People who have motivated me

Over the years I've had a few people who I've seen or read about who've motivated me.
Meeting both Robbie Hazeley & Pat Reeves, training with Robbie on occasion has always pushed me as he's stronger than me, so he forces me to try &, well if not keep up, do my very best so I don't look quite so behind him
One guy who has really inspired me is a old time lifter called Peter Cortese - the guy was lifting in the 1950's & was the first man to lift triple bodyweight with one hand (a one hand deadlift).

The guy had a multitude of issues to overcome like losing a lung & loads of illness, but still managed to pull a massive amount in his chosen lift. Imagine 3x your own bodyweight with one hand! Man, that is some lift.
Here's a brief rundown of hown to do a one hand deadlft

Oh yea, this is the tip of a large iceberg of people who've motivated me over the years - what about you guys? Who springs to mind when you think about who motivated you?

Frank Zane.
I've mentioned elsewhere that Mr. Zane is my age, and about my body weight, but that his is a bit better situated than is mine.
However since I will never have to compete with Arnie, and Zane did, I find him an inspiration.

I have a "Flex" magazine, Feb. 2010 with Frank Zane in it as well as articles on Arnold and others of that era. Still, those magazines seem to be 3 quarters supplements ads.

Jack Lalanne as I cited in another thread also. I had no say over the satellite tv package we got but we use to have Fit-TV and I thought that was excellent especially Gilad's workout, I'd keep that station on all the time. Gilad has it together in my opinion. He was trying to go to the Olympics in some discipline cerca late '70s, early '80s for Israel but suffered some injury that stopped that dream. Now his show was from Hawaii. Lots of static exercises. I'd follow the show whenever I could and they'd have them on about 3 or 4 times a day, early and late, like 11 pm, great time for an end of the day somewhat 'light' exercise...also usually, they'd put two half hour shows together for an hour of working out.


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Edited addon: Jack, whooah, attacked his brother with an axe: http://www.nndb.com/people/697/000022631/ though basically this is the only place I saw this, because he was hopped up on sugar. It's really unreal that the guy was born as early as 1914.

I've met people in the iron-elevation business who actively dislike Joe Weider. However it appears that some of these detractors are annoyed by the Weiders' (Joe and his brother, Ben) having built a successful industrial enterprise of bodybuilding.
Ben died in 2008. If my math and Googling are correct Joe is still with us at age ninety-one.
Even if Joe, et al, weren't the first to author the "Training Principles," at least the Weiders get credit for publicizing them ("Muscle Priority Training," "Pyramiding." etc.).

When I first began to play with weights I went through most of the usual beginner's lifting injuries until I was introduced to the Weider training program. I still got injured, but less so, and I made more progress following a systematic program.
Progressive training is an open-ended system, so no matter how long I pursue this sport I will always be a beginner, and gains are more difficult when one's Mighty Blasts consist of blowing out the candles on the birthday cake.
But I still have a copy of Joe's routines in my log book, and still rely on these to keep me on track.

Joe Weider deserves credit for providing support and direction, and for popularizing the sport.

You can go back & look at systems W.A.Pullum had a lifting system in the early 20th Century, George F Jowlett had his "Jowlett Institute of Physical culture" around the same time, Thomas Inch also had a system, Mark Berry, even back to Sandow you've had systems that they claim to have invented, when obviously they actually just publicised what they used & collected over the years (maybe with 1 or 2 small innovations, but generally following the ideas many people of their eras were using). The Weiders were just very, very successful at marketting theirs - it was original & yea they took ideas created by others...but don't we all? I know I do. My main gripe with the Weiders is they didn't pay their athletes the kind of cash they deserved for the services they often offered, they could have given either a little more, or included more people with everyone accepting a little less. I can guarantee you can find every "Weider Principle" written about elsewhere before they became a Weider principle, but as I said that's not the point anyone in business needs a brand & they did really well at branding themselves & getting themselves 'out there'.
An interesting note, if you watch the film 'Pumping Iron' even though at least one Weider is seen on camera they are never mentioned by name - the common thought held is that the athletes were unhappy with the way the Weiders actually treated them & George Butler (the director) felt it was his way of showing the athletes to the world & not promoting the Weiders - how true that is I don't know, but it's the myth!

Joe Weider comic book ad, featuring the future governor of California.



(Just goes to show what can be accomplished in Just Seven Weeks...
and a lot of steroids...)

..All I did was carry this girl 24/7 for 7 weeks & I gained muscle & as I couldn't eat very easily I lost bodyfat too

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When I first began to play with weights I went through most of the usual beginner's lifting injuries until I was introduced to the Weider training program. I still got injured, but less so, and I made more progress following a systematic program. - GrayFox

Once you say that, it makes everyone wonder what happened? Basically trying to lift too much weight I guess, I can relate. Are such injuries more minimal with proper care?? I don't know and it's everyone's right to choose if they overly-expend themselves but I'd think often it could be avoided. You must be a really strong fellow though from what I've read, keep it up.

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PhysCultureFan said:
Once you say that, it makes everyone wonder what happened? Basically trying to lift too much weight I guess, I can relate. Are such injuries more minimal with proper care?? I don't know and it's everyone's right to choose if they overly-expend themselves but I'd think often it could be avoided. You must be a really strong fellow though from what I've read, keep it up.

A typical beginner mistake is overloading the bar, then tossing the weight up instead of lifting it-- inertia helps the iron go up, but since there's a gravity-assist it comes back down much heavier. Ouch.
I suppose the other beginner's error is lack of patience, we want the gains to happen overnight. Of course they don't, so the beginner gets discouraged and either quits or launches into inappropriate training ploys.

Injuries? Just the usual... Rotator cuff. Torn chest cartilage. Garden variety bursitis in shoulders and elbows. One leg held together with titanium bolts (skiing injury, not weights). Broken ribs (karate injury, not weights). Minor spinal injuries. Pinched sciatic nerve. Torn muscle tissue in both arms while trying to follow Larry Scott's curling routine (I hate you, Larry Scott !).

But on the whole I've been lucky, none of the above have been crippling. Experience with training injuries is an effective teacher--makes us careful about what we do in the gym.

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"...You must be a really strong fellow..."

Naugh... everybody is stronger than I am.
I pursue this sport to stay in shape and to stay healthy. Remember: "They can't bury you while you're still moving."

I saw Jack Lalanne in an interview helping out Public Television. He's 95 or 96, he may have been tired and it's good to have gotten this far but poor guy, I do believe he was making a great physical effort to do that interview.

Well, dang... according to Wikipedia Frank Zane is actually three years younger than I am. Awww... maybe he lies about his age.
But if it's true, should this make me feel better or worse about our comparison?
Oh well, he may have the championship body, but I can probably draw better.

I can still remember how I felt upon seeing my first Rocky movie, the first I believe but maybe it was Rocky II but in the market today, some DVDs, they had the latest one made in the past few years, I had to get it, it is a bit inspirational and some people would say, the soundtrack music is inspirational and yes it is and the music from Hoosiers, the basketball movie is inspirational too.