Muscular Power and Beauty

I had recently been reading about Bernarr MacFadden, so I looked in the library to see if I could find any books by him.  I found a reprint of Muscular Power and Beauty.  MacFadden lived from 1868-1906.  This book was published in 1906 when MacFadden was 38 years old.  Consequently, I believe this book represents MacFadden’s philosophy because it was published at the peak of his mental prowess after he had been famous for some time.

The book begins with a couple of chapters about MacFadden’s philosophy and then moves into a discussion about how to build your body for beauty using exercises.  For me the initial chapters were the most interesting of the book while I found the exercise chapters relatively dated from both a conventional and unconventional point of view.  The excise chapters come in pairs with a first chapter discussing a muscle’s importance and a second chapter giving exercises to target the body part.  At the end of each exercise chapter come a series of photographs showing MacFadden demonstrating the exercises discussed in the text.

MacFadden looks to the ancient Greeks and Romans as a starting point for physical training.  He talks about how they were mentally vigorous and physically well built.  I do not share his conclusions.  I don’t think the Romans or Greeks are ancient civilizations to admire.  They were the invaders, conquerors, and lawbreakers of those ancient times.  They made humans kill one another for their amusement and they wiped out nations which posed no threat to themselves.

Furthermore, the Romans and Greeks were not as physically impressive as the Celts, Franks, or Germans.  The Romans won their wars because of their superior military strategy, by being more wealthy, and by being more ruthless.  Many Roman soldiers were not even from Italy but actually members of other conquered peoples hired into the Roman army.  If we look at the Greeks, their music and literature are impressive, but we have a hard time making a physical comparison between them and other peoples.  They usually fought other Greeks until the Persian Wars when they fought other peoples who had been enslaved by the Persian empire.

To better analyze MacFadden’s arguments I would need know what the conventional wisdom was at his time.  I would like to know what aspects of this book were revolutionary and which parts followed conventional wisdom.  This would allow me to better compare MacFadden’s views with my own.  I found many problems with his thinking, but these may only been areas in which he had not yet challenged conventional thinking.

One of the main areas about which I disagree with Bernarr is whether to use exercises that target specific body parts.  I think that you should shoot the minimum number of exercises which will target all of  the body’s musculature.  Ideally the exercise should only use the weight of the body for resistance.

The exercises in this book all target specific body parts.  Although the exercises don’t target specific muscles for the most part, this is still the wrong directio to gon.  The areas of the body targeted by MacFadden are:

1. Lungs
2. Chest
3. Shoulders
4. Upper arms
5. Forearms
6. Fingers
7. Neck
8. Back
9. Abdomen
10. Hips
11. Upper legs
12. Calves

All of the exercises given use body weight, but they do not train the muscles to work as  a team.  These might be good for someone who has realized they have a weak area in their body and want a quick fix, but it is not a good basis for an exercise routine.

Finally, MacFadden talks about the “university man” this is the person who defines what college means.  It means being a well rounded person developing a wide base of knowledge, great physical strength, and a good physique.  This is in sharp contrast to the modern college.  Today a college’s ideal student will only waste spend enough time at the gym to avoid becoming overweight.  He would not spend any unnecessary time exercising but would spend all of his other time studying and working in clubs related to his area of specialization.  He would not study a wide variety of topics and would focus entirely on his major from his first day in schoo.