Genesis
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A ‘thing’ in its beginnings exhibits undistinguishable form and imperceptible movement. And what it is, should it develop, is a marvelous evolutionary process. I’m not an historian, an archaeologist or a philosopher, but bodybuilding for man began when he first stumbled upon his ego many, many years ago. Might and muscle building is something apart. It’s for those men and women who desire to exert.
What’s he talking about now?
I walked into the picture about the middle of the twentieth century when I purchased a Hercules hand gripper. It lay there with its bright red handles and gleaming chrome coil spring amid a heap of crushed display cartons and well-sampled wiry chest expanders and how-to pamphlets exhibiting sketches of a handsome and rugged he-man with muscles bursting through his T-shirt. WOW. Wide eyed and transfixed. WOW.
I was seven and in the sports department of Macys in NYC, Christmas shopping with my mother. My mom got off easy. The hand gripper was harmless enough, fit in my back pocket just right and was only a couple of bucks compared to the $25.00 for the rather cumbersome basketball I’d been fondling earlier.
Queeze...Queeze...Queeze... That repetitious grating sound, music to my ears, became like dripping water to the senses of my family, not unlike an ancient Far Eastern torture. We all endured; I, the burn in the forearms and the anxious need to grow, and they, their loving patience and frazzled nerves.
By the time I was 12 I had acquired the three-spring chest expander, the five-spring super expander and a wall-mounted bungee/pulley contraption that hung conspicuously off a kitchen wall. Dear Mom and Dad and older brothers barely noticed.
Privately and uninterrupted, I pressed on when they were elsewhere. Kitchen chairs back to back served as a dipping apparatus, and finger tips over the doorway entry ledge provided a tough chinning structure for a future big back. My home gym, non-compare, the only one I imagined.
I remember one day staring down at a small, immovable pile of metal neatly fixed to a 16-inch steel bar. On the barren concrete sidewalk in front of my house in Secaucus, New Jersey, lay my first set of weights, somewhat rusty and full of gravity. It was my very own purchase from a neighbor up the street; for five dollars, he was released and I was hooked.
Curious.
My brothers had their own things, my mom smiled and Dad did a shoulder shrug (full range of motion) as he walked off. No one said ‘no’ or ‘hmph.’ I was encouraged. Self inspiration was anonymously planted, took root and grew, freely and unencumbered.
What I did with all these things, the 10s and 5s and three-pounders, collars and bar is a vague, unfocused and candid rerun. There were no courses or instructions or peer supervision. No magazines. I invented and improvised and wrestled and played…hard. Though I never saw his movies, a poster promoting Steve Reeves in Hercules deeply branded me, setting me aside for a labor of love to last, evidently, a lifetime.
The equipment grew, I grew and the effort grew. Powerlifting, Olympic lifting, Strongman competition, physical culture, fitness and physique and bodybuilding grew. High performance athletes in every sport lift weights as they strive to become champions. Moms and dads and their moms and dads lift weights for fun and fitness, therapy and diversion. Can’t watch CNN for a week without seeing a gym full of men and women pressing on as the newsperson sites research commending weightlifting exercise for kids, the aging, the AIDS patient, the arthritic, overweight, underweight, depressed, pregnant, diabetic.
The once-obscure, male-dominated peculiarity that raised eyebrows is now practiced in glittering, hi-tech gyms stretching sometimes over 50,000 square feet atop high rises in the big cities.
We’ve become a mob. Who’s your personal trainer? The evolution continues. Scary.
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