Born: 22 August, 1932, Sterling, Illinois
Died: 24 February, 1993, Siskiyou County, California.
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 220 pounds.
For a week now they have followed him, climbing further into the mountains. From time to time they stop, and he points out to the young men some species of tree or plant, a bird of prey high above, circling in the cloudless sky - even a mountain lion across the valley beyond.
They look at these things, but observe with just as much wonder the enormous musculature of the man's outstretched arms and shoulders; and when he walks in front of them, the vast spread of his back, the neck that seems to have been transplanted from some mythical creature, and his calves, like two thick joints of ham, above the ankle socks and boots. They have seen men like this before, but never outside the pages of a comic book.
In the afternoons, when the sun is less in intense, they find a shaded spot, drop their packs and exercise together. When night comes, they sleep soundly under a canopy of stars none of them have ever seen back in the city.
Now, in the evenings, after supper, under his guidance their talk moves from the usual chit-chat, jokes and things young men talk about to a more serious topic: how each of them has come to find himself on the wrong side of the law.
At first, the young men have trouble opening up. It's not easy to talk like this. Nobody has ever listened to them before. Their thoughts and feelings have never mattered. But this seems to be his real superpower: he shows them that they do matter. They are not just victims of circumstance, the ever-present criminal element of society, but masters of their own destiny. They have a choice. When they return home in three weeks' time, each of them will be determined to be a better man - to be just like Chuck Sipes.
An Illinoisian by birth, Chuck Sipes moved to Modesto, California with his family as a child. Although he had already been introduced to weight training as a scrawny wannabe high-school footballer, Chuck had his real introduction to bodybuilding only after a taste of high-speed dirt that would have killed anybody other than a man destined to become a demi-god; so too Chet Yorton, whose accident was arguably worse.
Before their respective dates with near-death, neither man had displayed much evidence of the physical prowess with which his name would later be synonymous. During his early days as a schoolboy lifter, under the tutelage of his neighbor Chuck Coker (it's gotta be that name "Chuck"), Sipes showed no real interest in bodybuilding at all.
Chuck began his competitive bodybuilding career unwittingly. Chuck Coker recalls that when Sipes was a lifting competitor in his junior college days in Modesto, there was one occasion when a physique contest was held in connection with the lifting. Chuck's buddies on the team filled out an entry form to the physique contest, then informed Chuck that he had to get up on stage and pose. He said no at first, but then did a stroll across the stage and hit a few poses. (This may be the first recorded instance of the Chad stride.)
Throughout his bodybuilding career, the posing, rather than the lifting, would remain the part that least interested Chuck, and his lack of a polished posing routine probably cost him a number of titles he would otherwise have won.
After graduating from school, Chuck decided to become a paratrooper, joining the U.S. Army's famous 82nd Airborne. He served for three years until during a practice jump his parachute failed and he became entangled with another trooper, falling 70 feet to the ground. Some have suggested that the impact may have been the cause of the mysterious and highly destructive Tunguska Event; however plausible the claim that the earth would come off a distant second to Chuck Sipes in a collision, the disparity of dates and locations is enough to disprove this. Chuck spent the next four months in hospital, recovering from serious head injuries that would leave their mark in the longer term with epilepsy and severe depression; tragically, the depression would dog him for the rest of his life, and was almost certainly a contributor to his death by suicide in 1993, at which point the love of his life, his wife, had passed and his body was no longer physically capable of allowing him to enjoy his favorite meaningful pastimes.
But our story continues in 1952. After his time in hospital, Chuck began to receive disability pay for his injuries, until a visit to a military doctor brought those payments to an end; how could a man with a body like that be disabled? The work with Chuck Coker, and the hard paratroopers' training had clearly already provided him with the basis for his later marvelous physique.
Chuck now returned to California and normal life (if by "normal" you mean the life of a lumberjack) with the intention of becoming a bodybuilder . . . and not just any bodybuilder but the best in the world.
He sought out Bill Pearl, who won his first Mr. Universe title the next year in London, beating (among others) a 23-year old Scot (not Bon) by the name of . . .
Sean Connery
Pearl would win the Universe title an unheralded four times before his retirement in 1971, and receive the moniker of the "World's Best Built Man of the Century." He has been described as "arnold before there was arnold," both of which could also just as equally be applied to Reg Park as well.
For Chuck, the mold was set: not only was Pearl possessed of a beautiful physique, but he was also extremely strong. He regularly dressed in the garb of a Sandow-era strongman, replete with leotard or fig leaf, fake moustache and period backdrop - and performed feats of strength like bending spikes and blowing up hot water bottles until they exploded. He could also bench press 500 pounds at a time when very few men could. Chuck would go on to perform similar feats in similarly absurd getups, bending steel rebars held between his teeth, ripping phonebooks in half with his bare hands or crushing spike nails, just like his mentor. This guy would make quite a scene on a construction site and for the love of the gods don't let 'im near the phone book. He would beat his mentor Bill Pearl's bench press PR by a full 100 pounds in time. While Chuck was competing, the only man stronger at benching - in the world - was Pat Casey, who was also 135 pounds heavier than him.
And here's one on Pat Casey's benching written by Bill Pearl:
After around five years of consistent, serious training, in 1958 Chuck won his first competition, the AAU Mr. North California contest. He was 26, and also placed in the top ten that year in a number of other regional and national contests, including the AAU Junior Mr. America and Mr. America contests.
In 1959 Chuck would get his first taste of real success, winning the IFBB Mr. America, before winning the 1960 Mr. Universe. In the mid-sixties he turned his attention to the Mr. Olympia contest for the first time. In the '66 Olympia, won by Larry Scott, he placed third:
. . . and the following year he came second to Sergio Oliva; along with Chet Yorton and Frank Zane, a Cuban bodybuilder often referred to as "the Myth," who was one of only three people ever to beat arnold in competition.
Chuck continued to compete to the end of the decade and into the early '70s. After his close failures at the 1966 and '67 Olympias, he won the NABBA World Championship in 1967 and Mr. California and Mr. World in '68. In 1970 (I'm gettin' exhausted just typing. That's a whole lotta intense contest training, a whole lotta DOMS and a whole lotta rose hips, Bon Scott) he came second in the medium class of the Mr. Universe, whose overall class was won by arnold.
Chuck finally retired from competition in 1974 following his win in the over-40 category of the Mr. Pacific Coast.
The intensity of Chuck's competition training but also of his life in general was legendary. Where most men would struggle to fit a bodybuilding routine in around any kind of fulltime job, Chuck, being Chuck, managed to work out after full days chopping trees as a lumberjack or in the sawmills up and down the Pacific Coast. He credited his massive 18" forearms to this hard work, at a time when many bodybuilders did little or no separate forearm training; he considered his forearms to be essential to his massive strength.
A sample Chuck Sipes' routine to increase the strength in your arms and hands:
1) Reverse Curl, EZ-bar - 4 x 10
2) Expander Cable Reverse Curl - 4 x 10
3) One-DB (palm up) Wrist Curl - 4 x 10
Note angle of upper body and upper arm:
Load the dumbbell to a poundage that you can get 10 reps with. Place it at the foot of the bench. Straddle the foot of the bench while facing the dumbbell. Reach down with one hand and take an off-center (thumb set firmly against the inside plate), palm up grip on the dumbbell handle.
For a solid base of support lay the back of the forearm (from the elbow to the wrist) along the top of the thigh, with the hand and the lower part of the wrist extending off the end of the knee.
Twist or lean your torso forward and to the outside until the upper arm and shoulder of the dominant hand is parallel to the floor, or as near as you can make it. Remain in this position as you prepare to perform this version of the wrist curl.
Contract the forearm muscles and flex the wrist, curling the dumbbell up as high as possible (the anatomical range of wrist action should allow the hand to finish approximately 60 degrees to the horizontal). Pause for a 2-second count at this peak contraction position. S-L-O-W-L-Y lower the hand downward so that it hyperextends below the edge of the knee.
By leaning the shoulder and upper arm of the dominant hand to a parallel position to the floor you'll notice a much stronger muscle contraction in the belly of the forearm, as compared to doing it the regular way.
Here's one man's variation and demo of same:
Chuck was training every body part three days a week, working up to his maximum lifts every other day and using all sorts of high intensity schemes, such as the 1-10/10-1.
As well as lifting heavy often, Sipes believed in maximizing intensity, reducing his rest times between sets to as little as 10 seconds.
This rugged lifestyle, while hardening his muscles superbly, did nothing to harden Chuck's heart.
Said Dave Draper of Chuck:
"This man, who looked like a pile of rocks and lifted steel like a crane and shredded and crumpled anything he got his hands on, was a gentleman, a peacemaker and an artist. He insisted you go first while he carried your load; he counseled troubled young men in the California state penal system and created with brush and oils on large canvas incredible old west painting in marvelous detail. Chuck Sipes was a mighty good man."
The use of drugs was one of Chuck's particular concerns. a heartfelt letter about your high school's drug problem would almost invariably guarantee an appearance from the man himself, who would turn up, put on an awesome exhibition of strength and then give a stirring speech on the virtues of clean living and exercise.
It was drugs, in particular, that led to Chuck's departure from competitive bodybuilding in the early 1970s. A few years later Chet Yorton was turned on to the dangers of steroids:
"Chuck was rooming with another world famous bodybuilder overseas during a posing exhibition. Chuck walked into their hotel room and found the other bodybuilder with a needle in his butt. Chuck asked what was going on and was told, "Oh, you have to do this to compete these days."
Chuck, however, disagreed, and began to speak out against steroid use.
Of course you'll find cunts who know nothing, have limited writing skills to go with their impinged thinking process along with pinched (if even connected) brain wiring and are only too happy to prove it in the comments. What's not to love? We're all humans, we all need to believe in the belief that we are all indeed intelligent by design, and who among us can resist publicly showing all of mankind our wondrous knowledge of lifting when the whim happens to arise online.
Moving on, walking effortlessly over the stultified in nature of human origin, possibly human, probably troglodyte-leaning and prone to believing it knows something about lifting as seen through sloping brow and the excelsior-level wisdom inherent in such cave apes of a lightly shaven nature . . . I could go on for hours but this will have to
be continued . . . in cliffhanging Part Two:
Routine and Diet.
Meanwhile, Enjoy YOUR Lifting and kindly shut your fucking hole about the way others do it, if that's not too-too much bother.
