HOW TO BUILD

A BETTER BODY

The famous BOSCO How-To-Do-It Books were written with just one thought in mind show you simply and clearly just how the Champions developed their powerful bodies. All the so-called secret methods and shortcuts were discussed and diagrammed for your personal use. With their help any ambitious body. builder was prepared to make the most of his muscular possibilities in the quickest time. with the least loss of energy. These books enabled many men who had found other methods. unproductive to finally achieve the bulk and definition and strength they had longed for in

vain.

Unfortunately many of these practical books. are now out of print. But fortunately, all of their valuable information has been put into a handy, easy-to-use system of instruction THE BOSCO SYSTEM OF PROGRESSIVE PHYSICAL TRAINING, complete with large charts and programs, showing you exactly what to do and when to do it to develop you to the limit of your possibilities.

TRAIN-DON'T STRAIN

The use of a unique double progressive principle enables you to get faster results than the average barbell user, and at the same time conserves energy so that you never feel tired. or stale, but vigorously alert and alive even after a training session. Full information regarding building bulk; diet; conditioning; separation and definition; muscle molding. Four distinct courses that take you from the beginning stage to the full peak of shape, strength and muscular perfection. The cost of this course is ten dollars, and it will be sent by first class mail the same day your order is received. A few Bosco Books are also still available for immediate delivery. All of these contain invaluable information about sensible modern training for those barbell users who want shape and proportion and genuine strength and fitness as well as size.

THE BOSCO BOOKS

The Bosco System of Progressive

Physical Training

...........$10

Bosco's Muscular Arms & Shoulders (Course)

..$ 1

....$ I

Bosco's Strength Notebook No. 2. Bosco's Strength Notebook No. 3.. SPECIAL OFFER: To those who order the Bosco System, the other three books will be sent entirely without charge as long as supplies last.

HARRY B. PASCHALL

P. O. Box 1321 York, Pa.

Dear Bosco: I enclose $..

for which please

send me by return mail the items checked above.

NAME

ADDRESS

CITY

Behind the Scenes

(Continued from page 26)

"There! You've had it. That's all the exercise that you need for your stomach all day."

In 12 weeks, the strength of a muscle will increase 50 percent-if exercised just once a day, it is claimed.

"Let's say," says Dr. Steinhaus, "that you can lift a weight of 100 pounds. If you lift a weight of 100 pounds, in one week you'll be able to lift 104 pounds." Doctor Steinhaus worked on the original experiment in Germany with Dr. Mueller.

Dear Harry,

-Bill Furlong, in the Chicago Daily News

I am sure you won't mind me calling you by your first name as I feel I know you quite well by this time. I have been reading your articles in S & H since before World War II and I have been following up your Behind the Scenes in the post-war decade, so that makes us old friends, huh?

Before the war I lifted in a club in Glasgow, but now I reside in Edinburgh and do all my training in the comfort of my own home. Looks like I am ber of what you call you Lonely Hearts Club.

mem-

During the war I was attached to the U.S. Army for 31⁄2 years overseas, and there I introduced a number of my American friends to Strength and Health and to weight-lifting. I am engaged in the insurance business and hold down a job in the Head Office of my Company. So much for autobiography, let's get down to business

You are pretty close to the lifting business so maybe you can help me get some things straightened out. I know you are rather busy and I am not looking for a special personal reply but maybe you could fit something into an article one of these days.

In Behind the Scenes (May 1957) you say that a pair of German scientists made experiments a year or so ago and found strength and size increases were directly dependent upon a very slow movement. According to Dr. McCloy, who told you about the test, if you come to almost a complete stop, then the strength-building qualities of the exercise is increased.

Now for the other side of the picture: Back in 1924 another group of German scientists made an investigation into muscle size and Dr. Herxheimer presented the hypothesis, based on facts gained from a study of athletes taking part in the Olympic Games, that exercises of Speed, with frequent rests, induce rapid hypertrophy of skeletal muscles.

There you have one of the contradictions that clutter up Physical Training. Let us examine the pros and cons. Many of the topflight Mr. Contestants have never performed a lift in their lives, all of their movements being of the slow variety--curls, squats and the like. This would seem to bear out the story you got from Dr. McCloy.

But now let us turn to Charles Rigoulot, of France. He had bulk plus-230 pounds at 5'8". Yet my information is that he trained almost exclusively on the quick lifts particularly the snatches, one and two hands. The former great Egyptian star lifters always trained for speed and especially the

snatches. Yet Kadr El Touni was tremendously muscled. Your own Norbert. Schemansky is a quick lift man, and has a lot of muscle, and John Grimek did a lot of lifting.

From where I stand it looks like this: If you have the potential, you will grow like a weed, fast slow, or a mixture of both. To build bulk the main asset seems to be possession of a large stomach area compared to the chest area. A study of numerous photos confirms this. If you have a long chest and a short stomach area, then you have a battle on your hands to bulk up. One made-to-measure program for everybody is not the answer.

I am aware that the chest/stomach ratio is not everything, other important factors are involved, but other things being equal, this chest/stomach ratio shapes your destiny. To say the leading musclemen work harder or concentrate more is just the bunk and an insult to the thousands of slender guys who keep slogging away year after year and get exactly nowhere.

I think you will find over here (Britain), in the run-of-the-mill lifting clubs, the big fellows keep getting bigger every year and the naturally slender lads stay just they were. I don't know if a deluxe professional gym can do any better for him. Perhaps they can part him from his money and that's all. However I don't want to be unfair to anybody.

There is a theory that underweights can gain if they use a brief exercise schedule with fairly heavy weights and low repetitions. Men like Anderson and Hepburn certainly got BIG on such a diet, but I think the slender man takes too much out of himself by lifting nearlimit poundages, even with low reps. The final answer might lie along the lines of doing perhaps one heavy exercise, with all the rest of the movements with a fairly light weight, and gradually over period of months, perhaps, ease himself into doing two heavy exercises, then three, and finally getting on a full heavy schedule. For example, your underweight program could be Curl, Press, Squat, Pullover, SL Dead Lift, Supine Press and Rowing. Pick one exercise (not the Squat), such as the Press, and do it fairly heavymaybe 3 sets of 5 or 6 reps. The remaining exercises could be kept light, with 8 to 12 reps, and the squat would be a light breathing movement of 20 reps, repeated two or three times. After a month or two, the slender trainee could add weight to his Curl for example and so on, until he has a full heavy program. It might take one or two years to build up to this, but it would be worth it.

The actual exercises I have suggested are my own idea, but the Heavy and Light idea comes from Dr. MacQueen, of Sheffield University. I seem to remember that various European authorities are thinking along the same lines. The idea seems logical, but the acid test is will it deliver the goods and the muscles?

Can a slender person build his body with such a system--or by using the Olympic lifts? Briefly, let's have your opinion on whether exercises should be fast or slow or a mixture of both. Ian Sinclair

Edinburg, Scotland

STRENGTH AND HEALTH

Behind the Scenes

(Continued from page 55)

SINCE THE TWO LETTERS deal with the same subject let us discuss them together. The newspaper item sent in by Leonard. Stein certainly contains material calculated to make any experienced barbell man turn purple. Naturally a lot of the trouble with this brief newspaper report lies in its obvious over-simplification.

The very idea that you can suck in your stomach once-hold it until you quiver and that's enough exercise for the day-is simply silly rot. Also the premise that if you press 100 pounds, and do one exercise per day-holding it until you shimmy-you will gain 4% in strength in a week-sounds somewhat dogmatic and arbitrary, to say the least. If this were carried on for 12 weeks, you could then, we assume, press 140 pounds. If continued for 12 months, you could press 308 pounds. If continued for 2 years, 516 pounds-but why go further?

If these scientists learned this magic secret in only 12 years of close study, imagine what they will come up with after a lifetime!

It sounds a lot like the dynamic tension hokum, with a bit of muscle control, theories with which musclemen have been familiar since 1890. Actually there is some meat in these ideas, but they are not nearly as productive as these scientists claim, and they have the added disadvantage of being classed as "unnatural" exercises, or "muscle spinners."

One of the worst dangers of the tension exercises is the effect they may have upon the nervous system. A lot of these muscle spinners finally wind up in the booby hatch. The idea of holding your stomach in against the spine until you shake like a bowl full of jello (Chinese baby velly mad-cannot eat jello with chopsticks) is enough to make any sensible physical trainer send for a psychiatrist.

These reputed scientific findings have some of the elements of the rest-pause type of power training utilized by some. of our bigger monsters. Anderson, for instance, used to do perhaps one or two presses, then sit down and relax for 10 minutes with a bottle of moo, and then arise and do another press or two. But he actually did a lot of presses through the afternoon-not just one press until he was all "shook up.""

There is no question whatever that great power for ONE extreme exertion can be built by this method, but it certainly will not thoroughly exercise the body nor achieve any degree of physical fitness or harmonious muscular development. It is flirting with disaster to develop great strength without matching endurance. Life insurance tables prove this without question.

Back in the early 1900s, Max Sick proved that muscle control was useful in developing an outstanding musculature, and he combined this development with unusual strength, but we have always held the opinion that he got his strength by doing a lot of heavy lifting, with reasonably high repetitions, rather than the idea that muscle control produced the strong muscles. The same goes for some of the muscle cramping or musclespinning movements which cramp the muscle in а state of extreme contraction. These exercises, if not practiced to excess, may add some size and shape to a muscle-but they will NEVER add strength. In fact, the chances are they will decrease power. (Continued on page 58)

NOVEMBER, 1957

Vi Proteen

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BOB HOFFMAN

YORK, PA.

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