Bodybuilding Special: Who Was Joe Weider?

Joe Weider Bodybuilding Businessman There are many famous names in the bodybuilding world, and many influential characters. For many people the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Franco Columbu and Kevin Levrone spring to mind when thinking about the great and influential bodybuilders of the 20th Century. However, one of the most important characters is the less known Joe Weider. Joe, with his brother Ben, founded of the International Federation of BodyBuilders (IFBB) and created the Mr. Olympia competitions, which made the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger so famous.

Joe Weider is also the founder of Muscle & Fitness magazine, which started out as Your Physique magazine in 1939. In 1968, the publication was renamed Muscle Builder magazine, and adopted the name Muscle & Fitness in 1980. Bodybuilding led to empire building, and Weider’s publishing empire have since included “Mr America”, “Muscle Power”, Shape, Men’s Fitness, Living Fit, Prime Health and Fitness, Fit Pregnancy, Cooks, Senior Golfer, and Flex. He also produced many fitness training courses and also developed the Weider System of Bodybuilding course. He has also written many books on the subject, including The Weider System of Bodybuilding (1981) and the 2006 biography “Brothers Of Iron” which he wrote with Ben Weider.

Joe’s empire started from very humble origins. His publishing empire began with a $7 investment after building his own barbells out of discarded car wheels and axles. He later introduced the Weider home gym exercise equipment, and was also one the first bodybuilders to incorporate nutrition into bodybuilding. Weider nutrition supplements are today still one of the most popular brands.

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On Labor Day 2006 California Governor and former multi Mr. Olympia winner Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Weider protegé, presented him with the Venice Muscle Beach Hall of Fame’s Lifetime Achievement award. During Weider’s introduction, Schwarzenegger credited Weider for inspiring him and bringing him to the United States.

Weider Training Principles

Contrary to popular belief, Joe Weider did not invent the Weider Training Principles. These principles were well-known, tried-and-proven methods of weight training. Weider’s contribution to these principles, however, was to catalogue them and provide definitions for each. By systematizing these principles, he provided bodybuilders with training methodologies that would otherwise have taken more time to learn from diverse sources. The principles have grown over the years as training routines have evolved. Currently they are:

The letters following each principles represent: (B) beginner, (I) intermediate, and (A)advanced

Muscle Priority Training (I & A) – Training your most underdeveloped muscles first, so as to subject it to the maximum possible effort. If you have a weak body-part you want to improve, train it first in your workout, before you begin to fatigue.
Pyramiding (B, I, & A) – When using multiple sets for a given exercise, doing your first set with less weight for more reps, gradually increasing the weight and decreasing the reps over the remainder of your sets. This allows you to gradually warm up a muscle group, preparing it for the resistance to come in the next set.
Supersets (I & A) – Working opposing muscle groups in back-to-back fashion, taking as little rest as possible in between sets. Alternating sets between opposing muscle groups – such as biceps and triceps/chest and back – greatly increases intensity. When you train one muscle group, the other is recovering (sometimes even being stretched) as you complete the set. With two muscles or muscle groups being worked, more blood is pumped into the area.
Tri-Sets (A) – Doing three sets in a row for the same body-part with as little rest as possible in between sets. Three exercises in a row more thoroughly exhaust the muscle. This training technique is so demanding that it should only be done on occasion, and is more often used by bodybuilders in their pre-contest training. It is not optimal for muscle building.
Set System Training (B, I, & A) – Simply doing more than one set for each exercise. This is the opposite of high-intensity training, which involves performing one set per exercise. Often, the first couple of sets aren’t enough to fatigue your muscle.
Giant Sets (A) – Doing 4-6 exercises for the same body-part with as little rest between sets. Giant sets are used to create overwhelming stimulation to a body-part and totally exhaust the muscles involved. This technique should only be used occasionally, as your body needs time to recover from this level of effort. This type of training is used more for muscular endurance and calorie burning then for putting on muscle size.
Instinctive Training (A) – This involves experimenting with your workouts and paying attention to how your body reacts to certain types of training. The fundamentals of bodybuilding training are the same for everyone, but we are all unique. The further along you get in your training, the more you have to fine tune your workouts to suit your needs. It takes time to develop this “feel” and have this type of knowledge. Whatever you are used to is going to feel best for you, but you have to figure out what really produces the best results for you and make adjustments accordingly.
Compound Sets (I & A) – Alternating two exercises for the same muscle group, taking as little rest as possible between each set. Each same-body part exercise fatigues the muscle involved in slightly different ways, so doing two exercises in a row with little rest in between achieves a deeper level of stimulation and muscle pump.
Staggered Sets (I & A) – Training smaller, slower-developing body parts like calves or forearms in between all sets for your major body parts. Arnold Schwarzenegger relied on this principle early in his career to develop his calves. He would do a set for chest, back or shoulders, then he would do a set of calf raises while his major muscle group was recovering for the next set. He’d then alternate sets for the working body part and calves. His calves got plenty of time to recover in-between sets and by the end of his workout, he would have subjected them to as many as 15-20 total sets of various calf raises.
Pre-Exhaustion Training (A) – Pre fatiguing a larger muscle with an isolation, single-joint movement so it can be even more exhausted by the compound movements to follow, which Weider and/or his publications would adopt from the Nautilus founder of Arthur Jones that is evidenced by Jones’ writing in 1970 (and throughout the decade) in a rival magazine of Iron Man. When you do an exercise like the bench press that works not only the chest, but also smaller muscles, one of the smaller muscles might fail before your chest is fully exhausted. By doing a chest isolation exercise beforehand, you can fatigue your chest so you can do bench presses to chest failure, which is what you want.

Source: Wikipedia

More information on Joe Weider can be found on the article “Joe Weider – His Fitness Legacy“. Joe really was instrumental in developing bodybuilding as an international sport and de-mystifying the industry.

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