Page 37 - Fire Your Personal Trainer and Kick Your Own Damn Ass

Fire Your Personal Trainer 34
And Kick Your Own Damn Ass

Finally, there was Peary Rader’s, IRON MAN. IRON MAN was hard to
find. It had terrific training articles and offered unbiased coverage of all
the latest developments in the field. It was a fantastic forum for sharing
ideas about training and the articles were first rate. I bought every issue
I could get my hands on and learned a lot. More than any other publisher
IRON MAN provided a forum for Arthur Jones, who more than anyone
else, wound up revolutionizing weight training with his Nautilus machines
and training ideas.

Yes, a person many of you have never heard of, revolutionized the way
we work out and changed it in ways that were unimaginable when he
first emerged in the early 70’s.

Joe Weider brought bodybuilding to the masses as his magazines gained
in popularity, but Arthur Jones had a greater impact on weight training
than any other person.

My father helped me put together a basic routine using dumbbells that
was focused on arms and shoulders. I tried to use the slant board as a
flat bench but it was a bit too wide and it wasn’t built for that purpose.
In short order I found I needed more weight. I decided to buy a full set of
barbells and dumbbells from Weider, which also came with courses and
wall charts.

The weights arrived and they were basically what was advertised: bars,

chrome sleeves, collars, plates, iron boots, a fabric neck harness and
a hollow metal tube with a length of rope that served as a wrist roller.
They were typical of the era in which they were produced. The straps
for the iron boots kept coming loose and eventually snapped, the fabric
neck harness wouldn’t stay on my head, and the preferred way of using
the wrist roller didn’t work. None of it mattered.