Plague of Strength

I’ve written a ton of short biographies on bodybuilders for a site so fucking bad I refuse to name it, but I was broke and worked for wages slaves would laugh at. In any event, I will be gradually throwing them up on here in the event that anyone wants to read them, in addition to new bios on people for whom I don’t have enough stuff for a full article. They’re not intended to be comprehensive- just interesting and/or educational.

TOM PLATZ IS NOT THE OG QUADZILLA AND THE ANDERSON SQUAT DID NOT ORIGINATE WITH PAUL ANDERSON. Just as the box squat came from Mr America Al Stephens, the “Anderson” squat/bottom-up squat/bottom-position squat came from a bodybuilder who should be known as the OG Quadzilla- Kimon Voyages (b. 1922 – d. 1989). And frankly, the picture is starting to look like powerlifting arose more out of the bodybuilding scene than the weightlifting scene, which makes sense when one looks at how the sports typically interact and intersect.

Kimon Voyages wasn’t just a natty bro- he actually convinced 1969 Mr America and Most Muscular winner John Decola to quit bodybuilding rather than gas up to compete with the likes of Oliva and Harold Poole(Fair 1812).

Voyages himself never won anything more than his class in a competition or the best legs trophy at almost every contest he entered, because he was really only there to show off his insane 27″ quads (which for the day were positively monstrous given his height and weight). He was 5’6″, which would put his bodyweight somewhere in the region of 165-180lbs (it was just after WW2, so everyone had been under food rationing, and Dan Lurie and Sam Loprinzi were around the same height but leaner at about 165 – 170), and he could bang out 100 reps with 200 pounds in the squat and once hit a set of 10 x 385lbs. He always favored super high reps to build his legs, though he trained using the super old school York barbell full body method as a general rule.

“I met Dr. Kimon Voyages at the Mid-City gym in New York back in the mid-1960s. The personable Voyages was then 42 years old but still had quite impressive thighs. As a bodybuilding competitor in the 1940s, Kimon had won numerous Best Legs awards and even defeated Steve Reeves in that category at the ’47 Mr. America contest in Chicago, where he placed sixth overall and Reeves was the winner. When I asked Kimon how he built those solid underpinnings, he told me of his penchant for doing very high-rep squats. Scientific studies confirm that high-rep squats are superior for building front-thigh mass” (Brainum).

Kimon Voyage’s Training Methods

The basis of Voyage’s training was the parallel back squat, which at that time was considered a cheating exercise because the lifter didn’t go ATG.

“Kimon Voyages, whose thighs were among the greatest in the world, advocates the parallel-depth squat. In a sense it can be called a “cheating” exercise, since the lifter descends only as far as parallel position. More weight can be used in this version than in the full squat, and great strength and thigh, hip and back muscle mass is built. In particular, heavy muscle is formed along the outer curve of the front thighs, giving a real “riding breeches” appearance” (Ross).

He did 10x10x300lbs for the back squat at every squat workout before the 1947 Mr America, but he was also known to do five sets of ten followed by what I would assume was another five sets of bottom-position partial squats from the hole to parallel. Before you protest that these aren’t Anderson Squats, because Anderson Squats are done out of a rack, you’re right- racks just didn’t exist when Voyage was doing them. That said, he was a York-affiliated lifter who trained there, and whose training methods were known to the York guys. Anderson was born ten years after Voyage, so it would stand to reason that he would have been able to adapt the bottom-position squat to the rack.

Is it a reach? Maybe, but it looks pretty fucking good on paper.

In other interesting news, it appears that he only has a cover of one bodybuilding mag, Weider’s Strength and Health… the other covers I found were the beefcake magazines of which I’ve been learning and sharing with you guys with shit like the Bob Mizer crew described in the Bill Smith article. One, Your Physique, was Weider’s foray into the field, while he also posed for VIM Magazine, which might look tame at first glace, but is listed alongside na lot of gay porn on eBay. And I’m not saying these dues were gay, but having done some of that sort of modeling myself, you’d be amazing how quickly you see a cock up close when you genuinely had no expectation of doing so… and that cock is a gateway cock. Again, I’m not casting aspersions about the sexuality of these guys, but I think the modern move by some of the people on the internet to look to the golden era bodybuilders because “all of the modern guys are juiced-up fags” is pretty fucking stupid given the fact that the people who do so are much less vocally afraid of steroids than cock, and their heroes were often otherwise inclined.

Sources:

Brainum, Jerry.  Squat science: the best exercise?  Iron Man Magazine.  28 Mar 2009.  Web.  18 Feb 2021.  https://www.ironmanmagazine.com/squat-science-the-best-exercise/

Fair, John, D.  Mr. America: The Tragic history of a Bodybuilding Icon.  Austin: University of Texas, 2015.

National lifting championships and Mr America.  Reprinted from Iron Man Magazine Vol 6, no 3, date unknown.  Musclememory.  Web.  18 Feb 2021.  http://musclememory.com/showArticle.php?im0603sup-1

Ross, Clarence.  There’s more to squats than just bending the knees.  Reprinted from 1954 original.  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  21 Sep 2021.  Web.  18 Feb 2021.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2011/09/theres-more-to-squats-than-just-bending.html

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