Bodybuilding

Eras

• Older Traditions, Strength cultures that predate the sport and were never derived from it. The Indian akhara and pehlwani wrestling, with its earth pits, mace swinging and dand and bethak, and the Great Gama. The Iranian zurkhaneh, the house of strength, where varzesh-e bastani is performed to a drum and a recited text, and Gholamreza Takhti. Japanese chikaraishi stone lifting and sumo. These sit at the front of the archive rather than in an appendix, because the Western story of physical culture borrowed from them and then forgot it had.
• Training and Science, What is actually known about building muscle, as opposed to what the magazines sold. Hypertrophy research, volume and intensity, the high-intensity argument Mike Mentzer made and Arthur Jones marketed with Nautilus, nutrition and the supplement industry that grew out of it. Note that Weider settled with the FTC in 1985 for a minimum of four hundred thousand dollars over claims made for Anabolic Mega-Pak, which is a regulator's finding and not a rival's accusation.
• Women, A sport women built and then had taken over. The first official contest was the Ohio Regional Women's Physique Championship in Canton, Ohio, in November 1977, organised by Henry McGhee and won by Gina LaSpina, judged on bodybuilding rather than beauty criteria. Doris Barrilleaux founded the SPA in 1978, the first women's bodybuilding organisation run by and for women, and McGhee's USWPA followed. The Ms. Olympia arrived in 1980 and absorbed all of it. Then came four decades of rules aimed at size: the 1992 IFBB guidance that competitors should not be too big, and a 2004 memo asking female athletes to reduce muscularity by roughly a fifth for aesthetics and health. No male equivalent has ever existed. Rachel McLish, Bev Francis, Cory Everson, Lenda Murray, Kim Chizevsky, and the divisions invented to catch the women judged too muscular for the last one.
• Physical Culture, The Victorian and Edwardian strongman economy, which was show business before it was sport. Eugen Sandow, born Friedrich Wilhelm Mueller in Koenigsberg, brought to America by Florenz Ziegfeld for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where the act shifted from lifting weights to displaying muscle. His 1901 Royal Albert Hall Great Competition was the first major physique contest, though regional heats preceded it, and his published measurements were promotional. The American first is usually left out: Madison Square Garden, 28 December 1903 to 2 January 1904, run by Bernarr Macfadden and won by Al Treloar for a thousand dollars. Also Louis Cyr, Arthur Saxon, Professor Attila, Hippolyte Triat, Charles Atlas, and the Edison films that are the earliest moving pictures of any of it.
• On Screen and In Print, How the sport reached people who never entered a gym. The Weider magazines, which are simultaneously the best-documented and least neutral source in this field. Pumping Iron in 1977, which made Arnold famous and which its own director described as partly constructed. Hercules and the peplum cycle, Conan, talk-show appearances, the home-video market where retired competitors made a living, and the internet era that replaced all of it.
• Around the World, The largest segment here, because the sport is not American and the English-language search surface hides that. India, where Monotosh Roy took a NABBA Mr Universe title in the Group III amateur class in 1951 and Manohar Aich in the professional short class in 1952, and where Roy went on to found the Indian Bodybuilding Federation. Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Russia, Senegal and the Philippines. Much of this segment came from federations posting their own national championships, which no keyword search in English would ever surface.
• Contests, The competition itself, from the first Mr. Olympia in 1965 to now. Larry Scott, Sergio Oliva, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Zane, Lee Haney, Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman with eight consecutive titles, Jay Cutler, Phil Heath, and the recent run in which most champions were born outside the United States. Note the asterisk that matters: Arnold's 1971 win came with Sergio Oliva banned for competing at a rival NABBA event, which is a firmer objection than anything about 1980. Judging, posing, prize money, and the promoters who owned the federation and the magazines simultaneously.
• Gyms, Where the training actually happened. Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, which was a 1934 WPA New Deal installation and not a private venture, and its Venice successor; Gold's Gym; the York Barbell club and Bob Hoffman's operation, which was a magazine, a barbell company and a team at once. Also the equipment itself, the ordinary commercial gym as it spread worldwide, and the training culture of the 1960s and 1970s that the Weider magazines packaged and sold.
• Drugs and the Body, Handled evidence-led, and deliberately restrictive. Metandienone was first described in 1955 and synthesised by researchers at CIBA in Basel, marketed as Dianabol from 1958; John Ziegler introduced it to American athletes but did not create it, and his account of Vienna in 1954 is his own later recollection. Documented early use includes Sid Gillman giving it to the San Diego Chargers from 1963. Then the 1990 Anabolic Steroid Control Act, which both the AMA and the DEA opposed; the WBF of 1990 to 1992, which claimed testing without testing, imposed real testing in March 1992 and visibly deflated; and the IFBB Pro League, which still does not routinely test. On the human cost: Andreas Munzer's autopsy found a 636 gram heart against a normal 300 to 350, and liver tumours; Rich Piana's found heart and liver each roughly twice normal size, but the hospital destroyed the toxicology specimens and no cause was ever established. Nothing here is instructional, and no allegation is presented as fact.