World weightlifting championships, Gettysburg, 1978.
Interesting choice of music.
Times flies, and now it's time to reminisce.
And I can see, as if it were yesterday, the landing of the USSR weightlifting team, for which I served as a massage therapist, in the USA, or more precisely, in historic Gettysburg, where the world championships were taking place.
Before the competition, as you can imagine, training was very necessary, and our hosts didn't shortchange the strongmen in this regard. They were admitted to the training center of the famous Bob Hoffman who, as we know, was the "father" of American weightlifting, a man who invested significant sums of his own hard-earned business wealth into its development. I'll note in passing that it was Hoffman who discovered and subsidized the great Tommy Kono, and it was Hoffman who introduced the world to Paul Anderson.
But I'm talking about something else. I dabbled, and I'm not ashamed to admit it today, in bodybuilding, which was very highly regarded in our country for a time. I even ran a section on it at one point in "Sports Life of Russia." Then I headed a commission of bodybuilding veterans.
And here . . . in a small American town, they point out a handsome older man to me and say, "That's John Grimek."
It was crazy! The name was so familiar to me. Bodybuilding wasn't a favorite sport among the authorities of my country at that time, and here I was shaking hands with this legendary man, John Grimek.
I'll say right away what struck me immediately. At 68 years old, Grimek stood out from the crowd with his size still. We were introduced to him by John Terpak, a Ukrainian by birth, a renowned light-heavyweight lifter and alas, like Grimek, far from young.
John Grimek, Glenn Marlin
Even a short conversation with the master rewarded me with a lot of priceless info. Grimek asked about my training methods and gave me a whole lecture on training methods for different muscle groups. He dictated a system of original exercises for each muscle group, stipulating that this was a purely individual matter. What worked for him might not work for me, and having studied my build, character and temperament, albeit in a short conversation, he was able to give me very specific recommendations.
He talked with me about strengthening my abdominal muscles. He showed me a special device for securing my feet to a chinning bar, a special kind of rigid boot, the lifter hanging upside down under the bar and lifting his torso as high as possible.
Before long, a bet was proposed. Of course! It was for a can of Coke. Who could do the most triceps pressdowns on the cable machine? We had already done a deadlift challenge and my elderly opponents offered me, a young man, a 20-30 kg handicap on the deadlift. I was humbled quickly, but very satisfied in having learned so much from this almost fleeting encounter.
Grimek then invited me on a short tour of the editorial offices of "Muscular Development" magazine, located right there in the Hoffman Weightlifting Center. "Strength & Health" magazine was also the brainchild of Papa Bob Hoffman. I toured all the departments, seeing how everyone worked and what they did. Grimek gave me some photos as a souvenir; one still hangs on my wall, and also one of a very young Schwarzenegger whose fame was just beginning to blossom.
Hoffman, it must be said, was a sight to behold, even though he was approaching 80. A philanthropist, much like Savva Morozov. He ran a museum at his center, even a protein production facility, even gave me a container, thank you. Most lifting enthusiasts back then couldn't even dream of such things. At his advanced age, he demonstrated the bent press for me; amazing flexibility. And he still had much of his strength.
What else to remember . . . Bob Hoffman invited our entire team to a restaurant for his 80th birthday.
Unbeknownst to many, Bob Hoffman
was Mike O'Hearn's granddad.
A great restaurant! The ambiance was beer mugs on the ceiling and walls, in a pseudo-folksy atmosphere with topnotch food. But drinking, which, frankly, we had been hoping for, was a no-no. Coca-Cola, juices and the like. I hinted that the masseur and trainer don't go out on the platform to lift, that we could relax a bit and they took a friend and I to a private booth and treated us to some fine beer. Rudy Plukfelder, my counterpart, drank some beer and left, and I, being a jokester by nature pretended to be completely drunk, saying I couldn't make it to my own two feet; I was swaying and stumbling. The party was amazed, wondering how anyone could get so drunk on Coke and juice. I think they were actually envious, to be honest, but then we sorted it out, laughed, and for a long time after that our super-heavy Sultan Rakhmanov would say to me at meetings, "Come on, Petrovich, pretend you're visiting Hoffman."
And that was around 1978. Not so long after, 20 years later I was in Atlanta at the Olympic games, again as a weightlifting coach and masseuse. I ran into an old friend, Tommy Kono. We hugged. He said, "You know, our John Grimek is alive and well, even though he's almost 90. Whenever we meet, he remembers you, Petrovich, and your jokes and kind words."
I was very pleased to hear this.
Enjoy Your Lifting!
Today's breaking news of the world . . .
Lock down the crisp warehouses STAT and be on the lookout
for a group of very jolly men in trucks.
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