People: "Are you a bodybuilder"?
Me: "No, I just lift weights".
Reminds me of this true story.
About 1921 Bernarr McFadden held what was probably the first physique
contest in history. He rented, I think, Madison Square Garden and spent a
lot of money promoting the contest. But it was a flop. He tried again
about a year later, that one too flopped too. So he quit conducting such contests.
None of the people who entered those two contests would never be accused
of being a bodybuilder and should never have been considered. They were mostly
fat professional wrestlers, out of condition football players or carnival “strong men.”
The only weightlifter that competed was an illiterate Italian man. For about fifty
or so years afterwards he was famous under the assumed name of Charles Atlas.
McFadden coined and registered (copyrighted) the term “The World’s Most Perfectly
Developed Man,” and awarded this title to the winner of his contests. But by any
reasonable standards, Atlas’s physique was pitiful.
For the next fifty-odd years, Atlas claimed to be “The winner and still the holder of
the title of The World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man.” Hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions, of such ads were published throughout the world for more than
fifty years; ads offering to sell you the “secret” of Dynamic Tension, which was
suppose to be responsible for Atlas’s physique. I remember those ads.
There was little or no profit to be made from trying to sell people barbells. (Eventually
the real money was to be made selling supplements. You can't prove they work but people
believed they did and kept coming back for more, which unlike a barbell set, once sold
you removed a customer from the market.)
So instead a supposedly secret and revolutionary exercise program discovered by Atlas.
He went to great lengths to deny that he was, or ever had been, a weightlifter. According
to him, weightlifting was bad, dangerous, of no value, to be avoided, all you needed
his secret he was willing to sell you. And he sold a lot of them
Eventually, he was sued by a manufacturer of barbells. In court, on the witness stand
and under oath, Atlas denied that he had ever used weights for any purpose. But,
when questioned by the judge, he finally admitted that he did use weights to
“test his strength.”
“How often do you test your strength?” the judge asked him.
Atlas replied, “Three or four times a week.”
So the judge then asked him “How long do you test your strength each time?”
And Atlas said, “Two or three hours each time.”