile, plus the car theft at a bare minimum) named Eric Pedersen entered the fray for the best built man on the planet.


“I firmly believe in individual muscle work besides group movements, for it again reaches the state of concentration – watching that biceps move and contract with all the force the weight, the thought, and the eye can furnish during each movement.”

Eric Pedersen Essential Facts
Born: 17 Aug 1928 (born Charles Roland Putnam in Newport Beach, CA)

Died: October 13, 1990 aged 62 (Bacliff, TX, United States of throat cancer)

Height: 5’10

Weight: 200-225lbs

Arms: the measurements are mostly immaterial because his arms were so damn pretty. at 19 years old, they were 18″ (cold) and 18.5″ (pumped); as he grew older he stretched them to 20″+ (which matched his calf measurements)

Best Lifts: interestingly, I could find almost nothing about his strength beyond the fact that he was seriously strong. By one account, he once tied a rope to a boat motor and swam across a bay towing the motor (Flammannelli), which sounds preposterous, but I am not a buoyant man and thus am no authority on towing boat motors even across a kiddie pool.

[I attempted to interview Flammannelli about Pedersen, but the man is a fossil and had his Boomer turned all the way up, so he wasn’t rational enough for me to get anything useful out of him. He insisted, for instance, that Pedersen never had kids, which he did and with whom I’ve been in touch. The man was a dickhead to boot, and I don’t need beefs with the nearly dead, so I abandoned him as a source of information lest I kill him for his insolence.]


Yeah, my money is on this man having the best golden age physique- just on abs alone he was unmatched.
Reasons to Know His Name
either invented or popularized bodypart workouts. If nothing else, he was the first person to push them in the magazines
was voted most muscular man in America over Steve Reeves (and essentially the world, because at that time the United States (and by extension our little bronation Canada) was essentially the only developed nation untouched by war
won the NWA tag team title with Classy Freddie Blassie
spent his retirement in Las Vegas, where he was an enforcer for the mob. As his son Eric Putnam stated, “legs broke quick around dad.”
was considered the youngest bodybuilder to win a major bodybuilding contest when he was competing in 1955, and should still stand among guys like Harold Poole, Casey Viator, Lee Haney, and Branch Warren as one of the best teenage bodybuilders of all time
was considered the most popular wrestler in the Pacific Northwest in 1953. Regionally, he was Roman Reigns for a year, but the wrestling scene was way too fractured for there to be a better direct comparison with the modern industry
had a speaking role in a movie designed by the Coast Guard to make it look cool to the populace called Fighting Coast Guard. It didn’t work worth a shit, as the film wasn’t well reviewed, but the man had a speaking role in a wide release film.
Jump to Part 2 for Pederson’s wide-ranging and lengthy “almost was a champ” careers in both wrestling and bodybuilding, or

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ADDEST MOTHERFUCKERS EVER- ERIC PEDERSEN, PART 2- AN ALMOST GOD-TIER LEGEND IN TWO “SPORTS”: HIS WRESTLING AND BODYBUILDING CAREERS
PUBLISHED ON NOVEMBER 11, 2020BY JAMIE CHAOS
Eric Pederson looking completely unhinged and being held back by two cops after an intense match.
Eric Pedersen’s Bodybuilding / Wrestling / Acting Career (1946-1961)
Following the 1947 second place showings, everyone thought Pedersen was going to dominate bodybuilding, but like 1946 Mr America Al Stephans, Pedersen faded from the stage, which was packed with big name lifters from what was then the old school starting to really battle it out with the beasts of the new (Sig Klein, who spend most of his career in an old-timey strongman singlet, had won the biggest bodybuilding contest in the world in 1946, but only because he and John Grimek, a younger but still old school bodybuilder, were in entirely different classes and never took the stage together). Pedersen dipped his toe in the water a bit, but he was already wrestling full-time by 1946, which meant constant travel in shitty cars on dirt roads and nightly matches all up and down the West Coast.


You’ve seen the pic of “perfect” Steve Reeves standing half flexed next to a relaxed Pedersen, but look at how peeled the man was in 1947. He looks flat because the AAU thought that bodybuilding was way too gay, so they refused to allow competitors to oil up or wear anything but plain trunks for a couple of years. In spite of that fact, my man looked to have been carved from cold, hard granite.
For all but the first year of his eleven-year bodybuilding career, Pedersen was a professional wrestler based in the LA area but travelling throughout the contiguous United States and Hawaii (which is insane considering the total lack of a highway system in the United States at the outset of his career- travel was certainly not easy). From 1946 to his retirement in 1961, Pedersen bodyslammed his way through opponents in over 1000 matches, which left little time for the other shenanigans the big dudes from the gym he called home in Hollywood got up to, and those motherfuckers were living the dream.

The owner of that gym, 1938 Mr America and Hollywood stuntman Bert Goodrich, utilized his position to staff Mae West’s scandalous travelling review with lifters from his gym, all of whom became either somewhat wealthy and famous or just marginally so from their time with the ultimate diva of the 30s and 40s, but somehow Eric Pedersen didn’t join the likes of 1948 Mr America George Eiferman, shredded pothead and Gold’s Venice mainstay Irvin “Zabo” Koszewski, rags-to-riches pretty boy phenom and 1954 Mr. America Dick DuBois, hypertalented handbalancer and Mr Muscle Beach Dominic Juliano, founder of Gold’s and World’s Gym Joe Gold, raw meat scarfing sultan of shred Armand Tanny, sword and sandal actor Gordon Mitchell, and Jane Mansfield’s eventual husband and 1955 Mr Universe Mickey Hargitay. Given the licentious nature of Mae West’s review, one would think it would have been right up Pedersen’s alley, but he was apparently more interested in breaking bones than busting nuts at the time (either that, or he really didn’t want to dye his hair black for her show, which was a requirement).


These dudes made bank working for Mae West. As kind of a proto-Chippendales male chorus line, these dudes pulled in $250 a week ($2700 in modern cash) for basically just getting drooled over by an aging sex symbol/comedianne for which there’s no real modern equivalent. Basically, these dudes were singing fuckdolls in the employ of a hilarious but over-the-hill sex symbol.
Though working for West would have been the perfect day job from which a person could pursue a career in bodybuilding, bodybuilding was barely even a sport at that point (and it’s a questionable sport even to this day) and Pedersen clearly didn’t have it at the top of his list of priorities. Reflective of his hilariously dismissive nature towards a sport for which he seemed naturally suited, Pedersen’s competition history begins with a preposterous entry into the most prestigious bodybuilding competition in the world at the age of 16. Even in bodybuilding’s infancy this must’ve looked idiotic, but he was a damn good looking kid.


Mae West was famous for telling dudes in movies to “come around sometime and see her,” and that meant she wanted to invite them into her wandering eye, if you get my drift. She wanted to fuck, and that was a literal standing open invitation to every male bodybuilder on the planet. It was basically like Jenny McCarthy just making her three holes available for activity at all hours by any IFBB pro, CrossFitter, or pro wrestler who wanted a crack at her increasingly less taught vaginal and anal canals.
1945 AAU Mr America
Did not place (he was 16)
1947 AAU Mr. California
Tall Class & Overall Winner

1947 AAU Mr America
Runner-up in the overall (to Steve Reeves), won Most Muscular
1947 AAU Mr Pacific Coast
Runner up (to Steve Reeves again, in another hotly contested competition)
1947 FIHC (now the IWF) Mr Universe
3rd. This was the first year of an attempt to make an international contest to follow the Mr. America that would be associated with the AAU and the international weightlifting championships. Pedersen lost a tie-breaker for second to 1950 Mr America John Farbotnik (1925-1998) in a contest skewed heavily in favor of our weightlifting Olympians (Steve Stanko mysteriously won it in spite of having no legs due to a horrible injury that made it impossible for him to train them). Pedersen did place above his buddy 1938 Mr America and 1962 Mr Universe George Eiferman, who also owned the gym at which Pedersen trained, as well as shredded-to-bits 1943 Mr America Jules Bacon.
As no one I’ve seen has any information on this, the FIHC stands for “Federation International Halterophile et Culturiste.” For those of you who recall, “halteres” were the dumbbells invented by the Romans and used for the long jump and lifting. The name, then, is just French for “dudes with a hardon for lifting,” and they were the Frenchies behind the removal of the continental from weightlifting because the French and English weren’t strong enough to compete with the Central Europeans on true brute strength tests. In any event, the fed that eventually became the International Weightlifting Federation ran their bodybuilding meets in just as dull a fashion as their lifting meets- almost the entire competition was the competitors standing relaxed, with only a 90 second posing section in which they were actually allowed to flex.

This is, I think, left to right: Floyd Page, Steve Reeves, Alan Stephens, Clancy Ross, Eric Pedersen, and Walter Marcyan (inventor of the first multi-stage lifting machine, the Marcy machine beloved by Bruce Lee). I might have Stephens and Ross confused there- I have horrific facial blindness and am comparing them by their abs.
1948 Mr USA
4th. The event was won by 1945 AAU Mr America and 1946 Pro Mr America winner Clancy Ross, followed by Steve Reeves and 1946 AU Mr America Al Stephens. Legends like Leo Stern and Jack LaLanne failed to even place in this thing.

Bert Goodrich, Clancy Ross, Eric Pedersen, Steve Reeves, Floyd Pages & Alan Stephan. Pedersen was the same height as Goodrich but at a heavier weight, so this is a case of a jacked prettyboy getting out-angled like crazy.
1956 Mr USA
did not place. This was essentially the best of the best from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. It was won by the inimitable Bill Pearl (Pearl and Reg Park were the two men to beat in the 60s), with Clarence Ross (he was one of the big three bodybuilders of the 40s, alongside Grimek and Steve Reeves) in second. Zabo, the abtastic maniac who ran Gold’s Venice, came in third, while Timmy Leong (Hawaii’s version of Joe Gold, who had to take a 9 hour prop plane flight just to get to San Francisco.  We forget how hard travel was then) took fourth. Bob Shealey took fifth (one of the earliest black competitors in the Mr America, he won the most muscular basically because his arms were ridiculous, pushing 20″). Along with the insanely ripped Vince Gironda, an actor who travelled from Hawaii named Rex Ravelle, Pedersen didn’t place. Pedersen had bulked up and lost cuts as a wrestler over the previous decade, and just couldn’t stand next to the biggest names in the game as a tourist from an entirely different sport.
If you’re thinking that Roman Reigns has no excuses for not being in bodybuilding shape at any time, you’re probably right, but the wrestling of Eric Pedersen’s day and the modern gymkata-style shenanigans that typically go on are about as far apart as the Republican party and verifiable scientific fact. Pedersen fought in the era in which wrestling was transitioning from carnival shootfighting matches to “worked” matches, and Pedersen trained under arguably the hardest of the old school, hardcore carnival sideshow psychopaths- Ed “Strangler” Lewis. Lewis fought in over 6000 verified matches, most of which were bloody free-for-alls against jacked farmers trying to make a payday by beating the circus’s ringer, and they’d try to do so by maiming the ringer nine times out of ten. Lewis lost fewer than 70 of his matches, and he continued winning even after being declared legally blind, because he was that kind of bad guy.


As you can see, their training was like live submission fighting with some goofy shit thrown in. Kinda fun to watch, actually.
Ed Lewis was partnered with a wrestler named Toots Mondt, the man responsible for the transition from the old school to the new, as he saw Ed as the only man on the planet who could impose his will on anyone and make the idea of scripted bouts work. If someone wouldn’t follow the script they were given, the “Strangler” would live up to his namesake, wrecking both the wrestler and their career enough that the other wrestlers joining his stable would never think of double-crossing the boss. Pedersen picked up Lewis’ catch wrestling “hooker” style from the carnival and became a terror on a circuit that included notable wrestling maniacs like catch wrestler Lou Thesz (who likely would have given Randy Couture a headache in the octagon even without any modern training). Pedersen’s matches at that time were a mix of shoot fights (as in real) and works, in the biggest wrestling federation in the world at that time, the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). And I realize that nothing that isn’t the WWE means shit anymore, but the NWA was far bigger on the world stage than the modern WWE before it broke apart into the WCW, All Japan PW, New Japan PW, and what’s now become Impact!…

so the fact that Pedersen was trained by the man who invented modern pro wrestling but was the most feared catch wrestler of the early 20th century isn’t just notable- it’s proof in and of itself that Eric Pedersen was one of the baddest and hardest motherfuckers about whom I have ever written, nevermind the fact that when combined with his unique training methods he becomes one of the most important people in both the evolution of modern bodybuilding and modern professional wrestling.


Eric Pedersen’s Known Wrestling Titles
NWA Pacific Northwest Tag Team Title (with Henry Lenz)- 1958/07/03 – 1958/09/05
NWA Pacific Northwest Heavyweight Title– 1958/11/14 – 1958/11/21
WWA International Television Tag Team Title (with Henry Lenz)- 1959/05/06 – 1959/??/??
NWA International Tag Team Titles (Georgia Version) (with Freddie Blassie)- 1960/05/03 – 1960/??/??
NWA Gulf Coast Heavyweight Title– 1960/08/14 – 1960/09/07

If it helps the WWE marks out there, Pedersen also wrestled for the CWC , but the real reason he’s important to the pro wrestling narrative is that he was the first bodybuilding prettyboy in wrestling. Instead of being a hardened badass who just wrestles a lot, Pedersen was billed as a literal Hercules who was trained by the most evil wrestler in history as a sort of mad experiment to produce the perfect wrestler, and he caught heat for it. Lewis brought in a number of bodybuilders in an effort to create a stable of wrestlers that sort of mirrored the 1980s WWF lineup- muscleheads alongside the hardcore old school dudes. Interestingly, that must have made an impact on Vince McMahon, whose father ran the Capitol Wrestling Conference, a part of NWA for some time, because shortly after the CWC broke off from the NWA it was stocked with an entire stable of bodybuilders transplanted directly from a single gym in Minnesota into the WWF.


Speaking of gyms that produced ridiculous numbers of jacked people, Eric Pedersen’s home gym was Bert Goodrich’s flagship location, which was the first true modern gym with leather and chrome equipment. Steve Reeves, Bert himself, most of Hollywood’s stars, all of the guys in Mae West’s revue, and all of the crazy-ass handbalancers you’ve ever seen pics of from muscle Beach, as Bert and his guys were all into that stuff as well. Another guy who trained with them was Pepper Gomez, a bodybuilder-turned-wrestler whom Pedersen accidentally made a star by failing to show up for a title match (Gomez filled in and took the strap). Pedersen and the bodybuilders-gone-wrestlers often travelled together from venue to venue (construction of the highway system had barely begun by the time Pedersen retired in 1961, so travel was a unmitigated nightmare), and would thus train together, just like the wrestlers of today.

That’s not to say they were particularly well received by either society or wrestlers- bodybuilders and weightlifters were generally assumed to be cock-hungry ass pirates (the guy who popularized bodybuilding in the US was insanely sex positive for the Victorian/Edwardian Era and was very vocal about it), who would prey on children at night and lure people into dangerous worlds of seedy people hopped up on “the marihuana” and committing indecencies that would curl the pages of this article if it were actually in print. As NWA legend Dick Steinborn (who trained George Eiferman briefly) put it,

“As far as the feelings about body builders entering wrestling in those days, it was a resentment by the boys. The promoters saw muscles captivating new fans, especially with the onset of TV, but it was the boys who could wrestle, that had to carry their opponents, because of lack of talent. The wrestling business had always gone to a turmoil time over the years” (Steinborn).


That said, Pedersen was absolutely no jobber- in fact, he was an insanely vicious heel just outside of the inner circle of old-time wrestling badasses like Lou Thesz, Ed Lewis, Verne Gagne, Buddy Rogers, and his tag team partner Classy Freddie Blassie. Whether due to his missed title shot (which made Pepper Gomez a star) or some other reason, Pedersen was never quite able to capture the nation’s attention fully on the wrestling scene either. That said, wrestling had only just hit television and the various wrestling promotions were, like the bodybuilding promotions of the day, in their infancy. As such, it might just have been a case of Pedersen arriving on the scene about five years too early to really make a splash in either.


By the accounts of his friends, Pedersen wasn’t terribly social, nor was he quick to make friends. That likely hurt him in everything from casting for the Mae West review to wrestling and bodybuilding, but it did make him an ideal candidate for what he did after he hung up his trunks- collect debts for the mob in Las Vegas. Pedersen had all of the tools one would need for the job- superlative strength, he looked great in a suit, and he was trained in the arts of small-joint and large-joint manipulation and destruction by one of the most dangerous fighters in history, carnie-turned-pro wrestler Ed “The Strangler” Lewis. Lewis was the man who initially taught Judo Gene LeBell, one of the first modern mma fighters, how to break large humans into bite-size pieces.

Eric Pedersen was so good at breaking bones until money popped out of their marrow that according to his son, he took his future wife on the Deadpool-esque first date of watching him break legs. On that occasion, the man’s children ran out, begging him not to break dear papa’s legs, so Pedersen relented so as not to do it in front of the kids. In doing so, he won that woman’s beautifully black heart and gave that man one more evening with two working legs.

As I said, Eric Pedersen was the unmitigated shit.

Up next, which will be either today or tomorrow as the third part is pretty much complete, I’ll detail Eric Pedersen’s workouts, in which you will discover that

Arthur Jones, and by extension any HIT advocate, ripped off his training methodology entirely from Eric Pedersen.
Eric Pedersen was the first bodybuilder to publicly promote bodypart workouts (and possibly the first to do them, though that is impossible to state with certainty)
Bert Goodrich’s way of running the rack might be the easiest way to bring up shitty arms in history, but it will suck to do.
Jump to Part 3

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  BADDEST MOTHERFUCKERS EVER- ERIC PEDERSEN, PART 3: THE REAL INVENTOR OF HIT AND THE (POSSIBLE) INVENTOR OF THE BODYPART SPLIT HITS THE GYM
PUBLISHED ON NOVEMBER 11, 2020BY JAMIE CHAOS

Eric Pedersen is perhaps the most foundational and influential bodybuilder and professional wrestler of whom you’ve never heard, likely due to the fact that he sued Joe Weider early in his career, which hurt his publicity considerably in the magazine. Additionally, he failed to win the Mr America Overall, and because historians have failed to inform the world that the winner of the Most Muscular was the winner of the bodybuilding portion of that contest, we’ve all been looking at the wrong Mr Americas the entire time and ignored guys like Pedersen, who was the first to have bodypart routines published, the progenitor of Art Jones’ high intensity training techniques, and one of the biggest wrestling draws of the 1940s and 1950s.

Eric Pedersen fucking rules. Recognize.

Part 1

Part 2


Eric Pedersen’s Training Methods
Pedersen kept his reps higher than Tommy Chong has ever been in his life, for no reason I can ascertain other than it’s what he enjoyed. It’s unlikely that Tommy Chong even used a rep scheme like this when he worked the desk at Gold’s Venice, because Chong was a disciple of Gironda, and Gironda loved short rests and 8 rep sets. Pedersen, on the other hand. used sets of 10-15, 15-20, or 40-50 depending on the bodypart, resting 3-4 minutes between sets and up to five between exercises. Also unlike Gironda, Eric Pedersen had no set program of any kind. He would decide what he was training that day, prior to going into the gym, so as to avoid too much fiddle-fucking around at the gym. Like E-Town Concrete said, Pedersen was there to win, not to make friends, and stated as such in an article about his training methods:

“Don’t allow anyone to talk to you, nor you to them, while you are training. Work alone as if you were the only one in the gym. If you train at your own home with your barbell outfit, so much the better as far as your concentration is concerned. I prefer a gym for company’s sake, for I like to meet a lot of other fellows and exchange ideas with them. but I often work out at home.”


He seemed to have a base workout he would do every time he hit the gym, at least at first, and then would add sets to the bodypart on which he wanted to focus that day. As time progressed, it seems he moved more towards bodypart workouts to train for contests and then used a very basic full body routine on the road wrestling. What didn’t change, however, is the part that Arthur Jones misunderstood and ripped wholesale from Eric Pedersen- training to absolute failure using reps with increasingly smaller ranges of motion.

That’s right- it looks like Arthur Jones stole his two sets of each exercise to maximum muscular failure with a moderately heavy weight and absolutely perfection for form from Eric Pedersen. Or he borrowed it and simply forgot to fucking tell everyone.

The basis for Eric Pedersen’s workouts He’d add or drop sets or exercises as he saw fit by checking his progress in the mirror, and would adjust accordingly. What he never did was go easy in a workout, and would do progressively smaller ROM partials until he could barely move the weight, at which point he’d do a few cheating reps.

The cheating reps were pretty new at the time, and are not credited to Pedersen- I’ll be throwing that dude’s name into an upcoming book about the unsung heroes of lifting. Feel free to look for the guy’s name yourself, though I struggled even with most of the original search parameters I used to find it again- this one is a fucking nugget of lifting wisdom I shall always cherish. Your hint: he trained at York but didn’t compete in Oly, and he built 19″ arms using cheat curls and a cheated bent press in particular. [I didn’t even know you could cheat at a bent press]


Reeves, Pedersen, and I think Bill Trumbo and Bill Cantrell. This looks like part of the lineup of the 1947 Pacific Coast.
Eric Pedersen’s Base Routine
The basis of the entire program was a full body routine he likely did between three and five times a week, doing two sets per bodypart (at a minimum), with psychotic attention to perfect form, and to absolute, utter, and catastrophic failure. Before he would enter the gym on any given day, he would make an honest assessment of his physique and determine what to add or subtract. Over time, that morphed into him training arms one day, shoulders another day, back another day, legs another, etc.

Handstand Dips Between Benches– 2xAMRAP, lowering himself until his chin was below the benches. This was his tricep/shoulder warmup.

Behind the Neck Chins– 2xAMRAP. Pedersen did both chins to the front and the back as a warmup, but he was very vocal about his idea that behind the neck pullups conferred greater gains.

Behind the Neck Press– 2×15-20

Concentration Curl-2×10-15

Dumbbell Overhead Extension– 2×10-15. Slow and controlled, focusing hard on flexing every inch of the muscle as you stare intensely at each triceps during your sets. After your triceps tire, go to half-extensions, then from a half-extension, do a few reps to full extension.

Squat-As I’ve mentioned, he liked to go to total muscular failure, like a psychotic barbell wielding Mike Mentzer. He said that for these he preferred to do more reps than find out how much he could squat, so he’d take between 200 and 300 pounds and do ass to grass squats until he couldn’t do another full rep. He’d then proceed to do progressively shorter stroke reps until he gassed out with quarter squats. He made no mention of a number of sets or reps. he just went until he decided he was fucking done, but initially he did do 2×40-50 with 150lbs, so it’s likely this was sort of a pre-Platz leg blitz that may have influenced Platz himself.

Dips– 2xAMRAP

Good Morning– 2x25x125lbs, done extremely slowly and with feet together.

Weighted Incline Situps– 2-3×25


Eric Pedersen’s Arm Specialization Routine
For both of these exercises, he would do as many full reps as he could, then would cut them to three-quarter reps, then half reps, then quarter reps, until he finally cheated two last full reps. After eight sets of that insane level of intensity, he’d move on to another exercise- he seemed to lead with the bodypart(s) on which he wanted to focus. I would assume the eight set limit was influenced by Vince Gironda, who was famous at the time for his 8×8 set and rep scheme that produced the leanest and densest physiques on the bodybuilding stage and in film at the time.

Unilateral Concentration Curls– 8×10-15x35lbs (going for squeexe and slow, controlled reps, using partial reps and cheated reps until you can’t move the weight)

Single Arm Overhead Tricep Extensions– 8×10-15

Wrist Curl– 2×10-15

Reverse Wrist Curl– 2×10-15


Like I say below, it was an unholy combination of a kickback and a rear lateral, but it is worth giving a shot.
Eric Pedersen’s Shoulder Routine
This is cobbled together from three separate articles- one was a recommendation for beginners, then the other two mentioned that as a wrestler his primary movements were the behind the neck press and arms. As with arms, he focused more on the actual contraction than the weight lifted, and was adamant about staring at the muscle being worked as you work it.

Behind the Neck Press– 2-8×15-20

Front Raises (taking the bell all the way overhead before descending)- 2×15-20

Dumbbell Laterals– 2×15-20

Rear Laterals– 2×15-20 (these were described as a sort of combo of a rear lateral and a tricep kickback, or you could think of it as a stiff-arm pulldown done bent at the waist, starting with the bells hanging below you and bringing them up and back towards your hips

DB Overhead Tricep Extensions– 2×15-20 (the electromyograph was invented in 1890, but the oscilloscope you needed to interpret those signals didn’t exist until the 1930s, so slow your role before you shit-talk a dude with arms bigger than you for including a tricep exercise in for shoulders.


Pedersen’s Routine While Wrestling
When Pedersen was on the road travelling and wrestling, he was getting a shitload of exercise between practice and fights anyway. He did assure the readers of Muscle Power that he was still lifting, though, and stated that the following comprised the mainstays of his barebones routine, done a couple of times a week.

Handstand Dips Between Benches– 2xAMRAP, lowering himself until his chin was below the benches. This was his tricep/shoulder warmup.

Behind the Neck Chins– 2xAMRAP. Pedersen did both chins to the front and the back as a warmup, but he was very vocal about his idea that behind the neck pullups conferred greater gains.

Behind the Neck Press– 2×15-20

Concentration Curl-2×10-15

Squat-As I’ve mentioned, he liked to go to total muscular failure, like a psychotic barbell wielding Mike Mentzer. He said that for these he preferred to do more reps than find out how much he could squat, so he’d take between 200 and 300 pounds and do ass to grass squats until he couldn’t do another full rep. He’d then proceed to do progressively shorter stroke reps until he gassed out with quarter squats. He made no mention of a number of sets or reps. he just went until he decided he was fucking done, but initially he did do 2×40-50 with 150lbs, so it’s likely this was sort of a pre-Platz leg blitz that may have influenced Platz himself.

Dumbbell Overhead Extension– 2×10-15. Slow and controlled, focusing hard on flexing every inch of the muscle as you stare intensely at each triceps during your sets.

Dips– 2xAMRAP


Pedersen’s face seems to say, “ehhhh, they do know I only have one dick, right?”
The Down The Rack Nuclear Option
Growing up, everyone had a different method of going down the rack, but it generally consisted of doing drop sets with 5 to 10 pound drops. The guys at Bert Goodrich’s gym had a system they called Up and Down training, and everyone at the gym swore by it. It consisted of running the up and down the rack doing singles on a given exercise, which doesn’t sound all that bad until you get to the details.

Most famously used for biceps and triceps, it was also in vogue for overhead dumbbell presses. To do them, you start with the 5s and increase by five pounds until you fail on a single, then do singles all the way back down to the fives. It’s a single set per bodypart, and the number of reps depends entirely on your level of strength.

Earl Liederman tried it for biceps, and he did singles all the way up to the 60s for biceps, which he claimed felt like 100s after doing 11 reps with progressively increasing weights. He also tried this for shoulders and said there was no way you could not grow using that sort of brutal method, so it’s one to keep in your toolbox.

Eric Pedersen’s Diet
Like all bodybuilders of that era, Pedersen just ate a fuckload of food and then trained hard as shit. Pedersen was obviously naturally lean, and you’re talking about WW2 era United States- food was rationed during his entire teen life, and prior to that America was struggling to get out of a depression- it wasn’t like they struggled to get lean. Pedersen was a voracious eater, as were all of the bodybuilders of that era, and was a big fan of eating a large steak with some veggies, brown bread covered in butter and honey, and a pint of milk an hour before training, so that he had enough energy for his training. Like all other lifters of the era, he was big on the basics- steak, eggs, milk, bread, and potatoes.

According to Thrillist, typical American dinners were nothing I would fucking eat.


“Overall, the ’40s weren’t nearly as dire as the previous decade (especially once that war production cash flowed in), but families weren’t whipping up five-course meals during the WWII ration years. Instead, they’d go with a centerpiece like liver loaf (it has “B vitamins that help keep you smiling with glowing health!” said an ad from that era) paired with veggies like buttered spinach. When dessert was an option, it might be a simple sherbet or banana drop cookies” (Hunt).

Words can barely articulate my horror at the prospect of trying to build muscle in the 1940s, but Eric Pedersen not only did it, but did it as well as the best of them even into the early 1960s. And it’s not as though the food got much better in the 1950s, because if you were a typical American in that decade, here is the noxious bullshit you would be eating at dinner (bear in mind the scent of tuna makes me punch whoever the fuck is responsible for offending my nose with it):

“With the war rations and Great Depression officially behind us, the 1950s became a veritable casserole city. Tuna noodle was a signature, and since it had veggies, it sometimes spared kids from a common(ly reviled) side dish of the era: lima beans. If you got dessert, it was almost definitely gonna be a Jell-O “salad” with a whipped topping. In fact, these treats were so in vogue that Jell-O took things too literally and marketed gelatins with actual salad flavors, like celery. You don’t see them around today for a reason” (Hunt). 

At that point, you didn’t have a lot of options for food, either in terms of different types of cuisine, fast food (there were only 7 McDonald’s in the world in 1955), sit-down restaurants, or places to buy groceries. As such, we could all stand to note that even when the above bullshit is about your only option for food, you can still build 19″ natty arms.

Eric Pedersen shows us that none of us really have any excuse for not being as big or strong as we like, other than the fact that we’re clearly not trying hard enough.


Liederman was no weakling, even if he was an old head at the time- he was a training partner and friend of Sandow’s.
And there you have it- the entire life and times of a bodybuilder of whom everyone should know, and yet very few do. he was the progenitor of what became the heavy duty training system, the first person I recall seeing mentioning the necessity of a good mind-muscle connection for proper growth, and possibly the first person to do a bodypart split outside of arm specialists ever in history. Throw on top of that the fact the man was a mob enforcer trained in various arts of savagery by one of the hardest men to ever throw a punch in anger, and you’ve got a solid recipe for one of the baddest motherfuckers who have ever lived.

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Steve Reeves Wins the 1950 Mr. Universe with Only 4 Weeks of Training
Updated: May 17, 2019

     Steve Reeves has always been a legendary figure in the world of bodybuilding. What he accomplished naturally will never be repeated. The stories of his life are so incredible it can be difficult to distinguish myth from fact. Perhaps the greatest legend associated with Reeves are the events that surrounded his training for the 1950 NABBA Mr. Universe contest where he defeated Reg Park and brought the original bronze Sandow from the 1901 Great Competition home to America. With so many stories surrounding these events they must be investigated thoroughly.


     Who can be trusted when it comes to Reeves’ training for this event? Reeves drove from California to York, Pennsylvania to train for the contest at the York Barbell Company. John Grimek was an employee of York Barbell and witnessed Reeves’ workouts firsthand. Grimek wrote a famous article titled, “How Steve Reeves Trained”, that was printed in the November 1964 issue of Muscular Development. Grimek’s words can be trusted over other articles and interviews as this article was only written 14 years after the events took place. Grimek was known for having an incredible memory of which prolific iron game writer, Terry Todd, described as, “remarkable for faces and names”, “prodigious”, and “elephant-like.”  If Todd trusted Grimek’s memory we can also.


     According to Grimek, Reeves arrived at York on Memorial Day, Tuesday, May 30th (until it was made an official holiday in 1971, Memorial Day was always on May 30th). He states that the next day, Wednesday, May 31st they arrived at the gym a little before noon and got their first workout in. Reeves was adamant about getting three full-body workouts in a week and would typically get a workout in every 60 hours. According to Chris LeClaire’s superb biography on Reeves, Worlds to Conquer, Reeves flew to London on June 22nd. The NABBA Mr. Universe reception and dinner was held on June 23rd and the contest was on June 24th so his workout schedule would have looked something like this:


 

     Based on this calendar it appears Reeves got in around 10 full-body workouts if he stuck to his typical workout protocol. Reeves mentions in Dynamic Muscle Building that while in London before the contest he only performed lighter exercises with cables to give him more definition. It is truly phenomenal that Reeves could go from an extended layoff of not working out to Mr. Universe winner so quickly. The last time Reeves had seriously trained for a bodybuilding contest was in March 1949 before the Mr. USA contest. This was about 15 months before the NABBA Mr. Universe.


     Now that we have a good idea of how long Reeves trained before the contest, we can dive into the next legend associated with this event, how much weight he gained during this training. This is harder to quantify since Grimek only commented on Reeves’ change in physical appearance during the training but did not comment on his weight. Sources are tougher to come by as Reeves makes no mention of the weight he gained in Building the Classic Physique: The Natural Way or in his interviews with Chris LeClaire for Worlds to Conquer. In unspecified interviews contained in Dynamic Muscle Building, Reeves claims to have gained 17 pounds of muscle during his training and in another interview in the book claims he started at a weight of 198 pounds and the day of the contest weighed 217 pounds for a 19-pound gain. The interviews are not sourced so we cannot be sure when these statements were made. In a 1981 interview with WABBA contest promoter Tony DeFrancisco, Reeves states that his weight went from 190 pounds to 225 during his training at York for a 35-pound gain.   


     According to Reeves’ official entry form for the 1950 NABBA Mr. Universe contest he weighed 214 pounds although we cannot be sure when that measurement was taken. We can be highly skeptical of the DeFrancisco interview as Reeves was never known to be much heavier than 215 pounds as he considered that his top form measurement. Reeves was known to keep in contest shape year-round and did not believe in bulking up and slimming down for contests as is commonly done today. The Dynamic Muscle Building interviews are more believable as they credit Reeves with a weight gain between 17-19 pounds. If done starting at 198 pounds this would have put him in the 215-217 range which is much closer to what his entry form lists.


     Another legend associated with Reeves’ training for the Mr. Universe contest is that he contracted pneumonia during his time at York, PA and trained through it for the contest. In Building the Classic Physique: The Natural Way, Reeves states that he, “caught pneumonia halfway through my training. That temporarily weakened and demoralized me somewhat – but surprisingly, it also served to increase my muscular definition!”  Chris LeClaire, through his interviews with Reeves states, “What others in the gym didn’t know was that two weeks after he arrived in York, Reeves had contracted the flu.”


    The only one who could be completely trusted on this issue is Grimek and he makes no mention of Reeves contracting any sort of illness during his stay in York. For this reason, we can eliminate pneumonia as it is doubtful Reeves could have hidden something like that from Grimek. The flu does not seem like something Reeves could have trained through successfully either. Grimek significantly added to Reeves’ legend with his article, so if Reeves would have contracted something that would have substantially affected his ability to train Grimek certainly would have let the readers know how incredible a feat that was. For this reason, we can conclude that no significant illness occurred.


     Based on articles, interviews, and our knowledge of Steve Reeves, a few legends surrounding his training for the 1950 NABBA Mr. Universe contest can be distinguished as closer to fact than myth. Reeves training probably consisted of around 10 full-body workouts from May 31st until he left for London on June 22nd, the weight he gained during this training was probably in the 17-19-pound range, and his training was not affected by serious illness.

[Humble Narcissist]

Jamie is still pissed pics of him having gay sex were posted on Getbig. This is why he rants about republicans, conservatives and Christians in almost every article.

[illuminati]

Jamie is still pissed pics of him having gay sex were posted on Getbig. This is why he rants about republicans, conservatives and Christians in almost every article.

And who is Jamie ??

[Humble Narcissist]

And who is Jamie ??

Jamie Lewis, the owner of Chaos & Pain and author of some of those articles above.

[illuminati]

Jamie Lewis, the owner of Chaos & Pain and author of some of those articles above.

Aaarrrrrggggghhhhh 😡😡😡. Disgusting Dirty Queer - May he catch Aids

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  Many of the newer articles were more widely spread and you may have seen them recently. I'm digging deeper, looking for older material that might be more surprising or fun for you. Let's see what you think about this one.
From Dave as an intro to the interview:
I start slow and offer this as a preamble to make it clear I was not exactly the bodybuilding participant some expect I was or appeared to be. The early 1960s were a mild time in bodybuilding. I trained hard in the Dungeon and worked regularly for Weider in his pint-sized office and shipping department. I had a young wife and daughter, no dough, lots of promise and promises and was busy with daily survival. There was some TV, a few side jobs to pay the bills and I had some friends in both Vince's gym (Howorth, Scott, McArdle) and the Dungeon (Zabo and some neat local lifters). We had lifting in common; it was the bond, but we didn't talk about training or nutrition or muscles. There was no shop talk when we hung out or played and explored.
At the same time, there was a sharpening rise in bodybuilding interest as the '60s progressed. Three or four big Weider shows in New York smack in the middle of the '60s set things off: the Mr. Americas, Mr. Universe shows and the Mr. Olympia. The zealous NY audience started a stampede. Sergio arrived on the bodybuilding scene, Arnold was in California toward the end of the decade and the launching pads were ready.
In the '70s, we saw bigger magazines, more coverage, and greater participation in the gyms, contests and audiences worldwide. Musclebuilding became an industry overnight. Hello, Pumping Iron.
At the stir of this phenomenon, I resisted and returned to lifting for the same reasons I began 15 years earlier as a snot-nosed kid: for its calm truth and simplicity, pain and fulfillment, muscle and might. I was not the star type nor a muscleman groupie. Thus, I didn't submerge myself in the developing bodybuilding world of the 1970s. I performed my delicious musclebuilding out of sight of the crowd and crowd-pleasers.
To the questions...
Q: Describe a typical day at Gold's in the 1970s.
It was in the shadows of the Muscle Beach Dungeon's spare lighting that I learned all I know about building muscle and power. There the seed I brought from the streets of Jersey in 1963 took root, grew deep and bore a decent yield. I won Mr. America and Mr. Universe.
I joined Joe Gold's gym in Venice in 1966 and continued to lift the weights with quiet passion. But for an occasional burst of training when a special occasion prompted me to work out twice a day (posing exhibition, inner urges, the 1970 Mr. World), I was in and out of the gym by 8 AM. Those two hours, six days a week, were major events internally, but on the outside, they were as ordinary as toast.
In the middle and late '60s, Frank Zane made his home in Venice and our workouts conveniently overlapped. Arnold appeared in California, with Franco close behind him, and made his way to Joe's original Gold's in 1968. Ken Waller joined the group at a corresponding time, and various seasons of the year brought champs from the corners of the world for a plunge in the West Coast bodybuilding scene. Rick Drasin, Denny Gable, Bill Howard, Dan Howard, Chet Yorton, Bill Grant and Superstar Wayne Coleman are some of the tanned and sand-dusted faces I see fondly in my memory.
Zabo ran the place and became known as the Chief. Eventually, Eddie Giuliani headed the gym's secret service dept.
Q: What was the atmosphere like at Gold's in the 1970s?
I offer a narrow picture of "training at Gold's" during the 1970s. For all intents and purposes, competitive bodybuilding was behind me. In fact, I resumed the role I never left -- lifting weights for muscle and might and the fulfillment and pleasure it offered. In 'n out, like the hamburger, and off to make odd, oversized furniture from pier wood. That's me.
The best times I recall at the original Gold's were the summer days of 1970. There were a series of competitions in the fall and five of us were preparing for the shows: Frank, Franco, Arnold, Katz, Zabo, Holland's Serge Jacobs and me. We trained twice a day and at least one of those daily sessions were together.
The days were exciting yet serene. The workouts were focused and intense, yet loose and easy. The gym floor was some 2,000 square feet of benches and platforms, pulleys and racks, iron and bars. No radio. The sounds came from moving bodies, shuffling benches, jangling weights, groaning lifters and muted thuds. We conversed, no one chattered; we laughed, no one sniveled; we barked, no one bit. The weights moved in the direction they were urged, and we grew.
One July evening stands out above the rest. Artie Zeller, one beautiful guy, carried his camera around the gym like a stealth pilot. He was there, but under the radar, silently exposing film at just the right moment. The gym was simmering, each of us off in different directions. Frank was benching, Mike Katz was doing pulldowns, Franco was doing barbell rows, and Arnold and I were squatting. Not a false move was made. We appeared like moths around a nightlight; we moved tons of iron like cranes, and we encouraged each other with authentic and willful persuasion and a strong arm when needed.
And the best part -- besides the fact that it's in black and white -- we never viewed each other as competitors, challengers or rivals. No revolting egos. No one wore designer gear, carefully torn sweatshirts and look-at-me low-slung tank tops. We were all unique with strengths and weaknesses to overcome, aches and pains to endure, and hopes and dreams to realize. We were friends of an unusual cut. Not that we considered it a very special thing, but we were a rare breed of musclebuilders yet to be displayed, yet to be archived and yet to be imitated.
Time moved on, the gym's location and ownership changed and the core dispersed, lost cohesion and became diluted by the crowd, that which time, people and things do.
Q: What were the popular training methods back then?
The basic movements were applied with good order, repetition, force, and regularity. The methods were not yet analyzed, overly intellectualized and named. I guess the popular training MO among the original Gold's champs was volume training: three exercises per muscle group, reps in the 12, 10, 8, 6 range, with max-power reps thrown in when the urge was unstoppable; each muscle group was trained compatibly twice a week and the gym visited at least five of the seven days. Squats and deadlifts counted big time, and supersets were plentiful. Heavy dumbbells had a special place in our hearts.
One generally amped up training in the spring and summer, and powered it in the fall and winter.
Q: Describe the diet you used back in those days.
If you sat down with us after a workout at our favorite Marina cafe, you'd see us order hamburger patties and eggs, home fries and whole-wheat toast. Our diets were high protein with an accent on meat and milk products, medium carbs with plenty of salad and fresh fruits, and medium fats with no fried food or junk.
With me, some things never change.
Q: How long would bodybuilders train for back then?
There was a season for hard training and a season for harder training. The average time in the gym was 90 to 120 minutes, five days a week. When contest preparation loomed (spring, summer and early fall), training twice a day was a common practice. This added another hour to the total.
Q: Today people say you risk overtraining if you train beyond one hour, but back then, guys routinely lifted for two hours or more, yet got amazing results. How would you explain the progress that was made under these circumstances?
I don't see how one can make championship progress with much less. Overtraining can be a problem, and it must be monitored closely. Training to the edge isn't the healthiest method of training, but it's the only method for superior championship.
Q: Was cardio used as often as it is today?
You hardly saw cardio training in our neighborhood. There was no stationary bike to mount at the gym, no treadmill for miles and miles and the other swell
gadgets (ellipticals, stair masters, goofy gofers) were yet invented.
Q: What were some of the problems you encountered as a bodybuilder back in those times? Was it harder to be a top bodybuilder back then?
There was no problem with identity. I was impervious to the misunderstandings from the average folks around me. In the gym, I enjoyed the distinction from those to my right and left. There were so few top names in the 1960s, we knew them all: Howorth, Pearl, Scott, Gironda, Zane, Yorton, Zabe, the local guys and Ortiz, Poole, Ferrigno, Abbenda, Boyer. Each was a mystery, each an inspiration, each a friend.
Being a top bodybuilder was easier, once you got past discovering the sport, becoming fascinated with it, and engaging it with passion and zeal long enough to understand it and achieve some muscle and might. The rest was hard work, sacrifice, perseverance, time, patience, commonsense and luck.
Q: Who were some of the more entertaining Gold's members and why?
Each lifter was a character upon which a book could be written. That includes the mild nutsos no one ever heard about, the Joe, Bob 'n Amys.
Zabo, his workout complete by dawn, sat in his shorts and flip-flops with the sun on his back as he read an important paperback. "What's it all mean?" was his philosophy and answer to all questions. No one got past the Chief without a terse comment that summarized the day: Shut up and train.
Superstar Wayne Coleman strode into the gym with no bones to pick or bodies to toss. He specialized in heavy bench presses, dumbbell presses at the far end of the rack and an attitude as soothing a Tupelo honey. He was like quiet, distant thunder.
Arnold and Franco were a pair, two restless racehorses in the starting block with an absolutely fundamental approach to training and life. They seemed to ride their own wave, the crest I mean. Come on in, that water's fine. In fact, it's fantastic.
Frank Zane slipped in at daybreak and we supported each other with pullovers and presses and endless gut work. We spoke silently and incessantly, and the communication was ideal. What went on between our ears and minds is anyone's guess. We never missed a workout, seldom a set or rep.
Joe Gold cruised the gym -- his creation, his humble palace, his emerging empire -- and spoke little and said a lot. He observed the muscleheads in their passionate and aimless activities, devising ways to make them more productive and palpable. Bigger pulleys, deeper racks, thicker handles... whadaya think?
Q: How did the existing clientel respond to Arnold when he arrived at Gold's for the first time?
People in Venice in the '60s were not easily excited. The kicked-back nature of the stony beach community in a time of questioning and doubts influenced our reception of Arnold. And bodybuilding was yet a novelty, an anomaly remember, a half-pint in a rolled-up brown paper bag.
"Arnold, he's the big kid with muscles and an odd accent from Europe. He won bodybuilding contests over there, Germany, I think, and dresses funny. Looks like he learned to lift at Camp Munich."
We liked him, helped him, taught him by not teaching him, and watched him grow and grow.
The rumble you heard in the background was bodybuilding in its early stages of take-off. Five, Four, Three, Two, One ...
Q: What was Joe Gold like? Was he influenced much by the bodybuilders who trained at his gym?
Joe was 20 years my senior, the odd combo of hard work and the beach-life styled his activities. He lifted and played volleyball in the sun, and went out to sea as a merchant marine first mate when too much fun was too much fun. He was a leader in Speedos, an engineer in sandals and a solver of problems, personal and mechanical, wherever they sprang. The Gold was not a social hound; he stuck by his true friends and didn't take crap from anyone. He watched and listened, scored and toured, improvised and learned. Joe was smart and authentic and tough.
Q: I have seen some great photos of you and Arnold training together. How influential was Arnold on your training and bodybuilding progress?
Arnold was impressive then, almost as impressive as now. I was a loner who, like a wolf, knew and trusted and attended his own territory. I could live beside a good man without doubt, envy or antagonism. Arnold was a strong force and his energy and drive were infectious. His training at first was clumsy -- nothing to emulate -- and gained grace and meaning day by day.
He and I and the rest of the small mob fed upon each other generously. Our unity was evident as were our developing training styles and individuality. Intensity begets intensity and our wills to win rose to the surface like helium-filled life preservers.
Q: Given that bodybuilding was more of a lifestyle than a career back in those times, how did the guys finance their gym efforts? How did you balance a job with your bodybuilding endeavors?   
Not very well. Making a buck was as hit and miss as clamming off the shoals of Nova Scotia. There were rare jobs in the film industry, cheapie jobs in the sparse neighborhood gyms, promises from pushy musclebuilding magazine tycoons, and occasional miracles. I resorted to crafting furniture (beats starving), Frank Zane taught high school science (serves intelligently), some guys delivered mail (gotta eat) and some guys had real jobs (engineer) or slept in their cars. Some guys had mysterious financiers.
Q: What was the training equipment like back then? Did it have many limitations compared to what is on offer today?
Joe Gold did a great deal to improve the then-current musclebuilding equipment: designing, engineering, enlarging, beefing up, broadening and thickening. Barbells and dumbbells did the trick and various improvisations of the basic benches and racks filled our needs. Necessity is the mother of invention and where there's a will there's a way. The earnest lifter will get where he's going, especially when it's over, around and through the limitations before him. Nothing like small obstacles to overcome the mountain. I find myself modifying my training groove and exercise performance regularly to accommodate age and injury or specific muscle engagement. If I'm not adjusting my set and rep, I'm not focused and in tune.
We could do with less nonsense and more guts and hard work and spontaneous invention.
Q: How big of a factor were nutritional supplements for building physiques back then? Which were used mostly? Which did you use and why? What were some popular supplement brands?
Quality supplements were important then and are important now. Nutrition plays a significant role in health, performance and development, but you don't want to go broke. Stick to the basics: a good protein powder, a good vitamin-mineral, extra C, antioxidants and EFAs.
Glandular proteins were my favorite. Blair's supplements were popular. Weider and Hoffman shared a large percentage of the market.
Q: What kind of clothing did you wear in the gym and on the street? Was there a specific dress style for bodybuilders back then?
Few of us were fancy dressers on the street and certainly not in the gym. Think t-shirt, tanktop, sweatshirt and flannel shirt and jeans. We wore our clothes hard and adjusted them to fit as needed and for comfort. The gear came later as the industry expanded.
We wore layers in the winter and shed them as the workouts warmed up; sweatshirts and t-shirts often lost their sleeves in the middle of a workout if needed. It was cool to see the bulk and muscle bulging through the well-worn clothes, but it was not the main source of entertainment. There was work to do.
Q: Back in the 1970s, bodybuilders training at Gold's seemed to encourage one another more and camaraderie between the athletes was more evident then it is today. How would you explain this different mentality?
The activity has become extraordinarily popular and busy, the sport sharply competitive and crowded, the diversion commercialized and usurped and the world swifter and tighter, more jaded and impersonal. Today, it's not who you are; it's who you are compared to him or her. It's not who you are; it's what you're worth.
Q: What was life like as a bodybuilder in general back in those times.
I never thought of myself as a bodybuilder, as if that was something to be. The term never rolled off my lips with affection. The early lifters from Muscle Beach were no fonder of the term than I. We were, we are, weight lifters -- people who lift weights. Bodybuilder has a connotation as likeable as "mercenary" when speaking of soldiers, or "camper" when referring to explorers or "star-gazing" when discussing astronomy.
Who knows? Maybe they hung at the beach and waited for life to happen. I don't know. I trained hard and slipped out the back door, applied myself to forming wood and lived a simple life.
Q: What would you bodybuilders do for fun after training? What was the social life like back then?
Though there were a dozen parties that brought us together over a two- or three-year period -– fun occasions with laughter, promise and cheer, good food and no drink –- we mostly went our own way. I was married, Frank was married and busy, Arnold and Franco had their interests and enjoyed the bodybuilding life as Joe Weider provided for their basic needs. We crossed paths for lunch or breakfast or trips abroad for competition or exhibition and promotion.
Life's a blur when you recall it 40 years later. It was fun, tough, heartbreaking, alive, fulfilling, energizing and exhausting. Some things never change.
Dave

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  13 Behind-The-Scenes Stories From The Making Of 'Blazing Saddles'

Alex Kirschenbaum
Updated July 8, 2021
12.5k votes
1.7k voters
208.9k views
List Rules
Vote up the stories that make you appreciate the Mel Brooks classic even more.
Making Blazing Saddles (and then convincing Warner Bros. executives to actually let people see it) was not nearly as effortless and joyful an experience as one might expect after watching it. The production and post-production processes were not always smooth, but as you'll hopefully conclude for yourselves from this compendium of interesting and surprising behind-the-scenes anecdotes, it was a resounding success as a collaboration between several very funny people that has yielded one of the all-time classic comedies.

Writer/director/co-star Mel Brooks, of course, is naturally front-and-center in most of these stories. This is not the first time we have talked about some of Brooks's behind-the-scenes adventures - check out this recent piece for more fun Mel Brooks stories.

What are your favorite and least favorite Blazing Saddles behind-the-scenes stories? Vote below!

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1687 VOTES
Mel Brooks And Madeline Kahn Had A Rather Awkward Moment During Khan's Audition

Photo: Warner Bros.
Madeline Kahn turned in an iconic performance as sultry caterwauling saloon singer Lili Von Shtupp in the film, but she almost didn't get past the auditioning stage due to a bit of a faux pas from Mel Brooks.

"Her audition was one of the most awkward things I’ve ever had to experience, because … well, I told her, I love your work, but I can’t hire you unless you raise your skirt and let me see your legs. 'Oh, so it’s that kind of audition,' she said, and started to walk out," Brooks said to Rolling Stone.

"'No, no, I’m happily married, it’s not that at all,'" Brooks quickly explained. "'We’re doing a take-off on Westerns, and if you’ve ever seen Destry Rides Again, there’s the scene where Marlene Dietrich sings in the saloon. We’re trying to match that, and I know you can do it, it’s just that…' And she goes, 'Oh, I get it now,' and grabs a chair, hikes up her skirt, and straddles the chair just like Dietrich does in the original. I mean, like an exact match of the shot. I nearly fainted. It was her idea to hum the song out of tune as well, which seems like a small thing, but adds so much to the scene in the end. She was amazing."

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Interesting?
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1302 VOTES
Mel Brooks Was Wary Of Including So Many Racial Epithets, But Pryor And Little Talked Him Into It

Photo: Warner Bros.
Mel Brooks was reticent to include so many epithets being uttered by white characters, but he was convinced to stay the course by co-writer Richard Pryor and star Cleavon Little.

"I don’t think you could ever get away with the ‘N’ word being done by so many white people so many times," Brooks noted in a conversation captured by NorthJersey.com.

"And I kept asking Cleavon and Richard, ‘Are we going overboard here? Is this too much? Are we going to be in trouble?’ You know, Richard said the most brilliant thing ’cause he was a very good writer and a realist. And he said, ‘You know, Mel, if the racists and the bad guys use it, then it’s perfect. But if good people use it, then you’re in trouble.’”

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1259 VOTES
Gene Wilder Stepped In At The Last Minute When The Original ‘Waco Kid’ Kept Vomiting On Set

Photo: Warner Bros.
Gig Young, then a recent Academy Award winner for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), had originally been cast by Brooks as the Waco Kid for Blazing Saddles (1974). "[If] you see some of the stuff he did earlier, like the Doris Day movies he was in, you’d see he had a real light comic touch," Brooks relayed to Rolling Stone. Unfortunately, Gig Young was accidentally a little too method in his performance preparation. "And the Kid is [an] alcoholic, and so was Gig. He knew how to do it. Then we have the first day of shooting, he literally started throwing up green stuff all over the set. I thought, 'We aren’t shooting The Exorcist, are we? I think something’s wrong here.' I sent him to the hospital and called Gene in tears."

Wilder had been best friends with Brooks since they first collaborated together on The Producers seven years prior. The duo had also worked together on Young Frankenstein (1974).

"I heard him sigh over the phone: 'I know, Mel, I’m the Waco Kid, you need me, I’ll be there,'" Brooks continued. "This was a Saturday; he flew out on Sunday, tried on the costume, tried on the gunbelt, tried on the horse … [laughs] it all fit. By Monday, he was shooting the scene where he’s hanging upside down next to Cleavon. It all worked."

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971 VOTES
Richard Pryor Was Supposed To Play Bart, But The Studio Wouldn’t Agree To It

Photo: Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip/Columbia Pictures

Richard Pryor is also ranked #25 of 279 on The Greatest Stand-Up Comics from the USA

Co-writer Richard Pryor was originally supposed to portray Black sheriff Bart, the lead in Blazing Saddles. Because Warner Bros. balked at insuring Pryor - then coming off a recent drug arrest per a NorthJersey.com interview - Pryor bowed out, but convinced co-writer/director Mel Brooks to stay aboard the project.

"I almost quit the movie because the studio was scared of casting him," Mel Brooks told Rolling Stone in 2016. "He was the original Black Bart. But Richard said, 'Mel, don’t quit - I still have two more payments coming to me from the Screenwriters’ Guild, let’s make the movie. I have to get paid. We’ll find a good Black Bart, let’s just do this.'"

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Mel Brooks Cut One Joke At The Last Minute

Photo: Warner Bros.
While Blazing Saddles pushed the envelope in many regards, there was one joke Brooks decided to cut out in the editing stage. During the scene where Madeline Kahn's Lili Von Shtupp character seduces Bart the sheriff, she asks if a certain anatomy-related stereotype is true. She then shuts the lights out, and after an unzipping noise, she exclaims, "It's twue! It's twue!"

In the original cut, Brooks admits, Bart then replies "Excuse me, ma’am. I hate to disillusion you, but you’re sucking my arm."

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Mel Brooks Had To Contend With A Hesitant Warner Bros. Executive Who Didn't See The Potential Of 'Blazing Saddles'

Photo: Warner Bros.
Mel Brooks told Rolling Stone that, when a series of Warner Bros. executives were first shown the film, "They could not believe what they were watching: A person cold-cocking a horse? Farts? One of the guys got up and asked me. 'What did we spend on this?' 'I don’t know, $2.5 million?' So he turns to everyone in the room and says, 'Well, I suggest we eat the picture. Let’s bury this. The campfire scene, and the language ... it’s disgusting. I don’t want Warners’ name on this!'"

Brooks needed a true believer, an ally at Warner Bros., and thankfully he had one, in the form of Vice President in Charge of Production John Calley. "Calley, to his credit, said, 'Well, give it a weekend in L.A., Chicago, and New York. No critics, no marketing, no advance notice - we invite an audience in cold, they see the words "Blazing Saddles" come across the screen, and that’s it.' I don’t have to tell you - those three sneak previews we did were absolute riots. Suddenly, the same executives who wanted to kill the film saw gold coins floating in front of their eyes."

Those test screenings yielded uproarious audience reactions, and the film became a massive hit. Its $119.6 million lifetime domestic box office take (including re-releases) is equivalent to $592.6 million in today's dollars, making it the 56th most-seen film in US theatrical history, per Box Office Mojo.

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Mel Brooks And The Crew Spent A Day In The Editing Room Recording Fart Noises

Photo: Warner Bros.
For the infamously flatulent campfire scene, writer/director Mel Brooks and his post-production team logged a day in the editing room recording fart sounds through a variety of methodologies. What a way to make a living!

"I can tell you that we made the majority of the fart noises in the editing room," Brooks informed Rolling Stone. "Not actual farting, mind you - it was courtesy of soap, water, and our armpits. We did that for a whole day until we had a supreme volley of farts that I knew would work."

"'We have to get the bad guys to discuss getting [Mongo, played by Alex Karras] to go kill the sheriff. How are we going to do this?'" Brooks asked his team. "'I mean, cowboys don’t have offices, they don’t chit-chat with each other when they’re in the elevator … they’re out on the prairie. They’re talking about stuff around the campfire at night, right?' And someone else said, 'Right, they sit around drinking black coffee and eating beans and they…' I said, 'Let me stop you right there, I think I’ve got it.' You do that, there’s going to be a lot of noise. It’s biology." He's not wrong.

Brooks was systematic in determining just how many farts made the scene click, as he told Entertainment Weekly on the event of the flick's 40th birthday. "I had a rough cut, and maybe I had 16 farts. Things didn’t get exciting until the fourth or fifth one, and the laughter began to diminish around the 12th fart, so I said, 'Okay, cut it off at 12.' I did it kind of systematically. I do a lot of homework."

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Frankie Laine, A Legend Of Western Soundtracks, Recorded The Theme Song Earnestly Without Knowing It Was For A Comedy

Photo: Warner Bros.
Per a Goldmine piece, mid-century recording star Frankie Laine contended he "was not familiar with Mel Brooks's reputation" ahead of laying down the theme song for Blazing Saddles. He thus approached the performance earnestly, as if he was recording a song for a serious Western film. Laine was hardly a stranger to crafting the theme songs for serious-minded Westerns, having performed on the soundtracks of six Westerns in the 1950s prior to Blazing Saddles.

Like the Elmer Bernstein score for Animal House, this approach to the music made it even funnier.

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One Scene Features An Actual Bystander Whom Brooks Kept In The Movie

Photo: Warner Bros.
During the film's extremely meta finale, Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) is pursuing his adversary, the crooked mayor Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) and his group of cowboy ruffians. Soon, the pursuit escapes the movie's sets and turns to the rest of the Warner Bros. studio backlot. In the scene, during a meta-on-top-of-meta moment, there appears to be a confused bystander in the shot, baffled by all the activity. In reality, that was an actual confused bystander!

"So the area in front of Warner Bros. was supposed to be absolutely clear," Brooks told Conan O'Brien during an appearance on Conan. "There was a guy in a kind of a brindle sweater walking up and down, and I said to the [assistant directors], 'Chase him, chase him away.' So they did." As they rolled, "everybody flew out of Warner Bros, onto the street... and he just wandered back in." Brooks enjoyed the moment so much, he made sure his crew got the man to sign a waiver green-lighting the use of his image for the movie.

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The Film Had Three Alternate Working Titles That Were All Scrapped For Fears They’d Confuse The Audience

Photo: Warner Bros.
Blazing Saddles was actually the fourth seriously-considered title for the comic Western. Three alternate titles were deemed too confusing. Mel Brooks explained the many prior monikers for Blazing Saddles in an informative Rolling Stone interview. When you hear what else they were considering, you'll probably come to the same conclusion that Brooks's Warner Bros. colleague did.

Originally it was called "Tex X," but [Warner Bros. executive] John Calley said, "No, sounds too much like a blaxploitation film." Then it was "Black Bart," which obviously had a double meaning - Black Bart was what you called a stock Western villain. Also our character’s name was Bart, and he was Black. Not exactly rocket science. But again, Calley said, "People will just think this is another Western … next!" So I waited a couple of weeks, so I said "I may have something that says Western and wacky …" And he says, "Whatever it is, it’ll never work." And I say, "Blazing Saddles." And he goes, "YES!" and jumps up and down.

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Frequently voted on
The Best 'Blazing Saddles' Quotes
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Mel Brooks's Catskills Training Led To The Count Basie Scene

Photo: Warner Bros.
Writer/director Mel Brooks explained to Rolling Stone that he is no stranger to breaking the fourth wall with weird meta moments if the comedy works. His adolescent experiences as a busboy in the Catskills were the origin of this mentality, which ultimately culminated in the Count Basie Orchestra's surreal desert cameo for Blazing Saddles (though he would do it in many other films, too).

"When I was 14 years old, I was a busboy up at the Catskills, and I was what you’d call a 'utility player' for the theater troupe - they’d call me in whenever they needed somebody to fill in, that kind of thing. So this guy who was playing a lawyer had broke his leg or something, and they needed me to do the part. They gave me a fake beard, they gave me a hunchback, they gave me a white wig - the whole thing. My big line was: 'There, there, Harry, take a seat … now, tell me in your own words, what happened on the night of January 16th. Have a glass of water,'" Brooks said.

"So my first time doing this, I’m onstage, I’m nervous, I go to pour the water into the glass for him - and the f**king thing drops right out of my hand, crashes onto the desk, and spills all over the place," Brooks continued. "I’m just standing there, everyone is in shock, it’s dead silent. So I walk down to the footlights, I take off my wig and beard, and I say to the audience, 'I’ve never done this before, I’m 14 years old!' The laugh I got out of that was huge. From then on, I thought, 'Okay, I’ve broken the fourth wall, and I’m never putting it back together. That’s how you get Count Basie and his orchestra playing in the middle of the desert in Blazing Saddles. That’s my whole method of working as a director in a nutshell. Find the fourth wall, then smash the hell out of it." This approach has served Brooks well over the years.

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Mel Brooks Never Expected 'Blazing Saddles' To Be A Hit

Photo: Warner Bros.
Blazing Saddles was an inordinate box office smash after Warner Bros. executives saw how it resonated with test audiences in key markets. But Mel Brooks never anticipated it to be such a universal hit.

"Actually, it was designed as an esoteric little picture," he told Playboy in a 1975 interview. "We wrote it for two weirdos in the balcony. For radicals, film nuts, guys who draw on the washroom wall - my kind of people. I had no idea middle America would see it. What would a guy who talks about white bread, white Ford station wagons, and vanilla milkshakes on Friday night see in that meshugaas?"

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Mel Brooks Wanted John Wayne To Play The Waco Kid

Photo: The Searchers/Warner Bros.
Mel Brooks confirmed in a 2016 conversation with Metro that John Wayne rejected the role eventually performed by Gene Wilder (after first going through Gig Young) in Blazing Saddles.

"I wanted him to play the Waco Kid, because the Duke was such a good actor," Brooks noted. "His reality is that he is the cowboy Western. We were in the commissary at Warners, I gave him the script, and he promised he’d read it overnight. The next morning I saw him and he says that he loves it - every beat, every line - but that it’s too blue, that it would disappoint his fans. He said, though, that he would be the first one in line to see it."

The idea of John Wayne cackling at the ribald absurdity of Blazing Saddles is quite an image. Here's hoping he made good on his promise to Brooks that he would check out the finished product.

[6 Reps]

   

   

funk,

Fyi, George Eiferman was in a 1951 movie, The Devil's Sleep, in a small part as a gym employee.  The movie is not a peplum, it's a crime drama.

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  Work out in polluted air and you may miss out on some of the brain benefits of exercise, according to two, large-scale new studies of exercise, air quality and brain health. The studies, which involved tens of thousands of British men and women, found that, most of the time, people who ran and rode vigorously had larger brain volumes and lower risks for dementia than their less active peers. But if people exercised in areas with even moderate levels of air pollution, the expected brain improvements from exercise almost disappeared.
   

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The new studies raise questions about how to balance the undeniable health gains of working out with the downsides of breathing in bad air and underscore that our environment can change what exercise does — and does not do — for our bodies.

A large body of evidence demonstrates that, on the whole, exercise bulks up our brains. In studies, active people generally sport more gray matter in many parts of their brains than sedentary people. Gray matter is made up of the brain’s essential, working neurons. Fit people also tend to have healthier white matter, meaning the cells that support and connect neurons. White matter often frays with age, shrinking and developing Swiss-cheese-like lesions even in healthy adults. But fit people’s white matter shows fewer and smaller lesions.

Partially as a consequence of these brain changes, exercise is strongly linked with lower risks for dementia and other memory problems with age.