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Changes in the Bodybuilding Culture since the 80s

Paul Bunyan?
Hillbilly Jim.

 
I was looking at the facebook page for Mid City Gym in Manhattan. The gallery has pics of people who have visited the gym over the years including Macho Man Randy Savage.

**broken link removed**
 
Hillbilly Jim.

I didnt recognize him out of his overalls!
 
I was looking at the facebook page for Mid City Gym in Manhattan. The gallery has pics of people who have visited the gym over the years including Macho Man Randy Savage.

**broken link removed**
My father ran into him at the gym in our city too. There was a Wrestling exhibition soon and he wanted to work out. He worked out a lot. Dad said that his voice seemed to still be in character when he asked the guy at the front desk "what time does the gym open in the morning?". My father was thrilled to hold the door open for Macho Man to enter the gym. lol
 
Cant forget The Ultimate Warrior!

Ultimate_Warrior_in_his_heydayjpg-JS362973310.jpg
 
Some interesting info about how different things were back in the 1980's, and Ciba's Dianabol being removed from the US market in 1983, and the black market that created for steroid dealers.

"After the Kefauver Harris Amendment passed in 1962, the U.S. FDA began the DESI review process to ensure the safety and efficacy of drugs approved under the more lenient pre-1962 standards, including Dianabol. In 1965, the FDA pressured CIBA to further document methandrostenolone’s legitimate medical uses, and re-approved the drug for treating post-menopausal osteoporosis and pituitary-deficient dwarfism. After CIBA’s patent exclusivity period lapsed, other manufacturers began to market generic “Dianabol” in the U.S."

Following further FDA pressure, CIBA withdrew the methndrostenolone Dianabol from the U.S. market in 1983. Generic production shut down two years later, when the FDA revoked Dianabol e.g, D-BOL’s approval entirely in 1985. Non-medical use of methandrostenolone outlawed in the U.S. under the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990."

Dianabol - Dbol | Muscle Labs USA (dianabol-dbol.com)


"Fitton found a pharmacy in Opelika, Ala., that stored the drugs. The supply channel was blessedly straightforward. Fitton would make occasional trips to Spain and Italy, where steroids were legal -- "I'd clean out the pharmacies in Milan," he says -- and fill up his luggage. He would also make periodic jaunts from San Diego to Mexico in a cheap rental car. "The old cars were better, because you could pull door panels off and load s--- in places," he says. "That's what we used to do."

Even as Fitton was purchasing huge quantities of steroids, his enterprise was unnoticed by law enforcement. A rumor surfaced in 1983 -- bogus, it turned out -- that Dianabol was going off the market. Fitton rushed to his Alabama pharmacist and ordered as much as he could get: 10,000 bottles. "The pharmacist, the distributor and the companies didn't bat an eye," says Fitton. "They knew damn well the pharmacy didn't need 10,000 bottles for legitimate reasons.""

Steroids In America: The Godfather - Sports Illustrated

"As a result, the FDA required a number of companies to withdraw steroids with no medical application from the market. In December, 1985--just months after, Dillon says, he hooked up with Duchaine--the agency withdrew the most popular steroid among body-builders, known as Dianabol, from its list of authorized drugs (although its legal manufacture had ceased in 1982). After that, methandrostenolone--the generic name for Dianabol--was available only through counterfeit sources.

The FDA’s supply-side approach caused the steroid black market to boom. In fact, it had the ironic consequence of transforming Dillon from an average distributor to one who, he says, “could walk into any gym in the country and sign up every steroid user in the place.” Through Duchaine, Dillon says, he met David Jenkins, a member of Britain’s silver-medal-winning 1,600-meter relay team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The government says Duchaine had met Jenkins after the Olympian had moved to San Diego and gone into business selling nutritional supplements. According to both Dillon and Jenkins, the three men discussed joining forces in the nutrition business over dinner in January, 1986. Out of the blue, Jenkins mentioned wistfully that anyone able to supply Dianabol could turn a dramatic profit. “A couple of weeks later,” Dillon recalls, “we met again, and Jenkins looked us both in the eyes and said: ‘I can supply the Dianabol. Can you distribute?’ We looked at each other and told him yes.”"

Confessions of a Steroid Smuggler : When the Quest for Big Muscles Turns Into a Passion for Big Money - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

Nice! I haven't thought of Tony Fitton's name in years. I'll have to dig out some old steroid dealing articles I saved decades ago.
 
I enjoyed this book way back when! Steve Courson was one strong dude!! Some of the stories are pretty entertaining!
 

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I enjoyed this book way back when! Steve Courson was one strong dude!! Some of the stories are pretty entertaining!

Steve Courson was a very strong man, on and off the field. Strong enough to have admitted his use of anabolic steroids, while so many other players from his era and before (and after) have continued to deny using them.

Alvin Roy, trainer since 1946 on the USA Olympic Weightlifting teams run by Bob Hoffman, and who worked with Dr John Ziegler, was the man who did the most to popularize the use of Dianabol and other steroids in football. Roy was the strength coach for the 1963 San Diego Chargers, and later the Kansas City Chiefs, Dallas Cowboys, and Oakland Raiders, and he did more than anyone to spread the gospel of weightlifting and steroid use around the league.

"From that point on, the U.S. team used Dianabol as part of its training. The trainer on that team was Alvin Roy.

While there appears to be no proof that Roy was using Dianabol with the LSU Tigers and Heisman Award Winner Billy Cannon, the timing is very close. Roy was the US weightlifting team trainer and had been associated with the program since 1946. John Ziegler had been trying to introduce the use of Dianabol to American weightlifters since the drug was released in 1958. LSU won the National Championship that very season, and the following year Cannon won the Heisman Trophy. The earliest documented proof that Roy was using Dianabol as a part of his strength training regimen at his studio in Baton Rouge was in 1962.

It was also in 1962 that the San Diego Chargers of the AFL suffered a dismal 4-10 season. Legendary coach Sid Gillman, the Chargers coach, was frustrated and looking for a way to change the fortunes of his team. Gillman took his team to Rough Acres for training camp, a ranch east of San Diego and introduced the league's first strength and training program and coach, Alvin Roy.

Per ESPN's article, Hall of Fame offensive tackle Ron Mix states,


"I still remember his speech, almost verbatim....He said, 'Because you're going to be lifting weights in addition to working out twice a day, you're going to need more protein.' And he said, 'When I was a trainer for the U.S. team in the Olympics, I learned a secret from those Rooskies.' And he held up a bottle of pink pills, and he says, 'This stuff is called Dianabol and it's going to help assimilate protein and you'll be taking it every day.' And, sure enough, it showed up on our training tables in cereal bowls."

Per Mix, the team that year made it "mandatory" that the players took Roy's pills with each meal.

"I think less than 5 percent of the guys never took them," says Paul Maguire, a former linebacker and punter and longtime announcer who now works for ESPN. "No one really understood what it was supposed to do for you. They just told you if you use this and lift weights, it will all come together. But if you weren't going to lift weights, you weren't going to take the pills."

Translation: 95% of the Chargers were taking the roids.

In 2005 at a Dole Institute speaker series discussion on steroids, former Chargers quarterback John Hadl was a panel member.

"Our strength coach (with the Chargers) was a guy named Alvin Roy. We called him the medicine man. He gave guys little cups with these pills in them. None of us knew what they were, but I later found out they were steroids. About 10 of us didn't take them...They weren't illegal back then, but I know a lot of guys who did take them...But two months after taking them, they were huge. The guys who didn't take them, well, they weren't huge. And that's the problem. Do you risk your health to succeed in your sport?" (Bill Althaus, The Examiner)."

The Steelers, Steroids, and Profound Misconceptions | Bleacher Report | Latest News, Videos and Highlights

"By the early '60s, the pills were coming to football no matter what. Already, at least two high school football programs had given Dianabol to players, says historian Matt Chaney, the author of "Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football." And the late Bob Waters of the San Francisco 49ers said he and a few unnamed teammates experimented with Dianabol in 1962.

But the 1963 Chargers put things together like no one else.

"They definitely were the first," Chaney says. "Nobody did it in a systematic way like that."

Then again, nobody had personalities like Gillman and Roy."

Football's first steroids team: the 1963 San Diego Chargers (espn.com)
 
I was looking at the facebook page for Mid City Gym in Manhattan. The gallery has pics of people who have visited the gym over the years including Macho Man Randy Savage.

**broken link removed**
it's one of the few hardcore gyms remaining in nyc. the ring binder book in that gym is a sight to seen. it's a who's who not just of bodybuilding, but also of pro-wrestling, and even a bit of mainstream culture. The owner (in the photo with Macho) is very nice man. They've moved around quite a bit. They were in another location close their current one, a few blocks away. I remember they had a smoking hot blonde that worked the front desk every once in a while. Anyway, i hope they can survive. Complete Body & Spa is another gym that has a lot of cool photos from the 80's and/of bodybuilders and was owned by Brian Moss at one time, who i believe was a successful photographer.
 
it's one of the few hardcore gyms remaining in nyc. the ring binder book in that gym is a sight to seen. it's a who's who not just of bodybuilding, but also of pro-wrestling, and even a bit of mainstream culture. The owner (in the photo with Macho) is very nice man. They've moved around quite a bit. They were in another location close their current one, a few blocks away. I remember they had a smoking hot blonde that worked the front desk every once in a while. Anyway, i hope they can survive. Complete Body & Spa is another gym that has a lot of cool photos from the 80's and/of bodybuilders and was owned by Brian Moss at one time, who i believe was a successful photographer.
I remember Brian Moss / Better Bodies Gym appeared frequently in the bodybuilding mags back in the day, his Instagram page has some very good pics (a couple of Flex Wheeler ones I hadn´t seen for example) and is well worth a look:

 
it's one of the few hardcore gyms remaining in nyc. the ring binder book in that gym is a sight to seen. it's a who's who not just of bodybuilding, but also of pro-wrestling, and even a bit of mainstream culture. The owner (in the photo with Macho) is very nice man. They've moved around quite a bit. They were in another location close their current one, a few blocks away. I remember they had a smoking hot blonde that worked the front desk every once in a while. Anyway, i hope they can survive. Complete Body & Spa is another gym that has a lot of cool photos from the 80's and/of bodybuilders and was owned by Brian Moss at one time, who i believe was a successful photographer.
Mid City Gym. You walk downstairs from street level, it’s in the basement, right?
 

Just checking ;)

I visited the gym back in 76(?). I remember it being small, unclean, smelly
with not a lot of of impressive physiques. The most memorable person I met
was Leon Brown, who was in the original Pumping Iron book (first foto you
saw when you opened it up). Really nice guy and not very tall, I thought
he would be bigger than he was but a very good physique. I hung around
the better part of the afternoon then left, never to return.
 
Just checking ;)

I visited the gym back in 76(?). I remember it being small, unclean, smelly
with not a lot of of impressive physiques. The most memorable person I met
was Leon Brown, who was in the original Pumping Iron book (first foto you
saw when you opened it up). Really nice guy and not very tall, I thought
he would be bigger than he was but a very good physique. I hung around
the better part of the afternoon then left, never to return.
That was the original location on 49th Street. I was there once in the 90's, checking around until I wound up getting a membership at Powerhouse that was on Fulton Street. For a time there were two locations: that one and the current one on 42nd. I think the owners of the building on 49th wanted to redevelop or sell.
 
Steve Courson was a very strong man, on and off the field. Strong enough to have admitted his use of anabolic steroids, while so many other players from his era and before (and after) have continued to deny using them.

It's been quite a while since I read the book but at one point he was going to start going after the bench press record that Ted Arcidi and Ken Lane were going back and forth on. Courson was up to a 700lb bench at that point.
 
It's been quite a while since I read the book but at one point he was going to start going after the bench press record that Ted Arcidi and Ken Lane were going back and forth on. Courson was up to a 700lb bench at that point.
I know that Courson did a 605lb bench at a meet, so who knows how much he could have done touch-and-go at the gym. But I don't think he was ever up near the same level of the great Ted Arcidi, Ken Lane, and the late great Anthony Clark, who had the potential to do so much more (and with a reverse grip!) before his life was cut short much too young. Anthony Clark actually benched 600 as a teenager, which blows my mind. Of course Courson was athletic enough to have a successful career in the NFL, and he wasn't just a powerlifter like the other guys (although Arcidi was a wrestler in the WWF), so one can only wonder what Courson could have done as a powerlifter if he had focused on that, and if his health didn't fail him.

As opposed to the others, Courson was surprisingly honest about his steroid use. He had heart, even if his heart failed him at the end. It's sad to read his accounts of what he used to compete in the NFL and powerlifting, and realize we have some guys on this board using more drugs than Courson ever did, who will never play in the NFL, compete on stage, or be anything other than a gym or Instagram bodybuilder. At least Courson ruined his health to make money and achieve glory in the NFL. What excuse do the rest of us have for abusing the drugs to that degree, other than pursuing our own passions, or battling our own demons?

"Preparing for the Bucs' April minicamp, I began my most serious cycle yet: a weekly regimen of 4 cc testosterone cypionate, 4 cc Winstrol V, 4 cc Deca-Durabolin, and 4 cc liquid Dianabol. I knew that it was a lot, but it seemed worth the risk.... My intention was to enter the '85 season at 285 pounds able to bench press more than 600 pounds, squat about 850, and dead lift about 900."

"Even after Tampa Bay released him in '86, Courson kept guzzling the steroids. Fully juiced, he benched 605 pounds in a powerlifting meet in 1988. "By the day of the contest," he writes, "I was at the end of a sixteen-week cycle, having ingested or injected substantial doses of Dianabol, Anavar (both orals),Deca-Durabolin, testosterone enanthate, and testosterone propionate (oil-based injectables) before capping it off with some human chorionic gonadotropin."

In the Aftermath of Steroids - Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com
 
I know that Courson did a 605lb bench at a meet, so who knows how much he could have done touch-and-go at the gym. But I don't think he was ever up near the same level of the great Ted Arcidi, Ken Lane, and the late great Anthony Clark, who had the potential to do so much more (and with a reverse grip!) before his life was cut short much too young. Anthony Clark actually benched 600 as a teenager, which blows my mind. Of course Courson was athletic enough to have a successful career in the NFL, and he wasn't just a powerlifter like the other guys (although Arcidi was a wrestler in the WWF), so one can only wonder what Courson could have done as a powerlifter if he had focused on that, and if his health didn't fail him.

As opposed to the others, Courson was surprisingly honest about his steroid use. He had heart, even if his heart failed him at the end. It's sad to read his accounts of what he used to compete in the NFL and powerlifting, and realize we have some guys on this board using more drugs than Courson ever did, who will never play in the NFL, compete on stage, or be anything other than a gym or Instagram bodybuilder. At least Courson ruined his health to make money and achieve glory in the NFL. What excuse do the rest of us have for abusing the drugs to that degree, other than pursuing our own passions, or battling our own demons?

"Preparing for the Bucs' April minicamp, I began my most serious cycle yet: a weekly regimen of 4 cc testosterone cypionate, 4 cc Winstrol V, 4 cc Deca-Durabolin, and 4 cc liquid Dianabol. I knew that it was a lot, but it seemed worth the risk.... My intention was to enter the '85 season at 285 pounds able to bench press more than 600 pounds, squat about 850, and dead lift about 900."

"Even after Tampa Bay released him in '86, Courson kept guzzling the steroids. Fully juiced, he benched 605 pounds in a powerlifting meet in 1988. "By the day of the contest," he writes, "I was at the end of a sixteen-week cycle, having ingested or injected substantial doses of Dianabol, Anavar (both orals),Deca-Durabolin, testosterone enanthate, and testosterone propionate (oil-based injectables) before capping it off with some human chorionic gonadotropin."

In the Aftermath of Steroids - Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com

As far as what he could bench, I'm just going off what he said in the book.

One thing that played a big roll in his health or lack there of was his abuse of alcohol. I don't know if you're familiar with how he died but it wasn't from the heart problems. He was cutting down a big tree and was trying to get his dog out of the way when the tree fell and landed on him, killing him. Just awful.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-nfl-lineman-dies-in-tree-mishap/


Here's some old Sports Illustrated stories about steroids and sports

Part 1

STEROIDS: A PROBLEM OF HUGE DIMENSIONS

https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/05/13/steroids-a-problem-of-huge-dimensions


Part 2 - This one is Steve Courson talking about steroids

GETTING PHYSICAL-AND CHEMICAL

https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/05/13/getting-physical-and-chemical


Part 3


A BUSINESS BUILT ON BULK

https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/05/13/a-business-built-on-bulk
 
Last edited:
As far as what he could bench, I'm just going off what he said in the book.

One thing that played a big roll in his health or lack there of was his abuse of alcohol. I don't know if you're familiar with how he died but it wasn't from the heart problems. He was cutting down a big tree and was trying to get his dog out of the way when the tree fell and landed on him, killing him. Just awful.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-nfl-lineman-dies-in-tree-mishap/


Here's some old Sports Illustrated stories about steroids and sports

Part 1

STEROIDS: A PROBLEM OF HUGE DIMENSIONS

https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/05/13/steroids-a-problem-of-huge-dimensions


Part 2 - This one is Steve Courson talking about steroids

GETTING PHYSICAL-AND CHEMICAL

https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/05/13/getting-physical-and-chemical


Part 3


A BUSINESS BUILT ON BULK

https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/05/13/a-business-built-on-bulk

Yeah, I knew he was on a heart transplant list for years, but it was a tree that actually killed him.

Steroid use is one thing, but mixing alcohol abuse or other rec drug abuse is just adding fuel to the fire.

He lived hard, died hard, but he lived his own way, and I'm sure he had a great time along the way, before things started catching up to him in the end. A warrior who earned his place in Valhalla, and I hope he is now enjoying his eternal reward. RIP
 
it's one of the few hardcore gyms remaining in nyc. the ring binder book in that gym is a sight to seen. it's a who's who not just of bodybuilding, but also of pro-wrestling, and even a bit of mainstream culture. The owner (in the photo with Macho) is very nice man. They've moved around quite a bit. They were in another location close their current one, a few blocks away. I remember they had a smoking hot blonde that worked the front desk every once in a while. Anyway, i hope they can survive. Complete Body & Spa is another gym that has a lot of cool photos from the 80's and/of bodybuilders and was owned by Brian Moss at one time, who i believe was a successful photographer.
Can’t believe I’ve never even heard of mid city gym and I live in Manhattan for 15 years. I’ve heard of steel gym and there used to be a hardcore gym on church street where I would see pros. It was 24 hours and you had to walk up a flight of stairs. Steel gym was 24 hours as well and I think still is. Mid city- I’ve seen it I believe but never heard it was a big deal
 
Eddie Murphy with The Golden Child 33 years later

**broken link removed**
 

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