Secrets of Strength - (Circa 1925) - Chapter 4 - Are Small Bones a Bar to Strength? - By Earle E. Liederman

Among those interested in muscle-culture, there is a widespread, but I believe erroneous, belief that only those who have big bones can get a fine muscular development. That is an idea which should be combated, because, as a fact, beauty of form (that is, perfect proportions), pronounced muscular development and great strength can be acquired by any man, be his bones large or small, if he cares enough for such things to work to get them.

Let us start by acknowledging that there is a basis for the belief that big bones make for big muscles. More of us feel that instinctively, when we see a big gawky boy of sixteen or seventeen, perhaps six feet tall, rather broad-shouldered and with noticeably large hands and feet. His extremities seem big, because the rest of his body is not particularly large, and that makes his hands big by comparison. Almost invariably we think "that chap is going to be a big man some day when he grows up to his hands and feet." In other words we recognize that the boy has the frame, but has not yet had time to "fill out." A man may be tall because his bones are longer than the average, but it takes more than mere length of bone to give size to the extremities.

A big-handed man or boy usually has thick wrists, broad palms, big joints and rather thick fingers. In a big-footed individual the foot is broad as well as long - and of course big bones make big joints. Most of the bones in the arms and legs are long with a knob at each end, the shape of the knob depending on the individual bone. It is hardly necessary to explain that the size of the knobs, say of the upper arm bone, bears a certain proportion to the thickness of the shaft of the bones; that is, a thick bone will have larger knobs at each end than will a thin bone. Therefore a man whose upper-arm bones are thick, and whose neighboring bones are correspondingly thick, will have bigger elbow and shoulder joints than will a man whose upper arm-bones are slender and where the knobs or the ends of the bones are small in proportion to the slender shaft. All that sounds dry and technical but it is something you must learn.

As all of you studied physiology in school you know that a muscle tapers off into tendons, and that these tendons are round like cords, sometimes flat like ribbons, and in other cases the tendinous attachment is broad. Sometimes the tendons are attached at the ends of the bones near the knob and sometimes to grooves in the bones. The part I am trying to make clear is this: Since there are certain places or spaces to which the tendons are attached, it stands to reason that on a big bone those places are bigger than on a small bone. Therefore, it is equally reasonable to say that the bigger the bone the bigger the tendons. And following that up, the bigger the tendons the bigger the muscles that rise from (or taper into) those tendons.

That is one way to state the case, and when so stated it does seem kind of hopeless for a man with slender and delicately made bones to try and get the rugged development which a man who has thick bones seems to acquire without particular effort. It is my opinion that people believe these things without being able to explain them. Certainly almost any man, young or old, will argue on those lines if you can get him to discuss his chances or becoming strong and muscular. It has gotten so that a man will tell you that he is naturally of the "truck-horse type," or "the race-horse type"; and will scout at the idea that his type is in any way changeable. Well, perhaps so, and perhaps not. But don't forget that, after all, it is possible through exercise to enlarge and to change the shape of the body, or belly, of the muscle, whether it is equipped at its termination with either stout or thin tendons. A young fellow may suddenly become dissatisfied with the size and shape of his upper arms. It may be a day in April that he notices how thin they are. Having planned to spend part of August at the seashore, he vows that by then he will have a decent-looking pair of arms.

He looks at his wrists, and says, "Huh! Not much bigger than a girl's." He examines his upper arm, puts a tape around it and finds that the reading is all of eleven inches. Doubles up his arm and looks at it in the mirror. Instead of showing a big lump of biceps, as it should, the shape of the arm is hardly different from when he holds it straight. There is a long low curve that shows where the biceps is, and that is all. On the back of the arm there is no indication of muscle. But he knows the muscles are there, for after all he can move his arms around the same as other folks can. He understands that the problem is to make those muscles bigger, and to get control of them so that they will stand out in pleasing curves.

So every morning he exercises with, say, a pair of 5-pound dumb-bells, and in the evenings he practices "chinning the bar" for his biceps muscles, and "dipping" on the floor for the triceps of his arms. At first he can "chin" himself only once or twice, and "dip" three or four times. But he is a "plugger" and by the time mid-summer comes around he can chin himself fifteen or twenty times without much trouble, and performs thirty or forty "dips" in succession. His arm muscles have responded to the regular hard work and the tape - which at first showed only 11 inches - now registers 13 1/2 inches when he passes it around his flexed biceps muscle.

A 13 1/2-inch arm is very far from being wonderful, but it looks so good in comparison to what it looked like in April that the young man takes great pride in it, and instead of dreading the ordeal of appearing in a sleeveless jersey, he anticipates flattering remarks about the size and shape of his arms. To increase the size of the upper arm by 2 1/2 inches in four months, is nothing at all remarkable, particularly when the arm was very thin to start with. If the arm had measured 13 1/2 inches at the start and had been increased to 16 inches it would have been much more noteworthy. But even that is possible and I have seen it happen, in the case of one of these tall, big-framed, broad-shouldered men; and while in his undeveloped stage a 13 1/2-inch arm looked as thin on him as an 11-inch arm does on a small-boned man of short stature.

Once I was discussing with a noted "Strong Man" the increase in strength that comes from graded weight-lifting. I mentioned a young man who had apparently tripled his lifting power in six months' training. "Yes," said my friend, "but that is about as far as he will go. I know him and I can tell you that he has realized all the strength that was in him. Look at his frame! It will not stand much more muscle. If he keeps on practicing he may improve his records by becoming more skilful, but I very much doubt whether he will get any bigger or actually any stronger."

This was a professional, who sincerely believes that there are limitations imposed by nature. There are other professionals (I am one of them) who believe that it is possible in some ways to overcome the handicaps of small bones and a naturally delicate physique.

Let us consider the arms, because they create most interest in the beginners. The small-boned man starts out by saying "it is impossible for me to get a big arm on account of my wrists being so very slender." He does not say whether he refers to the whole arm, to the forearm or the upper arm. In the forearm there are two bones, and their lower ends, which lie side by side, form part of the wrist-joint. The two forearm bones run roughly parallel to each other, and the placement of the bones governs in some measure the size of the forearm will be narrow when you hold the arm out in front of you with palm up. If there is a greater space between the bones, then the forearm will be broad. Since the longer of the two bones has a very considerable knob at its lower end, it can be readily seen that in an arm where the bones are big and thick, the extreme size of the knob will tend to set the bones further apart, thus making the wrist bigger and the forearm broader. Small bones may place a definite limit on the extent to which the forearms can be developed but the same thing is less true of the upper arm.

In the upper arm there is only one bone, and the thickness of that bone is small when compared the thickness of the arm itself. In the upper arm there is far more muscle-contents than bone-contents; and in the forearm it should be noted that there is more muscle at its upper end where the bones are close together.

The fact that it is hard for some men to develop big forearms (even by the hardest kind of work) positively does not make it impossible for them to develop big and wonderfully muscled upper arms.

One authority on the subject, who to say the least, is a man of very wide experience, says that the best most men can do in this way of development is to get a forearm 1 9-10 times the size of the wrist and that the flexed upper arm should measure 1-5 more than the forearm. To quote his own example: a man with a seven-inch wrist can get a 13 3-10-inch forearm and a 16-inch upper arm. He does not claim that this is the limit, but does claim that such proportions are possible to any man who will exercise hard enough.

Thirteen-inch forearms are comparatively rare, even in big men; and then you usually find them terminating in a wrist which is 7 1/4 or 7 1/2 inches around.

While I believe that the figures given by the authority just mentioned are possible, and that perhaps they show ideal proportions, my experience is that the forearm is apt to be smaller in proportion to the wrist, and that the upper arm can be developed until it is more than 25 per cent bigger than the forearm.

There is a "Strong Man" who was quite prominent a few years ago who, to my positive knowledge, has a 7 1/4-inch wrist, a 12 1/2-inch forearm and a 16 1/2-inch upper arm. His wrists are bony-looking, his forearms are terrifically strong, despite their comparatively small size, and his upper arms are wonderful. Figure out his proportions and you will find that his forearm is only a little more than 1 7-10 times the size of his wrist and that his upper arm, instead of being only 20 per cent larger than the forearm, is actually 33 per cent, or about one-third larger. And if that man could have developed his forearms any more he would have done so, because he was justifiably proud of his strength and his development, and would go to any trouble to improve himself in either respect.

I adduce this case to prove two things. First, that big wrists do not necessarily imply big forearms; and second, that the size of the upper arm is not limited by the size of the forearm.

If you were to examine a lot of ditch-diggers, or lumber-choppers, or any other class of men who use their arms continually, you would find that as a rule their forearms are large in proportion to the upper arms. While in gymnasts, "Strong Men" tumblers, and physical culturists in general, you would find the opposite to be the case; that the upper arms were unusually big as compared to the forearms. I myself, who have an upper arm measuring 16 1/2 inches, am a case in point; for I have never been able to get my forearm up to quite 13 inches, this leaving my upper arm over 25 per cent larger than my forearm; and my wrist is hardly 7 inches around. I admit that it is an advantage, from the standpoint of strength, to have big bones on which to build, but I refuse to admit that big bones are essential - or that a small-boned man is doomed to have small muscles.

There are those who think that shortness of stature - lack of height - is a positive bar to strength or development, and it is particularly hard to persuade them that any man can become possessed of great strength no matter what his height.

In the course of your life you have probably seen a number of professional "Strong Men" performing in circuses, or on the vaudeville stage. In addition it is likely that you have seen some amateur athletes of great strength, and perhaps there are among your own friends one or two men who are exceedingly strong.

If you were asked to describe a "Strong Man," you would undoubtedly say that such a man was strongly built, with fine shoulders, big chest, powerful legs and tremendous muscled arms. Also, if you were speaking of a professional, you would mention that his muscles were not only big but were very "clean-cut" and well-shaped.

I would be willing to wager that you have never seen a real "Strong Man" who was either very thin or who showed no muscle. The very idea of strength is connected in your mind with individuals of a certain bulk or a certain development. For my part, and remember that I have known scores of them, I have never known a "Strong Man" who had an arm smaller than 14 inches around. Nor have I known any man capable of feats of great strength who had a chest smaller than 40 inches. That goes for all of them, tall and short, big and little. Some years ago I saw a great deal of the famous Frenchman, Pierre Gasnier, and Pierre was a short man, for his head came scarcely past my shoulder. He had a chest like a barrel, and big, splendidly rounded arms and shoulders - and was so strong that he could toss around a 100-pound dumb-bell as easily as you would handle a medicine ball. His bones were perhaps a little bigger than those of most men of his height, but certainly no larger than those of the average middle-sized man.

I could name for you a dozen "Strong Men," none of them who are more than 5 feet 4 inches tall; and the least developed of them has a 15-inch arm and a 42-inch chest. In fact, nature seems to impose the rule that no man can do extreme feats of strength unless he has a body and limbs of a certain size - that is girth. It appears that a chest smaller than 40 inches will not harbor enough power, and arms smaller than 14 inches do not contain enough muscular fibre to enable the owner to exert great strength. Like all other rules, this one may have exceptions, but I have never happened to come across one of those exceptions.

It certainly is odd the way Dame Nature evens things up; or better still, the way she enables you to even things up. Otherwise how is it that when a short man trains to become strong he will get just about as big arms and chest and develop as much, or almost as much, power as do the big chaps?

I saw a "Strong Act" where two did Herculean feats, lifting each other around in ways that bespoke immense muscular power; and holding balances that required the utmost of muscular control. One of them was 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed 175 pounds, the other was only 5 feet 4 inches and weighed 150 pounds. Both of them measured about the same, having 42-inch chests, 15-inch arms and 23-inch thighs. True, the taller one was more gracefully built, having longer and finer lines; and the shorter one looked somewhat chunky. As far as actual strength was concerned there was little to choose between them. The big man by reason of his greater weight could show more power in certain ways, and his longer arms and legs were an advantage in some feats which involved a sling-like movement. But the smaller man, being what we call "short-coupled," could exert more strength in feats where a shorter leverage was an advantage.

And that brings me back to a subject I mentioned before: the common desire to possess the so-called "elegant" figure. Time and again, when talking to a short man, I find a positive dislike of certain types of build. A short man will express the most enthusiastic desire to become strong and especially to possess a great muscular development, and I will assess his possibilities for him, carefully explaining how, even with his slight frame, he can get a 40-inch chest and that with such a chest he is bound to get an impressive pair of shoulders. And it frequently happens that when I get that far, I will notice a far-away look in his eyes, and know that he is trying to make a mental picture of himself as he will appear when fully developed. Finally he will break out, and say "But if I had as big a chest as that and broad shoulders it would make me look squat and chunky. I don't want to look too heavy." And then I have to tell him that he cannot have his cake and eat it too. Everyone is entitled to his likes and dislikes, and if a man prefers slenderness to strength, no one can find fault with him. But this happens to be a book on the "secrets of strength," and it also happens that great strength entails a body of certain girth, and muscles of at least a certain size.

A large part of the population has a distinct prejudice against massiveness; and seems unable to understand that a person can be big without being massive. Given correct proportions even the most powerfully developed man can and will present a graceful appearance.

There lives in Massachusetts a 60-year-old man named Oscar Matthes. In 1884 he was famous as a "Strong Man"; in 1894 he was even more famous; and today in 1925 he is still a man of great power. Here is one of the cases which proves the value of systematic exercise, for when a child he was so small and puny that exercise was prescribed as necessary. He never got over being small in one way - in height. He never was taller than 4 feet 11 inches, and when in training never weighed more than 105 pounds. And here is what he accomplished by dint of regular and systematic exercise. He got his measurements up to the following figures: Wrist 6 1/4 inches, forearm 12, biceps 14 1/2, chest 40, waist 28, hips 35, thigh 21, calf 14 3/4 and neck 14 inches.

There is encouragement for any man, and incidentally there is the answer to those short people who are afraid of becoming chunky. Too, Mr. Matthes is not chunky, but is in all respects just a miniature Hercules. A 14 1/2-inch arm on a man less than five feet tall! How man tall men who read this book have an arm that big? And a wrist only 6 1/4 inches around! How many of my readers have such a handicap as that? Matthes must have had very small bones to start with, as those wrists prove. And that he was of slender frame is shown by the comparative size of his chest, waist and hips. A man with a 28-inch waist simply cannot be chunky in appearance, for these chunky men have bodies like barrels; bodies almost the same size all the way down. Since Matthes' chest is 12 inches larger than his waist, he must have a finely tapering body; and the fact that his hips are five inches smaller than the chest helps to add an appearance of lightness to the figure. Here was have in a small man the very spread of shoulder, the great chest, and the trim hips that novelists rave about.

It is interesting to note that Matthes' arms have just about the proportions recommended by the authority already quoted. His upper arm is exactly 20 per cent larger than his forearm; and his forearm a trifle more than 1 9-10 times the size of the wrist. If you take the trouble to look again at Matthes' measurements you will agree with me that they are not very large, except in proportion to the man's height. As already said the average young fellow of middle height has a 35-inch chest and a 12-inch arm. Most athletes of middle height have bigger measurements than that, and there are many gymnasts, football players and the like, who have 40-inch chests and 14 1/2-inch arms, and who weigh around 160 pounds. Certainly a 40-inch chest and 14 1/2-inch arm would be nothing out of the way for a strong man of medium height. In Matthes' case the secret of his great strength is the marvelous muscular development of the man compared to his height and his small frame. If ever a man owed his strength to his development, then Matthes does. To give you an idea of that strength, I can tell you that he has a record of 10 feet 7 inches in the standing broad jump, has "chinned" himself three times with one hand, and on one occasion lifted with hands alone off an 18-inch platform, carried ten feet and then placed on another platform 24 inches high, a barrel weighing 513 pounds. If that last isn't strength, then please tell me what it is. For he had not the advantage of weighing a great deal himself, and consequently had none of the so-called power of the big men; nothing to help him but sheer strength.

While a small-boned man may have trouble in building up big forearms, and large shapely calves, he has far less difficulty in getting a fine development of the upper arms and thighs; and practically none in putting powerful, shapely muscles on the body itself. I have never found it hard to put big muscles on a pupil's chest, or his upper back, no matter how small his bones were.

I think, and most experienced trainers will agree with me, that the hardest part of the body to develop is the calf of the leg. The size of the ankle does not have as much effect on the size of the calf as does the wrist in respect to the forearm. It is true that with a 16-inch calf you will usually find a big ankle; but it is not uncommon to find a man who has big ankles and but little calf development. Also you will often find men who have slender, round ankles and incredibly developed calves. The calf of the leg is a puzzle to many trainers and the despair of many physical culturists. There are no other muscles which so obstinately refuse to grow in size and improve in shape, as those which lie between the ankle and the knee. It is easy to make them strong, but to change their appearance is quite another matter. I know a man who is a professional wrestler and weight-lifter, and who is unquestionably one of the most magnificently built men in the whole world - from the knees up. According to the old rules of proportion, in a well-proportioned man, the neck, the flexed upper arms and the calves of the legs should measure the same. But this man has an 18-inch neck, upper arms that measure 17 1/2 inches (when he tenses his muscles), and calves which are only 15 inches around. Incidentally he is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 215 pounds when in condition. He has thick wrists and large ankles, and while his forearm measures fully 14 inches, the calves of his legs only girth one-quarter of an inch more than those of little Mr. Matthes, who has tiny ankles. I asked this big fellow how it was that his calves were so puny compared to the rest of him, and he frankly said that he could give no explanation. He acknowledged that he had never taken any pains to develop them, and doubted whether they would be any stronger if he did succeed in making them bigger. That his calf muscles are very strong, no one who has seen him in action could doubt; for in wrestling he can stand with firmly planted feet and toss the heaviest opponents around as though they were feather-beds. And on one occasion I saw him put a 500-pound weight on his shoulders and squat several times in succession (squatting is really a thigh exercise, but the calves have to assume part of the work), and no one with weak lower legs can squat while supporting a really heavy weight.

I have a theory about the calves, though I cannot swear that it amounts to anything. I have observed that it is the shape rather than the size of the ankle which governs the size of the calf.

If the ankle is thick from side to side, then the calf will be deep from front to back. On the contrary if the ankle is thin from side to side then, while the calf may have a fair width, it will lack that fulness in the rear part which adds so much to its size and pleasing contour. This seems somewhat contradictory, for one would think that if the ankle was thick from front to back, the calf would be likewise; whereas just the reverse is the case. This is tied up in some way with the placement of the ankle bones, for if the knobs of bone which appear at the sides of the ankle, are placed well forward, the calf is apt to be small, but if they are set further back the calf will be larger.

A somewhat similar condition is often noticed in the wrist, because men who have wrists of a certain shape rarely have any trouble in securing a great forearm development. Very frequently you see men whose wrists are so slender as to cause remark. There will be no sign of any bone at the thumb side of the wrist, while at the little-finger side the projecting knob of bone is small. In such cases, the wrist when viewed from the side will seem hardly any thicker than the palm of the hand, and for a distance of four inches up from the hand the forearm will show hardly any variation in size, all the bulk being in the upper-half of the forearm near the elbow. Such men can get big forearms but they have to work hard to get them. There are other men whose wrists are thick, with the bone apparent at the thumb side, and the development of the muscles seems to start right from the wrist. From the base of the thumb, the tendon will be so big and thick that it gives the wrist a sort of square appearance. On the inner side of the forearms, about two inches from the base of the hand, there will be a small canoe-shaped muscle, which is rarely seen on men with thin wrists. Such men have but little difficulty in getting big forearms. Joe Nordquest has a wrist of this type, and when he bends his arm half-way and tenses all the muscles, his forearm for the moment looks almost as wide as it is long.

Enthusiastic muscle-culturists have a great habit of comparing arms. Two young fellows will get in a discussion about arm development, and end by rolling up their sleeves to show what their arms look like. Since the forearm is the first part displayed, its size and shape, or the lack of it, is what makes the first impression. A poor forearm is a great incentive to exercise, for a man will get so ashamed of a puny wrist, and shapeless forearm that he will spend a lot of time at exercises that will improve the appearance of the lower arm. Knowing that thin wrists make the arm look weak, there are fellows who always wear wrist-straps. The straps naturally add to the thickness of the wrist, and you would think that would make the rest of the forearm look smaller. The exact opposite is the case, for the effect of the wrist-strap is to make the fleshy or muscular upper part of the forearm look shorter and more massive.

Strong wrists are such an advantage that it is impossible to spend too much time at improving their shape and power. These big-boned, thick-armed men, conscious of the fact that nature has been liberal in the matter of handing out strength to them, will rarely take the trouble to develop their forearms to the limit. I have never yet seen a big man whose forearms measured more than 14 1/2 inches (when the whole arm was held straight) even though some of them had wrists which measured 8 or 8 1/2 inches. And I verily believe that with an 8 1/2-inch wrist a man could develop a 15 1/2-inch forearm if he cared to. On the contrary I know plenty of small-boned men, who have so resented their lack of size that they have developed forearms nearly twice the size of their wrists.

I know that in some quarters it is held that slender wrists and ankles are signs of an aristocratic ancestry, and that thick ankles and knobby wrists are indications of common blood. The fact is that if you inherit big wrists and ankles it is proof that your recent ancestors have, at least, done some useful work; or have been of the fighting, athletic type.

I can understand why a woman should cultivate slenderness in the extremities, but I never have been able to see why a man should consider thin wrists a distinction. Rather they are a mark of effeminacy.

Iron Nation

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Secrets of Strength - (Circa 1925) - Chapter 3 (PART B ) - Strength Through Muscular Development - By Earle E. Liederman

We have seen how a slender young fellow can add considerably to his bodily weight and muscular strength by getting outdoors and doing actual labor. As far as general improvement is concerned, he can get just about as much net results by working in a gymnasium for an hour each evening, during ten successive weeks. I say "working" advisedly; because I believe that it is impossible to get a high degree of either muscle, or strength, unless you work for it. If you join a "gymnasium class" and spend the whole session in performing elementary drills, such as waving the arms, and gently bending the body this way and that, you will, to be sure, awaken your muscular system and improve your circulation, but you will not gain perceptibly in development; nor will you become very much stronger. If, however, you go to a "gym" which is not given up entirely to "class-work," which is patronized by men who like "real exercise," and where you have the unrestricted use of all the apparatus, you can increase the size and strength of your muscles just as much or more, than you can by outdoor labor.

Suppose after a week or two spent at doing easy stunts, your muscles commence to harden up, and you attempt the more vigorous stunts that give them harder and harder work. At the end of the month or so when you go to the gym, instead of spending the hour doing mild calisthenics your program is something like this: You get on the flying rings and do a few stunts to limber yourself up. You practice a bit at bar-vaulting, raising the bar after each vault. You join some of the other members and practice some tumbling and hand-balancing stunts. You do some rope climbing, "chinning the bar," "dipping" on the parallels; pull away vigorously for a few minutes on the rowing machine; use the spring-board for your legs and the "rack" for your abdominal and side muscles; and maybe wind up the evening at a bout of wrestling with some active opponent.

Under such a program you can, and will build up rapidly. Just as rapidly as though you spent all your waking hours at labor. You exercise pretty much all of your muscles, and because you do things which require strength, you create the strength with which to do them. And at the end of a few weeks you will find that you have outgrown your clothes, and that your friends are remarking at your improved appearance.

The effects of this kind of gym work are more visible than the effects of farm work, and also of a different character. While work on the farm provides active exercise, and increased strength in the back, the shoulders, the forearms and part of the legs; the gym work tends to give less work to those parts and more to the upper arms, the chest, and abdominal and side muscles, and to other, and different muscles on the legs. Moreover, gym work makes you springier and more active than does farm labor, produces almost as good an appetite and certainly makes your muscles stand out more prominently.

But even then, such unsystematic gym practice does not create great strength; all it does is to make you as strong as the others who use the gym. And while the average all-round gymnast is stronger than the average farmer, or day laborer, and very much stronger and better developed than the average man; yet he falls far short of being as strong as those men who have deliberately trained with the idea of becoming as strong and as well-shaped as is possible for a man to be.

In the course of a day's work the farm-hand may have to exert the full strength of his back muscles only once or twice. In the course of an evening's workout, the gymnast may do many things which require a full and powerful contraction of his muscles. Which explains why the gymnasts' arm muscles, for instance, are bigger, better-developed, and more powerful than those of the farm-hand. It is a truism to say that the strongest muscle is the one which can contract against the greatest resistance; but it is not generally known that the contractile strength of a muscle can be purposely and definitely increased by training it to contract against an ever-increasing resistance. The same power can be developed by causing the muscles to make what is known as a "full contraction" instead of the partial contraction which is all that is required when working or doing gymnastic stunts.

Anyone who has spent much of his time around gymnasiums is familiar with the remarkable development that comes from specializing in certain kinds of vigorous work, and the incredible strength which comes from such development. I was only a kid when I first joined a gym, and more by good luck than by good management, I happened to pick out one that was patronized by a lot of professional athletes, gymnasts and stage performers. Everything, in fact, from contortionists to circus "Strong Men."

Each of these men was in his way a specialist who earned his living by his trained muscles; and since I associated with them daily and watched them train, I naturally learned a lot.

I would watch a jumper training his thigh muscles and a gymnast coaxing up his arm strength. I recall there were two men in that crowd who particularly aroused my enthusiasm. One of them was a "Roman Ring Artist" who was at that time a great drawing-card in the big vaudeville circuits. The extraordinary thing about him was his arm and shoulder development. Up to then I had never seen such arms. I never thought to ask him how much they measured, but I suppose they must have spanned close to 17 inches. Even when he walked around, just swinging his arms naturally, the biceps and triceps muscles between the elbow and shoulder would ripple and roll under the skin in a way that fascinated me. And his shoulders! Well, he was not particularly broad, but covering the points of the shoulders were deltoid muscles literally as big as coconuts. His breast-muscles were as big as any I have ever seen, and his back seemed like a mass of interwoven straps, and ropes of muscle.

Every day when he came in for practice, he would walk over to the rings, pull himself up very slowly, shift his weight from one hand to the other, curl with one hand at a time, do "Planches" and other revolutions; but always very, very slowly.

When I asked him why he always started off with these slow movements, he told me that it was because it was much harder to do the things slowly, and required more strength. That he had to have a lot of strength, for that when he did his stuff before an audience it was necessary to do the hardest tricks as though they were easy to him. He also explained to me the necessity of fully flexing the muscles and told me how he had "worked up" his strength. Like most specialists he had an uneven development. He had the torso and arms of a Hercules, and the legs and hips of a non-athletic. See him only from the waist up and you would guess that he weighed 180 pounds. See only his legs and he looked like a 125-pounder. So he must originally have had a small frame, and it would be interesting to know whether he could have developed legs equally as good as his arms if he had trained his leg muscles as thoroughly as he had his arms. Then he was very strong in certain ways but not in others. He could tear three packs of cards, and it was a cinch for him to twist iron bars in the way that at present seems to wonderful to some of you. I doubt though, whether he could have lifted a very heavy weight off the ground, simply because he didn't have the legs for that kind of stunt; and I imagine that he could not have carried 500 pounds on one shoulder the way that some "Strong Men" carry twice that much. Because, in the first place, the muscles at the sides of his waist were not strong enough to keep him from doubling over sideways, and in the second place his legs were so frail that they would have buckled at the knees at the first step. Undoubtedly he was a strong-armed man, but whether he was a "Strong Man" is a question, for no man is really strong unless he is strong all over.

Another man in that gym, who interested me, was an old gentleman who was one of the few amateurs who frequented the place. I did not know his exact age, but from things he said I judged that he was a boy in Civil War days, and must have become interested in exercise in the 1870's; a time at which there was a vogue for a device called a "health-lift." All he was interested in was lifting weights off the floor; and he had made a contraption on which he could load a 100-pound weight and at the top of the affair was a handle, or cross-bar, which reached up about twenty-eight inches. This man had the theory that if every day you thoroughly exercised your back muscles, you would keep your figure, your health, and your strength into advanced old age. So every afternoon he would drop in and have a short session with his lifting-machine. He would pile on three or four hundred pounds, stand with legs straight, bend his body by arching his spine a trifle, and lift the weight by straightening his back. He would put on more weights and practice what professionals call the "hand-and-thigh" lift. He would keep his back straight and bend his legs at the knees, grasp the handle-bar, so that his knuckles would rest against the front of the thigh; and lift the weight by straightening the legs and heaving up the shoulders. After two or three repetitions he would pile on more weight, and it was customary to work up to 1,000 or 1,200 pounds before he quit. On one occasion to settle an argument he lifted 1,500 pounds dead weight in the "hand-and-thigh" style. I cannot tell you how long he had exercised in that way, but he must have been at it forty years when I knew him. And as he rarely missed a day, there was very good reason for his profound faith in his own method of keeping himself strong and healthy. As a result of his specialized work he had a most peculiar development. his thighs, both back and front, were unusually big and his calves were enormous. Naturally he had big chains of muscles along the spine, but the striking thing was the phenomenal development of the trapezius muscles, which are in the upper back just below the base of the neck. These muscles, when they contract, "shrug up" the shoulders, and when he did his "hand-and-thigh" lift and heaved his shoulders up, you could see these muscles bunch themselves into two enormous masses. Even when standing at ease these muscles were so big that they made his shoulders slope at a high angle up from the deltoids to the sides of his neck. No ready-made coat would fit him. His forearms - especially the outside parts of them - were covered with muscles so powerfully developed that there were big furrows between them. His grip was something to be avoided. His biceps muscles were pronounced in their size, but his whole upper arm was small compared to his forearm; and notwithstanding his ability to lift enormous weights from the ground he could not lift big dumb-bells over head.

My objections to his plan were, that by giving very heavy work to only a few sets of muscles he had made those muscles stiff and rather slow in action; and by his specialization he had failed both the realize the full strength of his whole body and had spoiled the symmetry of that body.

I was particularly interested in the effects of his exercise. So far as I could see, his heart was perfectly sound and strong, and as an explanation he told me that he never lifted so much that it made him red in the face. The moment he felt that there was a strain on the blood vessels, he would stop and lighten the weight. You might think that his constant dead-weight lifting would have broken down the arches in his feet, but the exact opposite was the cause, for the work which developed the big muscles in his calves seemed to give equal strength to the muscles of the feet.

Then there was the man who used nothing but pulley-weights. Nowadays the pulley-weights you find in gymnasiums are small things, equipped with a few weights of a pound apiece. But this one was a massive affair with thick cords and provided ten weights of five pounds each. So, if you cared to, you could put 25 pounds on the end of each pulley. This enthusiast never stood up when exercising, because, he said, when you stood on your feet you unconsciously used your body weight to help in the work. So he would sit on a stool facing the pulley weights; and would go through a lot of movements very slowly and steadily. Then he would reverse, and sit with his back to the machine and do a lot more. I have seen him work for thirty minutes without stopping and at the end of that time the surrounding floor would be wet with his sweat. Certainly he had a wonderful development from the diaphragm upwards, but below the level of his lowest ribs he was only average.

In those days they cared for nothing except big arm, shoulder and upper-body development. If they had their pictures taken they knew but one pose, and that was to sit in a chair with their arms folded across the chest and the biceps muscles pushed out by the hidden fingers.

There was a man who pinned all this faith in the "upright parallels" - a pair of bars set perpendicular to the floor instead of horizontal. The thing was to stand between these bars, grasp one in each hand at the height of your nipples, and then to lunge the body forwards and backwards. According to this man that was the only exercise anyone needed. "For," he said, "When you throw your weight backwards you develop all the muscles on the rear half of your body, and also strengthen your back, and when you lunge forward and through the bars, you open up the chest and develop all the muscles on the front of your body. If you don't believe it look at me," And that would end the argument, for when you looked him over you could not but admit the beauty of his build. None of his muscles were very big, but they were all good-sized. His chest was roomy and he had, I think, the widest back I have ever seen on a man of his height. The general lines of his figure were grand. He gave credit to the upright parallels for all his development - even for his fine legs. It happened that three or four times a week he would play handball for one hour, and he apparently forgot that that was what developed his legs, for the upright parallels positively will not make the legs either much bigger or much stronger.

Looking back I can see where I must have been an awful nuisance to some of those men, for I was continually pestering the, with questions and trying to drag information out of them. I fear I have always been that way. If I saw a man with amazing muscles in his chest I would have to know what he did to develop them. If a man had large and wonderfully shaped thighs I would ask him how they got that way; and whether the legs just grew that way, or whether he had succeeded in giving them their size and shape by exercising; and if so, what exercises did he favor. I was a "bear" on measurements and would embarrass these athletes by demanding to know exactly how much - to a fraction of an inch - their arms, legs an chests measured.

I may have been over-zealous, but I sure learned a lot. I found that the better a man was, the more willing he was to help you. After all, the secrets of acquiring strength are: first, to know what to do, and second, to do it. So these wise old birds had no hesitation in telling me just how to improve my development, and increase my strength, because they knew very well that it would not help me unless I had the ambition to become strong and the willingness to work to get strong. Today people consider that I am exceptionally well developed - all I can say is that I deserve to be, because I certainly worked for it.

Iron Nation

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Secrets of Strength (Circa 1925) - Chapter 3 (PART A ) - Strength Through Muscular Development - By Earle E. Liederman

Football used to be considered as a game only for huskies - but nowadays the coaches say that there is a place on the team for any man, no matter how small he is, providing he has the grit and the endurance, the speed and the energy.

So I say that a man can become strong no matter how much nature has handicapped him by giving him a lack of inches, or a small frame. Even those in ill-health can be made strong, because exercise promotes health. In turn muscle can be made to grow on the healthy body, and with muscle will come strength.

Some of the strongest men I know are little fellows; that is, little so far as height goes, for in every other way they are miniature giants. And most of them are strong today because they got tired of being snubbed and imposed on for their lack of inches and their dearth of strength.

Almost anyone who earnestly desires to, can make himself strong; not just ordinarily strong, but very much stronger than the average man, little or big. And to become strong - to add size and strength to your body, or in other words to develop it - takes much less time than to cultivate the mind.

A boy who enters school at eight years and graduates at eighteen, has during that ten years given up at least six hours a day to exercising and cultivating his mind. There was a time when those who run the schools gave no thought whatever to the cultivation of the body, but during the last generation the necessity of physical exercise has been recognized, and today the heads of schools see to it that their pupils are compelled to take part in sports, games and exercises which make for bodily betterment.

Undeniably, the brain can stand more work than the body can. A student can spend four hours in the class room and four more in concentrated study, without becoming brain-tired; in fact, his mental powers are developed by such application. The same student could not spend eight hours a day at equally hard physical work without becoming exhausted. Two hours of vigorous play every day is sufficient to promote healthy bodily growth in a schoolboy, while half of that is plenty enough to keep a college student in condition.

But play - athletic sports and games - admirable as they are, are neither the only nor the best means of physical education. Especially this is true at institutions where sport is systematized, and the big teams get most of the attention. For there the weak boy or youth, the one who most needs the exercise and the physical training, has to step aside and make room for the other boy who is already so good that his presence on the playing field is an asset to the institution.

At many colleges and schools, physical drill is required; but the very fact that it is compulsory robs it of much of the value. "Setting up" exercises are better than nothing, but when performed under compulsion and in a haphazard way by a large group they tend to become a monotonous hardship instead of an invigorating pastime.

Little or no effort is made to explain to the individual student his own capacities for bodily improvement, nor to awaken in him the desire for physical perfection.

For those who are interested in some particular sport, every facility is provided. High-salaried coaches will teach him all they know about how to play some game, and his hours for study will be arranged so as not to interfere with his hours for game practice. Members of teams are given special privileges. Under this system all that is required of the non-athletic student is that he shall appear regularly in the cheering section.

Anyone interested in the physical betterment of the rising generation cannot help being struck with the popularity of the playground as compared with the unpopularity of the gymnasium. The only time most students voluntarily go to the gym is when there is a chance to see a basketball game, or a boxing or wrestling tournament.

A student cannot graduate from school or college without passing specified tests, and to pass those tests proves that he has more knowledge and brain-power than at the beginning of his school work. I believe that it is possible to devise a system of physical education that will be just as successful in developing the physique of the pupil as the present system improves his mind.

But at present the weak and undeveloped man who wishes to become strong and healthy has to have recourse to the services of private teachers who will give him the kind of individual training his case demands. And such people are legion. Why, I myself in the course of a little over one year, heard from nearly half a million men and boys whose letters proved that they were interested in getting bigger, better and healthier bodies.

I mention that not as an instance of my own popularity, but as evidence of the tremendous and widespread interest in the cultivation of the body. Those letters came from all kinds and classes of citizens, all the way from the middle-aged business men who wished to regain their youthful figures and energy, down to college students and schoolboys who were after results which they could not obtain through the facilities afforded by the physical departments of their own institutions.

It has come to be recognized that systematic physical training will do as much for the body as systematic study will do for the mind. More and more people are becoming interested in acquiring for themselves beautiful, shapely, strong and healthy bodies.

And interest is the secret of development. Any teacher will tell you that a boy will learn vastly more about a subject in which he is interested, than in a subject which bores him. As a teacher of physical culture I can assure you that a man or boy who is interested in seeing how much strength and muscular development he can obtain, will improve in both respects ten times as rapidly as the other individual who looks upon exercise as a necessary nuisance, which must be done for health's sake.

There are many who are what you might call fatalists about their own bodies. They think that development "just happens," that either you have strength, or you haven't and that it is flying in the face of nature to try and increase your own physical assets.

I have in mind two brothers of exactly opposite types, both physically and mentally. The younger of the two, a tall, rangy youth of twenty-one, became dissatisfied with what he called his "scrawniness" and embarked on a system of home training that called for a half-hour's daily exercise of a rather rigorous character. The older brother, who was also tall but much broader-shouldered and heavier all-round, was inclined to sneer and jibe. He said to me, "I don't care what you say - strength doesn't come that way! Why look at me - when I was a kid I worked every summer on a farm. I would start in at six o'clock in the morning and work until supper time. Nearly twelve hours every day at plowing, reaping, spading, hoeing and all kinds of hard work. No wonder I have big shoulders and a strong back. My arms and legs are not very big, but then I have small bones. I feel that I have as much muscle and strength as nature intends me to have, and I think that Ed is a fool to think he can get even as big as I am by monkeying a little while every day with those 'exercisers.' Why, he never did any hard work in all his life. Let him do what I did and he can get strength if he wants it so badly."

Now, happily that younger brother was one of the kind that is not easily discouraged. He just went on quietly at his exercise, studying his weak points, and learning how to build them up. Also he had very definite ideas of just what he wanted to accomplish. For instance, he knew that in order to be well-proportioned he should have a 43-inch chest, and although his chest measured only 36 inches when he started, he knew that it was possible to get a chest as big as he wanted, because he knew of other men who had made that much improvement. To make a long story short, the younger man did get just the development he wanted (and the strength also) and now instead of being known as "the skinny boy" he is known as "that big, finely built boy." In fact, he now exceeds his older brother in development and strength just as much as he was inferior to him a year ago. But then he felt in his heart and soul that is was possible for him to improve. He refused to admit that while other men could build up, he could not. While the older brother who declined to make the effort necessary for improvement, now contents himself by insisting that there was "something unnatural" about Ed's growing so much huskier after he was twenty-one.

While I am on the subject, I can not help saying that I am continually puzzled by the attitude some people have towards strength and development.

Recently I was consulted by a young chap who certainly had nothing to brag about in the way of physical attractions. To begin with he was rather less than average height, and was of the flat-chested, round-shouldered variety. Now from my point of view he was at least twenty-five pounds lighter than he should have been. Evidently he placed a high value on his personal appearance, for he dressed in a way to emphasize what points he had. A good tailor had cut his clothes, and the back of the coat was well-shaped, and in order to make him appear broad-shouldered it was tapered into the waist line and tightly belted. The trousers were rather full at the top of the legs in a way that made it seem as though he had some thigh development; and like many other flat-chested men he had a trick of buttoning only the bottom button of his coat. That made his coat flare open at the top, and thus gave the impression that there was a real chest inside of the coat.

While he was talking to me I noticed that he was looking over me in a disapproving way and he stared so earnestly at my neck that I wondered whether my collar was soiled, or my necktie disarranged. Finally he blurted out, "Mr. Liederman, I do want to get stronger and to have a better figure. But if you take me in hand and train me I want you to promise that you will not make me too big. Now, I wouldn't want to be as broad as you are, and particularly, I wouldn't care to have a neck like yours." "Why, what's the matter with my neck?" "Oh," he said, "it is too big. It looks like a wrestler's neck. I don't want to be built like a wrestler or a Hercules. I want to be slim and have a good shape at the same time. I think that if a man has a thick neck and thick wrists he looks coarse, and would be out of place in a fashionable training room. You know, Mr. Liederman, the fashionable trend is toward slenderness - to keep your boyish figure. The women like a slender, well-made man, but these big truck-horses of men disgust them." Seeing that I am fairly tall and weigh only about 175 pounds I was rather surprised that I should be considered monstrously large, but I controlled myself and said: "Man, I have no intention of giving you what you call a 'truck horse build,' but if I am to give you a real build it will be necessary to make your chest several inches bigger. That means that the upper part of your back will be broader and that your sides will taper in finely from your armpits to the sides of your waist. Also your chest will get rounded out and full in front, so that when viewed from the side your chest will be thicker from front to back than your waist is. And at present, as you must realize, you are very little bigger around the chest than you are around the waist. Of course, your neck will get bigger as your chest gets bigger and your shoulders will get broader. You would look odd if your got a bigger chest and still had that slender neck. When I am through with you, you may have to wear a 15 1/2-inch collar instead of that 13 1/2 size you now have on. However, your neck will not look extra big, but in proportion to the rest of you."

It was no use! My neck had scared him off - which was a rather odd experience for me, as I had worked hard to develop my neck to its present size and shape. If I had talked all day I could not have made an impression on that man's mind. I felt just like a shoemaker does, when, after measuring a fat lady's foot and producing the right size shoe - five C - she insists that he does not know his business, and that in all her life she has never worn anything larger than a 2 double A; and if he cannot fit her there are other shoemakers, etc., etc.

Fashions and tastes change from year to year, but the ideal human figure does not. A beautifully made Greek athlete of 600 B.C. would be a beautifully made man of today. Conversely, a modern man, who wishes to make his body perfectly proportioned and supremely strong and enduring, cannot do better than to try and equal the proportions of some statue of Apollo, of Mercury, Theseus, Perseus, or one of the other old Greek heroes. There were well-built men before the time of the Greeks and there have been others since - even today.

I remember that when I was a boy the fashion in men's clothes was for the shoulders to be padded. Every man, in that year, who bought a new suit, immediately looked impossibly broad-shouldered. Sometimes there were pads as big as flat-irons where there should have been deltoid muscles. There was a great deal of talk about the "impressiveness of broad shoulders," and the "manly appearance of the new style." And since, like all boys, I aped my elders, I longed for the time when I could have one of those padded coats, and would be able to flaunt my (artificial) shoulders in the eyes of all beholders. Imagine my disgust when a couple of years later, I tried to get a coat of that variety, and the tailor said, "Oh! We are not padding the shoulders this year. The natural sloping shoulder is the thing."

A really well-made man does not have to depend on the cut of his clothes to give the impression of shapeliness. If he has the shape, the natural lines of his figure will set off any of the changing styles. This may sound more like a fashion-talk than a discussion of "the secrets of strength," but really it is important; because strength depends, as I hope to convince you, on the proportions of the body and on the size and quality of the muscles.

My hardest work is to convince a certain class of people that in order to become stronger and in general more vital, it is necessary to make themselves bigger. A man will tell me that he is tired of being a weakling, and would like to double or even triple his strength, if I can guarantee to do it in, say, six months. If, in reply, I say "Well, you have a good chance. I believe I can put six inches more around your chest, increase that 13-inch arm until it measures 15 inches, and give you a real pair of legs," he is apt to reply, "Oh! I don't want so much to be bigger, as to be stronger." I can realize that if a rather tall man of thirty, has for ten years been wearing a 36 coat, it is somewhat of a shock to realize that in a few months he will have to be wearing a size 42; but when I show that man pictures of beautifully shaped modern athletes of his height, whose bodies have beautifully smooth lines, betokening both strength and agility; and tell him that their chests measure even more than 42 inches, he realizes that a large chest is necessary, and when it begins to dawn on him that instead of having to be apologetic about his slender arms, he will get an arm like a Dempsey or Sandow, he sees that after all there is some connection between vigor and proportions.

I suppose that a watchmaker gets used to the fact that a business man will carry a watch in his pocket for a lifetime without having the least idea of how the watch works. But I cannot see how some young men, especially those interested in athletics, can live with their own bodies, and have so little knowledge of what their bodies should look like, and can be made to look like.

I found a young friend reading a book and he said, "Here is something that ought to interest you." I looked at the book, which told about Rajah Brooke's invasion of Borneo; and in the paragraph it started, "His crew were sturdy English fighting sailors - powerful men - not one of whom had less than a 14 1/2-inch biceps." My friend said, "Say Earle, is that a big arm?" I told him it was bigger than the average; such an arm as a blacksmith, a heavy-weight lifter or prizefighter might have - and that a 14 1/2-inch biceps might look very impressive on a short man, would seem inadequate on a very tall and broad-shouldered man, but nevertheless was a considerably bigger arm than the average man carried in his sleeve. Then, "Well, what is a really big arm," and I said, "Oh, sixteen to seventeen and a half inches according to the man's height."

Next, "How much does your arm measure?" I told him, and countered with "And how about yours?" That struck home. He did not know his upper arm measurement, although he did know the measurement of his chest and waist because he ordered his own clothes; and he knew the size shoe and collar he wore. I suppose those things together, with his height and weight, are as much a the average young fellow knows about his own body. But that the chest must be so many inches larger than the waist in order to give the proper taper to the body; that the chest itself must be of a certain size to insure proper lung capacity, and that a certain size arm should go with a certain size chest, is something of which even the athletically inclined are usually ignorant.

So when a man asks me to make him very much stronger without making him any bigger, I have to explain that I have no secret receptacle from which I can take a quantity of strength and pour it into his body. And even if I had, how could I put, say, a quart of strength into a vessel built to hold only a pint?

To put it in another way - you can't get eighty horse-power out of an engine which is built to develop only 40 H.P., no matter how much gas you feed into it. Even though it is true that it is the gas that makes the engine go, yet as a general rule the more the horse-power the bigger and finer the engine. And you simply cannot carry a five-ton load on a chassis built to carry 1 1/2 tons as the limit.

There are "Strong Men" galore, and I defy you to bring me one who is either small, or weak looking. Oh! I know there are people - men and women both - who call themselves "Human Magnets"; who are frail in build, and who seem to do great feats of strength. But if you knew as much as I do about the show business, you would realize that these people's strength is literally an illusion.

Well then - among strong men we find chaps with 48-inch chests, with 17-inch arms, and 25-inch thighs. Some of them are lazy, and have allowed themselves to get fat and "beefy looking." But you can rest assured that, if they are the genuine article, underneath the fat you can see, there are hidden steel-like muscles. Most of them, however, "look the part"; and take pride in so doing. Their broad shoulders, deep chests, wide backs and muscular arms and legs all fit into the picture. And some of the biggest of them look amazingly slender. That is because they are big and strong in the right places. They have the size and development that gives enormous strength, and yet you can tell by looking at them, that they have not sacrificed one bit of their agility; nor does their imposing size make them clumsy. Because their development is rightly placed, it accentuates the beautiful lines of the figure. Positively one can become strong and powerfully built without making oneself, either very heavy, or in the least clumsy. I know two men of exactly the same height, one of whom is a professional "Strong Man" and the other is his manager. Both are big. Each is five feet, nine inches tall; but the manager has only a 40-inch chest and 14-inch arms; and is fat and has a 44-inch waist and weighs 220 pounds. While the athlete who has a 44-inch chest, 16-inch arms, and a 32-inch waist, weighs 180 pounds. His hips are smaller because they carry no fat, but his legs are as big, far better shaped, and infinitely stronger than those of his manager. And he weighs forty pounds less, although he is a bigger framed man. True, he carries no fat except that small quantity which every healthy human being has to have. The bones of the two men are about the same size. If you could in any way segregate the pure muscular fiber of the fat manager, you would find that his actual muscles were only about half the size of the strong man's. All of which seems to prove that healthy well-trained muscular fiber weighs less than fat. It would be interesting to know just how much soft, useless fat a stout man carries around the middle of his body.

It is my experience that a man who is naturally slender, can so develop his body that it will be almost perfectly shaped; can increase his strength twofold or threefold, without the slightest danger of putting himself in the "truck-horse" class.

Let us take as an example, the average young fellow, say 23 or 24 years old. The likelihood is that he will stand about 5 feet 7 1/2 inches in height (for that is the average height), will weight between 135 or 140 pounds clothed; and that he will take a "size 36" coat and a 14 1/2 collar. Now, if we make that man strip for a physical examination, we will find that by shedding his clothes his weight comes down close to 130 pounds. That removing his shoes has reduced his height to 5 feet 7 inches, or less. And his chest which he fondly imagines measures 36 inches because his coat is that size, actually measures between 34 and 35 inches. If you attire him in a pair of trunks and take his photograph, he is apt to be surprised and dismayed when he sees the picture. "Why" he will say "I had no idea I was so skinny as that. I look as though I could stand 20 pounds more weight." And it would be easy for him to put on that much weight simply by developing his muscles through the right kind of exercise.

The picture shows that he has just about as little muscular tissue as will enable his body and limbs to function. His back is about the same width all the way from shoulders to hips; almost without shape at all, and decidedly without that magnificent taper from arm-pits to waist that is shown by the really strong. The front of his body is perfectly smooth. His collar-bones which should be completely hidden, stick out like two rails. There is hardly any indication of the big muscles that should cover the chest, and his abdomen is as smooth and muscleless as that of a ten-year-old boy. Because he has always worn stiff collars, his neck is thin and pokes forward. His shoulder-blades protrude a bit. His arms measure perhaps about ten inches just below, when the arms are hanging at the sides. His legs, which he has had to use in walking, are better than the rest of him; but the chances are that around the calves he measures not more than 13 1/2 inches, and that his thighs, even at the biggest part, measure 20 inches or less. Assuming that his work has been of a sedentary character, it is no wonder that his physique is so poor. The muscles grow by use, and the indoor workers - office men, clerks, students, and the like - hardly use their muscles at all. They are in the habit of riding even if they have only a few blocks to go; and during the day the hardest work they do is to pick up a ledger or move some light packages.

Put such a fellow as I have described on a farm and you will almost see him grow from week-end to week-end. Because he is continually moving about - stooping, lifting, carrying, hoeing and pitching hay - he has to use almost all his muscles. His back will become thicker and broader; his shoulders will straighten up and get square in outline. His chest will be bigger. His legs in particular will get more sturdy and his arms will have a capable, sinewy look. In ten weeks of such outdoor work a young man will gain 20 pounds in weight; practically all of which is good solid muscle tissue. Naturally his eating has had something to do with it. Being continually in the open air in itself promotes appetite; but using his muscles ten hours a day is the real factor. For all that time he is putting forth energy and he will have to eat very much more in order to keep up his strength, than he did when working indoors. He sleeps soundly because he is healthily tired; he eats all he can get, and he is using his muscles practically all the time; and muscles grow from use. His gain in weight is due entirely to something new that he has created for himself - bigger muscles for the harder work.

You may tell me that all this is nothing new; that "Anybody knows that." When you go on a vacation and play games, or when you take a job at laboring, you expect to build up, and put on flesh if you are thin; and to reduce weight if you are fat. That you think, is the regular and natural thing.

Well, then, let us look at it from another angle. Grant that, at the end of your ten weeks on the farm, you are a huskier physical specimen than when you started in. You look better, you feel better, and you know you are better. You can carry a heavy sack of potatoes that you could not have even lifted on the first day; you can keep up for hours at back-breaking labor that would have crippled you in the old days. You have a grand feeling of hardiness and capability. (And all of that is the result of unsystematic work, that is, unsystematic muscular work. For farm labor, while it calls heavily on certain muscles, leaves others almost untouched.) When you look at yourself in a mirror, you seem to be bigger all around than previously; but except in a few places there are but few indications of any pronounced increase in the size and shape of the muscles. Your back is infinitely better, for you have somehow acquired two big cables of muscle along each side of the spine, and there seems to be two or three times as much muscle across your shoulder blades as before. The points of your shoulders are much rounder. Your forearms are perhaps an inch bigger, your hands bigger and harder, and even your wrists seem thicker. Your thighs while not so very much bigger, are rounder than formerly, and look bigger when you view them from the side. All that is gratifying, but you are somewhat puzzled by the fact that your upper arms have not become as big and round and heavily muscles as the rest of you. You have developed but little muscle on the front of the body itself (breast and abdomen) and the front and sides of the thighs have not assumed those big, swelling, and impressive curves you are accustomed to see on the legs of track athletes, football players and tumblers.

But that you have gained at all is gratifying, and you feel if you could afford it you would always do several hours' muscular work every day. If you did, you would in all probability be disappointed in the results. For after a very few months of daily hard labor you would find that the body would lose its power to more than renew itself. That the work instead of the steadily increasing your size and strength, would tend to tire you; that your energy would gradually be drained, and that instead of having a surplus you would have a deficit.

Laboring men and farmers are undoubtedly, as a class, stronger than indoor workers; but also, as a class, they are not very strong. No laborer uses his back more than a coal-heaver, yet the average oarsman who rows only a hundred hours in the whole year, is apt to have a stronger back than the average coal-heaver. Similarly a gymnast who uses his arm muscle only an hour a day will have a stronger arm than the average blacksmith who uses his arm eight times as much. I can use this undoubted fact to prove to you that it takes very much less time and trouble to develop a strong body than it does to properly train your mind, and that systematic exercise produces more strength than does hard labor.

Because I have always been interested in muscular development, I am a close observer of the effects of different kinds of exercise, and different schemes of training. And always I have found that methodical, systematic exercise produces vastly greater results in muscle making and strength building that does, hit-or-miss unsystematic work.


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Secrets of Strength - (Circa 1925) - Chapter 2 - Power and Strength (Influence of size and weight) - By Earle E. Liederman

You are walking along the street with a friend, you meet some big husky of the Jim Jeffries type and your friend exclaims admiringly, "My, what a powerfully built chap!"

Now you can just picture the kind of man that is "powerfully built." Usually he is about six feet tall, broad-shouldered, big-chested, wide-hipped, with sturdy legs and thick arms. He looks as though he could do a lot; which is why you call him powerful. Power involves action, movement.

Power can be derived from momentum. A stream of water coming through a two-inch pipe through a drop of 200 feet will develop more power than a much thicker stream falling only a few feet. Momentum is weight multiplied by speed. Therefore a big man who can move quickly can ordinarily exert more power than a small man moving at equal speed; that is, if each of the two is fairly strong and well-knit.

Size alone does not make a man powerful; he must have strength along with his bulk. A fat man might be 5 feet 10 inches tall and weigh 275 pounds, and yet not be powerful at all. Most of his weight would be made up of soft flesh, which has not the driving power of well-conditioned muscle; and which further interferes with his freedom of movement, and makes any speed impossible. Most "fat men" are far from being powerfully built, although their very weight enables them to exert some power in certain limited ways.

To illustrate - Some years ago one of the most popular characters at a certain seaside resort was a real "fat man." He was nearly six feet tall and weighed over 400 pounds in his bathing-suit. In fact he was so stout that he could get in and out of a taxicab door only by having two friends push and pull him. He was a great mixer, and not in the least sensitive about his abnormal size. He would join the boys on the beach and pass the medicine ball and play catch. You know the way they work it. Half a dozen fellows will get in one group and as many more in a group fifty yards away. They throw a tennis ball from crowd to crowd, and whoever is nearest catches the ball and returns it. Sometimes several fellows rush to the spot where the ball is about to land; shouldering one another out of the way - so as to have the fun of making the catch and return throw. Well - whenever this big fat chap wanted to make the catch he was allowed to do so. If any foolhardy fellow reached the spot at the same instant he would simply cannon off that mountain of a man like a billiard ball from a cushion. But that was where the fat man's power ended. He could not throw the ball back again. Nor could he in any other way exert a fraction of the strength which we would naturally expect from a man his size. He could not lift a heavy weight from the ground nor carry anything heavy. Neither could he hit a hard blow. A really muscular man weighing 400 pounds would be inconceivably powerful; and as we all know, even a fairly muscular man weighing 250 pounds can be very powerful. This applies especially in personal combat; in man-to-man stunts where one man's weight and strength is opposed to another's. It is hard to appraise the strength of the contestants in most combats because skill has been developed to such a point that it is a tremendous factor.

An expert wrestler, even though he be a middleweight, can make a monkey out of a greenhorn of twice his own weight. But let us suppose that there are two wrestlers equally skilful, one weighing 225 pounds and the other 150 pounds. Undoubtedly the extra power of the bigger man would make him the winner - because during the match he would be handling a man only two-thirds of his own weight - while the smaller man would have the extra exertion of trying to heave around a man who outweighed him by fifty per cent. That is, the big man's work would be easy and the small man's very hard. The outsider is apt to forget the question of comparative weights, but the professional knows that weight counts - which is why a 135-pound boxer draws the line at meeting a good 140-pounder.

Nobody is foolish enough to expect a light-weight boxer to defeat a good heavy-weight - because they know that a good fighter has to have the knack of getting all his weight behind a blow. If Dempsey and Leonard were fighting and both landed on the other at exactly the same instant - then Dempsey with his weight would have all the advantage.

To apply power the athlete must have speed, skill, balance, weight and strength. A football line-coach will spend hours in teaching a candidate just how to manage his body and control his weight so that he is able to outcharge an opponent. Just as no fat man is really powerful, so no awkward man can display much power, simply because he cannot control his body and limbs so as to get the maximum work out of them.

From the foregoing it would sound as though no small or medium-sized man, no matter how strong, would have any chance in a test of strength and power against even a fairly good big man. Happily such is not the case, because there are men of medium size who have such terrific strength and energy that they are able to put as much power into a movement as are even the best of the big ones. This applies especially in tests where the body is at rest, or when it moves slowly.

I saw an exemplification of this one afternoon when a lot of very famous wrestlers, lifters, and heavyweight athletes were indulging in an impromptu contest at "wrist-wrestling." In this stunt the competitors sit on either side of a table facing each other, place their right elbows on the table-top, grasp each other's right hand, and then each man tries to force his opponent's arm down until the back of former's hand rests on the table. Since the competitors are forced to sit bolt upright, with their left forearms resting in front of them on the table, it is impossible to use the weight of the body as a factor, and so the whole thing is a test of pure strength in the wrist and arm.

Among the crowd were athletes of all sizes up to a couple of gigantic 250-pound wrestlers. But the man who won was a little chap who stood only 5 feet 4 inches and weighed only 145 pounds. he was what you might call a "pocket Hercules"; and although he was so short, his chest was nearly as big and his arms as powerfully muscled as those of the largest men present. He was particularly strong in his arm flexors - the muscles which bend the arm at the elbow - and which bend the palm of the hand towards the forearm - and so naturally he was good at stunts such as "chinning the bar" and "curling" heavy weights. So it was not surprising that he should be good at "wrist wrestling" - and he was too good for the rest of them. Not even the biggest and heaviest man there could push his hand even a trifle backwards, while he could put their arms down as fast as they came.

One would think that a powerful man would of necessity be very strong, but such is not always the case. In most of the big universities the physical departments hold periodic "strength tests" where each student is required to exert his full strength in pulling, pushing or lifting against the resistance of various machines, which resist the athlete's efforts and register the force of his muscles. The chap who makes the highest total on the machines is known as the "strongest man in college." It sometimes happens that the winner is some giant football player, but in such instances it usually happens that he is known as the "strong man" of the squad. But just as often the winner is some middle-sized student who has never won a name in athletics; but by devotion to gymnastic and developing exercises, has acquired a set of muscles that enable him to exert enormous strength.

So far as I know the strength record for all the colleges is in the possession of "Mike" Dorizas, of the University of Pennsylvania. Dorizas was a football player, a weight-thrower and intercollegiate champion wrestler; but his greatest claim to athletic fame is his reputation as a "strong man." Although no bigger or heavier than many other football players, Dorizas was admittedly twice as strong physically as most football men. He was not only powerful but tremendously strong - two things which seemed to be identical, but are not always so.

Undoubtedly the possession of immense muscular strength adds to the power of a big man; while in a small or medium sized man it compensates for lack of bulk and height.

The colored fighter, Joe Wolcott, weight but 145 pounds, but was enormously strong and such a terrific hitter that he was known as the "Giant Killer"; and very few of the best of the big men would consent to fight him. There have been others like him. A century ago in England there was a 140-pound pugilist who was supposed to be able to hit as hard as any man of his time. His supporters admitted that he was too light to be successful against the heavy-weights, but offered to back him against any man in the world, if both fighters were strapped straddled on a bench, facing each other. In that position the bodily weight was nullified, and the only thing that counted was sheer strength and hitting power.

I contend that a short man of moderate weight can exert enormous power, providing he is terribly strong, extra well-knit and has great speed and energy. I believe it is true that an experiences foreman will pick out big fellows for heavy labor; on the general principle that a large man can shift and lift more weight, and stick at it longer than a small man can. But I have seen men of moderate size who could stick on the job for hours at a time and do as much work as any man. When I hear stories of this, or that, man doing a huge day's work, I always think of a friend of mine who is a star in that respect. As a boy and young man he was intensely interested in gymnastics and feats of strength. He was one of those who cared more about what he was able to do than about his measurements and appearance. He trained on the gymnastic apparatus, used weights, and wrestled; but always picked out the kind of exercise that made him use his strength and his power. When in training he never weighed more than 140 pounds, but was so strong that he could lift and carry more than any one else of his size, and as much as the really big men could manage. He became particularly adept at applying his strength, and made quite a study of the most advantageous positions which would enable him to apply his power with the greatest force and the least expenditure of effort. After a time he married and retired from active athletics, but never lost his interest. At present he is about forty, has several children and runs a large trucking business. He employs a number of very husky drivers, but whenever there is a job which scares the others he steps in and does it himself. He undertook a contract for unloading and hauling four freight-car-loads of chemicals in iron drums - each drum weighing between five and six hundred pounds. He took one truck himself and put two of his biggest men on each of two other trucks, and actually he loaded, delivered and unloaded two car-loads of drums single-handed, sooner than the other two crews each did a car-load. In other words he did more work than the other four men. When asked to explain, he said that his years of exercise had so strengthened and hardened his muscles, and taught him so much about applying the weight of his body that with him it was simply a question of endurance; that he could keep on for hours doing things that an ordinary workman could do only a few times.

In other words, that while the average husky would have to cry for a rest after five minutes of hustling 500-pound bales or cases, this man could keep it up indefinitely; all the while working without much apparent exertion and no visible fatigue.

Power, therefore, is not the exclusive prerogative of big men. No man proved that more conclusively than the veteran athlete, John Y. Smith of Boston. Smith was a man who never weighed more than 168 pounds, yet he could do anything in the line of strength and power which could be accomplished by the natural giants. Although a dumb-bell-lifter by preference, he was one of those men who could lift or carry anything. It is told that once he passed some porters who were loading a truck with 200-pound bags of cement. Smith being in a jovial mood, stopped, and joked the men about the fuss they made over handling "little bags like those." Whereupon the men grew indignant and informed him that "it takes a man to handle these heavy bags," and invited him to take off his coat and see for himself whether it was as easy as he thought. Without taking off his coat, Smith seized one of the bags, swung it to his shoulder, and then slowly pushed it to arms' length over his head. Having thus surprised the others, he proceeded to amaze them by taking the bags, two at a time, one in each hand, and throwing them into the truck.

One of his most noteworthy feats was to walk for 200 yards, while carrying in each hand a dumb-bell weighing over 200 pounds. Almost any husky workman or football player could walk that distance carrying 400 pounds on his back and shoulders; but to walk with that weight dangling from the ends of the arms is several times as hard as carrying the same weight on the back.

There is nothing that fascinates me so much as studying "Strong Men" and trying to figure out where all their physical force comes from. That is why this question of strength and power interests me. It would hurt me to have to admit that only big men can be "powerful" because that would seem to put a premium on mere size and bulk. Yet it has to be admitted that there are strength sports in which bulk is a distinct advantage. For instance, if I were the coach of a football team, and I knew that a rival team had a 220-pound guard who was plowing through all opposition, I would be tempted to put my biggest and heaviest man opposite him, instead of taking a chance with a light man, no matter how skilful. And yet there have been cases where light men have successfully held the line against big men. If I were coaching a track team and needed a hammer-thrower I would be apt to hunt around for some big, broad-shouldered, long-armed, thick-legged fellows, and train them; instead of wasting my time trying to make hammer-throwers out of lightweights, or even middleweights.

Perhaps there is no sport which so well illustrates this mysterious difference between strength and power as does the throwing of weights. It seems that while it takes strength to lift or carry weights, it takes power to throw them. And that power is, or seems to be, dependent on the respective weight of the man and the object he throws. A good strong middleweight can make quite a success of "shot-putting," because the weight, or shot, is "pushed" away from the body at the final moment, the body and arm traveling in the line of the "put," with the consequence that there is no bodily exertion necessary to counter-balance the moving weight. There have been men weighing in the neighborhood of 160 to 165 pounds who have put the 16-pound shot, 46 and even 48 feet. Nevertheless the only men who have put the shot out around 50 feet are the actual physical giants. In throwing the hammer, the weight which is at the end of a four-foot wire handle is first whirled around the head to get up impetus, and then the athlete allows his body to pivot with the whirling weight, making two, three, or four complete turns as he crosses the seven-foot circle; and finally discharges the weight on its journey with one final heave into which he puts all his weight and power. Naturally it is easier for a big and heavy man to keep his poise when whirling a hammer than it would be for a small and light man. The more rapidly you swing the weight the more momentum it attains, and the more it tends to pull you off your balance. The lighter you are the harder it is the resist the pull of the weight. I can conceive of a small man, weighing, say 125 pounds, who could be strong enough to stand still and "keep his feet," while swinging the weight rapidly; but as soon as he would revolve his body with the weight, he would be pulled along with it, and would be dragged out of the circle by the flying hammer. If he kept in the circle he would get but little distance to his throw. So far as I know, all the record-breaking hammer-throwers are big men. I doubt if any man weighing less than 165 pounds could become a star in that event. For a while the championship was held by a succession of Irishmen, not one of whom weighed less than 225 pounds, but in late years our colleges have produced a number of young Americans who are equaling the records of the foreign stars; and these young chaps are not so terribly big. Some of them are six-footers, and other are only of middle height. They weight from 175 to 210 pounds, and what they lack in bulk and sheer brawn, they make up for in skill and energy.

The fact that weight is needed to throw weight is so well recognized that in our schools the boys are made to use 12-pounds, and even 8-pound hammers; the heavy 16-pounder being too apt to strain them.

Throwing the 56-pound weight is even more strenuous than throwing the 16-pound hammer. The method of throwing is somewhat the same, except that of course the weight is not whirled around the head. But in order to get momentum, the athlete has to hold the weight away from his body and revolve the body itself, making two or three complete turns as it crosses the circle.

To throw 56 pounds even a few feet away from you requires both strength and practice, and is far easier for a big man than for a small one. If the athlete weights 224 pounds himself, then the weight is only one-quarter of his own; whereas if the athlete weighs 168 pounds it means that the weight is a third of his own; and you can realize how much easier it is to throw one-quarter of your weight than one-third of it. I doubt whether even the possession of great muscular strength would enable middle-sized man to throw a 56-pound weight as far as could a bigger, but less strong, man.

Of course, some of these weight throwers are immensely strong as well as extremely big. It is told that a generation ago a visiting Irish athlete, who weighed over 250 pounds, on one occasion took a 56-popunds weight in his right hand, whirled it around his head and, without moving his feet, tossed the weight 29 feet. It is hard for the average man to realize the amount of strength necessary to do a stunt like that one, because the average man cannot lift 56 pounds to the level of the crown of his head, much less swing it around as though it were an empty basket.

A similar feat is told of a man named Condon (or Coudon), who was one of the greatest hammer-throwers of the last generation. In his time they used the old-fashioned hammer, the one with a three-foot wooden handle. He could take such a hammer in one hand, whirl it a couple of times, and throw it a hundred feet with a single arm-motion. A friend of mine who knew him tells me that Condon's upper arm was a big as an ordinary man's thigh, and that besides being big he was prodigiously strong.

I admire strength and I get a real thrill out of seeing some man perform a feat that requires terrific strength, and I don't care whether it is lifting a huge bar-bell the way some of these stage performers do, or whether it is supporting on the shoulders a ton of live weight, as is done by the Arab tumblers. Recently I heard of a comparatively small man carrying single-handed a 1500-pound bathtub up a flight of stairs. This sounds incredible to me, but if I had seen it done, it certainly would have been something to remember and talk about.

I know that many of you who read this book have puzzled your brains trying to reconcile different kinds of feats of strength, and trying to decide where one kind of stunt requires more strength than another. One of my pupils recently said to me, "Mr. Liederman, I wish you would explain something to me. I have been reading your book about 'Strong Men,' and I realize that these 'Strong Men' are several times as powerful as the average athlete. The measure of their strength seems to be how much they can lift in one way or another. But why is it that these men do not take up weight-throwing and break all the records? You told us of several men who could 'put up' a 300-pound weight with the right arm. The arm muscles used in putting up a weight are the same ones that are used in putting the shot. A fellow that can 'put up' 300 pounds ought to be a wonder at shot-putting. Why I know some fellows who can put the shot over 40 feet and none of them can possibly 'put up' 125 pounds, let alone 300 - it seems queer to me. Did you ever see any of these 'Strong Men' try shot-putting - and if so did they do anything wonderful?"

Now that is a fair question, and one that should be answered - but all I could tell my friend was that I had rarely seen a weight-lifter attempt to throw weights, nor a weight-thrower attempt to lift weights. I do remember one youth who was quite good as a lifter and who tried shot-putting. As I recall him he weighed 140 pounds and he could "put up" 210 pounds by what lifters call the one-arm bent press. This is a feat which requires great skill and balance as well as pushing power, and is not really a test of arm strength. This same youth, when he stood upright, could not push 100 pounds slowly aloft. I think 90 pounds was about his limit. Although he practiced several weeks he did not put the shot any further than 39 feet, and realizing that that was not good enough, he gave up the game, disgustedly remarking that he was neither tall enough nor heavy enough to make a good shot-putter. Yet he was remarkably strong, not only in the arms but in the back and legs. Once I saw him load on the tail-board of a wagon a 600-pound casting which two other men had failed to put in position. On the other side I have often wondered how some of these big weight-throwers would show up in a test at bar-bell and dumb-bell lifting. It seems to me that a really husky 200-pound man should not have much trouble in "putting up" a 100-pound dumb-bell - that is, in the military position, with body erect and all the pushing, or lifting, done by arm strength. And the same thing should be true of the big weight-throwers. I understand that Cameron, the big Scotch hammer-thrower, once visited a weight-lifting club in London. He watched the members heaving around bar-bells, and when asked his opinion, grunted, and said that anyone could lift those bells. This nettled the lifters and they challenged him to have a try. After a heated argument he walked over, picked up the biggest bar-bell in the place (one that only a few members could lift overhead even when using both arms), grasped it in his two hands, pulled it to his chest, pushed it aloft and then taking a step forward, threw it over the top of a nearby partition. It must be remembered that Cameron was a giant of a man - celebrated as a wrestler and hammer-thrower, weighing at least 240 pounds and boasting a 48-inch chest and 18-inch biceps. That is one of the few cases I have heard of where a star at one game proved equally supreme in the other variety.

I have my own ideas about the source of strength and the creation of power - and I intend to elaborate those ideas in the following chapters.

But before I leave this subject I wish to say that I am in favor of the kind of strength that enables its possessor to use it in any kind of muscular work, be it sport of actual labor. In other words I believe that a man who is really strong should be able by virtue of his strength, to lift weight or carry them; to pull a strong oar in a crew; to plunge through the resistance offered by two or three opposing football players - to throw weights, to do difficult gymnastic stunts such as climbing the bar with one hand, or vaulting a seven-foot fence - to swing a heavy hammer all day without tiring - to carry huge trunks or bales, and to do all these things without special preparation or training, simply because of the strength and energy that is in him. At least, that is the kind of strength I try to give to those whom I train.


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