Dr. Squat - Dr. Fred Hatfield

I wrote this article nearly 30 years ago.  Recognize the writing style? Fred  

            All the top bodybuilders call him “Papa Joe.”  I think it’s clear why.  Hell, he -- his organization -- is the principal source of their upcomeance, their survival,  their incomes -- their very identities.  There is little money to be made or glory to be derived as a bodybuilder outside the confines of Joe Weider’s vast empire.

            But it didn’t used to be that way.

            I met Joe and Bob long after I knew them.

            No, not after I knew OF them!  Not after I had HEARD of them!  I knew these guys -- like the back of my hand -- early in my lifting career.  That started in (hmmmm) circa 1955.  When cars were cars.  Before miniskirts.  When there wasn’t anything but Demigod GREATNESS  for me to look forward to.  When my teen mind soared at will and frequently to the numbing heights to which I knew I’d ascend. 

            The source of my teenage dreams?  Your Physique and Strength & Health magazines.  God!  How I looked forward to the next issues! 

            When it soared to thoughts of superheroes Bob Hoffman and his evil nemesis, Papa Joe.   Back then, they had a running battle going in the mags.  Remember the Boscoe cartoon and “very close veins?”  God!  Ya had ta be there! 

            I hated that, but chuckled every time one got a really good dig in.  Everyone did back then.  Still, I hated it because I loved them both.  I wished they’d be friends.  If they were, I thought, what an amazing dynasty they’d be able to create!  Imagine!  A world where both STRENGTH and MUSCLE reigned supreme! 

            .....as well it should, said I.

            Much happened between my teen years as a Walter Mitty world champion weightlifter-slash-bodybuilder and the time I actually became a reasonable facsimile of one -- a powerlifter.  One tragic thing that happened was that I lost my love for these two men. 

            Both had, in my (by then) slightly-more-adult mind, betrayed my trust because of what I perceived to be greed.  Both had told me that I could gain greatness ONLY if I took THEIR supplements, read only THEIR magazine, and joined only THEIR organization!   I would attain the dreams of greatness I had confided to them while on their knee as a child (rhetorically speaking) ONLY if I forsook the other and followed THEM. 

I was mortified.  I was shattered.  I remember feeling this way about these guys.  These were the guys I felt a deep, abiding KINSHIP to!  They were GODS!  Both of them.  And they engaged in this horrible ... THING!  This ... CAPITALISTIC thing!   They were (gasp!) trying to SELL things!

            A quarter century  later, I ended up working for Joe.  Yeah.  I grew up.   I learned that it was OK  to ... y’know ... make a LIVING?  I came to understand that these two men had been engaged in the age-old game of marketing and  competition for market share.

            When I first began working for Joe, my first duty was to take the first two weeks of my employ and read all of the old mags.  Joe’s collection of muscle mags (called “physical culture” mags back then) goes back over a hundred years.  Way back to Arena and Health & Strength (not to be confused with Hoffman’s much later but now defunct Strength & Health). 

            “You can’t write about today’s strongmen and bodybuilders unless you know where they came from,” instructed Joe.  “Sure, you can cite the research, you can provide some insights, you can write an interesting story.”  At this point, Joe’s voice and face seemed to change.  He became more pleading and less instructive.  More like a priest than a businessman.  More passion and less marketing hype. 

            Then, with sweeping gestures and obvious conviction he said, “But you cannot write the TRUTH about bodybuilding!  You cannot FEEL the history.  You cannot EXPERIENCE the great thrill of breaking a personal record or looking in the mirror at a pair of arms bigger than Steve Reeves’ unless you LIVE it when you’re reading it -- every WORD!” 

            Joe meant it.  So I read all the old mags and tried to feel the words.  Sometimes (I think) I actually succeeded.

            Sheesh!  When I read some of the tripe written about bodybuilding today, it reminds me of a celibate priest or a boring scientist trying to explain coitus.  They may be right in what they say,  but they totally missed the point!   Before all else, bodybuilding is a PASSION.  Before it’s a science.  Before it’s a profession.  Before it’s a hobby.   Precious few writers have that passion.

            But I digress.   Back to the article.  Some amazing stuff was in those old mags.  Did you know that male hormones were the mail order rage back in the turn of the century?  That was the time of this nation’s first fitness boom.  

            Did you know that back then there was a mighty tug-o-war going on between the physical culturists and the sports world?  The physical culturists said that lifting weights was good for athletes and the coaches said, “Mind your own business, you don’t know what you’re talking about and weight training is bad for athletes.”  So it went for decades.  To this day, even.

            It was a downright contentious issue back in the early part of this century, and it looked as if the sports people were winning hands down.  After all, there were more of them and they wielded far more influence in virtually every walk of life, including all of the media.

            All but two.  Hoffman’s and Weider’s.  Both championed lifting for both fitness and sports. 

There was one big difference between the early Weider Your Physique and York’s Strength & Health, however.  Hoffman’s magazine was much more “authoritative” because it preached what all of the early guru’s of strength believed.  Strict movements, full range, three sets of ten for every major muscle three workouts per week.  Like that.  ‘Course, Bob Hoffman was far better off financially than the struggling Joe Weider back then, too.

            Joe, far more independent in his approach to lifting, was getting beat up by a much more powerful Hoffman back in the forties and fifties.  Beat up bad.  Both financially and personally. But Joe persisted.  He was on a mission.  (Does all this sound vaguely familiar to any of you?)

            Joe explained to me how it originally happened, this mission he’s still on.

            As it happened, the great bodybuilder Clancey Ross (1945 Mr. America) and Joe were taking a workout together back in the forties, and a young admirer of Clancey asked him how to do curls.  Flattered, Clancey explained, “Stay very erect, don’t cheat.  Curl the weight up slowly without swinging it or leaning back.”   Y’know, the dogma of the day.

            Amused, Joe challenged his friend Clancey, “I’d like to see YOU do curls that way!”  Clancey obliged.  But, he could only do about half the weight he had been working out with.  “See?” explained Joe. “YOU cheat!  Why tell the kid not to when you cheat yourself?  You lean back, you swing, you do all the things you told the kid not to do!”

            I think you get the point.  Of COURSE it’s OK to cheat!  Everyone who’s anyone in the world of iron always has and always will! You can lift heavier weight that way, and ... well, that’s a topic for another story.  Point is, Joe made this very important observation way back then.  Way back when it wasn’t very popular to buck the system or to challenge the authority of the York writers.  (Indeed, many of the current day “Weider Principles” have a similar history, another topic for later articles.)

            And, over the years, as Joe’s challenges to the York authority went, so went Your Physique, the forerunner of Muscle & Fitness.  Now, folks, Joe has told me a million stories like the Clancey Ross story.  Someday I’ll catalog all of them.  They’re all great!  But let’s get to the two major points I’d like to make in this article.   

Point One: 

            The practice of weight training for both fitness and sport would never have survived had it not been for Joe Weider and Bob Hoffman championing the cause of weight training for fitness, bodybuilding and sports against all odds.  Think of it this way:  Without joe there’d be...

·         No Jane Fonda workouts. 

·         No Jose Canseco. 

·         No section in Big 5 stores for weights or supplements. 

·         No  GNC stores. 

·         No dozens of other muscle mags imitating Joe’s. 

·         No Tony Little. 

·         No Soviet sports machine (they emulated many of the training techniques Weider had by then popularized way back in 1956 when they first entered the Olympics). 

            And the moniker “Dr. Squat” would no doubt have been reserved for (or claimed by) some short-of-stature proctologist. 

            Think of it!  A nation of PENCILNECKS!

 Point Two: 

            If it were only Bob Hoffman’s York crusaders writing muscle stories back then, we’d still be doing three sets of ten, three times a week in strict fashion for one of those cute “total body workouts.”

            And LOOK like it too!

So, what’s the point:

            Folks, from my perspective -- which is a bit closer to 20/20 than most because I worked for Joe the longest -- his contribution to sport, to bodybuilding and to the general practice of fitness training in the entire world is incalculable. 

            But what do you say about a guy who constructed a bronze statue of himself?  What do you say about a guy who tells endless stories about all the stuff I just wrote about?  Over the years, some people around him NATURALLY got the idea that he was either 1) blowing his own horn, 2) lying, or 3) doing what he’s always done best -- MARKETING.

            Stop and think for a moment.  What’s wrong with letting people know who you are, what you’ve accomplished, what you believe in?  That bronze of Joe, his magazines, and all the other things this man has accomplished are in a very real sense his resume. We all have resumes, and most of y’all LIE on them (at least you stretch the truth).  Do YOU have a resume as grand?  Does anyone in Irondom?

            The only people who call that blowing your own horn are those who have no resume of their own.  Might it be that they have done nothing worth mentioning?  Might it be that all they have is a very thin neck?

            Joe has lived a dual existence all these years.  On the one hand, he was -- is -- the epitome of PASSION.  That he loves the world of Iron is not a point of conjecture in anyone’s mind. Everyone who has ever worked for Joe recognized his deep and abiding love for what he does.

            On the other hand, he’s a consummate businessman, trying his best to sell the bodybuilding lifestyle to the public.  By all measures, he has succeeded in doing that.  The public has bought BILLIONS of dollars worth of Weider equipment, magazines and supplements over the years.   Almost everyone I know in the world of bodybuilding got their start using Weider equipment, taking Weider supplements and reading Weider magazines for training and nutrition information.

            I admire anyone who has achieved this level of success, this level of knowledge and this level of wisdom in a single lifetime.  Papa Joe?  Perhaps for some.  Arnold Schwarzenegger may regard Joe as his surrogate daddy, and all the bodybuilders out there may do likewise. Papa Joe is not a nickname that happened by accident. 

            As for me, however, I will always regard this man as a consummate teacher and close friend.  By any reasonable measure, the name Joe Weider and the word “bodybuilding” will always be regarded as synonymous.   Joe Weider’s legacy will live on for as long as there is a sport called bodybuilding.