Rip Tennis Balls Asunder!

Every so often if a person is lucky, someone or something comes along that influences their lives and hopefully, for the better and for the long term.

For many of you it might have been a teacher or a parent that recognized your ability with numbers and urged you to pursue accounting or a career in finance. I certainly had my share of inspirational instructors and mentors along the way. Although with my suspect command of math, it was reasonable to assume I would not become a CPA or physicist.   

For me, the game-changer came as a high school sophomore while waiting for a classmate in the library. I went over to the periodical table (you all remember those I’m sure) and picked up a copy of Sports Illustrated which contained an article titled “Rip Tennis Balls Asunder.” It chronicled the early rise of the sport of bodybuilding in the United States, which, at that time, had at largely occupied the same shadowy advertising corners of magazines as X-ray glasses or magic handcuffs along with rumors and whispers about the people who practiced it.

The piece focused on a Canadian import named Joe Weider, who, as a skinny and vastly under-muscled youth, was bullied in the rougher areas of his hometown of Montreal until he immersed himself in this curious physical subculture and began the nucleus that would ultimately morph into a billion-dollar fitness and nutritional conglomerate that allowed him to reign over nearly every major bodybuilding competition on the planet.

Along the way, he brought over a 20-year old Austrian with a 56-inch chest and a tongue-twisting 14-letter last name and made him the centerpiece of his empire. Yes, the same fellow who later became a Hollywood action star and later Governor of California.

So, armed with the article and a newfound enthusiasm to transform my physique, I sent away for Weider’s home training booklet and began the arduous process of physical engineering, exerting endlessly against the stubborn recalcitrance of muscle and tissue. But other areas (i.e. math and science) I kept at it until I had gone from a 124-pound 10th grader, to an outside linebacker on the school's football team.

 

And I have never stopped.

Even today, I go the gym at least 5 days per week and have maintained my weight (and thankfully my waist size) for the past 25 years. I don’t even have to blush when I put on a bathing suit, nor in my old age have I become the target for Jenny Craig jokes.

I regale you with this fitness saga because over the weekend, I learned that Weider died at the age of 93. His obituary ran two columns in the New York Times, space usually reserved for high rollers.

Over the years I probably spent thousands of dollars on his supplements, magazines and training equipment, but I viewed it not as an expense, but as an investment in a lifestyle that I have maintained for more than four decades.

I never did get to the point where I could rip a tennis ball asunder, but nevertheless I wanted to give a shout-out to one among a series of inspirational people who have had some impact on my life.

I know my parents would rather me have acknowledged someone like Warren Buffet. Fair enough. But I’m certain l look better than he does at the beach.