Author David Waller’s
book, the full title of which is The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and
Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman is a brisk detailed biography of
the man considered the father of Modern Bodybuilding.
Sandow’s physique
served as a reminder that much of the carved figures we see in Greek and Roman
statuary were not necessarily idealized but indeed possible.
He stood out in a
world of “strongmen & women” where often the figures were undoubtedly strong,
but the beefy aesthetics did not resemble the Greco-Roman statuary ideals.
Sandow, while being
hailed as a Father of the modern body-culture movement [or physical culture as
it was known then] serves as the narrow bridge between the early portlier
strong man physique and the modern pharmaceutically engorged physique that
simply is not possible without wizards in the lab.
[I leave it to the
reader to decide the ethics of chemical enhancers. Suffice to say, it is not
Old School; what was built pre-supplements was built with no need of drug-tests.]
Mr. Sandow stood 5’9”
and fluctuated in weight between 185-195 pounds, which is not a large man at
all.
Sandow’s goal was proportionality,
overall trinity strength [muscle, tendon, and ligament] and aesthetics.
He never claimed to be
the strongest man in the world, such claims were from his publicist which Sandow
continually disavowed. His goal was overall development.
Enough from me, let us
turn to a few passages from the book that struck.
“Nordau’s book Degeneration
was published in Germany in 1892 and appeared in English three years later and
its period of influence overlapped with Sandow’s early career in London and the
US. The author lamented the impact of so-called civilisation on health and life
expectancy. “The dead carried off by heart and nerve diseases are the victims
of civilisation,” Nordau argued, blaming fatigue and exhaustion on “the vertigo
and swirl of our frenzied life, the vastly increased number of sense
impressions and organic reactions, and therefore of perceptions, judgements and
motor impulses, which at present are forced into a given unity of time.”
Nervous diseases and bodily decrepitude are “exclusively a consequence of the
present conditions of civilised life”. Nordau mounted a generalised critique of
modern, urban society, but he detested modern art in particular (Zola, Ibsen,
Wagner and Tolstoy were special targets), and he singled out railway travel for
vilification, alleging that the instability of modern man was at least
partially attributable to the “vibrations undergone in railway travelling”
I offer this to show,
that there are always grousing voices to claim that the “modern” is the cause of
our woes.
We could easily substitute
Nordau’s peeves with today’s faddish peeves and all to the same result—nothing.
We are wiser to ignore
griping and do our own thing.
The
“tableau vivant,” or living picture, such as performed by Sandow, had a
salacious history: it was a form of entertainment first perfected by Emma Hart,
Lady Hamilton, the notorious mistress of Lord Nelson. She got into the habit of
dressing up and exhibiting her “attitudes” – poses modelled on classical
pictures and sculptures – when she was living with her husband in Naples at the
end of the 18th century. She later practised her art in south London drawing
rooms where, after very little pleading, she would strip off behind a curtain,
drape herself in muslin over which water was poured – the original of the wet
T-shirt look – before striking her poses.
I offer this passage to
illustrate two points.
One-Victorians [all humans] were just as interested
in the human form as any contemporary.
Two-Huzzah! To Lady Hamilton for her courage and
pride in her wares. I am deeply suspect of prudes, scolds, and hectors of all
stripes.
Finger-pointers strike
me as folks who have something totalitarian in their natures.
“Nudity in itself
is as chaste as nature; it is holy, being from God, and it does not need to conceal
its existence.”-Father Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges, L’Art et la morale [1925]
Or…
“The total exposure
of the human body is undignified as well as an error of taste.”-Adolf
Hitler
I side with the gentle
soul.
The next passage
allows us to see the encompassing nature of Sandow’s thoughts on physical development.
He considered it more than readiness for mere athletic pursuit.
“Sandow
was not alone on his US tour – he had sailed over with his friend Martinus
Sieveking (1867-1950), a Dutch pianist and composer, and together they shared
an apartment during Sandow’s time in New York.As Sandow recollected: Sieveking…was
a brilliant pianist…but as a man he was exceedingly weak and delicate. Indeed,
his powers of endurance were of the slenderest, and he even found it difficult
to remain at the piano long at a time. ‘If I only had your strength,’ he used
to say, regretfully, ‘I might become almost the greatest player in the world.’
…I suggested that he should accompany me as my guest to America, guaranteeing
that in nine months or a year, under my personal supervision and training, he
would grow so strong that his best friend would scarcely be able to recognise
him…he travelled with me all through America. Weak as he was at the start,
within twelve months he became one of the strongest and healthiest of my pupils
and the most redoubtable amateur I have ever met, whilst he was able to
continue as he wished his professional career as a pianist.58 Journalists
visited them at 210 West 38th Street and found Sieveking stripped to the waist
and thundering through his repertoire at the piano, while Sandow worked at his
own exercises in time to the music. Sieveking left a deep impression on those
who met him, so much so that he has a cameo role in James Hilton’s novel Lost
Horizon, where he gives a recital on an ocean liner. Strengthened up under
Sandow’s personal tutelage, the fingers of each hand spanning nearly two
octaves, Sieveking was said to have “the largest, most muscular and perfectly
developed among piano hands” – as well as a beautiful tone and complete command
of pianistic technique. He invented his own system for teaching virtuoso piano
playing based on his trademark Dead-Weight Principle, a musical version of the
Sandow system, involving much repetition in order to build finger strength and
accuracy.59 He later composed various entirely forgotten marches and waltzes
and wrote and performed for piano-roll companies. He married an Englishwoman in
1899 and migrated finally to the US in 1918, establishing a piano-playing
academy in New York – a pianistic version of Sandow’s Institute of Physical
Culture. He outlived his bosom friend by several decades, dying in Pasadena,
California, in 1950.”
Using strength for the
finesse of piano. When do you hear anyone make that claim today?
Sandow felt that he
was training for more then mere athletic pursuit. He was training for life and
movement itself.
Through
the application of rational exercise came power for the individual, in the form
of a fitter and more effective body, and for the nation, comprised as it was of
millions of individuals. This, Sandow never tires of reminding his readers, is
a benefit of his System that is not available to those who pursue mere sport.
Sandow’s Magazine would contain articles on cycling, rowing, hurling, football,
golf, cricket, rock-climbing, and numerous other sports, but Sandow was
contemptuous of the benefits of such “recreative” exercise. “Physical Culture
is the scientific building up of the body to supply the strength which has to
be applied to recreative exercise,” he argued.
In other words, he
regards his training to be broad based so that one can apply oneself to the narrow
specificity of the recreational activity that one chooses for enjoyment not
chosen for its therapeutic benefits. The distinction is not small.
He claimed
that his system could help women take weight off, or put it on, as required,
and as with his male customer base, all the exercises could be fitted into a
busy life in twenty minutes a day, without any need to adopt a special diet.
I offer that I do not
use Sandow’s “System” as a whole, although I am greatly influenced by it and
many other methods of the old-schoolers. And I can vouch that if I minus out combat
training rounds a daily workout for me clocks in at around 25 minutes and I
make zero dietary strictures. I love me some donuts.
Old-timers knew of
what they spoke.
Look at his photos and
ask yourself if the following sounds anything at all like today’s restrictive
health advice offered, well, practically everywhere.?
He
recommended eating frequent light meals rather than two heavy meals, as was the
custom at the time. He recommended a great deal of sleep: “he needed nine hours
in bed, unconscious and motionless, and declines to yield a minute of this
habit”. He drank weak tea for breakfast, abominated coffee and champagne. Red
and white wine, lager beer and up to six small cigars were permissible during
the course of the day.
More “These kids
today” but…there may be a bit more truth here.
[In context, referring
to Great Britain gearing up for The Boer War.]
Despite
the upsurge of patriotic sentiment, it was notable that a high proportion of
those who volunteered for death or glory in the veldt, were turned down on the
grounds of one physical defect or another. In Manchester, for example, 8,000
out of 11,000 would-be volunteers were rejected outright and only 1200 were
declared fit in all respects. Nearly a third of all volunteers across Great
Britain were rejected in 1899, 28 per cent in 1900 and 29 per cent in 1901.
British troops had to be augmented by battalions of volunteers from other parts
of the Empire, chiefly Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which served to
highlight just how healthy these outdoorsliving colonial subjects were when
compared to the urban underclass from which domestic recruits were drawn. Far
in advance of the inevitable official enquiries, Sandow provided an instant
explanation as to what was wrong with the physical stock of the nation: “the
contraction of the lungs, the weak, irregular action of the heart, the
irregular liver, are all defects due…to unnatural conditions of life and
diet…and the absence of any counteracting influence in the shape of proper
exercise.” Even those volunteers who passed muster, could not really be
classified as fit: “with chests that have cramped over desks, shoulders that
have stooped in standing at counters, and digestions enfeebled by studious
habits, many brave fellows are going out to South Africa to encounter rigours
of climate, exhausting marches, and conditions of life which only the strongest
can survive.” Without wishing to seem unpatriotic, he thought that most of them
would end up in hospital – or worse. Sandow did not say it himself, but many
felt the Boer farmers were, by comparison, paragons of manliness: fit, lean and
flexible, and uncorrupted by the pressures of office or factory existence.
Cecil Rhodes told W.T. Stead that he never walked along Piccadilly, “without
being appalled by the number of flat-breasted women, chicken-chested,
pallid-faced men, with stooping shoulders. Especially when I contrast them with
the Boer on the Veldt…”
Overall a compelling read.
It is not a how-to book, unless one reads for context and recognizes that the instructive
factors lie in the overall mindset and approach than they do in the “Do
exactly this, this many times” prescriptions that many of seek.
For more on Old-School Conditioning thoughts and methods, see here.
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