Visual Essay for Roger Schwab, "Training Mike Mentzer for the 1980 Olympia"

                                                                                    from Elanna Schwab's Facebook post

Introduction by Bill DeSimone

I was a huge fan of Mike Mentzer from 1976-1983 or so-at least, the version presented in the muscle magazines then. My impression of him had a great influence on my training, my instruction, and other parts of life (although I now regard his story as a cautionary tale). I still get a burst of motivation when I look at those articles and pictures, even though I've gone from thinking his writing was particularly enlightened to realizing it's my nostalgia for the time.

Roger Schwab, as a long-time weight trainer, gym owner, personal trainer, and head judge for the IFBB, had actual first-hand experience with Mentzer and Arnold and the other competitors and players. At this year's Resistance Exercise Conference, Roger will be speaking about training Mike Mentzer prior to the 1980 Olympia, the judging of which, shall we say, ranged somewhere between controversial and corrupt. 

Prior to the '80 Olympia, Mentzer had mainstream book deals, appearances in GQ magazine, the NY Daily News, the Wide World of Sports Superstars competition to go with all the muscle media coverage. He was positioned to become a mainstream star, and winning that Olympia at that time would have been the catalyst for the non-bodybuilding media to make that happen. It didn't.

Worse than the result of the contest (and the beginning of Mentzer's personal decline) was the incredible detour competitive bodybuilding took away from Mentzer's (and others) "harder, briefer" approach to weight training. At a time when the "fitness boom" brought weight training from the cheesy section of the newsstand to every raquetball club in every town in America, the approach had no public champion. Nautilus had a role in health clubs and such, but without an appealing, well-spoken, public example of success using the approach, the media relied on Arnold to be the face of successful weight training. Maybe not a terrible choice, but you can't help but wonder how the sport and industry would be different if it had been Mentzer at his best.

Be that as it may. It doesn't take away from the fact that while most competitors, the few that beat Mentzer and the many that he beat, trained in similar fashion to get their results, Mentzer got his results by...

That story is Roger's to tell.

-Bill DeSimone

***

What Roger Had To Work With (pre-1980):


(From Joe Weider's Olympia history book)
The End Results


Arnold, Mentzer, Frank Zane, Dennis Tinerino


(Pages from the Joe Weider magazines.)







Roger and Mike in print:




From The Nautilus Bodybuilding Book by Ellington Darden, 1982, p 127.




The following were mentioned in the introduction above, part of what appeared to be positioning him for mainstream stardom
Gentlemen's Quarterly magazine:


The New York Daily News:


Marvel Comics ad p1980:

Books for the mainstream audience:





                                                           

Roger Schwab "has been a pioneer in weight training for decades. He was college football's first strength and conditioning coach (Penn State 1964-1965) and the man who introduced the Nautilus training and equipment system to Philadelphia in 1976...He also trained Mike Mentzer for the 1978 Universe and the 1980 Mr. Olympia competitions, and served as head judge of the International Federation of Bodybuilders, professional division, from 1978-1982."
More on Roger and his current studio at https://xforcephiladelphia.com/.

Bill DeSimone's Moment Arm Exercise  20th Anniversary Edition is now available on Kindle (link).

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