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A stern bronze of American Weightlifting icon Bob Hoffman surveys Interstate 83, just north of York, Pennsylvania. York County is a plain region, still characterized in part by the earnest reserve of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Today, York bills itself as the “Factory Tour Capital of the World.” Once, it was known round the globe as “Muscletown USA.”
If you’ve ever pressed a barbell or pounded a protein shake, you’ll want to know about Bob Hoffman and the York Barbell story.
In the early 20th Century, muscles from bodybuilding were often skeptically referred to as “manufactured bumps,” but professional strongmen still wowed audiences with feats of strength and agility. Bernarr Macfadden, Charles Atlas and Eugen Sandow were marketing various health and fitness programs through magazines and via mail order. There were no gyms full of barbells, squat racks or dumbbells. While lifts had already been incorporated into the Olympics, weightlifting was seen as a fad or a hobby for a few odd ducks. The practice had not yet gained popular recognition as a healthy pursuit for everyday guys.
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Bob Hoffman was an athletic young man from relatively humble beginnings who, after several documented acts of valor on the battlefield in WWI, settled in York and got involved in the oil burner business. He competed in canoe races, but soon took up weightlifting. He gained size and strength, and became a lifelong advocate of weight training. In 1929, at the beginning of the Great Depression, Hoffman and his business partner started using their oil burner factory to manufacture weight plates. He then organized the “York Oil Burner Athletic Club,” a group of lifting enthusiasts who trained on the second floor of his factory. His lifters began competing at weightlifting meets, though many were still very poorly regulated. Bob and others got involved and worked toward standardizing practices.
In 1932 Hoffman partnered with famous strongman George Jowett and started Strength and Health magazine, aiming to market York’s weight sets and promote “physical training for the masses.” In 1935, he was able to buy out Milo Barbell and its magazine, Strength, his only real competition in what is often affectionately referred to as “the iron game.” As Hoffman’s magazine gained popularity and his weights became the industry standard, York became a mecca for aspiring weightlifters. Hoffman gave many of these young men jobs in his growing factory, and encouraged them to aim for record breaking lifts. Over the years, this enthusiasm paid off, as lifters he took under his wing broke world records and competed successfully in the Olympics.
While the GNC stores you’ll recognize from your local mall only began to expand beyond the Pittsburg area in the 1960s, Hoffman made a fortune selling HI-Proteen powder to weightlifters and bodybuilders in the 1950s. It was Hoffman who was primarily responsible for popularizing protein as a key bodybuilding supplement.
However, it was also during this era that York Barbell’s hold on the industry was challenged. In part thanks to York’s promotion of weightlifting, other companies began producing weights at competitive prices. There was also a cultural conflict in the industry between those lifters who lifted primarily for function, and those who lifted primarily to achieve a muscular form. While York’s lifters — most notably his star John Grimek — were often impressive physical specimens of manhood, Hoffman was chiefly interested in functional strength, personal records and Olympic lifts. Joe Wieder, one of Hoffman’s main competitors, began publishing his own magazine, Your Physique. (He later re-named it Muscle Builder, which evolved into Muscle and Fitness. Muscle and Fitness remains one of the top bodybuilding magazines today.) Your Physique focused more on cultivating a muscular appearance. Weider was a younger man, and his approach became more popular during the 70s and 80s, as the aging Hoffman’s influence waned.
Hoffman was an interesting character, and like his contemporaries he was not averse to telling a tall tale or two. But it is clear from John D. Fair’s book, Muscletown USA that Hoffman truly believed that vigor, strength and health were essential components of American manhood and important for the success of any nation. In 1976 Hoffman even attempted to start a “Save The United States Movement” to combat what he saw as moral and physical decay typified by the growing popularity of drug use and countercultural, anti-American ideals. Today, while bodybuilding remains popular, there is a renewed interest — owed in part to the popularity of the CrossFit ideology — in the benefits of functional strength and Olympic lifting. People are re-discovering the old time strongman strength tricks that once captivated Hoffman and got people lifting weights in the first place. To Hoffman, bodybuilding had its place, but manly muscle was first and foremost made to do something. His weightlifters were often recent immigrants or men from humble backgrounds. Hoffman was a self-made man of the Horatio Alger type — he believed that success should be the reward for hard work. And like many sports and bodybuilding enthusiasts who followed him, Bob saw in cultivating the physical man a metaphor and a method for cultivating a man who could accomplish anything he put his mind to.
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The York Barbell Weightlifting Hall of Fame holds a unique collection of memorabilia and information related to the history of weightlifting and bodybuilding. York is my hometown, but my dad and I visited the Hall of Fame this summer for the first time. In addition to information about York Barbell and the history of Olympic Weightlifting, the museum also displays a rare life cast of pioneer strongman Eugen Sandow as well as a host of physical culture memorabilia including early strongman trophies and the actual dumbbells used by famous old time strongmen like Louis Cyr. If you live in the general area or are planning on making your way through South Central Pennsylvania, stop in to see a slice of the history of American manliness.
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For more, visit York Barbell, or read Muscletown USA: Bob Hoffman and the Manly Culture of York BarbellImage may be NSFW.
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About Jack Donovan
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Jack Donovan moonlights as an advocate for the resurgence of patriarchal, paleo-masculine values among the Men of the West. He has contributed articles to Alternative Right.com and has also written for the anti-feminist/men’s interest site The Spearhead.
Donovan has appeared on television and radio to discuss the topic of manhood, and in 2010 spoke to a group of students at a private high school about “Masculinity in the 21st Century.”
Jack Donovan is originally from rural Pennsylvania. He has lived and worked in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
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