If you’ve ever lifted a weight, you owe something to this man.
I thought Bernarr Macfadden was the founder of the modern fitness industry.
He was certainly an important figure, but I’d argue that anything before Joe doesn’t really count as modern.
98-pound weaklings everywhere are in mourning.
He kicked sand in Death’s face and stole his girlfriend.
Have you forgotten Jack LaLanne?
“Francois Henri “Jack” LaLanne (September 26, 1914 - January 23, 2011) was an American fitness, exercise, and nutritional expert and motivational speaker who is sometimes called “the godfather of fitness” and the “first fitness superhero.””
Here are some of his videos:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jack+lalanne&search=Search
…ehh. I’d say Joe was less about fitness and more about promoting bodybuilding and himself. He was pretty much bodybuilding’s Don King. Buddies and I still joke about how he tried to make everything about weightlifting a “Weider Principle.”
he was the Martha Stewart of fitness.
Yeah, pretty much. He was on TV during the day in the early days of television and was watched mainly by stay-at-home moms. Plus he wore those high-in-the-crotch jump suits and slipper style shoes, and he was always so…upbeat. He was regarded by many at the time as being somewhat effete.
He was a cool guy, though. I was a boy when he was on the air but as I grew older I came to like and admire him.
Regarding Weider, like epbrown01 said, he was sort of the Don King of bodybuilding. And while not quite at King’s level of chicanery, he still promoted a ton of supplements and weightlifting products that accomplished nowhere near the benefits his ads led you to believe. He knew his audience and how to manipulate them. In other words he knew what sells, and what sells isn’t always the truth.
Basically he was a publisher of weightlifting magazines who made most of his money off of the mail-order items he sold through them, and secondarily he was a promoter of bodybuilding contests whose main function was to grow the audience for his magazines.
But his shortcomings and level of dishonesty were rather minor and he had his good side too, often helping bodybuilders and others financially and/or with free advertising and business advice that gained him nothing. All in all I’d say he was basically a good guy - though a shrewd and hard-nosed businessman - whose primary impact on fitness in America was to bring Arnold Schwarzengger here, but it was really Schwarzengger’s charisma and star power that kicked off the interest in fitness in America that some are now attributing to Joe Weider.
Yes and no, history is often more complex than it seems. Modern physical culture had a lot of fathers. Weider was certainly an influential figure, but also a controversial one and the direction he took physical culture from the 60’s and 70’s onward wasnot applauded by everyone.
Is he also the father of the overpriced, overhyped nutritional supplement, or was he just one of the beneficiaries of that industry’s rise?
Supplements were around long before Weiders rise to prominence. All BB mags pimped supplements, Weider was not alone on that train.