Strength Training.

How It All Began

VERY FEW COACHES KNOW exactly how "weightlifting" -- the national pastime of circus strongmen -- evolved into "weight training" and then "strength training."

It actually started with a wire-service report in the late 1930s. Four top college shotputters had decided to come out of the closet. They confessed that they had built their bodies with weightlifting -- a banned substance (by their coaches).

The coaches had good reason to worry. Professional strongmen were suspect. They might be strong enough to lift pianos and buildings, but they didn't have a clue about exercise physiology or functional muscle.

That worried their coaches who, unfortunately, had no alternatives to offer. And so the athletes had to shift for themselves. The intellectuals among them gravitated to barbells and exercise regimens that could build strength and improve their athleticism.

The shotputters had worked it out; they were obviously on to something. If additional affirmation was needed, it arrived at Scholastic Coach in the fall of 1947: The first article it had ever seen on the science of progressive-resistance training.

Designed by a well-known team of California exercise physiologists, "Weight Training" presented a soundly constructed regimen of exercises performed with a light set of barbells.

The authors had designed a program for "The many high school boys who report to the physical educator or coach so underdeveloped physically as to preclude any real chance for success in skill activities.

"A training program of weights, employed in exercises graded in intensity, offers an excellent means of improving strength and building up underweight pupils."

We did not have to be a genius to understand that this could be the start of something huge: a revolutionary modality for building strength and conditioning in sports.

As the years flew by and the strength-training machines started moving in to join the free-weights (note: the revolutionary Nautilus machines were introduced in Scholastic Coach by their inventor, Arthur Jones), our scientific researchers began replacing the mythology of the old-time weightlifters with strength-training regimens that could be adopted by all athletes.

The strength-training movement turned into a revolution practically overnight. Every pro team, every college, practically every high school, every health club, and practically every male and female athlete in training adopted "the weights."

The progress in strength training has been enormous. You can see it in all the awesome facilities throughout the country and in the shapes of our athletes and the quality of their performances.