Behind the

Scenes

by

Harry Paschall

BOSCO

GO AHEAD, APE. THEN I'LL SHOW YOU HOW!

VS STUPORMAN

ME FIRST? ME?

THE BIG BATTLE FOR THE STRENGTH CHAMP OF THE UNIVERSE...

OKAY-TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE -STUPE!

WOTTA PRESS!

2000 LBS.

John Grimek stands as an excellent example of a fully-developed rib cage (and incidentally a few muscles!). From normal to expanded there is less than an inch difference in Grimek's chest size, but he has contracted his chest a measured 14 inches. from full expansion. (Photo by Steve Stanko)

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ONE of the paradoxes of weighttraining is that as your chest gets bigger, your chest expansion shrinks. This has often caused prejudiced physical trainers to explain with joy that barbells are simply no good for nothing. They slap the tape around a barbell bug, and after taking his normal chest reading, they say, "Now inhale deep" and gasp with pleased disgust when the tape only budges an inch or so.

This used to bother us no end. back in our own days as a charter member of the YMCA Leader Corps. Our local physical director, a graduate of the old school of calisthenics, used to point me out with special pains to the other boys, indicating in a loud voice that maybe I had. muscles, but I had no chest expansion, and that therefore, if I attempted to run a mile, I would fall panting on my face. This taunt finally got under my tender hide to such an extent that one day I went up on the running track and stepped off a brisk five miles. After the first mile I got the second wind feeling and had no trouble. This flabbergasted the PD, and he avoided me for several weeks thereafter, giving me the impression that I had committed one of the seven cardinal sins by upsetting one of his fixed ideas.

Later on, in the pages of Strength magazine, Alan Calvert mentioned something about Otto Arco, then a current favorite in vaudeville, which had to do with the same subject. Otto, he said, had reached the absolute peak of physical development -his chest measured exactly the same normal and expanded-he had no chest expansion at all!

a newcomer to barbell practice, for I vividly remember reading a story about Eugen Sandow which told of his tremendous 14-inch expansion. Sandow used to take a derby hat and prove his terrific expansion. First he placed a leatherbelt about his expanded chest-naturally with the latissimus dorsi flexed clear out to here, then he exhaled and contracted his chest to the utmost, and then slipped a derby hat between his chest and the belt. This was supposed to prove that he had enough chest expansion to fill a hat, but I was later to find out that it only meant he could contract his chest some ten inches or so, instead of expanding it.

A barbeller develops big latissimus muscles and these must be measured anytime you pass a tape around the chest. The fuller the latissimus development, the less difference you will find between normal and expanded chest readings. So it has become more or less common knowledge among the iron fans that normal chest means about the same as expanded chest. Most bodybuilders measure the chest with lats. expanded, no matter what they tell you. But no matter how they try, they really get very little more on the tape with this practice than if they measured relaxed.

Since we can thus assume that lack of difference between normal and expanded chest readings indicates that a barbell man has just about reached the zenith in physical development, what would you say about a man whose upper arm measured the same straight as it does in the right-angle flexed position? That would mean about the ultimate (Continued on page 49) STRENGTH AND HEALTH JULY, 1955

This was a bit confusing to me as

HE'S MUSCLING IT OUT!

WITH

ONE HAND

QUICK! WE GOTTA TURN ON THE ANTI-GRAVITY

DEVICE!

CLICK!

BOSCO STEPS UP AND LIFTS THE ONE-TON BARBELL

--AND NOW-WITH THE ANTI-GRAVITY TURNED ON-BOSCO LIFTS THE BAR WITH ONE FINGER!

So-

UP STEPS STUPORMAN BUT INSTEAD OF PRESSING THE BAR HE HOLDS IT OUT AT ARM'S LENGTH WITH ONE HAND AS THOUGH IT WEIGHED NOTHING! THIS NEARLY CAUSES BOSCO TO FLIP HIS LID---

BUT-

BUT

CURSES! BUT I SHALL TRIUMPH-HE CAN'T

PASS TEST NO. 2

G

STUPORMAN IS NOT YET BEATEN TEST NO. 2 IS STILL TO COME...

Paschall

TICK Tock

STRENGTH AND HEALTH JULY, 1955

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