IN PRAISE OF JOHN McCALLUM
23 June 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Oldie/goodieI found this going through some old files first published in 1994
IN PRAISE OF JOHN McCALLUM
Reminiscing on the Philosophies of a Strength Iconoclast
John McCallum was the heart-and-soul of Strength and Health magazine. For seven years, from June 1965 through November 1972, he wrote a monthly column, Keys to Progress. S&H was on the muscle cutting-edge of the day and I was a 15-through-22-year-old concurrent to the series run. I read all his articles (ravenously), and, more importantly, slavishly implemented the ideas Mac wrote about. I can unsentimentally say that the series had the power to change lives - like mine. My training buddies were similarly affected. You can imagine how I felt, 30 years down the road, when I discovered Randall Strossen had gathered and chronologically sequenced the entire Keys To Progress series into book form. I admit, I had some trepidation as I cracked the cover. Would it stand up in re-read? Was I tampering with fond memories best left alone? Truly deja vu. It felt spooky yet wonderful re-reading the series in the exact order it unfolded to me as a child-boy-man thirty years ago. The scribe once wrote, “You can never go home….” That is not entirely true. Keys To Progress was as good as I remembered it - in some ways better. Re-reading this book equated to, for me, a devout Christian re-reading the bible after being held in a Stalinist Gulag for thirty years. It was pure re-discovered joy.
For seven years John McCallum was the clean-up hitter for Strength and Health magazine. Keys To Progress led-off every issue. As a series, it was informed, formidable, humorous and effective. The public loved it because it was fun to read and it’s adherents made gains. John kept a core commandment running through the entire series - hard work pays off. Keys to Progress ran for 82 consecutive installments. John’s thing was size and strength, “No sense in getting too obsessed with peaked biceps and muscular definition early in one’s career.” He was fond of saying. This allowed him to roll up his sleeves and turn his attention to his first love: the pursuit of muscular size and power. John loved squatting. In his pantheon of exercises, they ranked first for their ability to infuse size and power. “Squats,” he pontificated, “are so far out in first place that second doesn’t even count.” He felt a squat rack should be approached with the reverence of a holy shrine: “Nobody knew much about squats twenty-odd years ago. (written in 1965) Nobody bothered with them and bodybuilding standards were way down. If you had a fifteen-inch arm you looked like the village blacksmith and a forty-inch chest would bring out the beast in your old lady. Those measurements today wouldn’t get you the heroine’s part in a Steve Reeves movie. Squats caused the improvement.”
To paraphrase Arnold watching Ed Corney pose; “Now that’s what I call writing!” In Mac’s literary world, he continually engaged in running feuds with everyone he came in contact with; Ollie, his daughter’s boyfriend Marvin, Uncle Harry, his wife, and a never ending succession of training dweebs and aquarium mullets in need of Mac’s no-bull advise. “I remember watching Reg Park work out one time. He was doing squats. He had half the weight in the gym draped across his shoulders and the owner biting his nails in case the floor broke. You never saw such intense effort. Park did rep after rep and each one looked like the last. One of the guys watching nudged me. “Good grief,” he said. “Have you ever seen anybody work harder than that?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t. I never saw anyone with more muscle either.” We watched Park finish his workout. Then we went out for a bite to eat and the guy said, “Do you think it is necessary to work that hard?”
“Sure,” I said. “Don’t you?”
He thought for a moment. “I dunno. I never worked that hard, but I got a few muscles.”
“Sure!” I said. “You got a few muscles. But you look like somebody’s mother-in-law alongside of Park. Anybody can work out easy with moderate weights and develop a fair body. That’s what most trainees do. But hard work on the right exercises is what separates the champs from everybody else.”
Were truer words ever spoken? Timeless advice that rings as righteous thirty-years down the road as it did the day it was spoken. McCallum pounded home the triple themes of lifting big, eating big and getting big. Not that all of his ideas hold water by today’s standards. Sugar, and to a lesser degree fat, crept into his nutrition advice. We know better now. His championing of circuit training (P.H.A.) for muscular “definition” was bogus and everyone overtrained back then; Mac had us performing full-body workouts three times a week. Still, if you eliminate the fat and sugar from his nutrition advice, reduce the training frequency and skim over his definition strategies, you still are left with a master-work for building size, strength and power. And Lord could he spin a yarn! He interspersed his message with humor and framed his contentions using fictional foils and the strength giants of the day. Doug Hepburn, Reg Park, Harold Cleghorn, John Grimek, Paul Anderson, Bill Pearl, Mac Bachelor, Steve Stanko - all populated John’s writings. He had an ability to study the best, dissect their methods, and teach it to the public better then the champs could. He was an eloquent communicator who blended wisdom, humor, psychology, balance, patience, optimism, joy and expertise with an uncanny ability to overcome training plateaus and obstacles. McCallum told us, in no uncertain terms, that he expected all of us to squat 500 pounds.
“I continually get letters from trainees who haven’t grasped the importance of heavy squats. Remember this - your ultimate success depends almost entirely on your squatting ability. Nobody ever failed who did heavy squats. Conversely, very few succeed who don’t do heavy squats. By heavy, I mean 500 and over for the big men and very slightly less for the smaller men. The only thing that keeps you from 500 pound squats is yourself. Don’t make excuses. If you are afraid of the weight, admit it and overcome it. Don’t waste your time fiddling around with baby-sized barbells your crippled grandmother could lift. If you want to look like a Hercules, then lift weights like one.” Yeeoow! A tough-love message to all the kids who hung on his every word. No cry-babies and whiners please. Though he never met us, he told us, his reading audience, that he had faith in us. He assured us that if we would persevere, not quit and stick to the program, the gains would come! And damn if they didn’t! Is Keys To Progress relevant in 1995? Hell yes. As a manual for increasing size and strength it is a text-book on the highest level. Overall the book is as poignant, pertinent, relevant and as effective as the day it was published. Re-Reading Keys To Progress is like finding a pristine 1965 Mustang fastback in your grandmother’s garage underneath a tarp. Cherry Red with a 289 Cobra engine, four-speed, RallyPac and 12,000 miles on the odometer. After your heart stops pounding, Grandma yells from the porch,
“Oh, I’d forgotten all about that old thing. It was your grandpa’s . . . Do you want it?”
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