[POWERJIM]

Talking Training with Old-Time Strongmen

Kurt J. Wilkens, RKC

Let us take a little time out of our busy schedules to just relax. Let us put aside for a moment all of our hard work and harder training and enjoy a few minutes to ourselves. Let us daydream. Imagine, if you will, that H.G. Wells has loaned us his favorite Time Machine, and with it we can travel back in time to the early 20th century -say 1925. Imagine also that many of the greatest strongmen of the time had gathered at Henry Higgins’ gym in Boston, Massachusetts to compare and discuss their various training methods. Imagine that they chose you—being from the future and all—to conduct an interview with them, so that you might learn all that you could about effective strength training techniques, and then take this treasured information back to the confused masses of the early 21st century and set them on the proper path to success in Physical Culture. (Hey, it could happen; work with me here.)

As you stare goggle-eyed around the gym at the men seated about you on the floor (after all, the bench press was a thing of the future, so there weren’t many benches to sit on), you see some of the most well-known personalities of the Iron Game who had ever lived: Arthur Saxon, George Hackenschmidt, Alan Calvert, and W.A. Pullum. Unfortunately, Hermann Goerner was off giving some sort of strength demonstration elsewhere, so his most trusted friend and confidant, Edgar Mueller, was sitting in for him. Of course, the owner of the gym himself was there as well, Henry Higgins. With shaking hands, you turn on your ‘new-fangled’ tape recorder and begin.

You (coughing, nervous in the presence of such greatness): Uh, thank you, gentlemen, for taking the time to sit down with me. It is very generous. (Mumbled acknowledgment from the strongmen.) There are a great many issues that the people of my time are always arguing about, but I’ll try and stick to the biggest ones. First is a concept that we have developed known as “training to failure”. What do you, gentlemen, think about training to failure, to the point of utter collapse and exhaustion?

Henry Higgins: “... I always made it a point not to lift to the limit of my powers. By lifting well within himself in practice, a man will do much better in training... It is always safe to lift less than your full strength will permit.” (6)

Edgar Mueller: “... I have always had the impression that Hermann, in performing the great majority of his many amazing feats, very rarely exerted himself to anywhere near the limits of his astounding power ...
“Whenever he wished to surpass a particular feat of his ... Hermann would recall the lift and when he made it -he would then proceed to better that particular feat, but he would never try his limit. He was always most ‘economical’ with his enormous strength and, due to this, very many of his lifts were nowhere near his maximum ability...” (8)

George Hackenschmidt: “Never on any account continue the exercise until exhaustion sets in...
“Do not perform any exercise to excess, so as to tire yourself out. If you feel tired and exhausted, give yourself the necessary rest, and, as in everything else, use moderation and common sense.
“REMEMBER that excessive and rapid exercising is harmful.” (3)

W.A. Pullum: “The work must ... always be graded with due regard to existing abilities...
“Learn to distinguish between that degree of work which merely insists that you strenuously exert yourself and that which really taxes you to perform it. The former is the limit beyond which it is never beneficial to proceed.” (7)

Alan Calvert: “When a man is exercising with a heavy bell there is no rule that compels him to continue his exertions after he feels with rubber exercisers does not develop the right kind of muscles for weight-lifting ... [i]t will be gathered that, in my opinion, when a man has got a good development and takes to weight-lifting, he will be wise to drop all his light exercises, and reserve the energy and nervous power such exercises would eat up, for weight-lifting.
“To such as have in view the improvement of health or development of muscle only, I have nothing to say, as any system of light training will improve such, and for health no doubt light dumb-bell work and any rubber appliance is good ... I admit that in the case of a man who has the least suspicion of internal weakness or a weak constitution, it is absolutely essential that a preliminary course of light exercise be gone through with the object of strengthening the body and preparing all round for the harder work involved in weight-lifting ... But at the same time I would say that the man who knows himself to be already constitutionally sound and internally perfect, with good physical development, should not waste time in light exercises of any description, but go right on to weight-lifting, of course practising at first with such weights as could be lifted with ease and comfort.
“Club swinging is a form of light exercise which is of no use to the would-be strong man, as it stretches and makes supple the muscles rather than develops them with increased contractile power.” (1)
“Numberless professors of physical culture are continually propounding systems of exercise to the public, which they specially recommend on account of there being no necessity for any weights or other apparatus in their system.
“I have nothing to say against these methods, as I have never tried them; but am perfectly satisfied, without troubling to investigate them, that only by exercising with weights can a thoroughly all-round development be obtained.” (2)

Henry Higgins: “Often you will hear people say that it is possible to become very strong and to get good development by practicing light exercises...
“Now I have taught straight gymnasium work for about 15 years and I never knew of a man who built himself up except by very heavy work. Light dumbbell drills never made anyone strong or muscular. I taught drills of this sort to people who wanted to get the ordinary hygienic benefit from exercise, and I knew that my pupils did derive that benefit. But they never got strength or development from the light drills ... On the other hand all my pupils who went in for strength and development were successful when I put them at heavy training.
“Any man who says that he can build a person up and make him very strong by the use of light exercises is deceiving himself. He can certainly improve the health of the pupil by giving him exercise of this character. But that is the extent of the usefulness of this sort of exercise.” (6)

George Hackenschmidt: “[i]t is only by exercising with heavy weights that any man can hope to develop really great strength ...
“[A man] may secure and maintain a condition of fair physical fitness by means of exercising without weights ... but he cannot hope to become really strong unless he exercises with weights ...
“Some trainers recommend to their pupils for the training of all muscle groups one and the same (light) weight and believe they are able to obtain the same effect by frequent repetitions.
“My experience has taught me that this is wrong ... One must consider that, although it is quite possible to enlarge muscles by certain light, prolonged exercises, at the same time the development of the sinews may be neglected, and it is the sinews which transport the action of the muscles to the bone frame. The sinews can only be exercised and strengthened by correspondingly heavy muscle work. Besides, to take a paradoxical example, it is quite impossible to improve strong muscle groups, as for instance, the hip muscles, with light-weight exercises.
“A further illustration of the fallacy of attempting to develop the muscles by frequent repetitions with the same light exercises may be found in a comparison with any and every other form of athletics, in which a man would never think of merely repeating his training programme. In order to improve himself either in pace or distance, he must set himself a steady progression of arduous effort.” (3)

Edgar Mueller: “it should be stressed that Hermann favoured low repetitions -usually 3 and very rarely 4 -with the weight being increased by 5 kilos (10 lb.) after each set. He trained for quality of muscle as opposed to quantity ... He was interested in training for strength; first and foremost in his mind was the ability to do things with his muscles, not just to have large muscles which were pretty to look upon, but when put to the test fell down. The training that Hermann did saw to it that, his muscles, whilst being developed, were also developed with the highest-quality tissue -- they were not blown up by endless repetitions with light weights. In that fashion, Hermann avers a man can never become strong -really strong -he must lift heavy weights, and the weights must be increased as his strength grows: this is the only way to become a strong man ...
“He also frowned on ‘expander’ exercises, believing that such forms of exercise destroyed the explosive force needed in performing quick lifts.” (8)

Alan Calvert: “... I have never known any man to make even respectable records at weight-lifting if he wasted his time with 5- and 10-lb. dumbbells.” (4)

You: I see. Okay, that makes sense. Now, what about exercise selection? In the future, a great many lifters tend to specialize on just one or two lifts. They focus all of their efforts on putting up huge weights in these ‘pet’ lifts while they virtually ignore the rest of the body. The lift most often practiced is the bench press; I believe you call it the floor press or supine press. (The gathered strongmen look a little perplexed by the idea of such an exercise being so popular.) Then we have the guys who only concentrate on the ‘showy’ muscles -the chest, the biceps and triceps, like that -and consequently walk around with puffed-up upper bodies but stick-figure legs. Worst of all, I think, are those who train on machines, trying to work each and every muscle individually, in isolation from the rest of the muscles around it. (Arthur Saxon gasps in horror at the mere mention of such a preposterous notion.)

Arthur Saxon: “Practice everything -single and double-handed press in dumb-bells and bar-bells, single and double-handed lifts, all the way in dumb-bells and bar-bells, snatching and swinging, jerking and pressing, lying down with weights, supporting weights, lifting weights whilst laid on the back, ring weights, human weights, and, if possible, double-handed lifts to the knee, and harness lifts, also holding the bell aloft and bringing a weight after with the disengaged hand, and raising bells aloft by what is known as the Continental style of lifting ... Also anything else that may suggest itself to your mind, such as heavy weights at arm’s length, raising bells overhead stood on end on the hand, juggling with weights by throwing them from hand to hand overhead, catching in the hollow of the arms, etc. A method of practice such as the above would not only bring into play every band and strap of muscle you possess, but also give you a far better knowledge of all-round weight-lifting, than you could possibly obtain if you practised three or four lifts only to the exclusion of all others.” (1)
“I have already stated that the surest method is to essay all-round lifting, and I would, therefore, recommend every aspiring weight-lifter to try and improve himself at every different feat.
“Supposing him to possess a specialty however, with a fair chance of making a world’s record thereat, ambition will, I have no doubt, overcome his good intentions in this respect, and will, consequently, impel him to devote more attention to his pet feat than it should properly receive.
“Now, it is no manner of use preaching to deaf ears, so I will refrain from saying what I think of these would-be world’s record makers ...” (2)

Edgar Mueller: “‘Variety is the spice of life’, declared Hermann. He was an all-round strong man and had no love for the monotonous ‘Olympic Three’ as the be-all and end-all of a lifter. Goerner practised all lifts ... Hermann regarded Dead Lifting and carrying of heavy weights as fundamental tests of bodily strength.” (8)

George Hackenschmidt: “It is advisable to vary the exercises constantly ... to develop all muscles harmoniously.
“... It is, therefore, most necessary to train systematically.
“Every human being possesses about five hundred separate muscles ...
“For the purposes of development ... it will be quite sufficient to classify them in groups, such as Neck muscles, Shoulder muscles, Arm muscles, Chest muscles, Muscles of the Abdomen, Back, Legs, etc.
“No one can afford to neglect any of these groups. All, in fact, should be equally developed, those which are naturally weaker to a greater extent than the others, until all are equally strong, when the object in view, should be that of equal all-round improvement.
“[A man] should of course combine these exercises with skipping, running, jumping and gymnastics of every description in order to similarly develop his activity and agility ...” (3)