THE WEIRDEST TREND MAKER IN THE HISTORY OF FITNESS: The Story of Bernarr Macfadden (Part 1)
By Shane Robert
Knowing the history of any subject is valuable to provide insight into the current state of that subject. In this case, knowing the roots and history of the fitness industry can help us predict what future might lay ahead as many of the trends and ideas are far from new, indeed, most being cyclical. With this idea in mind, there is no better place to start than by looking into one of the most fascinating, controversial, and influential figures in the history of fitness. A man who helped shape modern health culture long before protein powder and personal trainers, before television and mass media; a man who believed that weakness was a moral failure; a man dubbed, by himself, the “Father of Physical Culture.” That man was Bernarr Macfadden.
Early Life: Poverty, Illness, and Obsession
Bernarr Macfadden was born in 1868 in Missouri as Bernard Adolphus McFadden. His childhood was brutal—his father was a drunkard who died of DTs when he was 4. His mother was consumptive (tuberculosis) and eventually died from the complications of her disease. With no parents and no money, the young, frail, and undernourished Bernard was shuffled between relatives before landing in Chicago to live with relatives who ran a hotel. “And if you ask me,” Macfadden remembered overhearing the hotel's matron saying, “this one’s going the same way. He’s got all the symptoms. Consumption runs in the family.” This snide comment and humiliation planted the seed of obsession. Bernard thereupon decided to live to spite his relatives.
Bernard didn’t spend long in Chicago. He was soon shipped off to work as a “bound-boy,” essentially an indentured servant, for a northern Illinois farmer. By 12, after years of hard farm labor and somewhat greater access to food, a slightly more robust Bernard found his way to St. Louis, where he worked odd jobs. During this time, he began to feel the onset of the dreaded consumption that was prophesied to befall him. Core to his beliefs, fueled largely by his spite, was that illness was not simply a matter of biology; it was a personal failure. To improve himself, Bernard set up a gym and began training with weights and performing gymnastic feats, a common part of training in that era. Part of his daily regimen included daily 6-mile walks with a 10-pound lead bar that he carried inside his shirt, a proto-rucking style of training. According to his own accounts, he transformed (whether fully accurate or not), the myth of transformation would become central to his identity.
Reinventing Himself
Feeling sufficiently healthy, Bernard set out again as a hobo of sorts, riding the rails and working more odd jobs—as a water boy for a construction gang, a dentist’s assistant, a wood chopper, and printer’s devil, which was essentially an apprentice or errand boy in a historical printing establishment, responsible for tasks like mixing ink, fetching type, and cleaning presses (as we will see, this will end up being very relevant to Bernarr’s later life). One day while deep in a coal mine, Bernard had what he referred to as a moment of revelation. He suddenly saw that his mission in life was to preach the gospel of health.
He returned to St. Louis, and he rented a space to transform into his new temple to health. The sign in front of the business read, “Bernarr Macfadden–Kinistherapist–Teacher of Higher Physical Culture.” As to his change of name, he later explained, “The picturesque appealed to me. I wanted something out of the ordinary.” In other words, because he believed the new spelling looked more powerful. As to the origin of the word “kinistherapist,” he admitted having no idea. Odd, perhaps, but long before modern marketing psychology, he understood the importance of branding, and that image was power.
THE BIRTH OF PHYSICAL CULTURE
In 1899, the newly named Macfadden launched Physical Culture, a magazine that promoted ideas that were common in the small physical culture world, but quite radical in the mainstream, such as the benefits of weight training and exercise, raw foods and natural medicine, fasting for health and sun bathing; he warned the extreme perils of, among other things, corsets, white bread, doctors, vaccination, overeating, and prudery. He openly attacked the medical establishment, claiming doctors profited from sickness. This anti-medical sentiment was radical and controversial at the time. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, the magazine sold well and grew rapidly, eventually boasting a readership of hundreds of thousands.
Riding the wave of success from Physical Culture, Macfadden published a five-volume, 2,969-page Encyclopedia of Physical Culture (1911), and issued a litany of books and pamphlets that usually focused on natural methods of curing various ailments, many of which he reportedly used on himself. He also opened a chain of one-cent Physical Culture restaurants with menus that reflected his nutritional beliefs as well as a succession of spas he called “healthatoriums” across the east and midwest, including in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, which he fought, in vain, to have incorporated as “Physical Culture City.”
Macfadden organized some of the first physique competitions in America. In 1904, he staged the world’s first international bodybuilding contest at Madison Square Garden, looking for the “most perfectly developed man in the world.” The $1,000 prize (about $36,000 in today’s value) went to a man named Al Treloar, who would go on to become quite famous in his own right. There was also a women’s division won by a woman named Emman Newkirk. Sadly, Ms. Newkirk didn’t receive monetary compensation for her win. This was one of the first times muscular development was commercially celebrated and recorded on film, by none other than Thomas Edison.
In part 2 of this look back at Bernarr Macfadden, we will look at his later years as a publishing powerhouse, his decline, and his lasting legacy on the fitness industry. Before we conclude, however, I want to touch a little on some of the little tidbits about his personality that made him so…unique. The following is an excerpt from a piece on Macfadden that appeared in American Heritage Magazine in 1981:
“The personal impression he made was just as peculiar. He spoke in a flat Missouri twang that struck one employee as a combination of ‘Old Scotch and Choctaw.’ Following the Macfadden theory of voice development, he would periodically, and without warning, break into loud mooing or braying; when merely speaking, he had a penchant for malapropisms, referring to ‘fleas in the ointment’ and comparing himself to ‘Huckleberry Flynn’. To promote his cure for baldness, which involved yanking vigorously on one’s hair, he affected a thick, springy pompadour. He believed in the energizing benefits of ‘earth-to-body magnetic currents’ (note from Verse: we call this “grounding today”) and therefore walked barefoot as much as possible, slept on the floor, and spent a good deal of time standing on his head. He did not believe in the fashion industry and so kept the same clothes for decades, wearing them until they were literally in tatters. This led to maintenance men in the Macfadden Building mistaking the boss for a derelict. Occasionally, he would challenge them to a boxing match on the spot.”
