Growing Misconceptions: Step 72

One of the transformations that takes place during adolescence for boys and to the best of my knowledge, girls too, is a growing concern over personal appearance. Being a naïve child with a limited aptitude in the area of science as previously noted my mind was filled with numerous erroneous assumptions regarding human development. I got the part about hair showing up in due course under arms, around the genitals, and eventually on the face for boys. What was unclear was why certain males ended up with arms and chests like Mr. T, the Samuel Morse science teacher not the guy on TV, and others ended up looking more like Jackie Gleason or Art Carney. It was evident to me diet played a role in Gleason having a rotund figure while Carney, his co-star on the Honeymooners, appeared to be thin. No such formula explained the appearance of well-defined bicep and pectoral muscles. My ill-conceived notion was these changes somehow paralleled breast development for females. So, just as most flat-chested teenage girls had flat-chested mothers and most buxom teenage girls had buxom mothers, if a boy had a father with a muscular physique, sooner or later I speculated he would have a muscular figure. Even when Cousin Jim got a set of weights and a bench for heavy lifting my thoughts were about adding as many metal disks to the bar to show how strong I was. In an era well in advance of modern health clubs the relationship between weight lifting and bodybuilding was completely foreign. Fortunately, Mr. T knew how impressionable hormone charged adolescent boys were. A number of us were invited to the gym after school one afternoon to meet a couple of men Mr. T introduced as his friends. The shorter man, Dennis, was a salesman in his late twenties or early thirties, who when cued by Mr. T removed his shirt to reveal a torso similar to what one might see at the beach and fail to note any significance. However, when asked to flex his abdomen receded, his chest inflated and his arms bulged with cannon balls jutting under the skin. Mr. T explained that Dennis had been a Mr. Milwaukee a few years earlier, and was pound for pound one of the strongest people he knew. Then, Mr. T turned to the taller, younger, dark skinned man who had been sitting patiently waiting his turn. Jimmy was the current Mr. Milwaukee and when he removed his shirt it was not necessary for him to suck in his stomach to create the ripples that lined his abdomen. Mr. T explained that Jimmy was a student at the local university and had more time to work out with weights. He then had both men explain their daily regiment and how the exercises either helped build different muscles or increase their strength. Some time later, Mr. T brought another “friend” to the gym for us to meet. While he never took off his shirt, a number of us remembered Phil Torre from his days playing first base for the world champion Milwaukee Braves. His purpose was not to impress us with his achievements as a baseball player in the major leagues, but to let us know how weight lifting, or training as he called it, helped give him the strength and endurance to perform well as an athlete. We all listened intently, then went home wanting to know how long it took to build 18 inch biceps or 40 inch chests. When we figured it out most of us were less enamored with the process.