Hi Ellington,
I came across this today
Impossible to tell if these are in a timeline sequence, however it’s very clear that Boyer is a lot bigger in some of the clips than he is in others
Just out of interest - can you recall how much he actually gained and over how long?
Thanks,
Jeff
Interesting video. Boyer added at least 20 pounds to his physique. The time period was six months.
I have a lot of photos that I took with Arthur Jones training Boyer. I used many of them in The Nautilus Advanced Bodybuilding Book. Mentzer stepped in when Arthur was unavailable and that’s what is featured on the video.
And just for fun…
Are these videos in their entirety somewhere on the internet?
Scott
I don’t know. I came across them completely by accident.
While looking for these videos I came across this.
Scott
In the ’70s and early ’80s, Jones was known for surrounding himself with the best bodybuilders of his era. In 1982 Coe went to work for Jones and was personally trained by him. Although Casey Viator and the Mentzer brothers thrived on this type of training, it wasn’t right for Coe. Coe found that after eight months of training under Jones’ supervision, he had made no gains in muscle size; what’s more, after that experiment, Coe changed his workouts and quickly added 20 pounds of muscle.
I believe Dr. Darden’s account! 2nd or 3rd hand information is notoriously inaccurate!
Pictures don’t lie! Boyer was in great shape in the Advanced Nautilus Bodybuilding Book! He obviously discontinued his pharmaceutical aids!
Pictures don’t lie?? Ha ha!! You do understand that Boyer was already big before Jones did anything with him?
Scott
Yes I do!
This was the swan song for the fitness boom of the 70’s & 80’s!
Instead of concentrating on health and well-being, bodybuilding concentrated on narcissism, bizarreness, and inappropriate drug use! Cardiovascular conditioning was about dance classes in the latest fashion fad of the time!
Before the 70’s, people rarely exercised. The Mr. Olympia was a cultish event.
Peary Rader minimalist barbell routines were all but forgotten. I congratulate Dr Darden, Dr. McGuff, John Little and others on an emphasis on natural muscular growth, low body fat and healthy living. It is a shame that Nautilus dropped the ball after Arthur’s reign at top, and the outright foolishness of anti-cardiovascular zealots! What could have been!
It’s to bad you can’t stick to the subject instead of going off on your cardio / health obsession rant . I was simply showing how in an interview Boyer said he didn’t gain much muscle under Jones. Most likely many others didn’t either. Jones way brought some strength and fitness but not nessesarily big muscles and that is what it was about for those bodybuilders like Boyer. Viator and Mentzer could gain big muscles doing just about anything so if Jones workouts worked well for them that means nothing for the majority of us.
Scott
Instead of concentrating on health and well-being, bodybuilding concentrated on narcissism, bizarreness, and inappropriate drug use! Cardiovascular conditioning was about dance classes in the latest fashion fad of the time!
Before the 70’s, people rarely exercised. The Mr. Olympia was a cultish event.
Peary Rader minimalist barbell routines were all but forgotten. I congratulate Dr Darden, Dr. McGuff, John Little and others on an emphasis on natural muscular growth, low body fat and healthy living. It is a shame that Nautilus dropped the ball after Arthur’s reign at top, and the outright foolishness of anti-cardiovascular zealots! What could have been!
They still concentrate on all that slop today, nothing has changed!! I love how you are congratulating Darden , little and McGuff just like Grant used to do. Is this intended to bring you into his favor? Pathetic! What could have been? This was always about building big muscles and strength with Jones , not cardio. You didn’t exactly see him talking about Steve Prefontain in his stories hah!Scott
Why is this obvious?
A while back, I listened to a couple of audio interviews with Boyer Coe. He was pretty open about the fact that he used steroids. If I remember correctly, he first tried them when he as only 17 years old. The impression I got was that he would go on the stuff when he was training for something, and discontinue when there were not contests on the horizon. So unless you had detailed knowledge of his drug cycles, there is no way of knowing whether or not steroids played a role in how much he grew during a particular stretch of time.
In any case, in 1979, he published a book with the title: “Steroids: An Adjunctive Aid to Training”. I haven’t seen the book, but from the title, I assume it promotes the use of steroids.
As for training methods: I have also seen direct quotes, allegedly from interviews with the man, where he indicated that he did not like the rush factor training which Arthur Jones was using/promoting during his involvement with Nautilus. He thought being fatigued distracted from his focus on executing the exercises to failure, and that he got better results when he rested longer.
I echo Scott. Here is an excerpt from Boyer Coe’s 5-part interview to Iced Lamb (below is from Part 3):
" Then Arthur comes up with the idea that he wants me to start training using only Nautilus equipment and would film each and every workout. I think he expected to attempt to duplicate the Colorado Experiment that he had done with Casey Viator. It had worked well for him once before so why not try it again. With the experiment with Casey, he had him go on a real restricted diet and absolutely no exercise for some time prior to the experiment. So Casey did regain muscle at an extremely fast pace but I always believed it was largely due to muscle memory, that and all the food he could pack down. So we start the experiment, I was to train three times a week, doing whole body workouts, one set to failure, each workout lasting no more than 15 minutes. I was to go max out on about 14 exercises one set to failure. Arthur even frowned on me warming up, but I knew my body well enough to know that I could not start with a maximum weight without injuring myself, so I ignored his advice. The first exercise was the Duo-Squat, which I thought was an extremely dangerous exercise. It created such force on the spine using the negative cam, and the more force you used the greater compression on the spine. The very first time I used the machine; my right shoulder area went completely numb and stayed that way for several weeks. Ray Mentzer was the only one I ever saw use the entire stack. I recall, they measured his height, had him to one set to failure, then immediately measure his height, and in that short period of time, it had compressed his height over an inch.
This particular machine did not stay on the market long; eventually change the seat to a seated leg press type. Now make to my routine, the results were nothing. It was totally different than any way I had trained before. I never trained in a circuit fashion, might have worked for conditioning football players not for me. I did get stronger on the machines, but gain no muscle at all. At the end of the workout, in those 13 to 14 minutes my heart rate would be as high as 200. I begged Arthur to allow me to make certain changes that I felt certain would give better results, such as just give me time to focus on the exercise at hand rather than trying to rush to the next exercise; it was always like I was trying to beat the clock. After four months, with no results, Arthur lost interest and quit showing up for the tapings. So I quit as well, made some changes in my training routine and immediately put back on 20 lbs. of muscle". So, we have two different views on what has actually happened.
That is the part I remembered.
I’ve been trying to find the entire interview, with no luck. I think it had been on the IART site, but then was taken down. Do you have a link to the entire interview?
It has been on https://icedjamb.com/interview-with-bodybuilding-great-boyer-coe-part-4/, but the website is not responding now. I have saved it on my PC and can share, if needed.
I believe it is the case that Boyer was being trained by Jones, and then Mentzer. I don’t think Dr. Darden was directly involved with training Boyer. So, in some respects, his is also a second hand account.
The bloated belly look is a more recent phenomena in bodybuilding. None of the guys from the golden era had that problem. They were using drugs, but fewer drugs, and probably not in the amounts used by the bodybuilders that came later. I wouldn’t use modern era body builders as a standard to judge the nattiness of the older guys.
The videos don’t seem to correspond to the conditions that Boyer Coe complains about in the interview:
Toward the end of Boyer’s stay at the Nautilus headquarters in Lake Helen, Florida, I trained Boyer 9 or 10 times with my advanced routines. I reported some of these routines in my seminars and books in 1984 and later.
Let’s deconstruct this:
Dr. Darden answers a question by saying that Boyer Coe gained 20 lbs over the course of 6 months training at Nautilus.
Then someone posts a quote from an interview attributed to Boyer, where he says he gained no mass while training under Jones supervision. Rather, the weight gain came after Jones got bored and stopped supervising him, and Boyer adjusted the training to his own liking.
So do I believe Dr. Darden about Boyer’s 20 lb weight gain? I guess so, because both accounts agree there was a 20 lb weight gain. As to when the weight gain occurred, we only have one account…
So what can we learn from Dr. Darden’s very brief answer? Nautilus/Jones fans will jump on the answer to assert the effectiveness of that style of training. But that seems like a reach given the absence of detail in the response.
By contrast, the Boyer Coe version at least casts doubt on whether or not supervision by Arthur Jones had anything to do with his results. But even his story is still lacking with regard to other critical details (like how exactly did Boyer train himself after Jones lost interest).
Dr. Darden has since elaborated that he trained Boyer 8 or 9 times, toward the end of his stay. So maybe 4 or 5 weeks out of the 6 months that Boyer was at Nautilus? That is interesting. But I still don’t know what to make of it. How does this stretch of training under Darden’s supervision fit into Boyer’s narrative that he made gains when he asserted more control over his own training? Do the two periods overlap, or are we talking about two distinct phases? And how much first hand involvement did Dr. Darden have with Boyer’s training, prior to taking over the supervision?
The problem with trying to debate on the basis of brief accounts such as above is that people tend to fill in the missing details according to what they want to believe. I wonder if you aren’t doing some of that?
But I see that you mention a book by Dr. Darden that includes something about Boyer’s training? Which book is that? Does it have more detail than has been put forth here?
Aside from how much Boyer did or didn’t gain , when I look at the videos in their entirety , which are on the internet, it seems that Jones is pushing Boyer to use to much weight because he’s constantly noting that form is a problem on almost every set. On some exercises like chins Boyer struggles with his reps and I know Boyer is a good chinner. Just trying to use too much weight. It’s also quite obvious that The cams are too aggressive in the contracted position as Boyer has trouble with the last 3 reps on most sets. On his calf raises Jones has Boyer sort of bounce or jump to get his heels higher. That seems inappropriate. I think Boyer was used to doing more reps and less weight and in a fashion where he can feel the exercise more and taking his time between sets.
Scott
Just as it was obvious he wasn’t using PED’s???
I have no interest in fabricating fables about past events. I’m just trying to understand what really happened given that there seem to be some conflicting accounts.
Different people often have different recollections of the same event, depending on what was important to them about the event, and how close they were to the action. Moreover, memory is imperfect, and becomes less reliable over time. In the process of crafting a narrative about a past event, it is common to begin inserting details which are not necessarily memory, but seem to fit with the other facts and make the story flow better. Repeat the story often enough, and it can start to be difficult to tell which things are truly remembered, and which were just ‘filling in the details’. This is why eyewitness accounts are more flawed than people care to admit. That doesn’t mean people with differing accounts are lying or behaving dishonorably. That is just the nature of how memory works.
You seem to want to incite some kind of forum drama around “believing vs not believing Darden” or some such nonsense. I’m not interested in playing that silly game.