Training Methodologies of the 1960's by Dr. Ken E. Leistner

Yogurt was not sold in supermarkets and was considered foreign and exotic. We understood we ate yogurt and wheat germ, but didn’t eat cake, pie and cookies. It was a different type of mindset — one, in retrospect, I think left many of those engaged in lifting activities a lot healthier than they are today. If you talk to any competitive bodybuild er or powerlifter, for example, a diet is something used to reg ulate body weight or something manipulated in order to be as muscular as possible at contest time. However, the concept of health, if it exists at all, is secondary to the point where it’s hardly on the list. This was a key fea ture, especially in the 50s and at least to the mid-60s, of any body who lifted weights. I can tell you, if you were in the New York City area, on the subway or walking down the street and you had any degree of muscularity — and I keep saying men because women just weren’t engaged in the activity at that time and weren’t much until the mid-to-late 70s — and you saw or if you were seen by another person who was at all muscular or well developed, you would be stopped and asked if you lifted weights. We rec ognized a fellow trainee or a fellow lifter and would engage in conversation about training.

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