Forget about the Olympia. There have been a multitude of bodybuilding contests where the best competitor didn’t win and intentionally was ranked lower. It is just the fallen nature of man.
It is necessary to identify where a conflict of interest comes to play with the judging panel choice. In the late 1970’s the gym owner of the gym I worked out, wanted to promote bodybuilding contests. He was running the local city show. We decided that we wanted all gyms in the city to believe that the contest would be fairly judged. To do this, we needed to not use any local gym owners/members on the panel. We got all the judges from outside the city, at least 100 miles away. We paid them a nominal amount. Whether you like it or not, many people will pick those they know, or worse yet, their gym members a little higher than they actually are. I know that there are exceptions, who have great integrity. But we did not want to have the appearance of bias.
Speaking of my opinion, I did attend the 1991 Mr. Olympia. I do believe that Dorian Yates was a little better than Lee Haney? Not much… just a little. Do I think that Yates was cheated? Not at all. Haney was the reigning champion. To win the championship, the challenger must beat the champion. A tie will always go to the champ.
Back was one of Haney’s truly strong points, and from the back Lee Haney’s back looked great, but the entire back of Yates, top of the traps to below the calves was gnarly! His hamstrings and glutes were freaky. Really, not even close. .
Is cocaine a performance enhancing drug when it comes to bodybuilding? (Half serious inquiry…. Just not sure what the relevance is to the controversial outcome on the contest).
BTW, I found some old audio clips of Mentzer saying that Joe Weider told him that Arnold was on coke for the contest. Of course, both are dead, so no way to check the story. But it does seem to be an old allegation.
Well, didn’t that elicit a heated response!
Are you entirely sure you responded to the right post here? This is nowhere near proportion to my short note about how Walker stated Arnold looked on competition day. I doesn’t matter whether I’m the judge, jury or executioner. It’s all history - yet a fascinating story (that still seem to provoke many, incl. the other competitors of the 1980 Olympia).
Me personally have nothing against Arnold, as he is one of the foundations to poularize bodybuilding, as well as being my inspiration for many years. But it’s a fact that the audience booed at Arnold when declared the winner of the 1980 Olympia + that the event never was televised for some strange reason.
To heat things up even more, Walker has delivered even more arguments on the 1980 Olympia being a give away to Arnold.
The thing that stands out is your lack of critical thinking in this matter + attacking dudes on the internet re this little piece of history (that does not even matter anymore).
I am far from an expert on recreational drugs. I don’t know if coke benefits the competitor at the show, but I would guess that if it did, many would be using coke. And then its use becomes a non-issue, much like AAS or diuretics. You do understand that these guys will take most anything to improve their look on stage.
I had seen the use of alcohol back stage by a number of competitors. I never did any alcohol, but I can see how it could calm the competitor and reduce the anxiety. That would improve his look, but the effects of anxiety start a few hours into the episode, and it would take a few hours to fully rectify the effects.
That’s a great graph.
And that is just showing the claimed ‘work sets’, since HIT/HD only counts those, but in reality, some of their progressive warm up sets do count. A set will have some amount of stimulation, it’s not a ‘yes or no’ kinda thing where 220x6 = 0 stimulation but 220x8=maximum like the theory advocates.
I think that it’s one of the mistakes of the “effective reps theory” (which I tend to subscribe to, with some caveats).
I do believe that the further away a rep is from failure, the less effective it is to stimulate growth. But even a set that is 4, maybe even 5 reps short of failure will provide some stimulus. Far from as much as a set take to failure, but some nonetheless.
A friend of mine (who eventually ended up being the president of the Quebec Bodybuilding Federation and a nation judge) once went to California to be trained by Mentzer. At one time he was in early for his appointment and he saw Mike train, doing A LOT of “warm-up” sets before his top set. My friend was shocked.
I think that Mentzer did those instinctively, not wanting to do the top set until he felt ready physically, and psychologically, for it.
OK these are the facts…What I said is 100% true. What I know about the 1980 Mr Olympia, having seen the rough cut of the documentary, will blow the lid off what REALLY was behind the “win”.
Lastly, I won’t and can’t elaborate, the prison scene in Pumping Iron is more critical than many, if not most, realise.
I know what Roger and I discussed, take it as you wish. Just because you don’t want it to be true doesn’t change what happened … like it or not.
I’m done throwing my pearls to the swine. Enjoy your day!
Considering that those in my circles never attended a Mr. Olympia through the late 1970’s, we were more “outraged” that Frank Zane won three consecutive Mr. Olympias, than Arnold won the 1980 Mr. Olympia. (We just saw pictures in magazines.) I recall the arguments as to whether Zane was actually better than Mentzer. At least when Arnold won in 1980, we thought a little more sanity made it back into the O.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe that Frank Zane had one of the most remarkable physiques of all time, but a guy less than 200lbs winning the Mr. Olympia? How could that possibly be?
yes spot on, you’re totally correct about the way effective reps work, I
had an article last year in HG magazine about this very thing.
We know anytime a muscle fiber creates any tension it’s at least ‘some stimulus’, otherwise if a sedentary person had a limb in a cast, it wouldn’t atrophy, nor would it regain size once the cast was removed just from daily activity. No one is carrying groceries ‘to failure’, yet the increase in tension, just from daily use without any super effort levels does stimulate the fibers to increase. The more ‘tension-time’ the higher the stimulus, but the stimulus IS variable, never an on/off switch kinda scenario.
Since recruitment and activation are orderly, it’s more that as the set progresses, the reps become effective for more fibers. We were even talking about this in a group a few days ago and I created a quick graph.
I watched Carl The Truth Williams beat the hell out of Larry Holmes. Holmes won the bout. I was about 16 then. That was the first time, watching sports, that I realized the fix was in. The 1980 Olympia is unsatisfactory in its result. The Weiders controlled the bodybuilding world at the time. The Master Blaster lacked a code of ethics. The term slimy is not used much anymore, but might be in Joe Weider’s case. Who should have won? Frank Zane had injured himself pre-contest. I think he even admitted at one point that affected his outcome. The Oak looked like what he had become, an action star, but not competition ready. I never think Boyer Coe due to his ab structure. But watching this video he did look excellent. Mike Mentzer had won the Heavy Weight division title in the Olympia the year before, losing over all to Frank Zane. I think he (Mentzer) should have won 1980. But Padilla is an intriguing choice.
He came in 3rd. Is there a possibility that Chris Dickerson was obviously who should have won had Arnold not been there? He received 2 first place votes in the posedown. Arnold received the other 5 votes. Then Dickerson finished 2nd behind Columbo in 1981, and then won in 1982.
In the 1980 Mr Olympia, the totals after prejudging had Dickerson at 290 points and Mentzer at 280 points. Dickerson finished in 2nd place and Mentzer finished tied for 4th.
It is okay to believe Mentzer should have won, but IMO you owed it to yourself to have mentioned Dickerson with a reason why he should not have won.
As I recall, this is when the ground work was being laid for the NPC to depart the AAU and align directly with the IFBB. This is when the IFBB was leaving behind all the other bodybuilding federations and solidifying itself as the sole route for all bodybuilders. If I am not mistaken 1981 was the last year where the NPC was affiliated with the AAU. Going forward the NPC was under the IFBB. All of the above was done for the Benjamins.
NW-Lifter…
I like your explanation. It makes sense.
But here’s a question…if what you say is correct, wouldn’t the best model for training then require smaller ( probably either total body, or upper/ lower split at best) more frequent hits throughout the week, keeping away from failure so in order to ensure recovery is optimised?
Little micro workouts most days of the week…you could carry the shopping practically everyday ( and your explanation makes sense when you think about how some manual labourers get bigger from their work efforts)…but if you were going to train a bit harder than carrying shopping you might want a day or two recovery before hitting the same muscle again, hence the upper /lower split suggestion. Or would you have a better split idea in order to optimise?
