Sandow Starts It
In its broadest sense, bodybuilding is centuries old. Serious athletes have always done exercises and calisthenics to increase muscle mass and improve muscle tone, with the goal of improving performance.
As a discipline in its own right, though, bodybuilding is relatively young. Its origin is often traced to Eugen Sandow (Friederich Wilhelm Mueller), a strong man who was a featured attraction at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Sandow began his performance with feats of strength and concluded it by adopting various poses designed to show off his body--the same kinds of poses used during modern bodybuilding competitions.
After the exposition, Sandow toured the vaudeville circuit. In 1899, he went to England and opened his first "Physical Culture Studio" in London. Sandow aggressively marketed physical culture to the middle class, selling products by mail order and publishing his own magazine. Eventually, he had a chain of 20 studios throughout England.
One of his promotions was the first bodybuilding contest, called by Sandow the "Great Competition," held on September 14, 1901. Sandow made it clear that mere bulk would not win the contest; proportion and symmetry of muscular development would be the keys. He was one of the three judges; another was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the physician-author who created Sherlock Holmes.
Staged in the Royal Albert Hall, which had seating for 15,000, the Great Competition not only sold out, it created an immense traffic jam and hundreds of would-be spectators were turned away.
Oddly, it was the last of the Great Competitions. Sandow had evidently got the publicity he sought, so he didn't bother to do it again.
Macfadden Carries On
Sandow's counterpart in North America was Bernarr Macfadden. Frail and sickly as a child, Macfadden had built health and strength by working outdoors as a young teenager. At the age of 25, he was selling exercise equipment at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. He took a break to watch Sandow's performance and it was an inspiration to him.
Macfadden went to New York the following year and worked as a personal trainer, physical therapist, and wrestling instructor. He also sold exercise equipment of his own design and began selling pamphlets about physical training.
After lecturing and performing throughout England in 1897 and 1898, Macfadden returned to the United States and went on tour, giving lectures and setting up local physical culture clubs. In March of 1899, he began publishing Physical Culture magazine, which emphasized a healthy diet and general physical fitness as well as bodybuilding. His Physical Culture Publishing Company also issued Macfadden's many books and pamphlets.
Macfadden was an early crusader for women's physical fitness. In 1900, he began publishing a magazine called Women's Physical Development, which was soon renamed Beauty and Health. At a time when most experts thought that most exercise was basically bad for women, Macfadden espoused relatively strenuous exercise for both sexes and all ages. He also advocated sensible, comfortable clothing that would allow free, natural movement. Naturally, he joined many feminist reformers of the day in decrying the corset and high heels.
However, Macfadden probably went farther than many of those reformers would have when he announced a bodybuilding competition that would include women as well as men. The competition began with regional contests in major cities that had physical culture clubs, from New York to San Francisco, and culminated in Madison Square Garden, where American winners and champions from a similar European contest took part in a six-day event that included fencing and wrestling as well as the physique competition.
A second nationwide competition was held in October of 1905. It was well publicized because of Anthony Comstock, leader of New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who had Macfadden arrested for planning "a lewd display of carnality." Macfadden was given a suspended sentence and the newspaper stories about his arrest helped pack Madison Square Garden for the contest, which included track and weightlifting events.
Macfadden and his publishing company continued to hold similar contests through the 1920s and 1930s. He also established the Bernarr Macfadden Institute (later known as the American College of Physical Education) to train physical instructors who spread the gospel as coaches, therapists, and trainers. Many of them set up their own gyms to train bodybuilders.
The IFBB and Modern Times
Bodybuilding had become so popular by the late 1930s that the Amateur Athletic Union began to sanction physique contests in connection with weightlifting competition. The AAU's first national event was held on July 4, 1939. The winner was called "America's Best Built Man." In 1940, it became known as the Mr. America contest.
The 1940 Mr. America contest was a major event in the history of bodybuilding. Held in New York, in conjunction with the World's Fair, it attracted a lot of publicity for the sport. That carried over into the 1941 contest, which was held in Philadelphia. John Grimek easily won the title for the second year in a row. He was so far ahead of the other competitors that the AAU decided no one could win the title more than once. Grimek therefore couldn't compete in 1942, when Frank Leight was the winner.
Many bodybuilders were unhappy with the AAU's involvement, for two reasons. First, only amateurs were allowed to enter AAU contests, and most of the top bodybuilders were professional strongmen who could win cash prizes in other competitive events. Second, the AAU required that entrants in the physique contest had to compete in the weightlifting event that preceded it. Bodybuilders weren't usually traditional weightlifters; they were more likely to do exercises with dumbbells to strengthen specific areas of the body.
In 1946, the AAU withdrew sanctioning from a bodybuilding competition that was about to take place in Montreal. The promoters, Ben and Joe Weider, not only went ahead with the event, they organized the International Federation of BodyBuilders (IFBB).
The IFBB quickly attracted serious bodybuilders, including most professionals and many of those who weren't involved in Olympic style weightlifting. In 1949, the organization began holding a Professional Mr. America contest.
That was followed in 1950 by the Mr. Universe competition, staged by the National Amateur Bodybuilders Association (NABBA), which was founded in England that year. A third major competition, Mr. Olympia, was established in 1965 by the IFBB. At first, those events were open to men only. The NABBA began holding a Miss Universe contest in 1965 and the IFBB added a Miss Olympia competition in 1980.
The Mr. America contest became less important during the 1960s and 1970s, as did the AAU's influence over bodybuilding. The publication of Pumping Iron in 1974 and the 1977 movie based on the book gave bodybuilding new bursts of publicity, and the IFBB was the chief beneficiary. (The movie, although it was a documentary about the Mr. Universe contest, also made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger and won Lou Ferrigno his role as television's Incredible Hulk.)
In 1982, the AAU's National Physique Committee was spun off as a separate organization. It is now the amateur wing of the IFBB.
The IFBB is now the major international bodybuilding organization. It has 173 affiliated national federations and is recognized by International Olympic Committee (IOC). The NABBA International has about 40 member countries, most of them in Europe. Its American affiliate, NABBA USA, was founded in 1992.
The American Federation of Women Bodybuilders (AFWB), founded in 1980 as a division of the IFBB, later merged with the National Physique Committee because the IOC requires a single amateur federation for both men and women.
There are several other organizations that sanction competitions. Among the more important are the North American Bodybuilding Association (NABF), the North American Natural Bodybuilding Association (NANBA), the World Natural Bodybuilding Association (WNBF), the United States Natural Bodybuilding Association (USNBA), the National Gym Association (NGA), the Amateur Bodybuilding Association (ABA), the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation (WNBF), and the World Amateur Bodybuilding Association (WABBA).
The major issue that keeps these organizations distinct from one another is the degree of control over the use of drugs, primarily anabolic steroids. "Natural" in an organization's name means that it is committed to drug-free members and competitions. The National Gym Association, as an affiliate of the WNBF, is also a drug-free organization. In 1986, the IFBB began to implement doping controls in accordance with IOC guidelines. That was a major factor in the organization's being recognized by the IOC.
The other organizations all have limitations of some sort on the use of drugs, but their standards for testing may not be as strict. In particular, some of them test only at competitions, not while athletes are training to compete. The list of banned substances also varies from one organization to the next.
Some question whether bodybuilding should actually be considered a sport, since the competition itself consists only of posing, without requiring any actual athletic effort. Its proponents point out that it takes a great deal of physical exertion to prepare for competition and that a competition's choreographed routines do, indeed, require physical skill as well as preparation.
It should be noted that bodybuilding did give birth to a separate sport, powerlifting, which is a kind of alternative to Olympic style weightlifting.
