Reg Park - George Snyder

 

A photo in Health & Strength magazine touched a nerve in Reg Park's ego . . . 

"I was thumbing through the magazine at a newsstand when suddenly I had to stop. Never before had a photograph so inspired me. The picture took me by surprise. 

"All at once I knew this was how I wanted to look It was a picture of an  American bodybuilder, a fellow who had just won the title of Mr. New York City, a guy named Vic Nicoletti. Vic was standing in a sort of sem-lat spread pose and the way his shoulders, lats and chest blended together . . . hell, I still feel a thrill after all these years in recalling the experience. You have to understand that in those days American bodybuilding was light years ahead of anything Britain had to offer. 

I decided I would emulate Vic Nicoletti."  

But Reg Park would experience still another vision before actually getting down to doing something positive about his dream physique. 

"I had gone for a swim at our local public baths," he said, "with bodybuilding the furthest thing from my mind. But suddenly there was this incredible body standing a few feet from me. I could not believe my eyes. I went up to the body and introduced myself. 

"How did you build a body like that?" I asked this gentleman whose name was Dave Cohen. He told me he trained with a friend who owned a barbell set. His friend's mother allowed them free use of her front room. And when I asked if I could join them he said fine, I could come over whenever I fancied. 

"You have to realize this guy had a neck and arms that measured 18 inches, and 18 inch calves too. Perhaps that might not mean all that much today, but believe me, thirty years ago the sight was almost miraculous, definitely inspirational.

"I'll never forget that first night we trained together. It was cold, even  for the near arctic north of England. Below forty degrees, as I recall. It seemed to take forever before I found the address that Dave had so kindly supplied."

The gym itself offered no great comforts. By Park's personal account it was almost as cold as the biting winds outside. It comprised a bare room with a wooden floor on which stood a forbidding standard barbell and a pair of iron dumbbells. Nothing more.

Their first workout: standing barbell press, barbell curl, squats, and something called a pullover-and-press. For this last exercise the loaded barbell was placed on the floor. You lay on the floor flat on your back, your head nearest the barbell. Now you took a shoulder-width grip on the barbell, pulled it towards you in a sort of bent-arm pullover fashion, flipped it up somehow till it was in position at arms length over your prostrate body, and from there you did presses for your pectorals and deltoids.

"That was way before anyone thought about using a bench for pullovers and bench presses. Anyway, we did 3 sets of each exercise; 10 repetitions for the first set, 8 for the second, and 6 for the last set. I remember that I used 40 pounds for my presses and curls. Ridiculous weights, let me say." 

Well, even though Reg Park strongly desired a body that looked like Dave Cohen's his enthusiasm for his workouts hardly matched his need for bigger muscles. In truth, had it not been for the hospitality of the lady whose front room served as a gym for the three young men, Reg may have called it quits after the first two training sessions that he endured with Cohen. 

"Each time I would say to myself, this is not for me. But i would be back the next training day. I think I might well have quit altogether had it not been for the fact that our hostess made the best English tea I have ever tasted. After our workouts in the cold I could hardly wait to get her hot tea inside me. It seemed I drank gallons of it after our sessions." 

Barely three months after meeting Dave Cohen at the local baths, Reg was called upon to do his stint in the army; national service in Singapore. There were no training facilities at Park's new temporary home but he maintained his interest in bodybuilding, thanks to the generosity of friends back in Leeds who sent him regular issues of muscle magazines.

"I remember they were sending me Your Physique, Muscle Power, and other magazines," Park recalled. "Of course, I had no weights out in Singapore but I compensated with free standing exercises. I was a physical training instructor, which meant I was doing exercises with different classes from 9 o'clock in the morning to 5 in the evening." 

And then in 1948, with six months to go before his discharge from the army, Reg Park received news of a Mr. Universe contest that was to be staged in London at the time of the Olympic Games.

"I immediately wrote to my superiors beseeching them to hurry the discharge process so that I might be in time to catch the contest," Park recalled. "Here was my opportunity to see the greatest physiques in the world and I was not about to miss it. The big names of the day, Steve Reeves, Andre Drapp, and the legendary John Grimek would all be there." 

Park did not miss the event. After four weeks at sea aboard a troop ship, there he was at last at the aforementioned Mr. Universe contest, still in uniform, altogether agog at the staged spectacle.

Always notoriously straightforward, Park would say later that he was not satisfied with the way the 1948 Mr. Universe finally turned out. 

"Andre Drapp [above] was a Frenchman who had been a free-fighter," Park said. [I think he means French freedom fighter in WWII? He was also a pro wrestler and I'm goin' with both] "He weighed around 190 pounds, heavy for a French bodybuilder. In those days the ideal French male physique featured spectacular abdominals with little else. Drapp was built more along the lines of the American-style model; he was pretty thick and muscular. He did some of the classical poses the French have always been famous for and then left the stage to Steve Reeves. 

"Now Reeves was even then already famous for his good looks. He appeared immaculately groomed, hair styled like a movie star's, with impeccable skin that was tanned a healthy orange tome. His reputation for watching what he ate was not undeserved. His skin spoke volumes for his internal condition. Reeves was already the epitome of male beauty. 

Reeves in 1948, Russ Warner photo: 

  

"But he offered just six or seven poses, and even though they were breathtaking the audience was nevertheless left with the feeling that a champion of Reeves' caliber should offer more. 

"Then John Grimek . . . 

. . . presented his own posing routine. Later, the three men were recalled on stage to show what they could do with their muscles. However, when Reeves took his turn the audience was treated to exactly the same eight poses that he had earlier presented to tumultuous applause. This time something was lacking in the reaction to his posing routine, enthusiastic as it still undoubtedly was. 

"Of course, when Grimek came on and started off with his acrobatics and presses from the floor into handstands, that and his muscle control, well, the roof almost caved in from the ovation he received. After all, here was a man who weighed 200 pounds and he was moving around like a ballet dancer onstage, doing incredible stunts that might have stopped a much lighter bodybuilder. Grimek won the 1948 Mr. Universe, of course. But in my own book, Steve Reeves should have beaten him. When it came down to physical beauty, which was what I thought the Mr. Universe contest was all about, Reeves was way ahead of Grimek. But there you are, that is what mass hysteria can do at a bodybuilding contest. It's not all that different today, either."

Reg recalled that as he sat with a friend at the '48 Mr. Universe event he knew more than ever, in his essence, that his future and bodybuilding would be synonymous. 

"I told my friend than that I would win the Mr. Universe title . . . even though I had just three months training experience behind me," he said.

When Reg returned to Leeds, however, his private decision to devote all of his time to bodybuilding, in preparation for the fulfillment of his Mr. Universe prophesy, underwent a subtle change. His education had been interrupted when he was called upon to do national service in Singapore. Now Park was thinking that it made no sense at all to devote all of his time to winning a title at the expense of his education. Finally, a dumb Mr. Universe was destined, as Park saw it back then,  to be no winner at all. What was more, the British government was offering free education to all veterans, an opportunity that Park and his parents considered too good to pass up. 

Reg decided to take a course in business administration. He would train for a career by day and in the evening he would devote time to training for the Mr. Universe contest. 

Soon, Reg Park had built his own gym in his parent's back yard: two poles were driven into the ground, a bar placed across them for chinning exercises, then there were the barbell and the pair of dumbbells that he had acquired since returning home from overseas army duty, and the flat wood bench that he had built according to specifications obtained in a muscle magazine. Oh, and he set up a pulley machine that extended from his bedroom to the yard. 

Over all of that Park set up a large tarpaulin, the better to keep out the snow and the rain. In truth, the cloth ceiling offered little protection against the harsh winter of 1948 and in desperation Reg took to training while attired in three thick sweatsuits, the better to withstand temperatures that sometimes sank to 30 degrees centigrade. 

After a time he and his training partners moved to amore, I mean a more prestigious premises: A three-walled garage that had a roof and a concrete floor but no electricity. The young men trained most evenings my candlelight, quite romantic. Stop it. 

In 1949, at a bodyweight of around 200 pounds (he had increased from 175 in seemingly no time at all!), Reg Park entered the Mr. North Britain contest. 

In Britain, it has long been the practice to invite bodybuilders to national bodybuilding competitions only after they had won their area title. In other words, you cannot decide to enter the Mr. Britain contest until you have been declared winner of the Mr. East or West or North-East Britain title, unlike the fashion in the United States where John Doe from Utah can enter the Mr. America event with nothing more to his name than a vaulting ambition. Park would first have to win the Mr. North Britain (his area) title before being invited to compete in the Mr. Britain event. Only upon winning this last title would he then be invited to strut his stuff at the Mr. Universe contest.

It should also be said here that until five or six years ago the Mr. Universe contest that was staged by NABBA was no picayune YMCA basement affair. No, here was the most exciting bodybuilding event of the year, with invited contenders flying to London from all over Europe, the United Stated, and the Caribbean. There was glory merely in being invited to participate. 

Yes, so Park decided to begin his journey to the bottom of bodybuilding's rainbow by entering the Mr. North Britain contest of 1949. 

  

AND NOW . . . we can get to the training-related section: 

For the first time in his bodybuilding life, Reg Park embarked on a TWICE A  DAY, THREE TIMES A WEEK training program. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning he trained his lower body with high-repetition squats, hack lifts, and calf exercises. And in the evening he worked his upper body. [see the Rader System for more on this type of full body, thrice a week split].

"I devised a method of breathing during the squat movement that I believe had great effect on my rib cage and lungs. I found that when I breathed in the usual way, that is, one deep breath at the start of each rep, I soon lost count. I could not concentrate. I should say that I was doing 20 repetitions per set of squats. 

"So I took to thinking of those squats in fives. At the start of the first five reps I would breathe in deeply just once, and then I'd breathe out on completion of each repetition, in the regular manner. 

"At the start of the second five [this guy and his love of fives!], I breathed in twice before each squat.

"For the third five I took three inhalations . . . but for the final five I returned to breathing normally again, as I had done with my first five squats. That is, with each repetition I breathed in just once and out again on completion of the movement." 

His upper body work on those three mornings consisted of heavy presses, curls, bench presses with both barbell and dumbbells, bentover barbell rows and so on, with poundages that allowed a maximum of 10 repetitions. 

At this point, at no time did he use weights that he could not handle for at least 6 repetitions. 

It should also be pointed out that while preparing for Mr. Britain he followed no other activity. He rested whenever he was away from the weights. 

"I did not walk when I could ride, never stood up when I could sit or lie down. I existed during those three weeks strictly for my Mr. Britain training."

At Warrington, someone wanted to know what supplements he consumed during the Mr. Britain period. "Nothing at all," was the reply. And then Reg went on to say that in those days food was very scarce in England, and the government, noting this, had arranged for pregnant women to collect free of charge a vitamin C concentrate from clinics all over the country.

"It was a thick liquid, and many of the pregnant ladies, after they tasted it once, put the container away and forgot about the vitamin. So I went around to the homes of these ladies and asked for all the bottles of vitamin C that they had. In fact, I persuaded a great many of them to go on collecting bottles of the stuff from the clinics each week for my convenience. I would mix the vitamin C concentrate with glucose and honey and I would sip a quart of that during each workout. I think it did a lot for my energy and kept me buoyant after my training sessions." 

The records show that Reg Park won the 1949 Mr. Britain with little difficulty. But contrary to legend, the trip Park took to the United States shortly afterwards was NOT sponsored by the Weider organization. 

"This was a gift from my parents for winning the Mr. Britain title." 

Reg enjoyed a great time in New York, even though the journey by the Queen Mary [a five or six day trip] had left him somewhat underweight and weak from the seasickness he had suffered from the moment he left the U.K. until his arrival in the U.S.A.

"I arrived in New York weighing around 205 pounds and was in no shape to shake up anyone." 

It was not long before the new Mr. Britain was back to his old ways again. Soon he had resumed training at the John Terlazzo gym in N.Y.C. and with some of the leading names of American bodybuilding as training partners.

He went to California for a time and trained with Clancy Ross, from whom he learned a new exercise, the incline bench press . . . and loved it.  

 

He joined the crowd at Muscle Beach in Venice and picked up a number of new training ideas with which he would later experiment. 

  

                                                                           1941 . . . '51 . . . '56

Note of little interest: The photo from 1956 on your right was taken while Reg Park was in Vancouver for posing thing. John McCallum, in his article titled "Training for Gaining" states: A bunch of us went down to the gym one time to watch Reg Park work out. He was in town doing a show." It's a good article, sure, and I wonder if that was when he saw Park train. 

https://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2016/09/training-for-gaining-john-mccallum.html 

"Later, after winning Mr. Universe in London I began to read up on every aspect of physical training, books on physiology, anatomy and so on. And I recalled my school days when I was not very good at long distance running but strong in the sprints. Bearing this in mind I devised a training system that would not tax my endurance too heavily [OBVIOUSLY STEALING AND APPLYING THE WEIDER PRINCIPLES HERE!!!]. 

"I began training on a system of 5 sets of 5 repetitions for each exercise, but always using some pretty heavy poundages. I remember that I concentrated on presses behind the neck, bench presses, clean & presses, and two-arm dumbbell presses. 

"My workouts lasted about 90 minutes, after which I felt completely depleted. In fact, on the one or two occasions that I experimented with longer workouts I found that my interest simply disappeared after about 90 minutes." 

Park would begin his bench presses with a barbell that weighed 160 pounds. He would do 5 reps with that weight, 5 more with 180, and then the last three sets with 200, striving to get 5 repetitions for every set.

"I did not increase the training poundages until I could do the last 5 reps with reasonable ease, then for my next session I would increase all poundages by five pounds, so that now I would begin the presses with 165, go up to 185,and finish off the last three sets with 205, over time working to get 5 reps in all three."

Park applied the system to all of his training, whether he was working upper or lower bodyparts. Soon he was performing standing dumbbell presses with a pair of 110's, very respectable poundages for that era. 

There was one American with whom Reg particularly enjoyed training and his name was Marvin Eder, whom he nicknamed 'The Bull'. 

"I was also a young bull," Park would relate years afterwards, "and any time I walked into Abe Goldberg's New York gym, where Marvin trained, you could feel the vibrations. Whatever weights he handled I felt I had to do better. And of course he felt the same urge when I excelled. I recall that one time I was doing seated curls with a pair of 100 pound dumbbells, Marvin steadying me knees. And for his part Marvin would do dips with not one, but two grown men hanging from his waist . . . and pumping out reps that way." 

It is well known that when Eder and Park trained in New York the two often used 450 pounds for bentover rows. 

"As I was saying, I decided to forego high repetition training in favor of heavy poundages and lower reps and sets. I found I enjoyed this approach and it paid off. 

"I trained 5 days each week, working the same bodyparts each session."

PARDON ME? What do ya figure he meant there? Whole body five times a week, as he had previously split them, morning and night for five days straight? Not that it matters much either way, seeing as each of us can only do so much and still see results. When in doubt, try it out. And don't forget to come back to it a later date if it worked well in the past. 

"Suddenly I had the urge to be the first man in the world to bench press 500 pounds," he explained. Unfortunately, a Canadian gentleman named Doug Hepburn beat me to it. [Heh, burned by Doug]. But one month after his 500 I was giving an exhibition in Bristol and as usual I was putting on a bench press performance before my posing exhibition. I had done 480 and was ready to call it a day. The guys were replacing the barbell onto the racks when I changed my mind. 'Give me 500,' I said to everyone's amazement. As I started lowering the weight to my chest I found myself thinking, 'Well, if Doug could do it, then so can I.'

"And I pushed that weight right back up for a perfect 500 pound bench press." 

Park weighed a little over 220 when he did this. 

Food supplements were not as popular in 1950 as they are today, so Reg ate anything he fancied, including a dozen eggs and eight pints [one gallon] of milk daily.

"Many of you will be surprised to hear that to this day I still consume a pint of cream daily." 

"Heavy training is, in a sense, negative training by virtue of the fact that you are forced to control the weight as you lower it. You do it automatically. For heavy bench presses you have to set yourself up, flex your deltoids, triceps and pectorals for the first phase of the exercise. You can't let the weight come down with your muscles relaxed. You must lower it in a negative training pattern."

He says that beginners should be careful, even wary of the training systems they try to follow. He states that there are precious few champions who know a great deal about anatomy, physiology or nutrition. They are champions in spite of their obvious ignorance. No matter what forms of training such men followed, they would quite possibly emerge champions, for they were born to be champions. It is in their genes.

"Had I known what I know now, had I learned half as much as I now know about myself and applied it in my early training, I would have gone very much further as a champion." 

He contends that a knowledge of body mechanics, lengths and types of levers will eventually raise the standard of physique competition to heights now unimagined. 

Asked if it was possible to change one's natural form, Reg said, "Yes, to some degree a man may change his body type with systematic training. [nothing extraordinary here, Hise et al showed this earlier repeatedly].

But then, Reg Park is certain that in the not too distant future we will look back on how each of us trained and wonder what could possibly have been going on in our heads. 

Indeed. 

Enjoy Your Lifting!