Body Building – A Thing of the Past

‘Personal Training’ is a field that has only existed for 20 years. Before personal trainers, there was only one mainstream form of working out – body building. At the time, the average body builder was the trainer. One builder would teach another an exercise, or even begin to teach an amateur some introductory, yet fundamental exercises. 

Body building is a form of exercise with extremely high weights, low repetitions, and a goal of large muscle mass and strength. Back then, everyone wanted the biggest chest, the thickest legs, and the most bulging biceps. We can even look back to the 80’s and picture a much larger population of people with massive muscles. It’s a lot rarer in present time that we come across a man with 200 pounds of muscle – it’s much more common that, when we do see them in public, they are perceived as “freakishly big”. 

If there was one contributing factor to the decrease in population of body builders, it would have to be ‘science’. Science in sports is something that has changed dramatically over the last twenty years and has assisted in allowing athletes to perform at their highest potential. But science didn’t only play a role in professional sports, it also allowed for the ‘Average Joe’ to have options when it came to exercising. No longer would people squat 300 pounds. Or dead-lift 250. An endless amount of fitness theories were developed – but almost none of them supported body building.

With all of these new developments in the mid 90’s and 2000’s, ‘Average Joe’ was able to make his exercising specific to his or her lifestyle. In personal training terms, we consider this type of training “functional fitness”, meaning it is fine tuned to assist in your functionality on a daily basis. If you golf on the weekends and jog during the week, why would you want to bench press over two hundred pounds? As new fitness theories materialized, people started realizing that the old (and only) form of working out was irrelevant in today’s society. The demand for enhancing your ability to perform better at your specific sport or operate more functionally during your weekly tasks became apparent.

Body building has turned into a niche form of training. Of the hundreds, maybe thousands, I’ve met in the personal training world, I know just two body builders. Its role in bringing the science in sports to such a high level today can never be ignored. Without body building, we would have never had a need for a newer form of exercise. It laid the groundwork for many more concepts of athletic training to take shape. But when it comes to an individual evaluating which type of training would yield the best results, it is an option that will be chosen on rare occasion. We live in a day where we need to focus on our personal goals. And unless your personal goal is to have neck muscles rippling out of the top of your t-shirt, you should probably choose another method of training.