Page 32 - Fire Your Personal Trainer and Kick Your Own Damn Ass

Fire Your Personal Trainer 29
And Kick Your Own Damn Ass

that catalog: this was another world and it was inhabited by real life
supermen!

The catalog had photos of 1947 Mr. America, Steve Reeves, and 1963
Mr. America, Vern Weaver, promoting MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT
and STRENGTH & HEALTH magazines, and lifters demonstrating the
equipment. I didn’t know who Reeves or Weaver were, and it didn’t
matter to me what movies they were in or what contests they had won.

Their photos were enough to confirm what I thought: weights were the
answer for gaining strength and size. It was right there in front of me.
This was how I would level the playing field. I knew nothing about any of
this, but that wouldn’t stop me. I wanted to be part of it.

When I look back now, I recall watching movies at my grandparents’
house on Sundays that were part of a “SONS OF HERCULES” series,
but the physiques on the heroes made no impression on me. (BTW the

title song for that series is still stuck in my head all these years later.
You should definitely stop and listen to it right now on You Tube! It’s a
shame that 80’s band WALL OF VOODOO never recorded that song!
Can someone out there ask Stan Ridgway to at least think about it? He
could nail that song!)

Steve Reeves had played Hercules in two hit films that were not part of
the “SONS OF HERCULES” series and his physique inspired a generation

of bodybuilders a little older than I was, but I was completely oblivious to
the physique end of these movies until I made the decision to lift weights.
After that, I couldn’t get enough of them.

I refused to give up asking for weights, and on another trip through York,
my father picked up a slant board, an 85-pound set of adjustable Milo
dumbbells with chrome sleeves and collars you had to tighten using a