The Foundation of Physical Culture

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The passing of Dan Lurie, bodybuilding pioneer and publisher of Muscle Training Illustrated, at the age of 90 on November 6, 2013, marked the end of an era—an era in which the foundation of physical culture started expanding after World War II. The explosive growth of the United States economy following the war plus the overwhelming number of injured men returning from battle created fertile ground for the study of resistance training and also for those who had the vision to bring the ideas to a wider audience.

Tomas L. DeLorme, M.D., was one who advanced the field, and his famous book Progressive Resistance Exercise: Technic and Medical Applications was filled with pragmatic information learned in the gyms of the era. According to Jan Todd, Ph.D., rehabilitation with resistance training became the norm in the latter years of World War II, and DeLorme experimented with those techniques.

Read the rest of the entry at John’s Blog