Eugen Sandow: The Father of Modern Bodybuilding

“Life is movement. Once you stop moving, you’re dead. Choose life.” -Eugen Sandow

Arguably the most famous name from the Bronze Era of physical culture, Eugen Sandow was a performing strongman and bodybuilder from Konigsberg, Prussia. He was born on April 2, 1867, and died on October 14, 1925.

Sandow became interested in physical culture at the age of 10 during a visit to Italy. After years of performing as a circus strongman, he visited the gym of Ludwig Durlacher (aka Professor Attila). Durlacher eventually became Sandow’s mentor and encouraged him to enter his first strongman competition. After winning this competition, Sandow’s popularity exploded, and he began his career as a performing strongman.

In addition to feats of strength, Sandow coupled his performances with physique display where he demonstrated is exceptional muscular development through a variety of poses. This resulted in Sandow organizing what is believed to be the world’s first bodybuilding competition in London in 1901. Due to this, Eugen Sandow is referred to as the “father of modern bodybuilding.”

Sandow stood 5’9” and weighed around 185lbs and built his physique to a proportion referred to as the Grecian Ideal. Due to possessing the ideal physique, a statue of Sandow has been used as the award for the Mr. Olympia, the most prestigious title in bodybuilding. It’s somewhat laughable that a statue of the perfect physique is awarded to chemically enhanced freaks that are anything but the Grecian Ideal.

The training of Sandow and the Bronze Era lifters centered around lifting weights overhead through both single and double arm jerk, press, and snatch exercises. There was no bench press, or any of the modern equipment gracing gyms today, so most of the exercises involved lifting barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells overhead. In addition, squats, curls, various straight arm lifts, and bending and twisting exercises were the focus.

In addition to frequent, heavy weightlifting, Sandow marketed a system of exercise with light dumbbells he simply referred to as the Light Dumbbell System. He learned these light exercise protocols from studying under Professor Attila. Sandow’s system involved 17 exercises utilizing light dumbbells. He recommended starting with 1-5lb weights and performing the exercises daily, building up to 50-100 reps over time. The key to this system is maximally flexing the muscles you are exercising through a slow, controlled movement. Using the light weight makes flexing the muscle easier and more effective. This is just another form of muscle control practice that was very popular in the Bronze Era. Bodybuilders today perform muscle control exercises during their posing practice.

There were many who were critical of Sandow’s light dumbbell system saying it was simply a money-making scam as it was more cost effective to mail a light pair of dumbbells than heavy weights along with the program Sandow was selling. Despite the critics, Sandow posts the photos and success stories of many of his clients in his books, and while they don’t possess the same size and strength of the strongmen, they certainly were able to improve their health and develop a lean, slightly muscular physique with Sandow’s protocols.

In addition, there have been various critics of Sandow’s feats of strength as well. None of Sandow’s peers are alive today, so all we know are stories that have been written about and passed down over many years.

Regardless of any of the claims and criticisms there is no doubt that Eugen Sandow possessed one of the best built physiques and is an extremely important figure in the history of physical culture and bodybuilding.

I hope you enjoyed this article and until next time, stay strong and healthy!