Joe Weider

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Joe Weider

Joe "The Master Blaster" Weider
Born Josef Weider
November 29, 1922(1922-11-29)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Other names The Master Blaster
Occupation Trainer of Champions
Height 5 ft. 11 in.
Weight 200 lb.
Known for Creating: The Mr. Olympia Contest & The IFBB
Relatives Ben Weider (brother)
Website
www.weider.com

Josef E. "Joe" Weider (born November 29, 1922) is the Canadian co-founder of the International Federation of BodyBuilders (IFBB) along with brother Ben Weider and creator of the Mr. Olympia, Ms. Olympia and the now defunct Masters Olympia bodybuilding contests.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, before founding the IFBB, Weider published the first issue of Your Physique magazine in 1939. Twenty-nine years later, in 1968, the publication was renamed Muscle Builder magazine. The name changed again to Muscle & Fitness in 1980. Other magazines published by Weider's publishing empire include "Mr America", "Muscle Power", Shape, Men's Fitness, Living Fit, Prime Health and Fitness, Fit Pregnancy, Cooks, Senior Golfer, and Flex. He also authored numerous training courses, beginning in the 1950s and also developed the Weider System of Bodybuilding course. In addition, he penned numerous books, beginning with The Weider System of Bodybuilding (1981) and, to date, cowrote the 2006 biography "Brothers Of Iron" with Ben Weider. In 1983, Weider was named "Publisher of the Year" by The Periodical and Book Association.

Weider began his publishing empire with $7 at age 17, after building his own barbells out of junked car wheels and axles. As an adult, he has introduced a line of home and gym exercise equipment. One of the first to incorporate nutrition into bodybuilding, Weider also offers a line of nutritional supplements. In 1972 Weider and his brother Ben found themselves a target of an investigation led by US Postal inspectors. The investigation involved the claims regarding their nutritional supplement Weider Formula No. 7. The product was a weight gainer that featured a young Arnold Schwarzenegger on the label. The actual claim centered around consumers being able to 'gain a pound per day' in mass. Following an appeal, where Schwarzenegger testified, Weider was forced to alter his marketing and claims.

In the 1980s Weider found himself answering to charges levied by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In 1984, the FTC charged that ads for Weider's Anabolic Mega-Pak (containing amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and herbs) and Dynamic Life Essence (an amino acid product) had been misleading. The FTC complaint was settled in 1985 when Weider and his company agreed not to falsely claim that these products can help build muscles or are effective substitutes for anabolic steroids. They also agreed to pay a minimum of $400,000 in refunds or (if refunds did not reach this figure) to fund research on the relationship of nutrition to muscle development. Although the forbidden claims no longer appear in Weider ads, similar messages appear in articles in the magazines and are implied by endorsements and pictures of muscular athletes as well as by names of the products themselves. False and misleading claims also appeared in a series of 18 booklets published in 1990 by Weider Health & Fitness and marketed through General Nutrition Center stores. In 2000, Weider Nutritional International settled another FTC complaint involving false claims made for to alleged weight-loss products. The settlement agreement called for pay $400,000 to the FTC for consumer and a ban on making any unsubstantiated claims for any food, drug, dietary supplement, or program

Weider has won many awards and wide recognition for his work toward a healthier America, from everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom he helped bring to the United States, to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the Boy Scouts.[citation needed] Weider's holistic approach—mental and psychological as well as physical—was developed over years of study on the human physique; he claims not to be an innovator, but a synthesizer of successful elements from many sources.

Weider has been accused by his critics of fixing Mr Olympia contests, but there has never been any evidence that he did, and no ex-IFBB judge has ever claimed that Joe Weider has ever interfered in the judging process.

On Labor Day 2006 California Governor and former multi Mr. Olympia winner Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Weider protege, presented him with the Venice Muscle Beach Hall of Fame's Lifetime Achievement award. During Weider's introduction, Schwarzenegger credited Weider for inspiring him and bringing him to the United States. Weider appeared weak and frail, confessing he had recently had a seven hour operation. He did not elaborate on the surgical details.

Contents

[edit] Weider Training Principles

Contrary to popular belief, Joe Weider did not invent the Weider Training Principles. These principles were well-known, tried-and-proven methods of weight training. Weider's contribution to these principles, however, was to catalog them and provide definitions for each. By systematizing these principles, he provided bodybuilders with training methodologies that would otherwise have taken more time to learn from diverse sources. The principles have grown over the years as training routines have evolved. Currently they are:

The letters following each principles represent: (B) beginner, (I) intermediate, and (A)advanced

  • Muscle Priority Training (I & A) - Training your most underdeveloped muscles first, so as to subject it to the maximum possible effort. If you have a weak body-part you want to improve, train it first in your workout, before you begin to fatigue.
  • Pyramiding (B, I, & A) - When using multiple sets for a given exercise, doing your first set with less weight for more reps, gradually increasing the weight and decreasing the reps over the remainder of your sets. This allows you to gradually warm up a muscle group, preparing it for the resistance to come in the next set.
  • Supersets (I & A) - Working opposing muscle groups in back-to-back fashion, taking as little rest as possible in between sets. Alternating sets between opposing muscle groups - such as biceps and triceps/chest and back - greatly increases intensity. When you train one muscle group, the other is recovering (sometimes even being stretched) as you complete the set. With two muscles or muscle groups being worked, more blood is pumped into the area.
  • Tri-Sets (A) - Doing three sets in a row for the same body-part with as little rest as possible in between sets. Three exercises in a row more thoroughly exhaust the muscle. This training technique is so demanding that it should only be done on occasion, and is more often used by bodybuilders in their pre-contest training. It is not optimal for muscle building.
  • Set System Training (B, I, & A) - Simply doing more than one set for each exercise. This is the opposite of high-intensity training, which involves performing one set per exercise. Often, the first couple of sets aren't enough to fatigue your muscle.
  • Giant Sets (A) - Doing 4-6 exercises for the same body-part with as little rest between sets. Giant sets are used to create overwhelming stimulation to a body-part and totally exhaust the muscles involved. This technique should only be used occasionally as your body needs time to recover from this level of effort. This type of training is used more for muscular endurance and calorie burning then for putting on muscle size.
  • Instinctive Training (A) - This involves experimenting with your workouts and paying attention to how your body reacts to certain types of training. The fundamentals of bodybuilding training are the same for everyone, but we are all unique. The further along you get in your training, the more you have to fine tune your workouts to suit your needs. It takes time to develop this "feel" and have this type of knowledge. Whatever you are used to is going to feel best for you, but you have to figure out what really produces the best results for you and make adjustments accordingly.
  • Compound Sets (I & A) - Alternating two exercises for the same muscle group, taking as little rest as possible between each set. Each same-body part exercise fatigues the muscle involved in slightly different ways, so doing two exercises in a row with little rest in between achieves a deeper level of stimulation and muscle pump.
  • Staggered Sets (I & A) - Training smaller, slower-developing body parts like calves or forearms in between all sets for your major body parts. Arnold Schwarzenegger relied on this principle early in his career to develop his calves. He would do a set for chest, back or shoulders, then he would do a set of calf raises while his major muscle group was recovering for the next set. He'd then alternate sets for the working body part and calves. His calves got plenty of time to recover in-between sets and by the end of his workout, he would have subjected them to as many as 15-20 total sets of various calf raises.
  • Pre-Exhaustion Training (A) - Prefatiguing a larger muscle with an isolation, single-joint movement so it can be even more exhausted by the compound movements to follow, which Weider and/or his publications would adopt from the Nautilus founder of Arthur Jones that is evidenced by Jones' writing in 1970 (and throughout the decade) in a rival magazine of Iron Man. When you do an exercise like the bench press that works not only the chest, but also smaller muscles, one of the smaller muscles might fail before your chest is fully exhausted. By doing a chest isolation exercise beforehand, you can fatigue your chest so you can do bench presses to chest failure, which is what you want.

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