“That there is an almost total neglect of the physical education of our youth in the home and school, as seen in the imperfectly developed frames...crooked spines, round shoulders and protruding shoulder-blades... flabby muscles... lung-starved and blood-poisoned bodies of our boys and girls, our men and women.”

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Although the above quote could describe the slouched teenagers and frail hipsters ubiquitous in my neighborhood, it was written a bit before our time as an observation on modernization and the human condition... in 1892.

So what’s new? Well, strangely enough, the quest for exercise, according to statistics of gym memberships, surveys and product sales, is greater per capita than it was 113 years ago. And yet our health, our holistic state of physical being, is actually declining. We might be living longer, but that’s modern medicine prolonging our decay. We’re fatter with a higher incident of a host of diseases that have simply replaced a bunch of other diseases that we’ve gotten rid of over the last century.

What’s changed? We’re no longer striving for health. We’re trying to look better, health be damned! Our culture supports a fitness industrial complex that is as geared toward actual health as the cosmetics industry or plastic surgery lobby is. The booty shaking, bright lights and fake vocabulary of modern marketing seems to have us convinced that ‘science’ has evolved fitness into little pills and, well, the Shake Weight.

To be fair, the snake oil and gizmos were around a century ago as well, but the refinement and volume of modern marketing hadn’t yet proliferated the nonsense in grand public view with three easy payments.

Fitness in the new millennium is an industry driven by a media-fed aesthetic ideal: endless gadgets and gizmos eking out every "pump" and "burn," allowing users to (supposedly) "tone," tighten and target problem areas. Almost gone are the days of health and ability for health and ability’s sake, now replaced with constant striving for ripped abs, pert bottoms and "defined" arms.

There was a time when muscles and bodies were built for use, not just for show; when training called for strength and ability of the entire body, used to conquer obstacles and prove might - not just to swell muscles full of blood.

These were the days of Physical Culture, a bygone era, a relic of the past that seems wholly unfamiliar and irrelevant to gym members of the twenty-first century, but was in fact the foundation for everything we know about fitness.

For the past 2+ years a handful of us have been collecting research and interviews for a documentary about the history of fitness, which, as far as we’re concerned, is a history of strength. Is that a slightly biased premise to our documentary concept? You bet, but we think a fair one.

Physical Culture is something in and of itself - not merely a performance aid or assistant to improved body composition. It is not a just sport or a training method. It is a world comprised of movement, obstacle, burden, success and perseverance; a philosophy that stresses strength, empowerment, self-improvement and personal victory.

With roots in ancient Greek philosophy (along with elements borrowed from Eastern thought and movement), Physical Culture drew its influence from the developing arts of gymnastics, wrestling and dance. It has a much richer history, though, in the deepest roots of human motivation: the desire to push against the un-pushable, move the immoveable and become victorious over the unconquerable.

The development of tools throughout the ages, from Indian clubs to dumbbells, to bicycles, barbells, kettlebells and more, has added to the evolution of movement and training. Physical Culture has been the toolbox for survival, an expression of national pride and a means for developing the body (for strength, sports and otherwise).

It found its name in the late 1800s at the hands of such Physical Culture luminaries as Bernarr McFadden, Professor Attila and perhaps most famously, Eugene Sandow. But the path had been laid generations before in the ancient Greek Olympics, in the Turnverins and YMCA's of the early 19th century, and by health and fitness legends like
Catherine Beecher, Edmund Desbonnet and Johan Guts Muths.

Our current wish is to revive and reanimate the study of Physical Culture, excavating its ancient history, breath life into its antiquated countenance and uncover the hidden history of fitness. Perhaps a look into the roots of modern fitness will bring the current physical culture underground a bit more into the popular forefront.

Although idealized in many ways, as history can often become, Physical Culture had a few lessons that we can learn from by not repeating them. For instance, our current dot in chronology has no monopoly on gurus and experts. Despite the desire of our research to unveil nothing but pure holistic consciousness from a century ago, there are many correlations to our practices in the industry today that might be more about stubborn dogma than actual health.

The western concept of fitness is either entirely vague (lift weights + hop on treadmill = 6 pack abs) or completely specialized (I do yoga, or I powerlift, or I CrossFit, or I do Pilates). We strive for identity through our workout choices, and therefore choosing a trend or group fits our personality needs.

Although there are many stories of the classic strongman also having a background in several other disciplines of training, sometimes history has curious stories that might have us asking “what if?”

One of these stories is man responsible for bringing the barbell to popularity in America.

“Men looking to reshape and strengthen their body in fin de siècle America (particularly after Eugen Sandow’s 1893 appearances at the Chicago Worlds Fair) discovered two major problems: the limited exercise literature available in this era almost universally espoused the use of lightweight training methods which did not build the kind of muscles owned by Sandow, and those who wanted to lift heavier weights—ala Sandow and other professional strongmen—could not buy such implements from any sporting goods company in America. Enter Alan Calvert, who solved both problems for American men by opening the Milo Bar-bell Company in 1902. His promotion of progressive resistance exercise using the adjustable barbells and dumbbells he manufactured launched a new era of strength and muscularity for America.”

A Quick Story of the Barbell

About 50 years before the barbell was introduced to America via Mr. Calvert, Austria’s Karl Rappo was using a revolutionary big bar with globes on it in his strongman act. Before that the closest thing you might recognize as resembling a barbell were 4 foot long wands with small globes on the ends, often weighing less than the mini-barbells used in Body Pump classes today.

But there was unknown prophecy in Rappo’s act, as the door began opening wider to the concept of heavier training implements being integral not just to strongman acts, but to health and what the idea of strength meant to the eventual lifting public.

Weightlifting clubs started blooming around Germany and Russia, but while Europe was embracing the barbell and its heavy kin, here in America heavy athletics received a fatal PR blow when a stroke ended the life of its most popular spokesperson, George Barker Windship. Public opinion blamed strength training, especially the heavy kind, for Windship’s sudden demise at 42. Then, according to historian Jan Todd, “during the 1880s and 1890s, heavy dumbbells and barbells were nearly impossible to find in America.”

But let’s not remember Windship by the bad public opinion that might have been unfairly levied on him and strength training. Windship can probably be credited with the original concepts for shot-loaded and plate-loaded heavy training implements, since he started toying with these concepts as early as 1850 when building the heaviest dumbbell he could, which was adjustable with loadable shot up to 180 pounds. This was followed 6 years later by a patent for a fantastic adjustable plate-loaded dumbbell, which was to have a range of 8-101 pounds--in half pound increments! According to the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture, there might have never actually existed a finished product, since there isn’t much suggesting that one was ever produced. But heck… a boy can dream!

America, being behind in the strength training trend by the turn of the century, finally had a voice for the cause when Alan Calvert opened the Milo Bar-bell Company in 1902. Calvert sold globe barbells that were both shot AND plate loaded, all in one. With the globe opened, you’d find a section for shot and another section with changeable plates.

There were a variety of barbell options throughout the beginning of the century, but it was the 1928 Olympics that heralded the official life of the barbell we recognize today. The Berg Barbell, which was the first to revolve, made the competition lifts much easier (try cleaning a heavy, fixed barbell and you’ll see what I mean), and it was quickly copied by everyone and became the gold standard of weightlifting. What you get your hands on in most gyms today has not changed much in the last 80+ years.

So the barbell became the tool of choice for most practicing strength addicts of the time, a common tool of the that end of the Physical Culture spectrum, and Alan Calvert’s words and instructions were gospel to any true iron head. But the iron game guru became the follower of Edwin Checkley, another physical culturist guru (he called himself a ‘physicultirst’) from the other side of the spectrum, who advocated breathing and less-than-vigorous bodyweight movements as the path to health and wellbeing.

Soon after Edwin Checkley’s death, Calvert made the complete switch, denouncing barbell and heavy weight training and embracing, teaching and writing about the Checkley Method for the rest of his life. Even his friends weren’t entirely sure why his philosophy switched so abruptly, and his followers were less than thrilled with his new ideas.

The Modern Correlation

Bruce Lee once said to take what works and discard what doesn’t. History can now offer us a palate of successful ideas, but through Calvert, it might also teach us that applying Bruce Lee’s concept would let us incorporate multiple disciplines rather than hop philosophical ships from one extreme to the next. Calvert could have taken the best from both worlds and created an entirely unique and holistic experience. That’s the real curiosity… why didn’t he?

Are you?

The lessons from history often don’t come from the words or direct actions of those who came before us. It’s the patterns over time that develop. Many folks, including modern historians, regal in the excitement of our current period, watching records continue to fall and strong men and women push boundaries far beyond what was thought possible.

But might be of more interest about modern strength is the limits we put on our definition of it, not the individual feats that represent this definition. We’ve gone from an ideal of being strong, in a broad, holistic definition that might be interpreted as ‘capable,’ to being the Best, which now means dominating one aspect of strength possibility.

Strength had a use... You were a benefit to the tribe, to the family, to your clan or country. Whether through actual physical usefulness or simply as a gauge of possibility, a strong person represented someone who could DO, who was useful, healthy and capable. This is even evident 100 years ago simply by perusing the iron game and physical culture literature of the time. From Arthur Saxon defining strength as the ability to endure the stresses of life, not just the gravity of a heavy barbell, to Bernarr MacFadden screaming from the masthead of every copy of Physical Culture magazine “Weakness is a crime, don’t be a criminal,” the one-trick-pony strength and sport world of today made as little sense to many of the early physical culturists as not training or lifting at all.

“Mind and body should be viewed as the two well-fitting halves of a perfect whole, designed and planned in perfect harmony, mutually to sustain and support each other, and equally worthy of our unwearied care and attention in perfecting.” 1

Or to paraphrase an even older text, “Man know thyself, thou art fearfully and wonderfully made.”