WHAT'S OLD IS STILL RELEVANT (PART 2)

WHAT'S OLD IS STILL RELEVANT (PART 2)

By Shane Robert

NOTE: Part 1 can be read here. This isn’t exactly a continuation of that entry, but close enough in theme to be grouped together

If you have read any of the entries in this blog, it should be obvious that I quite enjoy the history of the ‘iron game’ and often read books and articles from eras long past. There is a lot to be learned from these pioneering lifters that is still relevant today, perhaps even more relevant than some of the advice you might get today. These lifters were writing at a time when they had real jobs outside of lifting, even as world-level competitors, family and life commitments, and all of the usual stresses of a normal person's life. Not to mention that they didn’t have access to the best nutrition and certainly didn’t have access to any kind of PED, which didn’t exist. Their insights on how to build muscle and strength are still so valid that much of the emerging research in this field seems to confirm it.

One aspect of this era that I love is how general and vague their advice could often be. Today's readers want every little detail spelled out for them—sets, reps, percentages, rest intervals, frequency, movement execution, the list goes on and on. I’m not judging. If anything, I have contributed to this problem. Once again, there are examples all over this blog. That said, I enjoy the vagueness because it forces you, as a lifter, to be more involved in the process and figure out what works for you, both within each training day and over the course of a whole training period.

John Grimek was a lifter from this time period whose writing I thoroughly enjoy. If you aren’t aware of Mr. Grimek, you should be. This man competed in weightlifting at the 1936 Olympics, placing 9th overall without specialization in the 3 movements contested at that time, and went on to become the greatest bodybuilder of the first half of the 20th century, perhaps ever. He is the only man to win the Mr. America contest twice, in 1940 and 1941, because he was so dominant that they changed the rules to state you can only win once for fear that he would never be beaten. He also won the Mr. Universe contest in 1948 and Mr. USA in 1949, his last contest. At the time, there wasn’t much else to win.

When he wasn’t lifting weights, which was only 3, perhaps 4 days per week, Grimek was a writer and editor for strength and bodybuilding magazines. He spent most of his tenure with Bob Hoffman periodicals, Strength and Health and Muscular Development.Thanks to this, we have many articles that share his wisdom, though it can be challenging to know which he actually wrote for sure since it was common practice for ghostwriters to pen articles and use a well-known name, like Grimek, to drum up interest. A good indication is the brevity of information and/or the less formal nature of the writing style. Grimek was a very casual writer. The short article, titled “Training for Lifting” below highlights this style (the bolded sections are my emphasis):

“The average lifter should warm up with five light cleans and presses and/or some calisthenics. In both press and snatch, he should start with some light sets of 5 before working up in sets of three repetitions at about 60 to 70 pounds below his best personal records, progressing in 10-pound jumps. As the weight gets heavy, he should drop to sets of two repetitions, possibly doing four or five sets of two with a given weight. On a night when limits are to be tried, he should continue upward in single attempts. Limit attempts should not be made too often, and only when the lifter feels up to it.

For the clean and jerk, the same procedure should be followed, except that the weights are only cleaned in threes and twos, not jerked. After reaching a near-limit clean, jerks should be practiced in sets of two from the shoulders after single cleans.(NOTE: This only applies to people who are better jerkers than cleaners, something common during that time due to the clean technique used)

Other exercises which will prove of value to a lifter are squats, done in sets of five with heavy weights, rapid deadlifts to waist height in sets of three, and heavy bench presses in sets of three using regular overhead pressing grip. If weak in the press, a lifter will often profit by doing dumbbell presses in sets of three to five repetitions on one or two of his non-training days each week. A total of 20 presses is plenty for this additional training.”

If one dissects this a little, one can see that it is very valid advice that lines up with many modern training programs. Here is what we see:

1. General Warm-up 
2. Specific Warm-up
3. Training starts with around 70% of a max—this is the minimum percentage that many modern programs use to start calculating volume
4. Take reasonable jumps
5. Use challenging but doable weight
6. Squats should be heavy but for moderate reps
7. If you deadlift (as a weightlifter), they should be fast and mimic the weightlifting movements, likely this is more in line with what we would call pulls today.

Let’s put this in perspective for a lifter who can snatch, in pounds, 210, clean & jerk 275, and squat 360

When broken down like this, you start to see a very modern-looking training program. This would be a very effective and challenging training day. The press is excluded here but would have been part of the training prior to it being eliminated from Olympic competition in 1972. If it were to be included, each press set would almost certainly have started from the floor and be power cleaned. If that were the case, you would likely be able to jump right into heavier snatches without the longer ramp-up to the first ‘working’ weight.

Of course, Grimek wasn’t the only one who wrote in this manner. Bob Peoples, who I have written about in the past, had a very similar, “sometimes I did this, sometimes I did that,” style of writing. In fact, almost all of the writers before the late 1960s or early 1970s tended to write in this manner. I can’t prove it, but I think this is one of the reasons why there used to be more variety in the type of training you would see at different gyms and regions of the country. Everyone had different interpretations of the same information and created different styles around it that they shared with those around them.

This piece isn’t intended to be idol worship of John Grimek; it just so happened that I used him as an example and needed to give some background information on him. My intention was to, once again, encourage readers to seek out the older information and not to dismiss it as outdated or inapplicable anymore. Despite not wanting to make this all about Grimek, there is one last little tidbit of advice from him that I think we should all heed:

“But... any exercise is better than none, regardless of what type of apparatus you employ to develop strength and health. Just do some training. It will pay in the end.”