Bodybuilding is defined as working out with weights to reshape the physique by adding muscle mass and increasing separation and definition of the various muscle groups. The practice is distinct from other types of resistance training (e.g., bodyshaping, bodysculpting, and fitness training) in that it is the visible result of training—large, well-defined muscles—that is judged rather than any ability developed in the course of building those muscles. Appearance counts; the athletic component—lifting weights—is not presented but re-presented through a series of poses. Opinion is divided on the question of whether bodybuilding is a bona fide sport.Many men practice bodybuilding, but only a small proportion of bodybuilders compete. In contrast, most women who lift weights exclusively to build larger muscles are either active competitors or aspire to compete. Bodybuilding competitions are well established internationally, but the sport has yet to achieve Olympic status.

History

Modern bodybuilding descended from the mid-19thcentury health reform movements, including the muscular Christianity movement, that emphasized exercise and heralded a cult of manliness that, by the end of the century, was embraced through exercise, athletics, and weight training.Eugene Sandow is credited with generating intense interest in bodybuilding in Europe and the United States. First appearing in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair, this strongman and physique showman represented a new ideal of muscular manhood. Strength and stoicism replaced passivity and turning the other cheek in a cultural form that linked athleticism and religion.

At the same time, as the population became more sedentary, concern for public health increased.Muscu lar masculinity replaced the prevalent masculine models of the thin,wan intellectual and the corpulent businessman of the 1800s. For women, the Gibson Girl dominated the scene from the late 1800s to World War I.“The Gibson Girl was a healthy, strong, athletic, albeit corsetted ideal” (Bolin 1992a, 85).

An industry quickly developed to support physical culture: the invention of resistance training machines, the use of various types of weights, and the widespread availability of training/exercise programs. The world’s first major bodybuilding contest was held in Britain in 1901, followed in 1903 by the first such competition in the United States, sponsored by Bernard MacFadden. Physique competition was the focus of the show, with the athletic feats and strength displays relegated to a supporting position—an unprecedented approach at a time when bodybuilding was more often an exhibition tacked on after weightlifting contests. Twenty years later,MacFadden’s 1921 physique contest spawned one of the best-known U.S. bodybuilders, Angelo Siciliano, who later changed his name to Charles Atlas and claimed the title of the Most Perfectly Developed Man in America. Atlas perpetuated the ideal of a muscular masculinity through his mail-order courses on physical development. He embodied the industrial self-made man, who, through hard work (i.e., Atlas’s program of exercise), could overcome hardship (i.e., being weak). In the 1930s, physique contests began to gain in popularity.The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) inaugurated its first Mr. America Contest in 1939. Other national contests followed, facilitating the promotion of local and regional bodybuilding contests as qualifying events, thereby boosting the sport economically and socially.

Joe Weider and his brother Ben are regarded as a driving force in the modern history of bodybuilding and Joe remains a major promoter of bodybuilding as a sport and way of life in the 1990s. Their goal was to make bodybuilding into a genuine sport. In 1946, the Weiders founded the International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB), which today has 134 member countries. The era of bodybuilding spanning the 1940s and 1950s continued to incorporate the health concerns of the physical culture movement and to provide opportunities for physique competitors through contests such as Mr.America and Mr.Universe. Steve Reeves became a public figure in bodybuilding via his subsequent career in Hollywood’s Hercules movies.

In the 1960s, bodybuilding included multiple amateur and professional contests at the national and international levels in the United States and Europe. European bodybuilding was dominated by the Mr. Universe competition. In 1965, the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding championship was created by the IFBB.By the 1990s it would become the highest award possible in international bodybuilding competition.

The 1960s can be regarded as the beginning of the Arnold Schwarzenegger era in the United States. The 1970s were punctuated by the publication of Charles Gaines and George Butler’s book Pumping Iron (1974), followed by the movie of the same name,which helped popularize and increase national recognition for the sport.Bodybuilding became more competitive, and the standards of perfection demanded greater expertise in the knowledge of dieting, nutrition, and training. By the 1980s, bodybuilding had been reborn. Professional bodybuilders and the gyms where they train have been transformed into elite clubs with resistance machines, aerobic classes, stair climbers, stationary bikes, tanning beds, computerized diets, and personal trainers. Professionals could earn money through personal training, endorsements of fitness commodities, guest performances, and seminars. Health clubs expanded and became co-ed during this time. The popularization of bodybuilding ultimately converged health spas with the development of elite gyms and led to the decline, but not disappearance, of barbell clubs and hardcore gyms. The elite gyms are often expansive facilities catering to the public at large as well as providing a setting for the professional.

Rules and Play

Rigorous training, a strategy for continual muscle development including size, shape, proportion and body symmetry, disciplined dieting and nutrition, posing practice, and the preparation of a choreographed posing routine are integral components of bodybuilding competition. Competitive bodybuilding is organized formally at both the amateur and professional levels through a number of associations, each with a bureaucracy, by-laws, agendas, membership fees, contests, promotions, and personnel consisting of judges, promoters, competitors, and fans.

Competitive bodybuilders train toward their competitions throughout the year, varying it as their contest approaches. During the off-season, they work to acquire as much muscle as possible. Pre-contest training frequently involves lighter weights and more repetitions, and super sets (two exercises performed backto-back without rest in between). Simultaneously, bodybuilders increase aerobic activity to acquire the necessary leanness.

Bodybuilding is one of only a few sports where a rigorous diet is such a central feature in training. Participants have estimated that diet is 90 to 98 percent of pre-contest preparation. Since success for the competitor demands a lean body coupled with significant muscle mass in a symmetrical form, fat is the enemy of the competitive physique. For bodybuilders diet entails modifying the relative proportion of carbohydrates, protein, and fats in the calories consumed. The diet typically consists of five to seven small meals a day, with no more than 10 to 20 percent fat. The ultimate goal is to reduce body fat to a very low percentage, preferably 7 percent or lower for men and 10 to 12 percent or lower for women.

For the day of the competition, bodybuilders strive to have a physique that has “peaked”—one that has achieved its potential in terms of maximum leanness, muscularity, vascularity, striations, and skin thinness and tautness. Fluids under the skin can obscure the muscles and can be avoided through the manipulation of diet. A peak may be missed, sometimes by a few hours or several weeks, because the diet strategy did not work or it was not followed closely enough. Local, state, and national competitions usually consist of two segments: the morning, or pre-judging, portion when most of the judging decisions are made and the evening contest, in which the finalists and winners are announced and awarded.

The day of the competition includes a backstage “pumping up” through exercise and lifting light weights,wherein blood is brought to the surface resulting in vascularity and muscle fullness.The competitor’s body is stained with a temporary tanning agent, and posing oil is applied to give shine and enhance the visibility of the muscle. Sometimes an oil that causes the skin to feel hot and appear vascular may also be used. Judging occurs as the competitors display their physiques through mandatory poses and the presentation of a short choreographed routine set to music.The standard of excellence for bodybuilders is the “X.” The lower portion of the “X” signifies the ideal of large flaring thighs, with a thin waist and wide shoulders and back (latissimus dorsi). Contestants are evaluated for symmetry or proportions,muscular development, vascularity, skin tightness and tone, leanness,muscle fullness, muscle shape, and the overall configuration of their physiques. In the evening, the competitors, depending on their placing, will have an opportunity to present their choreographed routine. After presentations of the routines, each class of competitors will engage in a posedown. Hard rock-and-roll music is usually played and the audience cheers on their favorite contenders, who engage in a drama of comparison. Men and women in their classes move around the stage and may stand next to an archcompetitor in a symbolic duel of muscles and body parts.

In nonprofessional competitions weight classes dominate and height classes are used by some organizations. Other additional classes include novice classes, teen classes, and masters classes that may be further subdivided by age. Professional competitions include no class divisions.

The Culture of Bodybuilding

Historically, bodybuilding for men has been associated with the working classes and blue-collar professions where physical efficacy is a component. Bodybuilding was born in hardcore gyms (the term hardcore is usually used in reference to gyms where weightlifting is marked by intensity, commitment, and seriousness), and, at the amateur level, hardcore gyms are still the site of choice for competition training. Their atmosphere cannot be replicated in the social milieu of the modern health club.A hardcore gym offers various advantages for potential competitors: the presence of mentors—former competitors and active competitors—to help the novice bodybuilder learn all aspects of the sport as well as a pool of other serious lifters from which to find a training partner. There is camaraderie in such gyms, but also unspoken but powerful rules of respect and the sanctity of training. There is a no-nonsense atmosphere, embellished with pictures of professional bodybuilders and local competitors. A particular kind of clothing has come to be associated with hardcore bodybuilding: tank tops, tee shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants, and “baggies”designed for the workouts. Contemporary bodybuilders, unlike their predecessors, come from all professions, following an influx of white-collar men that began in the 1980s. These elite centers have lost some of the sense of camaraderie and family forged by the subculture of bodybuilding in its earlier days.By the end of the 1980s the single-owner, hardcore gyms were on the verge of extinction. Competitive women’s bodybuilding has a different cultural role. The female bodybuilder is in a position to contribute to the social redefinition of womanhood and femininity, which involves challenging the notion that the muscularity that embodies power and privilege is the “natural” purview of men. Centered as it is on the body, bodybuilding still occupies a somewhat marginal position in an age that favors the mental over the physical.

Women and Bodybuilding

Women’s bodybuilding has a briefer history than men’s, and is distinct from it.Health reform in the mid-19^th century at the time of early feminism led to the innovative idea that exercise was healthful for women and that women’s muscles could be beautiful, contradicting the prevailing view of middle-class femininity as frail and ethereal,which continued through the turn of the century. Early on, Sandow and MacFadden both promoted the benefits of exercise and muscle development for women.

MacFadden may be counted as one of the first to promote the ancestor of modern women’s bodybuilding contests. From 1903 to 1905, he staged a series of local and regional physique competitions culminating in a grand competition with a prize for the “best and most perfectly formed woman.”Paradoxically,MacFadden’s very success placed the development of women’s physical culture back in the closet for some time. In 1905, he hosted the Madison Square Garden Mammoth Physical Culture Exhibition, which included the finale of MacFadden’s women’s competition. Shortly before the competition, Anthony Comstock of the Society for the Suppression of Vice,had MacFadden’s offices raided for the spreading of pornography. The offensive items were posters of the finalists of the women’s physique competition, who were dressed in white formfitting, leotard-like exercise wear, along with a photo of one of the men’s winners in a leopard-skin loincloth and other items (Todd 1991, 3–8). MacFadden was arrested and found guilty of dissemination of pornography, although the trial’s publicity served to promote his physique extravaganza even more. MacFadden, however, ceased all publication and promotion of women’s physiques.Women’s physique exhibitions continued to be relegated to sideshow strength performances through the early decades of the 1900s of women like Sandwina, who displayed her strong and beautiful figure at the Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1910.

Weight training for female athletes was introduced in the 1950s, and women’s competitive bodybuilding emerged as a sport about 20 years later. Competitions began in 1975 just before the first competitive powerlifting contests for women in 1977. The social movements for gender equality in the 1960s were a major influence in bringing women into the sports arena.

Women’s bodybuilding found a home in the hardcore gyms where men trained, and it moved, along with male bodybuilding, from these gyms into scientific and contemporary pavilions of nutrition and training, which opened their doors to the public and became part of the modern fitness industry of the 1980s. The first Miss (now Ms.) Olympia was held in 1980, establishing the zenith of women’s international titles.

Bodybuilding Today

The question of whether bodybuilding is a sport continues to be debated among sports researchers and within organizations. The detractors of the bodybuilding-as-sport position claim physical exertion does not actually occur in the competition itself,which is limited to posing displays of muscularity. Supporters contend that posing and presenting choreographed routines is indeed a physically demanding and grueling activity. Joe Weider is the driving force behind the National Physique Committee, which organizes amateur and professional bodybuilding on the local, state, regional, and national levels. For some years, the only other organization for competitive bodybuilders was the Amateur Athletic Union. In the late 1980s,“natural” contests and bodybuilding organizations (those that drug test,using polygraph and/or urine testing methods) began emerging. This has occurred in part as a result of a generalized increase in public awareness of anabolic steroid use among athletes. Natural organizations include the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation (WNBF), which sponsors professional bodybuilding and the National Gym Association (NGA), a WNBF-affiliated amateur organization. The recent growth of “natural” (drug-free) bodybuilding organizations and their increasing popularity is a positive sign for the sport.

The use of anabolic steroids among competitive bodybuilders remains a concern. As a result, widespread drug testing became routine in many professional sports, including some bodybuilding organizations and within the Olympics. Steroid use also inflamed the existing debate over what constitutes femininity, as some female bodybuilders were using the drugs to increase their muscle mass too. Bodybuilders, meanwhile, continue their quest for Olympic status for what they view as a true sport.