Body Building... Questions and Answers

By BOB HOFFMAN

This straight-from-the-shoulder article answers Bobybuilding questions of universal interest and puts the facts on the line about Sensible Weight-Training versus Monster-Building. This should be MUST reading for every barbell man.

Ronald "Specs" Lacy, runner-up in the Mr. America contest this year, is a real athlete as well as a muscleman. Here he is shown lifting 300 lbs., at a recent Wildcat picnic in Lexington, Ky., where he works at the Kentucky Rehabilitation Center.

UESTION: I have been lifting

weights for about a year. When I first started, four other fellows were lifting with me and all the space that we had was a little garage. However, in the last six months things have changed considerably. More and more fellows kept joining us until now we have twenty-five members in our club. We pooled our equipment and money and rented a large store which we now use as an athletic club. Members in our club range in age from ten to twenty-two. The neighborhood kids really enjoy it because besides giving them something to do, it also offers a challenge as we stage contests between ourselves and fellows from other neighborhoods. Besides. those interested in weightlifting and body building, there are many who box, swim, or run track and who just want to lift weights to make them better in these sports.

This brings me around to the reason why I am writing you this letter. Since I first began lifting weights, I have been lifting York. However, I must admit that this is only because I bought the set of weights from a friend who was going into the service and he happened to throw the York Courses in with them. I had never heard of York or any other body building outfit. I believed that one exercise course was as good as another. However, after I first began to turn the pages and read the introduction I knew that I had been wrong. I started to become interested in the science of body building instead of just the exercise. That is the reason why I bought my first copy of Strength and Health magazine. Before when I would go into a store for a magazine I never even gave body building mags a second look. I just thought that they were full of pictures about supermen and

STRENGTH

AND HEALTH

their feats of strength. Would you believe this? It hardly seems plausible to myself that just a short time ago I thought that 18" arms and 50" chests were only owned by circus strongmen who had exercised the greater part of their life in order to obtain them. I had never seen a barbell or a weightlifter and all that I had been doing were some push-ups. The reason for this, I suppose, is not that there weren't any weights or weightlifters around but that I was indifferent to them and as the weightlifting craze had just about begun around my neighborhood, there weren't many fellows around with good builds. You could imagine my surprise when I learned that boys whom I had grown up with had been lifting weights secretly. I say "secretly" because those who did. lift generally did so alone and told no one because they were probably afraid of being laughed at.

Well, usually it is the magazine that makes a fellow start lifting; but in my case putting the horse before the cart so to speak, it was the weights and the York course that made me start buying the books. When I started to read Strength and Health magazine it was like a whole new world was opening up to me. Since then I have become somewhat of an authority on food, sleep, exercise and anatomy. Occasionally, I would buy another body building magazine just to see if all exercise was alike but I soon discovered that they were not. I stuck to York methods of training because they were the most sensible and the quickest. I use York courses in the club and all the fellows are extremely satisfied with their results. As I have previously stated I do know more about training problems than most of the others and so they tend to come to me whenever they

DECEMBER,

1956

Billy Fraser of Jacksonville Florida has been training with weights for about three years, and has won numerous medals in his area. He is 23, 5'6", 162 lbs., with normal chest of 44, waist 28, arms 164. He has pressed 210, snatched 195, c & 240. Billy has a very nicely proportioned build.

are in doubt.

This is where the problem exists. Lately there have been doubts and disagreements on many subjects, mostly by newcomers to our club and those who are interested in playing sports. Although I have thumbed through many a back copy of Strength and Health, the answers still stump me and even though I can offer some reasonable explanation to some of the questions there are still those who want to see it in writing. All of us here at the club respect your judgment and would greatly appreciate it if you could give us some assistance. I shall enumerate the major questions at the end and while I know that it is somewhat of a list I also am sure that your time shall not be wasted as you will be helping not only the twenty-five members of our club but also many other fellows in the neighborhood who have the same fears and doubts about starting to lift weights. Here are the questions: QUESTION 1: One fellow is skeptical about weights because he had lifted previously and after a few months had noticed what appeared to be stretch marks in the skin appearing around the lats and especially the joint between the pecs and the shoulder. That was a year ago and they haven't gone away since. He doesn't know what caused them or if they will ever go away. My guess is handling weights too heavy for his muscles. What do you think?

ANSWER: An old rubber tube or band will stretch too far and become striated as will the skin, if it lacks resiliency. The skin is normally a super-elastic and resilient bodily envelope. Regardless of the weight handled the skin should not stretch to the point of no return. This frequently happens with women who (Continued on page 42)

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