Joe Weider, Emperor of Muscle
He was a mentor to Schwarzenegger and founded numerous bodybuilding magazines
Today it is common to go to a kiosk and see in the exhibitor magazines whose covers are illustrated with titanic images of hyper muscled men. It is equally common to see in the pages of these publications advertisements for nutritional supplements that help improve physique; Or see those products in specialty stores or herbalists. Today fitness, sculpting the body based on gym sessions, is a life habit for many people. And that way of living, that cult of the body, possibly began with Joe Weider. This Canadian, who died on March 23 at 93, built an entire empire based on bodybuilding. He founded magazines like Muscle and Fitness, sold worldwide; It commercialized all kinds of nutritional supplements, and organized competitions such as Mister Olympia, considered the World Cup of the discipline. He was a pioneer, a visionary who knew that behind the devotion to muscle there was a business that, properly exploited, could give juicy amounts of money.
Weider, born in 1919, was a boy who grew up in a marginal Montreal neighborhood and was constantly abused by gangs of thugs and other older children. Small and slim, the young Weider began to develop his muscles inspired by a magazine of the time. He built some dumbbells with scrap metal from scrapped cars and little by little his physique grew in width. The boy who was rejected at a fight club because the coach was afraid that his fragile body would be injured was invited to enter bodybuilding gyms. According to Weider himself, when he entered the premises for the first time, he was amazed by the brotherhood and camaraderie that existed.
Fascinated by that world, Weider dragged his brother Ben and they founded a small fitness magazine in the early 1940s. They also rented Montreal theaters to host bodybuilding championships. Little by little, the Weider became a reference and they moved to the United States to get more projection. They soon founded the International Federation of Bodybuilding, the body of which Ben was president for several decades, and in 1965 they created Mister Olympia, the international competition where the best bodybuilders compete internationally.
But Weider knew that every sport needs a star, someone with enough charisma to put a minority sport on the map. And the Canadian found his star in Austria. In 1968 he witnessed how a young man named Arnold Schwarzenegger prevailed in a local competition in the Central European country. Fascinated by the bodybuilder's physique, Weider persuaded him to go with him to the Angels and offered to write in his magazines while programming weight-bearing routines for him. The future actor was the most famous disciple of the Weider method of training.
Schwarzenegger has always shown thanks to the Canadian, whom he considers a mentor. "Not only did he inspire my childhood dreams, but he made them come true the day he invited me to go with him to the US to continue my bodybuilding career," the former California governor posted on his website. The thanks do not seem exaggerated, especially considering that Weider got Schwarzenegger his first role as an actor in the movie Hercules in New York, quite an achievement because the Austrian barely spoke English at the time.
With the media star he wanted, Weider rose to the Mister Olympia pageant. Schwarzenegger won seven times, raising some speculation among the rest of the participants, who always suspected that the judges favored the owner's protégé.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the empire only grew. Published magazines numbered over a dozen, training methods were widespread in gyms, and nutritional products filled the shelves of sports food stores. The efficacy of some of those supplements was questioned by consumer associations, but Weider always defended their quality.
In 2003, the businessman sold his publications for $ 350 million but maintained a stake in some of the magazines. He lived a golden retreat in his last years and despite his advanced age he continued exercising, applying his maxim that "there is no age to cultivate the body." "Sooner or later people will recognize that the human body is another form of art," he said. publications