STRONGMEN I REMEMBER BEST...

George F. Jowett

To many readers of the "pulp" magazines, George F. Jowett is a familiar name. His mail order course has been advertised under various managements, for nearly thirty years. To veterans of weight-lifting, he is better known as the former editor of STRENGTH magazine, and the President of the first American lifting association, the American Continental Weightlifters Association. This picture is taken from the cover of an advertising booklet and shows him as he was about the time Siegmund Klein first met him in Pittsburgh. He was a talented writer who exerted an almost mesmeric spell upon his readers in those far-off days, and many of them will still claim, after 30 years, that they still "dig him the most!"

The first organizer of Weight-lifting in America

By SIEGMUND KLEIN

Y FIRST MEMORY of the well-known strength figure,

M'George F. Jowett, goes back to the early 1920s,

when his picture and several articles concerning him appeared in the old Strength magazine. My very first glimpse of him was in a small advertising booklet issued by Earle Liederman. At that time he was a native of Inkerman, Ontario, Canada, where I understand he has since retired.

Before I left Cleveland to plant my muscle banner on Broadway, I made several trips to Philadelphia to visit my first teacher, Alan Calvert, at the old Milo Barbell Company there. From information in Strength, I learned that Jowett was now located in Pittsburgh, where, in company with Ottley Coulter and Charles Schaefer, he was operating the Apollo Barbell Gymnasium and a mail order business in the art of molding muscles. So on my next trip to the Barbell Mecca (then Philadelphia, now York, Pa.), I decided to stop over in Pittsburgh and look up Mr. Jowett, by whom I had been very strongly impressed.

When I walked up a flight of stairs to the Apollo Gym, I found it closed during the daytime, and upon making desperate inquiries I learned that Mr. Jowett had a daytime job nearby at the Donohue Market, where I duly found him, incased in a white butcher's apron, with his sleeves rolled up to disclose very powerful wrists and forearms. I waited around the market until lunch time, when we repaired to a nearby coffee shop for a bite to eat and a long enthusiastic conversation about strongmen and weight-lifting.

This conversation convinced me that Mr. Jowett was a man with a mission. He radiated confidence in the future of the sport in America, and in his soft, slightly British accent, described the plans he had on foot for organizing weight-lifters into a powerful body to be known as the American Continental Weightlifters Association (George F. Jowett, President!).

He was a short, thick-set man, about 5'5", weighing in the neighborhood of 180 lbs. He had been a wrestler, an acrobat, a gymnast, and claimed many weight-lifting records, particularly in the bent press and military presses. He had spent some time in England, and as a result, all of the rules and bodyweight classes used when he finally did set up the American WL Association, were taken directly from the British Rule Book, even to hav-. ing classes designated in "stones" instead of American pounds.

(Continued on page 50) HEALTH

STRENGTH AND

Tommy Kono is weighed in after his press with 295 lbs. (165 lb. class) on August 3, 1956 in Hawaii. Officials, L to R: Thomas Collazo, Don Potter, Dr. You. Alvin Brock, Kono, Tad Fuji, Dick Tomita, Tommy Kowalski.

TROPICA

LIGH

Tommy Kono's Training Methods

As told to Russian readers in the Soviet Magazine "Theory and Practice of Physical Culture" By TOMMY KONO

ORN to sub-normal health, I have always been keenly interested in physical culture. I suffered the first 14 years of my life with severe attacks of asthma and, therefore, it was common for me to miss one-third of my school days during those early years. At the age of 14, when I was 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighed approximately 105 pounds, two close friends introduced me to the value of progressive weight training.

Although my primary aim in weight training was to improve my health (strength and muscular development being second in importance), I had a tendency to drift into the sport of weightlifting. But it wasn't until March of 1948 when I was almost 18 years of age when I first competed in a weightlifting contest. I managed to place second in the lightweight division in the Northern California Championships with an unimpressive 585 pounds total175 lb. Press, 185 lb. Snatch, 225 lb. Clean and Jerk.

During my early weightlifting career I did not experience any "fantastic" improvements on the lifts in any short space of time, but I did manage to make steady gains. My total progressed from 585 pounds to 780 pounds in two years time; showing improvements on my total in every contest that I entered.

In May, 1950, I entered my first national contest in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I competed against Joe Pitman, defending National Champion, and Dave Sheppard, sensational New Yorker. At the completion of the match in the lightweight class only 5 pounds separated the three of us with Pitman for the first place with a 765 pounds total. Dave Sheppard and I tied in total with 760 but because I had weighed in a half pound lighter than Sheppard I was awarded the second place position.

My progress was stopped temporarily when I was called to military duty in early 1951. Later that year I was granted permission by the Army to compete in the National Championships. Although I only managed three workouts before the match, I again totaled 760 pounds, once more trailing Pitman. Actually, this was en(Continued on page 50)

DECEMBER. 1956

SOVIETS SEEK DATA ON KONO'S TRAINING METHODS Soviet Union athletic and Olympic heads are wondering just what it takes to build a world champion weight lifter like Tommy Kono, world and Olympic 165 pound champion.

In a letter recently received by Kono, V. M. Kasyanov, editor in chief of the publication for the Soviet magazine "Theory and Practice of Physical Culture," asked for a detailed article covering all phases of Kono's rigorous training schedule to be read by all Soviet athletes now training for the Olympics.

Kasyanov's letter read as follows: COMMITTEE OF PHYSICAL CULTURE AND SPORTS SOVIET MINISTRY, PUBLICATIONS DEPT.

Dear Mr. Kono,

The publishers of the journal "Theory and Practice of Physical Culture" request that you write an article for our publication according to the following plan:

1. At what age did you begin heavy athletics? 2. What results did you have from your earliest competition? 3. How did you solve the problem of all around training?

4. How did your training program advance? a. Quantity of weights used. b. Length of each training period. c. Loads of weight used at each increase. d. Length of each training program. e. To what particular points did you pay most attention in your training? f. Sequence of exercises used. g. What aim did you set; what problem was set before you for fulfillment. h. Repetition of exercises used. How cor-

rected mistakes. j. Do you practice the hot bath and massage during training periods. k. How training progressed. 1. Food and sleep habits during training period. V. M. Kasyanov,