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Siegmund Klein, A man of Two Eras

by Dennis Mitchell

Siegmund Klein was a well-rounded strength athlete and early day bodybuilder.

Siegmund Klein was born on April 10, 1902, in Kronisberg Germany, also known as West Prussia. His family moved one year later to Cleveland Ohio. He still has family living in the greater Cleveland area. Siegmund was never a 97 pound weakling and was a sturdy healthy child. His father was a strong and muscular man, and Siegmund said he got his desire to be strong and well built from his father. At age 12, his first set of dumbbells were two discarded iron weights used to counter balance the raising of windows. He got his first set of real weights when he was 17, and trained in his secret attic gym. Siegmund was a true All-Rounder, not only doing the standard lifts but the odd lifts as well. He was a physique man, an excellent poser, and muscle control artist. He was an admirer of Professor Louis Attila, the man who invented the Bent Press. The Professor died before Siegmund could meet him. However he did meet his widow and with her permission took over running the gym which was located in New York City. He also married their daughter Grace. He eventually opened his own gym. His gym was a show place known through out the weightlifting world. It was equipped with the old time globe barbells and dumbbells.

Sig Klein was also a very accomplished tumbler and hand balancer. Klein owned and ran one of the most popular gyms of all-time in New York City for over 50 years.

He is credited with inventing some new equipment – the “Feet Press Machine, The Iron Boot, and the ‘In-Klein’ Board”. Somehow he managed to be friendly with the two barbell super powers – Bob Hoffman’s York Barbell Club, and Joe Weider’s IFBB organization. He wrote articles for both organizations and was not only written about in their magazines but his photographs were on their magazine covers. He also was on the covers of Iron Man, Vim Magazine, LaCulture Physique, and Macfadden’s Physical Culture Magazine. He even published his own magazine, The Klein’s Bell, from June 1931 to December 1932. After that he wrote for Hoffman’s Strength & Health magazine. He was inducted into Joe Weider’s Bodybuilding Hall of Fame in 2006. At a body weight of between 147 to 150 pounds he did the following lifts: Strict military press 229.25 pounds, strict press behind head 206 pounds, one arm snatch 160 pounds, one arm clean and jerk 190.5 pounds, crucifix 126.75 pounds (total), alternate dumbbell press with two 100 pound dumbbells for ten reps, a bent press of 209 pounds and a side press of 174 pounds. He also did 10 reps with 300 pounds in the deep knee bend. Notice that I did not say squat, as in his day they were done on your toes, not flat footed. The Association of Old Time Barbell and Strongmen began with a birthday celebration for Siegmund. It was so well received that they have been meeting yearly since then. Siegmund Klein passed away May 24,1987. The end of an era.

Aging and Strong (Part V)

AGING AND STRONG

Part V: Recovery

By Dan Wagman, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.

 When I was in my 20’s I would frequently hear older guys, like in their 30’s, talk about how they couldn’t recover as well from training as they used to. At that point in my lifting career I couldn’t relate. Now, several decades later, I hear guys much younger than me making the same complaint—and still can’t relate. But one of the worst things any person can do is generalize from their own experiences onto others. And so we need to discuss training recovery based on evidence and not experience or beliefs.

 Investigating Recovery 

In looking at recovery research you have to pay close attention to detail. To illustrate, two studies have found older people to have a reduced immune response to a graded exercise test compared to younger adults, indicating a delayed recovery response.(3, 6) Other studies have associated the decreased muscle mass found in older adults to increase muscle repair time after exercise.(2, 7) Then a study found that older adults (~69-years old) who recreationally train between 3 to 6 hours per week take longer to recover than younger people.(9) On the other hand at least two studies have found no differences in recovery time between younger and older people.(1, 5) It’s important to understand, however, that these studies looked at different modes of exercise, training intensity, pre-training status of the subjects, and only one looked at subjects with weight training experience. This, therefore, represents the perfect example of how research evolves from study to study and why it’s critically important to look deeper than just the summary of research to derive at an accurate understanding of a particular issue.

            With the above in mind I believe the best study on the topic of recovery as it pertains to us meatheads was published just a few years ago by researchers from the University of Central Florida.(4) They looked at recovery abilities between young male adults aged between 18-30 compared to middle-aged ones between 40-59. All of the subjects had been training with weights for many years and had no physical limitations. They went through ridiculously tough training of 8 sets of 10 reps to failure in the leg extension. The machine used controlled the speed (isokinetic) of each rep so that no variability between subjects was possible. Baseline data were collected via a visual analog scale designed to record each subject’s subjective feelings of pain and soreness including ultrasound; blood draw; and performance measures at baseline, i.e., before the training session, immediately after training and 30, 60, and 120 minutes after training and again 24 and 48 hours after training.

The researchers were interested in seeing what differences there might be between the age groups in terms of various recovery-related variables such as their feelings of pain and soreness, cross-sectional muscle size and overall muscle thickness, isometric (static) muscle strength, and biochemical recovery markers of creatine kinase, c-reactive protein, myoglobin, and interleukin-6 concentrations. The findings can be best summarized in the researchers’ own words and in but one sentence:

“Results of this study indicated no differences in the recovery response between

            young-age and middle-age for any of the performance measures, nor in subjective

            levels of muscle pain or soreness.”

Recovery Reality

            Most lifters think about recovery this way, “I’m gonna squat till I drop today, so I’ll eat a big steak tonight and maybe I’ll even take tomorrow off.” That’s a simplistic way to look at it. In fact, even looking at just recovering is oversimplifying. You see, at the most fundamental level “recovering” from a training session means you’ll end up where you were before you trained. While I can’t speak for you, that’s insufficient for me as I want to end up at a place of greater strength. In other words, I want to recover from and adapt to my last training session.

When talking about recovery-adaptation you need to consider all that goes in to it. Full recovery-adaptation is influenced by all aspects of your training session, i.e., the composition of all training variables in relation to each other; heredity; demands of your job, school, family; social life; injury; sleep; nutrition; physical environment; and the sort of coach-athlete interaction you’re exposed to.(7) I’d like to shine a bright light on the fact that the athlete’s age is not part of the recovery-adaptation formula. Thus, regardless of your chronological age, if any of these variables are out of balance as necessitated by the demands of your training, recovery and adaptation will be compromised.

So now you know all there’s to know about the impact of chronological age on your ability to gain strength. That, of course, is an exaggeration. One of the hardest parts for me in writing this series of blogs was to decide what and how much information would fit the blog format, which is anything but scholarly. Still, there should now be little doubt in your mind that any losses in strength performance prior to your 60’s are not age-related and thus unnecessary and avoidable. And you’d most certainly agree that there’s little chance if any of you turning 40 and from then on you’ll bend the barbell less, and less, and less with every year of life as all-round weightlifting and many other strength sports would want you to believe. Yet I cannot dismiss what many of you are thinking, “If all this science is true, why am I weaker now that I’m in my 50’s than what I was in my 20’s? How do you argue against the fact that now that I’m 53 I’m benching 75-pounds less than when I was 26?” I’ll address that and more in the final part.

 References

  1. Allman, B. and C. Rice. Incomplete recovery of voluntary isometric force after fatigue is not affected by old age. Muscle and Nerve 24:1156–1167, 2001.
  2. Candow, D. and P. Chilibeck. Differences in size, strength, and power of upper and lower body muscle groups in young and older men. Journal of Gerontology and Biological Science in Medicine and Science 60:148–156, 2005.
  3. Ceddia, M., et al. Differential leukocytosis and lymphocyte mitogenic response to acute maximal exercise in the young and old. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 31:829–836, 1999.
  4. Gordon, J., et al. Comparisons in the recovery response from resistance exercise between young and middle-aged men. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 31(12):3454-3462, 2017.
  5. Klein, C., et al. Fatigue and recovery contractile properties of young and elderly men. European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology 57:684–690, 1988.
  6. Mazzeo, R., et al. Immune response to a single bout of exercise in young and elderly subjects. Mechanisms in Aging Development 100:121–132, 1998.
  7. Peterson, M., et al. Influence of resistance exercise on lean body mass in aging adults: A meta-analysis. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 43:249–258, 2011.
  8. Stone, M., et al. Principles and Practice of Resistance Training. Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL; 2007.
  9. Toft, A., et al. Cytokine response to eccentric exercise in young and elderly. American Journal of Physiology and Cell Physiology 283:C289–C295, 2002.

All-Round Peak Contraction

by John McKean

Maxick - the famous muscle control artist.

Each thigh was bigger in circumference than the lifter’s entire inseam measured. And those legs were CUT ! My good friend Santos Martinez was famed for his olympic lifting and physique wins here in Pittsburgh during the early 1960s, and later for powerlifting. Usually weighing 198 pounds at about 5’7″ in height, Santos always impressed with his rugged, deeply etched all-over body massiveness, yet I NEVER saw him perform a single bodybuilding exercise during the years I knew him ; he was strictly a LIFTER ! So it was a surprise to many of us when an upstart local physique competitor, an arrogant kid just out of his teens,named Bernie, challenged Santos to return to the posing dias. The gym conversation went something like “Hey,old man, you USED to win some of those dreary, ancient muscle shows, but you’d have no chance against a modern bodybuilder like me! I’ve been winning everything throughout the area for 3 years now, and these days they want MY definition, symmetry, and washboard abs. How about letting yourself get embarrassed and enter the Mr. Allegheny contest next month -it’s following the weightlifting meet , and I know you’ll be there!” Always up for a good laugh, a relaxed Santos agreed.

I just had to ask Santos what strategy he possibly hoped to use to have any chance whatsoever in this challenge. After all, young Bernie had almost taken the Mr. Pennsylvania title a few months earlier. Of course, an always philosophic Martinez wasn’t taking the whole thing seriously, so in his usual laidback fashion, he quipped ” Ah heck, I’ll just flex my fat in front of a mirror every day for the rest of the month, and hope the judges will enjoy the shape of my lard over the kid’s well tuned muscle!” (it might be mentioned that none of us in the area’s iron game ever saw a trace of fat on Santos’ body, but he apparently liked to imagine it was creeping up on him as he aged!). You can guess the rest – getting whatever “pump” he needed from the weightlifting meet earlier in the evening, Santos strode out under the physique lights,did a few early poses, then completely dominated obnoxious little Bernie with his trademark “most muscular” pose! Heck, Martinez’ trapezius itself looked bigger than Bern’s whole body! (Santos actually scared my girlfriend of the time , who thought a gorilla had escaped from the zoo!). I don’t recall that our loudmouthed young bodybuilder, sniffling home with his 2nd place trophy, ever competed again !

It’s interesting to observe that Mr. Martinez obviously had terrific genetics toward his strength and physique , but that he relied on seemingly simple “flexing”, or what some would term “muscle control” exercise to enhance both.Especially since many of our REALLY early all-rounders used a similar method during their build-up years. The phenomenal Maxick,back in the initial part of the 1900s, developed what may be argued as the best natural body ever built, with youthful reliance on self developed muscle control exercises. The 145 pound Max claimed this provided the base strength to almost effortlessly perform tremendous one arm swings,snatches, and jerks, and among the very first lifters to do over a double bodyweight continental and jerk. During the same time frame, Otto Arco utilized his own form of isometric muscle posing to develop a superbly dense muscle structure which served him well as a champion wrestler, gymnast, bodybuilder, and lifter -Arco actually was witnessed doing a Turkish Get-up(one arm,of course) ,his favorite All-Round lift, with nearly 200 pounds! (Arco usually weighed a mere 138 pounds!). From that time on, some very celebrated lifters got into muscle control (and all LOOKED it!) – Edward Aston, Monte Saldo, Sig Klein, John Grimek, etc. Often makes me wonder why or how “modern” bodybuilding ever became such a big event (oh yeah, hours upon hours in a gym daily “pumping up” with tiny weights gave a temporary illusion, followed by anorexia for definition, then later, drugs really enhanced the BLOAT !), when heavy lifting along with a small bit of muscle control exercise produced virtual human anatomy charts, with strength to match.

I also have to note that Dr. John Ziegler ,while working with York lifters on his famed isometric rack methods, also developed a machine to offer electric stimulas to obtain near maximum contraction of his lifter’s muscles. Dr. Ziegler apparently achieved some measure of success with this “artificial muscle tensing” toward increased strength , yet never recorded or published results. Indeed, even the famed Max Planck Insitute in Germany did research that proved “self willed, purposefull muscle contraction” (isometric posing) would yield tremendous, almost unbelievable gains if done with consistancy over time. I just have to consider that with many of the old muscle control books being reproduced lately -courses by Maxick, Arco, Saldo, Jubinville – many of us all-rounders can possibly instill this 10 minutes extra exercise to add a bit of hope and excitement for the long winter of training ahead.

However, I do foresee one very horrific downside. You see, the lower portion of the Ambridge VFW gym is lined with mirrors. If old Art Montini happens to read this information, we’re likely to face the gruesome prospect of him down there, shirt off, posing away. And we’ve long had a saying at the VFW – “If one is unlucky enough to see Art even partially naked, that person will instantly turn to stone!”

Dino Gym Challenge

by Al Myers

MEET ANNOUNCEMENT –

DINO GYM CHALLENGE
“Presenting a Challenge Left by Warren Lincoln Travis”

The Coney Island Strongman, Warren Lincoln Travis.

Warren Lincoln Travis has always been one of my favorite Old Time Strongmen. WLT was the consummate circus Old Time Strongman, performing strength shows at the World’s Circus Side Show in Coney Island for over 25 years. He was one of the few strongmen of that era to keep his strength exhibitions in the United States.  In an interview with Sig Klein, Travis told him that he had many opportunities to travel abroad and perform, but had made a promise to his mother that he would not travel overseas to Europe!  Showdowns with other famous strongmen of that era, like Sandow and Saxon, never materialized for Travis.  At one time a match between Saxon and Travis about happened when Saxon was in New York performing for the Ringling Brothers Circus. WLT trained hard for that encounter.  WLT declared that he knew he could never beat Arthur Saxon in the Bent Press or the Foot Press, but was confidant he could out do him in the Harness Lift, Back Lift, and the Finger Lifts. 

WLT was also a strongman who excelled in competitive all round lifting.  He loved the one arm lifts, and was truly an all round weightlifter in addition to a strongman.  Some of his best all round lifts were: Pullover and Press 290 pounds, Bent Press 270 pounds, Clean and Jerk with Dumbbells 229 pounds, Dumbbell Curl 170 pounds, and two dumbbells Continental Jerk 260 pounds.

Travis was most known for his endurance lifting.  He set several records for repetition-lifting in the Back Lift and Harness Lift.  Part of WLT’s legacy is that he left a 10 lift “Challenge to the World” that he completed.  This challenge was left in his will, with the first person to accomplish it after his death receiving his prized jewel-studded belt!  No one has accomplished this “challenge” yet!  It has some hard stipulations – in addition to performing the 10 challenge lifts one must do the entire challenge in under 30 minutes and succeed with it for 10 straight years!!!  The basis of  the lifts for this year’s Dino Challenge comes from WLT’s “10 Lift  Challenge to the World”.

Warren Lincoln Travis – Challenge to the World

1. Take a 100 pound barbell from the floor with both hands, and press it overhead 10 times while seated (must be done in 30 seconds)
2. Take a pair of 90 pound dumbbells from the side of the body to the shoulders, and press it to arms length overhead.
3. Teeth lift from the floor, hands behind neck, 350 pounds.
4. Finger Lift from the floor 350 pounds with one finger, eight times in five seconds.
5. Finger lift from the floor 560 pounds with one finger once.
6. Two hand grip lift, straddling the weight, 700 pounds twenty times in ten seconds.
7. Hand and Thigh Lift 1600 pounds once.
8. Back Lift 3660 pounds once.
9. Harness Lift 3580 pounds once.
10. Back Lift 2000 pounds, 250 times in seven minutes.

Warren Lincoln Travis was born as Roland Morgan in Brooklyn (he was adopted), New York on February 21st, 1875.  He died July 13th, 1941.

MEET DETAILS:

Meet Director:  Al Myers, phone #785-479-2264
Meet Date:  Saturday, January 18th, 2014, 10 AM – 4 PM
Location: Dino Gym, 1126 Eden Road, Abilene, Kansas, 67410
Sanction: USAWA, must be a member to compete
Weigh-ins: 9-10 AM day of the meet
Divisions: Mens and Womens
Awards: None
Entry: There is no entry form and no entry fee, but I must be told a week in advance if you plan to attend. I will have a teeth bit available for use – but it will shared by all and may not be to your mouth size. I recommend you bring your own to use if this is an issue to you.

Lifts:

Teeth Lift
Finger Lift – Middle Finger
Kennedy Lift
Harness Lift
Back Lift

These were 5 of Warren Lincoln Travis’s favorite lifts.  This meet will allow you to see how you “stack up” against one of the best U.S. Old Time Strongmen in history.  If anyone wants to attempt to duplicate the “10 Lift Challenge” that WLT left as his legacy – please let me know and I’ll make arrangements for it.

Roman Chair Squat

by Thom Van Vleck

The Roman Chair Squat

Some time back Al Myers wrote a great article on the Roman Chair and it’s place in the USAWA as a contested lift.  It can be found here: https://www.usawa.com/roman-chair/.  It even inspired me to make a Roman chair and add some Roman Chair sit ups to my workout.

Recently, I have been doing some bodybuilding.  My workouts have traditionally been basic movements for low reps and heavy weights.  Not much assistance work.  My transition was not an easy one as I didn’t want to be too much of as sissy bodybuilder.  So I decided to pull out some of my Bill Pearl Training Manuals (purchased by my Uncle Phil Jackson and autographed to Phil by Pearl himself no less) and follow Bill’s advice.  Why?  Because Bill was BIG and STRONG.  My Uncle saw Bill give a seminar in 1967 after his third Mr. Universe.  He said Bill loaded 300lbs on an Olympic bar and easily power cleaned it, pressed it overhead, then pressed it behind the neck twice!

At any rate, right or wrong, I figured if Bill Pearl did it then it must be good!  I also believe most any program will help you if you believe in it and I was raised to believe that Bill Pearl was almost mythological….the Babe Ruth of Bodybuilding.  So as I looked at how Bill trained his legs I found that one of Bill’s favorite exercises was the Roman Chair Squat.  It is very similar to the Sissy Squat.  My legs have always been a weakness for me so I’ve started doing them.  I like them, but you can’t handle much weight (as a matter of fact, this is a body weight exercise for me).

I also learned a little bit of history as I went about my research on this exercise.  In Al’s article he mentioned that a lifter from Rome did work on the Roman Chair at Professor Attila’s gym and it became quite popular.  This was shared with Sig Klein who did a type of plank movement (and I suspect this led to the Roman Chair Bench Press lift in the USAWA).  But I believe I’ve found the original purpose the Roman Chair was invented for!  In ancient times latrines were basically ditches.  You would have to squat over them and since you didn’t want to fall in you would hook your feet under something and leverage out to “do you business”.  I think this is much better explanation than Al’s medieval torture device chair in his article!

What ever the case, the Roman Chair can be used for much more than sit ups!  But regardless of what you do on a Roman Chair…..it all is painful!  And I, for one, am thankful to have a modern toilet!

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