The History of Strength Training: What Still Works Today with Dr Connor Heffernan - Stronger with Time | Lyssna här

How much of what we do in the gym today is genuinely new, and how much has been around for decades?

In this episode of Stronger With Time, I speak with Dr Conor Heffernan about where many of the training ideas we now take for granted came from, how they changed over time, and what their history can teach us about how we train today.

Conor is a historian and sociologist of sport at Ulster University whose work focuses on the history of strength training and physical culture. He is the author of The History of Physical Culture and When Fitness Went Global, and writes at Physical Culture Study.

In this episode:

How physical culture evolved into modern bodybuilding and gym culture
Eugen Sandow, the first modern physique star, and why he sold light dumbbells while training heavy himself
Where the squat, three sets of ten and body-part splits came from
What lifters already understood about progressive overload by the 1930s
The steroid era, and what changed in training once anabolic steroids arrived
Where single-set and high-intensity training came from
The history of women in strength, from calisthenics and “toning” to progressive strength training
What Conor takes from more than a century of strength-training history into how he thinks about training today

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

00:57 Physical culture and the origins of modern gym culture

06:28 Where three sets of ten and body-part splits came from

13:08 What lifters already knew by the 1930s

16:50 Eugen Sandow and early fitness marketing

21:39 What a 1930s lifter would recognise today

31:33 Silver Era training and the pre-steroid physique

39:18 When anabolic steroids entered strength sports

43:01 How steroids changed training

49:18 Single-set and high-intensity training

52:49 The history of women in strength