Post by Tim Wescott on May 8, 2004 9:14:41 GMT -5
BOB PEOPLES:
DEADLIFT CHAMPION,
STRENGTH THEORIST, CIVIC LEADER
As kids, when we headed out to lift weights, that’s what we did: lift weights. Nowadays a kid doesn’t head out to some icebox garage or dirt-floored cellar; more likely he’s off to a plush-carpeted spa with a blonde in spandex behind the instructor’s clipboard. And
except in name, it isn’t “weightlifting” that he’s headed for; it’s bodybuilding or “pump-ing iron,” the (gorge-raising coinage that wouldn’t have meant beans to us when we were kids). So little real
weightlifting, indeed, occurs in these plush emporia that it’s a common sight to see an “iron pumper”
return his E-Z curl bar to the middle pin on the power rack to save himself from bending the whole
way down to the distant floor to take his next set. Before spandex and spas, weightlifting meant just
that: lifting a barbell off the floor by either jamming or finessing it overhead or strong-backing it clear of the floor. We knew of course that weightlifting meant pressing, snatching, and clean and jerking, but the god-awful complexity of the snatch and clean and jerk often meant that the sport had only two components: a gut-busting Continental jerk-press and a hitchedup-
the-legs lift we called the deadlift.
To us, however, the greatest demonstration of might and main was the deadlift. And chief among the heroes of deadlifting might and main loomed the legendary Bob Peoples, from the land of Davy
Crockett and Paul Anderson, Bob’s friend and one-time pupil.
As scholars of “the book,” Strength & Health " we can be forgiven for thinking in those years that “Peoples” and “deadlifter” seemed to occupy the same breath, like “damn” and “Yanked’ to a loyal Southerner.
The late John Robert “Bob” Peoples was born on August 21, 1910 in Northeast Tennessee, near Johnson City, of Scottish ancestry (originally Pebylls, later changed to Peebles, the most common
spelling of the name). His clan migrated to our shores about 1650, at which time some of them changed the spelling to “Peoples.” In about 1783, they moved to Northeast Tennessee, where they have taken root, intermarrying with the local English and Germans. Bob lived in Central Community in Carter County. He was married for 53 years to the former Juanita Wills, who after 32 years of elementary and junior high teaching is now retired, the recipient of many awards for her long service in special education and for her civic and church work. They have a daughter, two granddaughters, and a great-granddaughter.
When asked about the origins of his interest in lifting, Bob responded “No one in particular started me in weightlifting. I admired men of great strength and prowess, especially my father who
had great strength. I started lifting his 50-pound dumbell and anything else that provided me with some
resistance. For example, I admired Jack Dempsey for his great strength as a fighter and his ability as a
boxer. Over the years, I’ve trained outside and in various out-buildings on our farm anywhere, in fact,
I could set-up a small lifting platform. In 1946, we moved to our present home, and I have a gym in the basement that Paul Anderson has always referred to as ‘the dungeon..”
Rye Bell captures the feeling of Bob’s ancestry and boyhood in his excellent 1948 Strength & Health sketch: “From his ancestors, all hardy mountaineers, he had inherited an admiration and desire for great strength. Bob’s father was . . . a man noted locally for his strength. Most of his uncles, as well as his grandfathers, were hardy, robust men who could do a hard day’s work and still have energy left for the rough and tumble sports that are native to East Tennessee.
Sports such as Follow the Health, Leader, Rap Jack and Running Through, as well as the more common ones such as boxing, wrestling, and football . . . His interest in strength had to contend with all the other myriad interests that engross the thoughts of the growing youth . . . He spent hours horseback riding up and down the steep mountain trails or along the broad valley at the base of the Great Smoky Mountain range. . . During those rides, Bob often had occasion to demonstrate his strength . . . but in this country where a Weak man is the exception, rather, than the rule, Bob as yet showed no promise of becoming the world’s champion.”
When asked about the initial training system he followed, Bob observed that he used no special system at the start: “I was not aware of any systems of training. Later I read the Farmer Burns Wrestling Course and Jimmy DeForest’s Boxing Course. I was also able to locate a copy of Physical Culture magazine and read through all the articles on weightlifting. Mark Berry’s Strength magazines were also available; I later discovered Strength & Health and Iron Man magazines. Following some of the systems in these publications, I began to refine and develop my individual methods and equipment. (It is not an overstatement to observe that these “methods and equipment” were to prove truly revolutionary and ingenious.) In thinking back to these years in his landmark training piece for Iron Man in April-May, 1952, Bob reminisced: “When I started training, I could deadlift 350 pounds and clean and jerk about 160 on the crude apparatus I had been able to make up. My first lifting instruction was obtained from an early article in Physical Culture by David Willoughby and from a copy of Calvert’s Super Strength.
My first weightlifting apparatus was made with a 1 1/4 inch bar and some wooden drums on the end, into which I put weights of various sorts through a hole in the top. I later applied pins to the ends from which I could hang iron plates. This could be loaded to 1,000 pounds or more. I later purchased a Milo Duplex set and then added a Jackson International Olympic set, plus a lot of plates of various sizes, totaling well over a ton. At one time I had two 50 gallon drums on
legs with a bar through them to practice carrying heavy weights on shoulders. The drums or barrels were loaded with rocks.”
By the time he was twenty-five, in November of 1935, he had begun to keep records, and after irregular training on the five lifts and some strength stunts, he was able to deadlift 500. He “drifted along” until 1937 when he made 150, 160, 205 as a middleweight,
and because he felt unhappy with these results, Bob began his revolutionary experiments with the prototype of what we have come to call the power rack “I set up two posts in the ground and bored holes through them. . . in such a way that I could load a bar up and finish at deadlift height. From this I would take the loaded bar and do dead hang lifts which I found to be of great value in developing the deadlift. I also built what I called a ring bar . . . a large ring of steel to which I fastened two short bars (one on each side) on which I could load plates. I would stand inside the ring on a box and do lifts from a very low position, going into a full squat and bent over position.”
DEADLIFT CHAMPION,
STRENGTH THEORIST, CIVIC LEADER
As kids, when we headed out to lift weights, that’s what we did: lift weights. Nowadays a kid doesn’t head out to some icebox garage or dirt-floored cellar; more likely he’s off to a plush-carpeted spa with a blonde in spandex behind the instructor’s clipboard. And
except in name, it isn’t “weightlifting” that he’s headed for; it’s bodybuilding or “pump-ing iron,” the (gorge-raising coinage that wouldn’t have meant beans to us when we were kids). So little real
weightlifting, indeed, occurs in these plush emporia that it’s a common sight to see an “iron pumper”
return his E-Z curl bar to the middle pin on the power rack to save himself from bending the whole
way down to the distant floor to take his next set. Before spandex and spas, weightlifting meant just
that: lifting a barbell off the floor by either jamming or finessing it overhead or strong-backing it clear of the floor. We knew of course that weightlifting meant pressing, snatching, and clean and jerking, but the god-awful complexity of the snatch and clean and jerk often meant that the sport had only two components: a gut-busting Continental jerk-press and a hitchedup-
the-legs lift we called the deadlift.
To us, however, the greatest demonstration of might and main was the deadlift. And chief among the heroes of deadlifting might and main loomed the legendary Bob Peoples, from the land of Davy
Crockett and Paul Anderson, Bob’s friend and one-time pupil.
As scholars of “the book,” Strength & Health " we can be forgiven for thinking in those years that “Peoples” and “deadlifter” seemed to occupy the same breath, like “damn” and “Yanked’ to a loyal Southerner.
The late John Robert “Bob” Peoples was born on August 21, 1910 in Northeast Tennessee, near Johnson City, of Scottish ancestry (originally Pebylls, later changed to Peebles, the most common
spelling of the name). His clan migrated to our shores about 1650, at which time some of them changed the spelling to “Peoples.” In about 1783, they moved to Northeast Tennessee, where they have taken root, intermarrying with the local English and Germans. Bob lived in Central Community in Carter County. He was married for 53 years to the former Juanita Wills, who after 32 years of elementary and junior high teaching is now retired, the recipient of many awards for her long service in special education and for her civic and church work. They have a daughter, two granddaughters, and a great-granddaughter.
When asked about the origins of his interest in lifting, Bob responded “No one in particular started me in weightlifting. I admired men of great strength and prowess, especially my father who
had great strength. I started lifting his 50-pound dumbell and anything else that provided me with some
resistance. For example, I admired Jack Dempsey for his great strength as a fighter and his ability as a
boxer. Over the years, I’ve trained outside and in various out-buildings on our farm anywhere, in fact,
I could set-up a small lifting platform. In 1946, we moved to our present home, and I have a gym in the basement that Paul Anderson has always referred to as ‘the dungeon..”
Rye Bell captures the feeling of Bob’s ancestry and boyhood in his excellent 1948 Strength & Health sketch: “From his ancestors, all hardy mountaineers, he had inherited an admiration and desire for great strength. Bob’s father was . . . a man noted locally for his strength. Most of his uncles, as well as his grandfathers, were hardy, robust men who could do a hard day’s work and still have energy left for the rough and tumble sports that are native to East Tennessee.
Sports such as Follow the Health, Leader, Rap Jack and Running Through, as well as the more common ones such as boxing, wrestling, and football . . . His interest in strength had to contend with all the other myriad interests that engross the thoughts of the growing youth . . . He spent hours horseback riding up and down the steep mountain trails or along the broad valley at the base of the Great Smoky Mountain range. . . During those rides, Bob often had occasion to demonstrate his strength . . . but in this country where a Weak man is the exception, rather, than the rule, Bob as yet showed no promise of becoming the world’s champion.”
When asked about the initial training system he followed, Bob observed that he used no special system at the start: “I was not aware of any systems of training. Later I read the Farmer Burns Wrestling Course and Jimmy DeForest’s Boxing Course. I was also able to locate a copy of Physical Culture magazine and read through all the articles on weightlifting. Mark Berry’s Strength magazines were also available; I later discovered Strength & Health and Iron Man magazines. Following some of the systems in these publications, I began to refine and develop my individual methods and equipment. (It is not an overstatement to observe that these “methods and equipment” were to prove truly revolutionary and ingenious.) In thinking back to these years in his landmark training piece for Iron Man in April-May, 1952, Bob reminisced: “When I started training, I could deadlift 350 pounds and clean and jerk about 160 on the crude apparatus I had been able to make up. My first lifting instruction was obtained from an early article in Physical Culture by David Willoughby and from a copy of Calvert’s Super Strength.
My first weightlifting apparatus was made with a 1 1/4 inch bar and some wooden drums on the end, into which I put weights of various sorts through a hole in the top. I later applied pins to the ends from which I could hang iron plates. This could be loaded to 1,000 pounds or more. I later purchased a Milo Duplex set and then added a Jackson International Olympic set, plus a lot of plates of various sizes, totaling well over a ton. At one time I had two 50 gallon drums on
legs with a bar through them to practice carrying heavy weights on shoulders. The drums or barrels were loaded with rocks.”
By the time he was twenty-five, in November of 1935, he had begun to keep records, and after irregular training on the five lifts and some strength stunts, he was able to deadlift 500. He “drifted along” until 1937 when he made 150, 160, 205 as a middleweight,
and because he felt unhappy with these results, Bob began his revolutionary experiments with the prototype of what we have come to call the power rack “I set up two posts in the ground and bored holes through them. . . in such a way that I could load a bar up and finish at deadlift height. From this I would take the loaded bar and do dead hang lifts which I found to be of great value in developing the deadlift. I also built what I called a ring bar . . . a large ring of steel to which I fastened two short bars (one on each side) on which I could load plates. I would stand inside the ring on a box and do lifts from a very low position, going into a full squat and bent over position.”
