(Rough Draft) Quickie History: Hippolyte Triat- 100 Years Before John Grimek and Joe Gold, This Man Was Better than Both

As I am simply one man battling the massive waves tides of ignorance, I lack the ability to write all I want to, when i want to. My level of production surpassed prolific years ago, but I still find myself wishing I had the time and mental energy to write even more than I already do. Thus, I am dropping this article draft into “Published” as a placeholder to be updated- it is the third sidebar in the middle of my Adah Menken series, but it’s important background info, and information on this man was very difficult to come by in the past (the book containing his entire biography has yet to be translated into English, and Triat never wrote anything down). At some point I will build this out, but for now it will remain an unfinished draft you can use as a reference.

Instagram Intro?

This is a quick snapshot of one of the most influential people in the history of lifting weights, Hippolyte Triat, the dude who created the first two commercial gyms, invented the barbell… and group fitness instruction… and gym chains… and an early form of membership dues for gyms.  You don’t know about him because the dickheads on the right in France drove him out of business, confiscated his gym and equipment, and essentially made sure he’d die broke and in a gutter because he was too progressive, but without this man your gym would probably look a hell of a lot different than it does, or not like like anything at all.

And the man was no pussy- standing 5’8 and 210 lean pounds in an era before mass transit, refrigeration, or industrial food production, Triat had a physique very similar to John Grimek’s, and enough strength that he’d outlift almost everyone in your gym, especially at overhead work.  His methods relied primarily on the use of dumbbells, and because of that focus exists as a sort of precursor to the proto-bodybuilding training methods of Professor Louis Atilla (1844-1924), who followed shortly after Triat and trained the inimitable Eugen Sandow.

Hippolyte Triat Vital Statistics

• Born: 1812 (Saint-Chapes, France)
• Died: 1881
• Profession: Circus Strongman / Gym Owner / Exercise Equipment Inventor
• Height: 5’8″ (1 meter 79)
• Weight: 210lbs (95kg)
• Neck: 17.7″ (45 cm)
• Chest: 49″ (1 m. 24)
• Biceps: 16″ (41 cm)_
• Waist: 32″ (83 cm)
• Thigh: 29″ (73 cm)
• Calf: 17″ (44 cm)

As I said, I don’t really have the time or energy to rewrite this stuff at the moment, but thought it would be an interesting resource nevertheless. With the exception of the first line, the following are all direct quotes from Edmond Desbonnet’s book Kings of Strength (1911), which is linked in the sources if you want to read it yourself..

Best Lifts

• The man had such incredible grip strength that he could do a one armed flag, which is insane, especially at his bodyweight. “Triat also performed a remarkable feat which no other person has ever duplicated: using a little iron column, he assumed the flag position with his right hand below and his left hand above and his body extended horizontally. Triat then released his right hand and smoothly lowered his body while thus supporting his entire weight on the arm that was bent.”
• He lifted a barbell weighing 101 kilos (222lbs) a single time with two hands.
• He “twice lifted a 91-kilo dumbell in his right hand and an 84-kilo bell in his left,” which I would guess is a dumbbell clean and jerk with a 200lb dumbbell for two reps, and a single rep on his left with 185.
• He correctly curled a 32-kilo (70lbs) dumbbell while with his left shoulder rested against a wall and his left foot was 45 centimeters (18″) from the wall.
• Triat also lifted a weight of over 1,000 kilos on his back, his hands supported by a trestle.
• He was also a very good tumbler, and Triat was able to jump over an ordinary horse. He lifted 150 kilos with his teeth, juggled admirably with medium sized balls, and was a distinguished balancer; balancing on a horizontal bar on one foot he performed an effortless lift of two 45-kilo (99lb) dumbbells.

“Triat’s training techniques were very complex since he had different exercises for each person. He had condensed a bit of everything in his floor exercises for he had to deal with many different types of people, from children and ladies to young men and the elderly.”

These floor exercises are the ones he used for men:

FREE HAND EXERCISES — arm rotation, leg lunges, knee bends etc.

SIX-KILO GLOBE BARBELLS — putting the bar behind the neck and the back, twists, exercises on the balance beam, etc.

RUNNING — gymnastic walking, hopping, side stepping, jumping

LIGHT DUMBELLS — Thrusts, body bends, etc. in all directions, always alternating,

LIGHT BARBELLS — walking with resistance, lifting the arms with a half twist etc.

HEAVY DUMBELLS AND BARBELLS — snatching, swing-lifting, pressing, cleaning, etc. [Triat had dumbbells and/or ranging in weight from 3kg to 200lbs]

PHYSIQUE POSES — among which is that of “The Gladiator;” lifting of one gymnast by another.

“Each student in these lessons does only those exercises which Triat tells him to do (at least at the beginning). Later the student does them all. We can assure our readers that when one did a complete lesson, finishing with the 15-kilo dumbbells, especially on the days when Triat took command, one would have had quite enough.”

“In less than half an hour the student would be drenched in an abundant perspiration and ready to head off to the showers at the end. Triat was very partial to these obligatory showers, and he even included rubdowns with a horsehair glove. The exercises were less strenuous for women and children.”

When Triat directed the lesson, he was attired in tights and a costume from the time of Ring François 1st which emphasized his male beauty and his gentle, Christlike appearance in long hair that floated freely on his Herculean shoulders. His students also wore tights dyed the color of ox blood” (17)

Triat loved to repeat certain maxims, for example:

“Exercise is not exhaustion.”

“Working out is not working to death.”

“The body’s strength, carefully directed, is a source of moral
as well as physical beauty.”

Triat’s Big Plans for France

“Triat had founded his gymnasium in Brussels in order to train educators of both sexes. In his gymnasium on the AvenueMontaigne, he had two teachers for ladies: Misses Allix (Augustine) [1838-1901] and Mathilde who loved her teacher, and in turn was loved by him Triat’s finest project was the idea of founding a teaching college of rational gymnastics on the island of Billancourt just a short distance from Paris. Triat had plans drawn up as well as an engraved
illustration of this model establishment before submitting the proposal to the government. Unfortunately, the officials preferred to construct a military armory on the island of Billancourt rather than creating a school that would turn out students who would go out into France and spread the good news about Triat’s excellent system. If this project had succeeded, thousands of invalids would never have encumbered our hospitals, millions of francs would not have had to be spent to cure them, and much suffering could have been averted.”

“The island of Billancourt would have had paths for running and for cycling, the river for swimming and canoeing, a school for gymnastics and physical culture, and all this at the very gates of Paris. The plan was simply too easy to accomplish, and that is why the project came to nothing. It was a concept of vast implications, but Triat had not counted on the hostility of the powers that be and with the criminal indifference of those who should have put betterment of the nation above everything else.

Triat was among the first who understood that it is far preferable to prevent disorders at an early age than to cure them at a later time. He believed that by establishing model gymnasiums (rather than constructing new hospitals) he could improve the physical state of his contemporaries by exercise and hygiene. In this way he could combat the unhealthy or unsanitary conditions which had been caused by modern life.”

My Short Bio From the Oldest Gyms article

An orphan who’d been abducted by Roma and forced to perform at circuses in drag but had bought his freedom by saving a rich lady from a runaway horse, Triat has a story that seems ridiculous on its face, but times were pretty ridiculous then.  The woman paid for his education at an aristocratic school, whereupon he went back to show business as a strongman for a few years until that Dickensian motherfucker took his love for showmanship and combined it with his love of fitness to found his first gym.  Drawing upon his experience in vaudeville, Triat not only made lifting a spectator sport, but he invented the globe barbell, group fitness classes, and an ingenious way to finance his operation by preselling training sessions as “shares” in the gym (Chapman).

Rather than holding his exercise classes in a filthy warehouse, Triat held his training classes in opulent settings in gyms set in both Paris and Brussels that befitted the new middle class that generated all of his clientele. Spectators were encouraged to watch the proceedings from the balconies, while he and his instructors led groups of people through workouts involving globe barbells, set to music. If it had been any more modern in its intent, it would have been Les Mills classes inside of a Lifetime Fitness. Tragically, Triat fell victim to the predations of the faux tough guys of the right and had his gym and all of his painstakingly acquired and expensive equipment, plus the machines he built himself, confiscated when the right began cracking down on democratic agitators in France during the Franco-Prussian War.

Triat’s two main instructors were daughters of an eccentric inventor named Jules Allix, who was a leader in the Paris Commune who championed non-communist socialist views that mostly involved the rights of women.  He was apparently banging Mathilde Allix, though I doubt that colored his opinions of letting the two use his gym for meetings during the Commune- I can’t imagine he thought the right would cut off their own balls simply to prevent chicks from voting. In any event, the psychos on the right jailed Triat for a year and stole all of his shit for promoting women’s rights, because their views simply mirrored those we hold today in the West.

“During the events of the Franco-Prussian War, Paris had been defended by the National Guard, where working class radicalism grew among soldiers. In March 1871, during the establishment of the Third Republic under French chief executive Adolphe Thiers, soldiers of the National Guard seized control of the city and then refused to accept the authority of the French government, instead attempting to establish an independent government.

The Commune governed Paris for two months, establishing policies that tended toward a progressive, secular system of social democracy, including the separation of church and state, self-policing, the remission of rent during the siege, the abolition of child labor, and the right of employees to take over an enterprise deserted by its owner” (Wiki). 

Luckily, the man didn’t fade into poverty and obscurity until after his dope inventions were noticed and adopted by the Turners, who rapidly incorporated his globe barbells alongside their dumbbells, clubbells, and other apparatus. Additionally, people noticed that a significant portion of the population likes watching muscular people lift stuff, which likely helped foment support for the first public weightlifting competition, held in Britain in 1891. That didn’t help him one bit, though- destitute and without any equipment from at least the Paris gym, Triat struggled to get back on his feet. He’d not been robbed by the right simply of his possessions, but of his very identity, in the same way Jahn had been before him. The war had also stretched finances thin, and the gymniarch craze had mostly passed by the time he managed to pull his life back from the apocalypse that had befallen him.

“Somber and bitter were the final hours of this great man. His haggard face mirrored the cruel blows of fate that had descended upon him. He had known the liveliest earthly emotions and the most energetic passions, the most ardent joys, satisfied ambition, and ecstatic love (for Triat had been a handsome man) only to have them bartered by Fate for a run of dismal luck and torments aplenty. And after having sacrificed the best years of his life in order to reform his
fellow human beings, he came at last to his end. Triat passed away in a barren attic, alone and abandoned by all, without even the hand of a friend to close his eyes” (Desbonnet).

Triat died a pauper, but the father of the two Allix sisters who had been female instructors at Triat’s Gymnasium took his corpse and laid it in their family’s crypt in the Cimetiäre du Nord. Unfortunately, the great man’s name was not even inscribed on the tombstone. Since he was, alas, penniless, everything leads us to believe that the great pioneer’s body would otherwise have been thrown into a common grave with the beggars, vagabonds, and other anonymous
derelicts of life. 

Bittersweet Endnote

In cross-checking dates and places, it is almost certain that the Nahl brothers who started the Olympic Club in San Francisco trained with Hippolyte Triat and were friends with him. In 1848, they fled Paris when Louis Phillipe was deposed to avoid the fate that befell Triat. After living in Brooklyn, New York for two years as political refugees, selling art and paintbrushes to get by, the pair moved to San Francisco to mine gold. Using the produce of their efforts, they opened a gym that is perhaps the greatest paean to Triat that one could create as they continued to create art and perform gymnastics. They outfitted it resplendently, hired the best coaches on Earth- Col. Thomas Hoyer Monstery for fighting arts and William Miller for strength training, and set about dominating the sporting world immediately, in exactly the sort of manner that Triat would have, had he the foresight to fuck off to the United States before landing in jail for loving democratic principles too much.

SUPPORT THE STRENGTH SPORTS UNDERGROUND AND A ROGUE ACADEMIC HELLBENT ON FORCIBLY EDUCATING EVERY PERSON WHO’S EVER LOOKED ASKANCE AT A BARBELL. I AM THE FUCKING TOM BRADY OF PHYSICAL CULTURE HISTORY, BUT BASICALLY UNPAID. HELP A MOTHERFUCKER OUT.

Sources:

California Art Research.  Vol 1.  First series.  San Francisco: WPA Project, 1937.  https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/cara/ucb/text/Cara_Volume_01.pdf 

Chapman, David.  Hippolyte Triat Introduction.  Iron Game History.  Sep 1996.  4(1):3-10. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kX5tX_Ny5FR6UV6RT0SZCeJqkBcgMt5E/view

Desbonnet, Edmond. Hippolyte Triat. David Chapman (Trans.). Reprinted from The Kings of Strength. Iron Game History.  Jul 1995.  4(4):13-18. https://starkcenter.org/igh/igh-v4/igh-v4-n4/igh0404h.pdf

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