More Work and More Weight is What You Need - Bob Hoffman (1949)

 

Michael Meyer, one of the great old timers practicing his favorite exercise, 

stiff legged dead weight lift. All the great old timers trained with 

the heaviest possible weights at times. 

Weight lifting has proven to be the best means to attain your physical desires. Throughout the world there are millions of men who went into weight lifting, with certain ambitions and who through proper and intensive training have realized their physical desires. 

There are some failures, of course, those who fail for the reasons enumerated elsewhere in an article in this issue, "Why Do You Exercise?" [Why not put that one up here too!] 

But for every man who has failed, there are at least a score who have succeeded even beyond their hopes or expectations. 

And there are others who have gained but not as much as they would have liked. They have worked hard, as hard as others they believe, they have tried to follow the rules and live right, they are now in excellent condition, they are better build and far stronger than the average, but in spite of all of these earnest efforts they realize that physical training's richest rewards have escaped them. They become strong, but not phenomenally so, they become well built, achieve a fine muscular development, but they do not achieve perfection. 

These men are not exactly disappointed in the results they have obtained, but when they read and observe what others have accomplished, they feel that they have not obtained as much as they should. They believe that the time they have spent at physical training has been time well spent, but when in a reminiscing, reflective mood, they feel that they should have gained more. They wonder if the stories they have read about what others have done are true. 

In last year's "Self Improvement" contest, we reported that Robert Nehring, of Minnesota, had gained 12 inches in chest circumference, twenty-six pounds in bodyweight, and won the title "Mr. Minnesota" as a result of his 13 weeks of training. 

The runner-up in the contest gained 28 pounds, and a very powerful, attractive figure. A 64-year old man gained 17 pounds and an outstanding physique, after not exercising for thirty years. There were a host of other sensational cases. 

This man who is not entirely satisfied with his progress, aside from reading about the fine successes of others, very likely has some friends or acquaintances, perhaps a younger brother, or a club mate, who has improved so fast that he has greatly outstripped him in strength, development and lifting ability. He wonders what is wrong with him that others gain so much faster. 

They believe that a man who has gained more rapidly than they must have been more favorably endowed by nature. In some cases, yes, but in most cases no.

Most of our strongest and best build men of today had a sub-normal beginning. To escape the inferiority complex under which they labored they went in for weight training, they normalized their bodies and then continued training to become the best built men in the land. You've read the stories of them. How Dave Mayor went on from a lad of 6 feet in height, 120 pounds in bodyweight until he was a well built powerful man of 265 pounds, a man with 19.5-inch muscular arms the biggest muscular arms in the world.  

How Steve Stanko won the state, district, junior national, senior national titles and was second in the world's championships, making the world's highest two hands snatch and two hands clean and jerk in his first year of competition. Yet Steve weighed 145 pounds when he was All State Fullback in his high school days. It was evident that heavy weight training made him the phenomenal man he became.  

You must remember Joe Miller, national champion of 1936 and one of the members of the York Team which first won the national weight lifting team championship in 1932. 

1932 York Oil Burner Athletic Club.

Joe Miller - front row, on the right. 

Joe was an average young man, trained hard, and increased the girth of his chest by a full 12 inches in a single year. He became what the experts considered to be the strongest man of his pounds in the world. 

There was Art Levan [group photo above, middle row, 2nd from left, and below, hanging from his teeth while holding a 70 pound kettlebell in each hand]

Art was national champion for ten consecutive years, he had a bad heart condition and nerve ailments when he first started, yet he became the first American to lift double bodyweight to arms' length overhead. 

John Grimek who was but an average lad to begin with . . . 

. . . who reached the heights as national weight lifting champion, two consecutive "Mr. America" titles, and the reputation as the best built man in the world. 

The phenomenal increases of Tony Terlazzo and Louis Abele were mentioned in the article, "Why Should You Exercise?" [put that one on here!]. 

There is a tale attached to the success story of nearly every one of our leaders in the world of strength and development. I could fill a book concerning how these men have gone from mediocrity, usually physical inferiority, to world fame for their strength and development. But all regular readers of this magazine have heard their stories, they will forever remain as inspirations for the younger men who are now going along the road to super strength and development. 

Few men who are strong to begin ever continue with weight training. They have natural strength and development, they have never suffered through the lack of it, they are prone to be satisfied. But the men who have succeeded, the weaklings to begin, men who in so many cases were small, weak, ailing, who had inferiority complexes, are the men who have gained the most and continue to gain. 

The successes of these men parallel each other. Invariably, they trained progressively, they became enthusiastic concerning their training, were persistent, they hitched their ambition to a star and kept eternally trying. They worked hard, they aspired and perspired, they were real, super enthusiasts, and rich was their physical reward. 

Most men expect too much in too little time. 

To gain you must put plenty in your strength and health bank. Many thousands of cases of outstanding physical specimens, of our champion lifters and perfect men, prove that more work and more weight are what most men need.

The men who have gained most, in the beginning in particular, trained for many hours each week. Ronald Walker, Britain's greatest weight lifter, the man who officially held the world's two hands snatch record in the heavyweight class, before Stanko, Abele and Davis went after it and put it almost up to astronomical heights, transformed himself from a fair middleweight to a world famous 200 pounder in a single year's training. 

Some of Abele's training: 

https://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2010/03/louis-abele-chester-teegarden.html 

He had as an example the great old timer, formerly England's strongest man, Thomas Inch, who also transformed himself from a middleweight to a heavyweight in less than a year's time. 

"Thomas Inch on Strength" - 

https://pdfcoffee.com/inch-on-strength-9-pdf-free.html 

John Grimek, as mentioned before, would train several times a day. 

Steve Stanko has often told me how John would train most of the morning, go to the beach in the afternoon, lift weights, balance, tumble, swim and work physically for a few hours, finally excusing himself rather late in the evening, saying he was going home and to bed, but he didn't go to bed just then. Steve said all one had to do was to walk around to John's home and there he was straining, puffing and panting, exercising with heavy weights.  

Few men could stand the program that Ronald Walker subjected his body to. Not less than 20 hours of the hardest kind of hard lifting a week. Three times a day, practically every day of the week. He became phenomenal, reached the point of a one arm clean with 300 pounds, two arm cleaned 400 pounds in practice. Snatched well over 300 pounds, back in the days when the record was held by Wohl of Germany at 286, and before that had been held by the great Nosseir, the Egyptian champion, at 275 and later 280. Prior to the advent of these great lifters the world's record had remained for long at what seems to be the meagre poundage of 264. 

Steve Stanko and Dave Mayor and all the rest of the greats, notably John Davis and John Terry, put in hours and hours, then more hours of hard training. 

To get to the top, a man must almost eat, breathe and sleep weights. 

More work and more weight, that's the slogan to keep in one's mind. A little poem that I used at one time in my big book, "How to Be Strong, Healthy and Happy," is an example of what must be done to keep going ahead. 

If at first you do succeed,

A harder job is what you need,

For work that does not try your strength,

Is sure to weaken it at length.

Note: I finally got myself a copy of that book to read. It's much like listening to a man who has an uncontrollable desire to talk on at great length about health, exercise, nutrition, etc. I am liking it a lot! 

That's what takes place when you don't train progressively, when you don't constantly strive to handle more and more weight, when you don't put in plenty of hours of constructive effort. Those men who perform the same work, the same duty, the same labor day after day, do not get stronger, but when middle life is reached they toboggan down the hill faster and faster.

The truth is that only progressive training will make possible continuous gains. It has always been my contention if a man will continue to train intensively and wisely that he will continue to improve until an advanced age is reached, certainly be better in many ways at fifty than he was as a young man, remain near the peak for many years after that. 

If the same demands are always made upon the muscles, that is all the power they will become capable of delivering. If light exercise is practiced, just enough strength, development and endurance is built to keep on with that exercise. By constantly being forced to handle more and more weight the muscles become ever more powerful, what had formerly become aa hard day's work becomes child's play. Advanced barbell men, even the smaller fellows become strong enough to perform deep knee bends with 300 or 400 pounds, half bends with 600 or more. 

Yes, more work and more weight is what you need. 

I am assuming of course that you have had some weight training experience. It is expected that you will have made your beginning with moderate poundages. If you are an average man, you probably were able to two hands curl 50 pounds two hands press 65 pounds, and deep knee bend with at least this amount for 10 repetitions when you started. Training progressively as outlined in the courses, four or five times a week, or every other day, you have continued to add to the repetitions and the poundages until you have reached a fairly advanced stage. Then you may find it harder to progress farther. That is called the sticking point, unfortunately some men do not pass that point. 

I am going to suggest means to jar the muscles out of their rut, to make demands upon them so that they will continue to gain. 

As mentioned before if you use the same weight in your training always, you will not advance past that point. If you follow the simple rules of health there is no good reason why you should not be able to follow your regular schedule of repetitions and poundages for an indefinite period. When and if you reach the sticking point, take stock of yourself.     

 

Be sure that you are obtaining sufficient sleep, that you are eating good food at meal times only, that you have little or no bad habits, that you avoid excesses of any sort. If you have been living wisely and well, I suggest a slightly different method of training for a time. I'll make two suggestions, both in the line of more work and more weight. 

A great many of our pupils when the sticking point is reached have, at our suggestion, launched upon a course of heavy dumbbell lifting. 

York Courses Three and Four include dumbbell training: 

https://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2022/04/york-courses-three-and-four.html 

This has proven to bring splendid results in many cases where all else had failed. Most men spend nearly all their training time with barbells. Barbells are excellent, the best results cannot be gained in strength and development without them, but their range of action is not as great as training with dumbbells, the muscles are operated in the same groove always. 

It takes the combination of heavy dumbbell training, heavy barbell training and weight lifting to bring the best all around results. 

This is nothing new you say, not now, for more than a decade these principles have been built into the York courses and have accounted for the development of more unusual physical specimens than all other methods combined. Before the earlier years of the York courses leaders in the physical training world opposed the use of dumbbells. When we first advocated comparatively heavy dumbbell training, a near war took place, but our system quickly proved its superiority. 

In spite of all this there are still a great many body builders who use dumbbells only as a rest between the heavier barbell movements, use them to practice a few breathing exercises. They should be utilized a great deal more than that. 

You don't suppose that it is an accident, do you, that men like John Grimek, Frank Leight, Siegmund Klein, Jules Bacon, Elwood Holbrook, and so many others spend such a large percentage of their training time with dumbbells. It's no accident, they have found that heavy dumbbells bring superior results when combined judiciously with heavy weight training. 

The muscles of the body are designed to apply force, to push, pull, lift and carry in many diverse manners. The body is a complicated system made up of 720 muscles, four billion muscular fibers, designed to move the parts of the body and any object they grasp in a diversity of manners. It's been proven that developing as many of these muscles as possible brings the most outstanding results. It produces the greatest strength for the muscles are strengthened from every possible angle, more muscles are developed and they aid the others when called upon to perform a certain task. This adds to the bodyweight by enlarging the muscles, but what is gained most aside from greater strength, and more weight if needed, is to build an unusually attractive physique. 

To produce a physique that is extraordinary, extraordinary efforts must be put forth. 

Many of you have gone through several weeks of the great Strength & Health self-improvement contest by the time you are reading this. The preliminary weeks of training have placed your body and your muscles in an advanced stage of development so that you are ready and able to put forth greater effort. You are ready to work more and to use more weight. This will assure that you will receive the maximum of favorable results. 

First, do you have enough weight for your barbells and dumbbells? Most men will need at least 300 pounds for the dead lift and perhaps for the deep knee bend exercises, certainly for the straddle lift and the half bend. 

There must be sufficient heavy plates to make the dumbbells heavy enough to make demands upon the body. 

By having more weights a great deal of shifting of the plates from the barbell to the dumbbell and back to the barbell can be saved. 

You will be wise to obtain some heavier weights. A pair of 75-pound plates . . . 

. . .  will allow you to leave them on a bar at all times, so that you have 165 pounds with the 5 foot steel bar, and 170 with the six foot bar to begin. Then very little additional weights are required, until your poundages over time become much larger. 

What sort of a system should a man use who wishes to gain the limit in strength and development, you may be wondering. 

An all around course, practicing many exercises, with MORE WEIGHT AND MORE WORK will be the answer. If you have the time, the inclination and the energy, your big day of training for the week will extend over a period of two or three hours, depending on how much you rest between exercises. 

I'll give you an idea of the sort of program that I like on the heavy day, which is Saturday at the York barbell gym. Saturday and often Sunday too had been a day that our foundry representatives in the field, men from the proving grounds, or the ordnance department, engineers from factories for whom we make or plan to make special war materials, would be with us and conferences have been held. This prevented my Saturday afternoon training fun for some time, just twice in three months on Saturday to be exact. But I was able to be present last Saturday . . . 

We don't have so many men training on Saturday any more. Ten of our younger men have enlisted in one branch of the service or another, and many others were busy with work and exhibitions, so Gord Venables, Dick Backtell, Warren Stein, Elmer Witmer and myself, with a few visitors, were the entire crop this day. 

We went through quite a program . . . 

Elmer Witmer, one of the nation's best light-heavy lifters, and I teamed up for a real workout. We went through the simplified course of training:

https://pdfcoffee.com/bob-hoffman-simplified-system-of-barbell-training-5-pdf-free.html 

Here:

The ten exercises of the 1st course of the Simplified Barbell Training System in proper sequence and grouped according to weight increases are: 

1) Two Hands High Pull Up

2) Side to Side Bend

3) Two Hands Regular Curl

 - weight increase of 50%

4) Stiff Leg Dead Lift

5) Two Hands Military Press

6) Shoulder Shrug

7) Rowing Motion

 - weight increase of 50%

8) Raise on Toes

9) Straddle Lift

10) Regular Deep Knee Bend

We started with 100 pounds in the first series, 125 in the second series of four exercises, 150 in the last series of three exercises. Depending upon one's strength these exercises are performed with 20-30-50, 50-75-100, 75-100-125, or more if the man is capable of handling more weight. 

The course is so arranged that it is suitable for the weakest or the strongest, while sensational results can be had while employing not more than 100 pounds, the stronger, more ambitious fellows can add as much weight as the like. 

Next, we had a four way handicap contest on the three Olympic lifts. Gord and Elmer were too much for me at this stage of my training, little Dick was the only one I could excel in this program. I was surprised and pleased to learn that my lifts, after months of not cleaning and jerking, were still up to a creditable point. 

I made 275 in the first attempt, without too much difficulty, didn't try any more. 

After this contest we went on to a series of tests on many events. These included pressing both wide and close, snatching with a close grip, pressing on box, upright rowing motion, with no body start, pull the bar until it touches chin. 

I made 140, Elmer 150 in this style. 

Two hands curl, leg press with our leg pressing machine, abdominal raise, pull over, leg curl on our abdominal board. We have a pair of iron boots fastened to a steel bar in that part of our gym. 

We started with 100 pounds in the curl. In the deep knee bend contest I reached 325, and had not done a really heavy deep knee bend since I made my lifetime record of 350, considerably over a year ago. I had been using little more than a hundred pounds with the Simplified System. 

One arm military pressing, side pressing, regular rowing motion, and then some tests with our overhead pulleys and dumbbells. 

Such a lengthy, vigorous program is fun and brings good results. 

When you have advanced in your training sufficiently, and can train with friends or team mates, such a program on your limit day will speed the results you obtain. 

YOU CAN'T DO THIS EVERY DAY, OF COURSE. But regardless of what your chief desire is, whether it is to be a leading weightlifter or bodybuilder, whether just to become surprisingly strong, to have unusually big muscles, this combination program of weight lifting and weight lifting exercises, following a complete body building course, with some specialized exercises and heavy dumbbell work provides the ideal program. 

If you have cables, some heavy cable exercises can be included in this program too. 

The men who are really ambitious devote an entire evening to their training. It is not necessary to spend so much time if you don't wish, but if body building is your chief hobby, an evening spent at heavy exercise is well spent. 

Depending upon your time, you can practice lifting only two of the four nights or training days of the week, or you can practice exercises only. 

An ideal program is one which includes some lifting, depending upon what results you wish to accomplish, you will place most emphasis upon weight lifting or upon heavy exercise. But regardless of what is your paramount desire, a perfect body, or weight lifting ability, you should practice an all around course as I am advocating. If your greatest desire is a powerfully constructed body, perform the lifting movements with the knowledge that they build an all around strength and perfection of the body which cannot be had any other way. They build, particularly the lifting exercises, so many desirable physical qualities. Speed, timing, balance, coordination, endurance, better wind, stronger internal works, better athletic ability and recuperative powers. The all around strength athlete must be able to do something with his muscles and by spending considerable time at lifting, particularly lifting motion exercises, the best all around results are to be had. 

If your greatest ambition is weight lifting proficiency, if you desire more than anything else to become a lifting champion, don't neglect your body building exercises. Be sure that you follow a complete, well planned course at least two training days a week, preferably every training day. 

Make sure we have this straight. If your chief interest is skill at lifting, place particular emphasis on lifting but at least twice a week follow one of the complete York courses. Each training day perform a few good body building exercises either as a warmup before lifting or as a final series of movements after lifting. 

If your greatest love is body building exercises, invariably practice a few lifts, and lifting motion exercises, and in either event spend some time at HEAVY dumbbell movements. 

    

Before making suggestions about dumbbell training let me remind you to have a record book. Between exercises, mark down in the record book just what you did each training period. You will find this book to be most interesting reading, and very encouraging too when you find that you have progressed to the point where you can handle twice as much weight in some exercises as you could in the beginning. Read this book during your nights of rest, plan your schedule, for you must be a real super enthusiast to gain the most and fastest results from your training. 

Concerning heavy dumbbells, practically all the leaders in weight lifting, in strength and development use heavy dumbbells. All the greats of the past used heavy dumbbells. Louis Cyr, Arthur Saxon and Eugen Sandow are the best of these, but stories of the lives and training of other greats of the past prove that they too spent most of their time at dumbbell training. 

The first important dumbbell exercises you should practice are heavy leverage exercises. These strengthen the muscles, ligaments and tendons, produce unusual strength and a shapeliness that cannot be gained as well with other methods of training. Only heavy cable training is a close rival of heavy leverage exercises with dumbbells in building strength and development in the shoulders, the latissimus, the pectorals and allied muscle groups. 

I have written before that John Grimek's favorite exercises seems to be the alternate forward raise with heavy dumbbells. This exercise has its beginning with the dumbbells resting against the thighs in front of body, the knuckles front. Keeping the arms straight, they are raised alternately to arms' length above the head. Avoid body swinging, don't make the movements too fast and of course not too slow. You should feel the weight every inch of the way but you should use sufficient weight that too slow a movement makes impossible. 

A combination leverage exercise is the favorite of Jules Bacon. He normally uses a pair of 33-pound dumbbells in this movement, practiced as high as 15 repetitions, but he could use more if he wished. Undoubtedly, this one exercise is responsible for a great deal of the extraordinary physique the he has obtained. Keeping the arms straight throughout he swings this pair of dumbbells back between his legs, then he swings them with moderate slowness to arms' length overhead, turns his hands and lowers them to the side, in the crucifix position and then swings back between his legs. Try this exercise, you'll like it. 

Jake Hitchens developed most of his unusual strength, his 18 inch arms and 50 inch chest, through dumbbell exercises. While he is best known as an advocate of the "flying exercise" a chest developing exercise practiced while lying, he performs a great many dumbbell leverage exercises. In this group are the forward raise either alternately or with both arms, raising and lowering simultaneously. 

The lateral raises, the crucifix, and the various raises and movements while lying on a box or bench. Another Grimek favorite is the alternate raise while lying, moving each arm alternately from the thighs to a position back of head. 

Success in body building and strength developing is greatly speeded up and amplified by practicing all the heavy dumbbell exercises you can fit into your program. 

The old timers did a great deal of heavy dumbbell lifting. One arm swing, two arm swing, a really hard movement, clean and jerk, two arm military press, alternate press, the movement at which Frank Leight excels, one arm military and side press. 

Practice the two arm military and the one arm military press seated on a chair, it's harder and brings superior results. 

Continental clean and jerk permits the handling of very heavy dumbbells. In fact, many men who have reached the sticking point and spent a few weeks with heavy dumbbells alone have quickly advanced past their best press of thte past. 

To sum up: more work and more weight is what you need. 

Get more 50 and 75 pound plates if you don't have enough weight, if you can handle more weight than your dumbbells will carry, you can obtain a longer pair (load your dumbbells like the Aristocrat bell is loaded, like I load the bar for the bent press, with the small plates inside, it makes it possible for you to  handle heavy weights without bumping arms and wrists), practice heavy lifting exercises, heavy lifting motion exercises, heavier exercises in the body building course, heavy dumbbell exercises, both leverage and body building exercises as well as actual dumbbell lifting (the boys at York spend a lot of time at dumbbell lifting, notably Grimek and Stanko) and at least occasionally use heavy cable exercises. 

Keep a record of the work you do, do more work and use more weight, constantly striving to do more, live right, and you're sure to gain and be a stronger, healthier, better looking, more vital, virile and enduring man. 

Enjoy Your Lifting!