Everyone on the planet runs into obstacles, and people are measured by the manner in which they conduct themselves when tested. That’s been a fact since people have existed, and remains one in spite of the fact that everyone seems to have gone looking for their personal pride at the same time. There are options available to everyone in every single circumstance that might obviate the need for endless public whining- you can always find different way forward. or for the military people out there, you can advance in a different goddamned direction.

Whatever you do, do it moving forward, with your fucking mouth shut, and go so fucking hard at winning that no single person can dispute your supremacy. That is how you establish dominance, rather than boxing people out or just wringing hands and endlessly whining about whatever “unfairness” you face. This is the story of a man named Sam Loprinzi who did just that, and in doing so created modern bodybuilding by being its first true “freak.”

Early bodybuilding was a bit of a mess, as sports necessarily are in their nascence. Soccer/football, for instance, was banned over and over in England and France over the damage it caused to the cities and populaces of those nations- the early sport had almost no rules and was played in the city streets. If you think that sounds harmless, try jogging on cobblestones without breaking something or dying- the number of people who must have died just from falling backwards and cracking their heads on stone must have been significant, even before you get to the death and injuries caused by the feuds resulting out of the games.

Bodybuilding obviously lacks those violent roots… hell, for the most part, bodybuilding contests lack any precedent. The ancient Greeks held male and female beauty contests that were probably the earliest forebears of modern bodybuilding, and they took that shit far more seriously than modern man does. That said, they didn’t have much else to do, either.

“A full-lipped, cheek-chiselled man in Ancient Greece knew two things – that his beauty was a blessing (a gift of the gods no less) and that his perfect exterior hid an inner perfection. For the Greeks a beautiful body was considered direct evidence of a beautiful mind. They even had a word for it – kaloskagathos – which meant being gorgeous to look at, and hence being a good person.

Not very politically correct, I know, but the horrible truth is that pretty Greek boys would have swaggered around convinced they were triply blessed – beautiful, brainy and god-beloved. So what made them fit? For years, classical Greek sculpture was believed to be a perfectionist fantasy – an impossible ideal, but we now think a number of the exquisite statues from the 5th to the 3rd Centuries BC were in fact cast from life – a real person was covered with plaster, and the mould created was then used to make the sculpture.

Those with leisure time could spend up to eight hours a day in the gym. An average Athenian or Spartan citizen would have been seriously ripped – thin-waisted, small-penised, oiled from his “glistening lovelocks” down to his ideally slim toes” (BBC).

In short, the men and women who won their respective beauty pageants weren’t just showered with gifts- they were made immortal, just like the dude who was cast for the Doryphoros. And it seems they set the bar so high that no one dared challenge them for primacy in the West until the modern era, a time in which we had to look back almost 2500 years into the past to figure out how best to show off our muscle. This is why Al Treolar and company copied the poses of the ancients in 1903’s Physical Culture Exhibition– it was the only precedent upon which they could draw outside of vaudeville, where bodybuilders and strongmen often performed in tableaux vivant, or live action photographs. Basically, they posed for a scene and held still as the audience would walk past and check them out.

That said, bodybuilding started out as a beauty pageant and remained one until one man hit the scene who decided that a beauty pageant really wasn’t what all of this shit is about- hell, many of us lift to draw attention away from our faces. A beauty pageant isn’t gonna appeal to most people slanging weight. Regardless, that is what bodybuilding was in 1946, and 5’6″ 160 pound Sam Loprinzi knew he was going to have a hard row to hoe against the tall, strapping young men old ladies never stop carrying on about. The apparent man to beat that year was Al Stephan, a man who looked enough like Captain America that we quite frankly should have had a rad Avengers film built around him in the 50s. Knowing the judges could hardly pick a swarthy near-midget over a six-foot blonde Adonis, Loprinzi was sorta fucked- if he simply chased the Mr. America crown, he’d leave bitter and empty handed. If he, however, altered his goals so that they better fit his unique attributes, he was pretty sure he would be unbeatable.

With that in mind, Sam Loprinzi decided to flip the fucking script. Instead of sitting home and whining about the unfairness of it all, or arranging a group of people to annoy everyone with their whining about an ultimately inconsequential male beauty contest, Sam just said, “fuck a beauty pageant- I am here to enjoy my second amendment rights!” and set about expressing his right to bear arms… and the result changed bodybuilding forever.

In other words…

Whatever excuse you have for your sub 17″ arms is trash.

Sam Loprinzi Vital Statistics

Born: January 22, 1913 Portland, OR USA

Died: October 12, 1996

Profession: Gym owner, bodybuilder

Notable Wins:

• 1947 Mr America Most Muscular winner
• 1947 Most Muscular Man in America Short Class Winner

Measurements

• Height: 5’6″
• Weight: ~160lbs (never over 170lbs)
• Chest: 47″
• Arms: 17″
• Waist: 31″
• Thighs: 23″
• Calves: 15″
• Neck: 17″

Best Lifts

Bench Press: 310lbs

Military Press: 220lbs

Squat: 425lbs

Deadlift: 550lbs

Clean and Jerk: 270lbs

Snatch: 200lbs

Before we continue, let’s delve into those numbers, lest they fail to grab you right out of the gate, because comparing his numbers against the 2020 numbers on Openpowerlifting might lead you to believe this man was some kind of a chump, and that could not be further from the truth (and the same goes for every other badass lifter of this era).

“During the Second World War, Americans were asked to make sacrifices in many ways. Rationing was not only one of those ways, but it was a way Americans contributed to the war effort. When the United States declared war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States government created a system of rationing, limiting the amount of certain goods that a person could purchase. Supplies such as gasoline, butter, sugar and canned milk were rationed because they needed to be diverted to the war effort. War also disrupted trade, limiting the availability of some goods. For example, the Japanese Imperial Army controlled the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia) from March 1942 to September 1945, creating a shortage of rubber that affected American production.

On August 28, 1941, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8875 created the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA’s main responsibility was to place a ceiling on prices of most goods, and to limit consumption by rationing. Americans received their first ration cards in May 1942. The first card, War Ration Card Number One, became known as the “Sugar Book,” for one of the commodities Americans could purchase with their ration card. Other ration cards developed as the war progressed. Ration cards included stamps with drawings of airplanes, guns, tanks, aircraft, ears of wheat and fruit, which were used to purchase rationed items. The OPA rationed automobiles, tires, gasoline, fuel oil, coal, firewood, nylon, silk, and shoes.

Americans used their ration cards and stamps to take their meager share of household staples including meat, dairy, coffee, dried fruits, jams, jellies, lard, shortening, and oils. Americans learned, as they did during the Great Depression, to do without. Sacrificing certain items during the war became the norm for most Americans. It was considered a common good for the war effort, and it affected every American household” (NPS).

In other words, literally everything these lifters did was ten times more difficult than what you’re doing, and they did it far better, for the most part. In 1946, the average American man of fighting age was half fucking starved by our standards- 5’8″ and 144lbs, with a 15″ neck and a hilariously tiny 36″ jacket size. By comparison, American men of today are an inch taller and 54 pounds heavier, with a flabby-as-fuck 40″ waist and man-titties wedged into a 40″ jacket, but you can use that weight to move weight- the half-starved men of the 1940s didn’t have that luxury. And yet they packed on fucking mass using homemade barbells and under rationing where half of Reddit can’t seem to bench their own bodyweight and the other half is too fat to see their genitals.

Though the man certainly wouldn’t overawe the kids who don’t lift and just muscle hustle steroid monkeys on the internet, anyone who’s actually spent time in the gym busting their ass would definitely be speaking about Sam with respect if you ran into him at any age, but especially between 20 and 40. To the people of the United States in 1946, Loprinzi might as well have been Gregg Valentino, which is how he took second in the overall to Alan Stephan (whom I mentioned in the OG Westside series and in the Eric Pederson series) in spite of the fact he was giving up almost 50 pounds to his opponent.

Insofar as the bodybuilding world was concerned, Stephan descended from heaven as the second coming to deliver us all from bad skin, fatness, non-whiteness, necrophilia, baldness, and all other forms of general subhumanity. And it was understandable- over the course of his career, the man who looked like Steve Rogers went from 6’1″ 195 to 215 pounds of golden rip, boasted seriously legit numbers in the gym, including a press of 260 pounds, a snatch of 240lbs, a 325lb clean and jerk, and did curl repetitions with his bodyweight at 205 pounds… plus he was college educated, well read, and everything a 1950s mom looked for in a potential provider for her vacuum-loving daughter.

If you’re thinking that Sam Loprinzi had a mighty big set of balls to think he could outmuscle dudes who towered over him bearing the hypertrophic results of an extra two to three weight classes, you’d be thinking correctly, but Loprinzi had reason to be cocky. Born to Italian parents in Portland, Oregon, Loprinzi and his siblings started building his little muscles by helping his father deliver fruits and vegetables from their family truck.

“The Loprinzi siblings, Lena, Gus, Sam, Joe and Phil were exceptionally close throughout their lives, particularly Sam and Joe who were just 18 months apart and virtually inseparable until Sam’s death in 1996. Joe was a high school athlete at Commerce (now Cleveland) High School and was a competitive weight lifter” (Sorenson).

Seeing his teenage kids’ interest in moving weights after seeing pro strongman Clevio Massimo perform at the Portland Hippodrome, the elder Loprinzi built an addition onto the family garage that became the community gym, filled with homemade weights cast from concrete and set onto pipes.

Tony “Clevio” Massimo (1895-1974) was a vaudevillian, so it’s likely you’ve not heard of him. He was akin to a mashup between Mike O’Hearn and Frank Yang- jacked as fuck, pretty as hell, an accomplished violinist, and strong as a fucking ox, yet he had no interest in competition. Son of one of the famed “three giants” from Italy, he was hardly that, but he was jacked- standing 5’8″ and 194 pounds lean as shit, Clevio would have rivaled two-time Mr America and legendary strongman John Grimek onstage and possibly on the platform, but performing was his true love. He rocked an 18″, 16.25″ biceps, a ridiculous 15.25″ forearm, an unexpanded 46″ chest, a 34″ waist, and 25″ thighs, which likely would have made him as big or bigger than most of the Gymshark-clad tr00 lifters in any gym. That said, after his initial forays into performance were considered boring, he realized that his HUGE WEIGHTS ONLY policy wasn’t going to put his name on the lips of fans- handbalancing, however, put asses in seats and smiles on faces, so he figured out how to be the brute strength handbalancer no one knew they needed in their lives.

“Massimo’s early training with the violin stood him good stead for he often opened his show by playing the difficult Mendelssohn’s concerto in E. Minor. When finished he removed his clothes and went into this act. His audiences always found it difficult to believe a man so muscular could be such an artist” (Gentle).

Massimo was so strong he performed feats that frankly seem impossible, on a daily basis.

• Considered the “strongest understander in the business” (basically, the strongest guy ever to perform handbalancing), he once supported his 5’4.5″ 156lb “top mounter” Dave Foley in a perfect head to head balance for 11 minutes (Willoughby 269).
• He would also lie face down with his partner doing a handstand on the soles of his feet, and then would rep out leg curls. His heaviest top mounter for this weighed 227.5 pounds, and that’s considered the world record leg curl insofar as historian David Willoughby was concerned (Ibid).
• During WW1, Massimo entertained the troops while stationed at Camp Gordon by using a 135 pounds soldier instead of a rifle to perform exercises from the manual of arms (Ibid).
• He could swing a 180 lb dude from the ground into an overhead handstand and then press him 15 times (Ibid).

And Massimo seems to have been the perfect man to inspire a small kid with big dreams- Massimo began his career as a pure weightlifter, like Saxon, but people had found his feat boring. As such, he had to switch it up, building his legendary handbalancing strength as he expanded his horizons beyond what he had previously believed he could or should be.

That is really the aim of this series- to impart the idea that your conception of yourself isn’t you- in fact, it only fucking exists in your head. If you adjust your conception of yourself to reality, rather than trying in vain to bend reality to your will, you can actually achieve great things, and they might not be the great things you’d originally anticipated. And this shit isn’t just limited to lifting, obviously- MLB pitcher Tim Wakefield switched positions and learned to throw a weird pitch called the knuckleball just so he could make it from the minors to the majors. He didn’t want to pitch and the knuckleball is a wildly disrespected pitch, but Wakefield said that he just wanted to be able to say he tried everything he could to make it to the big leagues. The man who invented the color mauve did so accidentally while trying to help eradicate malaria, then got rich off major advances in the fashion industry (which he hated intensely, but he liked inventing new colors [without digitized color gradients he was quite literally inventing colors no one had ever seen] and artificial scents) before retiring to contribute to scientific research and avoid the litigious dickheads of the fashion industry.

You’d be surprised at the shit you can achieve when you adapt yourself to the world around you rather than just pretending reality is different than it is.

Up next, the workout that built the physique of the man who changed bodybuilding from a male beauty pageant into a contest of muscular development, definition, separation, and presentation.

JUMP TO PART 2

SUPPORT THE STRENGTH SPORTS UNDERGROUND AND A ROGUE ACADEMIC HELLBENT ON FORCIBLY EDUCATING EVERY PERSON WHO’S EVER LOOKED ASKANCE AT A BARBELL.

Sources:

Fair, John D. Mr. America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.

Gallagher, Marty.  Olympic barbell history snippet.  Iron Company.  14 Feb 2017.  Web.  23 Feb 2021.  https://www.ironcompany.com/blog/olympic-barbell-history/#:~:text=Olympic%20Barbell%20History%20Snippet,-Olympic%20Barbell%20History&text=In%201928%20Kasper%20Berg%20of,standardizing%20the%20Berg%20Olympic%20barbell.

Gentle, David.  Clevio Massimo.  History of Physical Culture.  25 May 2020.  Web.  1 Mar 2021.  https://www.davidgentle.com/hopc/clevio-massimo/

NPS.  Sacrificing for the common good.  National Park Service.  Web. 1 Mar 2021.  https://www.nps.gov/articles/rationing-in-wwii.htm#:~:text=During%20the%20Second%20World%20War,contributed%20to%20the%20war%20effort.&text=Supplies%20such%20as%20gasoline%2C%20butter,diverted%20to%20the%20war%20effort.

Rader, Peary. The story of Sam Loprinzi. Reprinted from Feb 1963 Iron Man magazine. Foundations of Iron. 16 Mar 2018. Web. 26 Dec 2020. https://foundationsofiron.com/2018/03/16/the-story-of-sam-loprinzi-iron-man-ed-1963/

Thomas, Al. Where are they now? Sam Loprinzi.  Iron Game History, Aug 1996. 1(6):8-10.

Willoughby, David. The Super-Athletes. South Brunswick: AS Barnes and Co, 1970.

Would you be beautiful in the ancient world.  BBC.  10 Jan 2015.  Web.  27 Feb 2021.  https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30746985

Liked it? Take a second to support Jamie Chaos on Patreon!