Dan John: Wandering Weights, Our Epic Journey Through All Things Heavy, Issue # 22
I just tied up a long trip to Orlando and Austin. In Austin, I shared a workshop with Chip Conrad of BodyTribe and really enjoyed the opportunity. Dave Hall organizes a great event.
One of the many highlights of the trip was visiting the Stark Museum. Jan and Terry Todd have gifted a legacy to the future here. You can touch Sandow’s equipment, Hack’s personal photos, and see some of the greatest photos in the history of the sport. Plus, you can see literally every magazine, book and scrap of paper that have made strength training what it is today. I can’t recommend this enough. Visiting this museum should be on every fitness enthusiast's bucket list.
A question about Hugh Cassidy's workouts came up on the Q and A forum, which lead to a meander through that great Tan Slacks site. It started with this article on Cassidy's thinking behind power training. Reminds me of Pete George in the O lifts: Press, Snatch, and Clean and Jerk. That’s what you need, so that’s what you do! Every time I go to this site, I find myself wandering around and oddly, this time I found lots of parallels with my talks with Jan and Terry. I think I'll take you along on the meander.
Harry Paschall was one of the first iron philosophers. This piece resonates today as well as any other time.
Bob Peoples was an amazing lifter…huge deadlift. I saw his homemade wooden training barbell. Yes, that is right: wooden. Here's a look as some of his favorite training systems.
I was trying to explain HeavyHands to my audience this week. They had NO idea what I was talking about! Frankly, it remains the best fat loss exercise program I know.But you look weird, so the idea died. It works great, but you look silly. “Vanity of vanities!”
Whether this next article is “true” or not, I don’t know, but Dick Notmeyer had me do hypers with well over 100 pounds, sneaking up on 200, with the Blue Plate Specials. My lower back in college (and I guess my traps) were freaky enough to get comments from people around the swimming pool. Maybe I need to reconsider them:Spinal Erector Training.
You can replace the word “Nautilus” with "the training program that Shalt NOT be named” and laugh your way through this Gironda and Weider Nautilus discussion.Every generation of strength training has to put up with the “answer to all questions.” And…later….we come back around to what has always worked because it (I wish I had the hyperbole button here) works.
Something we forget, but I think does work: isometric training. Terry Todd, of course, knows everyone involved in this story, so it was fun to hear his explanation.
The Tommy Kono ABCs of Weightlifting series might have been the first article by Tommy that I tried to apply in training. Still a classic.
Great squatting and powerbuilding concepts here from Dave Draper, a man I consider a hero and friend.
If all this history is putting you to sleep, this is an excellent article.
Finally, a very fun piece about a very popular, and bloody, television show. It turns out to be awfully good at teaching fitness lessons, too!
Until next week, keep training and remember to think about the roots of your sports. Someone at the table this weekend noted that most every lifter can name and rank dozens of football, basketball and baseball players through the years. Few, though, can tell us about Davis, Kono and Sandow.
Let’s work on this.
Dan
DanJohn.net
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