Roger Schwab – Old School Competition Judging – Bodybuilding Legends Podcast with John Hansen [S1E4]

Roger Schwab – Old School Competition Judging – Bodybuilding Legends Podcast with John Hansen [S1E4]

Former IFBB Head Judge Roger Schwab joins John on the Bodybuilding Legends Podcast to talk about bodybuilding in the 1970’s. Roger talks about his friendship with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the filming of the movie “Pumping Iron”.

Roger also explains what it was like to train at Gold’s Gym in Venice, California in the 1970’s and attending the “Pumping Iron” movie premiere in New York in 1977 as well as the Bodybuilding Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in 1976. Roger also talks about attending the Mr. Olympia contest throughout the 1970’s and watching Arnold, Franco and Frank Zane win their titles.

John Hansen:

All right. Welcome to Episode Number 4, Season 1 of the Bodybuilding Legends Podcast brought to you by Old School Labs where the subject of Season 1 is the 40th anniversary of the movie Pumping Iron. My name is John Hansen and I’m the host of the podcast. Our guest today is a former IFBB Head Judge Roger Schwab. Roger was involved in the bodybuilding scene in the 1970s. He was a good friend at that time of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was also a good friend of Mike Mentzer. Actually, he helped prepare Mike Mentzer for the 1980 Mr. Olympia.

John Hansen:

He was also friends with John Balik, who went on to own Iron Man Magazine, and he also wrote the contest report articles for Iron Man Magazine about the Mr. Olympia each year and late 1970s. I would read those articles and they were really, really exciting to read. Roger was involved, like I said, in the bodybuilding scene in the 1970s. We’re going to talk to Roger about his years in the 1970s. He saw Arnold compete on stage in ’73 and ’74, and of course he was there in ’75. We got some great, great stories from Roger Schwab.

John Hansen:

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Roger Shwab’s Start In Bodybuilding

John Hansen:

All right. Our guest today is Roger Schwab. Roger was a big part of the bodybuilding scene in the 1970s. I first became aware of Roger when I was reading Iron Man Magazine back in the late 1970s. Roger was the head judge at the Mr. Olympia in the early 1980s, and he always wrote a contest report about the Mr. Olympia and Iron Man Magazine each year, and his reports were really detailed and very exciting to read. I want to welcome Roger Schwab to the show. Hi, Roger.

Roger Schwab:

Thank you very much, John. As I’ve mentioned to you, I respect your passion to stay in shape after all these years, and that you and I were both involved in what I would say was the golden era of bodybuilding. Although I got involved in the early ’60s because I’m quite a bit older than you are, but my interest started way back in 1962 in the last row of the Brooklyn Academy of Music when I watched Larry Scott win the IFBB Mr. America contest.

John Hansen:

Wow, that had to be something.

Roger Schwab:

Yeah. I mean, it’s been a great history of the sport. Early on, I realized if I wanted to be part of it, I didn’t have the genetics to go the distance as far as bodybuilding, but I was interested enough that I decided to tackle it and go 100% in the involvement in some way or another, and so I got involved. I had no regrets as I look back because I think the time of my involvement was the epitome of what bodybuilding was in the States and on the European continent also. It was the highlight of my life and I have no regrets about being involved.

Roger Schwab:

As far as the mid-’70s are concerned, I was an acquaintance of Charles Gaines and George Butler and Wayne DeMilia of course in New York when the whole thought processes of Pumping Iron was taking place. I can also say I was one of the early acquaintances of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he moved to the United States. We had great conversations with each other, and early on, we were quite friendly. As a matter of fact, on the day of the filming of Pumping Iron, of at least the filming at Gold’s Gym, I along with John Balik and one or two other gentlemen, I don’t recall right now, had breakfast at Arnold’s apartment. I remember seeing the big wooden bed that Dave Draper had made for Arnold, as a matter of fact.

Roger Schwab:

Then we got into this car and drove over to Gold’s Gym. I happened to be in the back seat. Arnold got out of the car and walked into Gold’s Gym with me behind him. If you take a look at the footage of Pumping Iron … I know you’ve seen it, John, because I sent it to you, but I was right behind him and I think it was not anticipated by Arnold that Eddie Giuliani was going to run over and jump into Arnold’s arms. I can tell you that to me, that was quintessential comradeship in the ’70s as far as bodybuilding was concerned, and the peers of each other and the all-out acceptance of everybody. It was competitive, but it was a great competition and these guys were really friends and they certainly looked up to Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a very wonderful time, especially being friends with all these guys. It was a great time. Then the night in the … I think it was 1977. In a tuxedo, we all made it to the premiere of Pumping Iron. I remember that night how happy Arnold was and how much of a hit and how much that was going to archer in the acceptance of bodybuilding into the mainstream.

John Hansen:

Yeah. Roger, I had no idea. I know you were a big part of the bodybuilding in the late ’70s, but I had no idea that you were actually in the movie Pumping Iron. When we were talking on Facebook, you said, “Who do you think Arnold walked in with?” Then you sent me that screenshot of you and Arnold walking in the gym, so that was awesome.

Roger Schwab:

Of course it was right at the beginning also when women were getting involved in bodybuilding. It was the time of Lisa Lyon, Claudia Wilbourn, Stacey Bentley, and of course Rachel McLish. It was wonderful times. It was the best times. To me, it was the golden era.

John Hansen:

Tell us, Roger, how did you meet Arnold? How did that happen?

Roger Schwab:

In the early ’70s, it was very interesting, I opened up a small training facility in Philadelphia. It was a Nautilus gym. Arnold’s fiancée at the time was Maria Shriver, and so Arnold introduced me to Maria and she came and trained at the club that I own, which was Main Line Nautilus. A funny anecdotal thing there was that she trained hard and she looked great, if you know Maria, and she was training on a leg extension machine in Air shorts and there was a scar coming down her … I believe it was her left knee from mid-quadriceps down to the middle of the tibia. I said to her, “How did you hurt yourself? How did you have the surgery?” She said, “Football.”

Roger Schwab:

It was funny, but if you remember the Kennedys, how famous they were for playing football at Hyannis Port, and of course Maria was part of the Kennedy family. I trained Maria. When Arnold would come to Philadelphia, she and Arnold and myself and another woman would go out and double-date, so it was really a wonderful time. Subsequently, of course, Arnold, basically, when he started the Mr. Olympia contest in Columbus, had his own team. Maybe I’m from Philadelphia, I wasn’t really part of that team, so our relationship didn’t really continue in the same deep friendship I believe that we had in the early ’70s, especially in the Mr. Olympia contest of ’73 and ’74 and going all the way up to the late ’70s.

Roger Schwab:

If you remember the Mr. Olympia contest in ’73 and ’74, John, I’m sure you will, Arnold was probably in his best shape in those two contests. I remember at his house that morning before we went to Gold’s Gym, I commented saying that I thought that he had his potential in 1973. I assure you that he reminded me in no uncertain terms that he was better in 1974. I don’t know if you were at those contests or if you saw either one, but in retrospect, looking at the pictures, he was correct. I think he was at his Venus in 1974, although he came close to it in 1975. That was probably his last year of great competition, excluding everything that went on in Sydney in 1980.

Roger’s Friendship With Arnold

John Hansen:

Roger, let’s go back to 1973. How did you actually meet Arnold? Did you just go backstage and meet him after the show?

Roger Schwab:

No. At the time in ’73, I was just starting to cover physique contests in Iron Man, I believe. I was in Philadelphia, so it wasn’t far away. Quite honestly, bodybuilders were much more accessible. I would travel out to Ohio. There were contests in Ohio, I remember, and Arnold would be there. Arnold was also friendly with George Snyder from Olympus Gym in the early and mid-’70s. Again, Warrington was close to my home. He was accessible and he was fun, and it was very easy to meet him. You have to remember this is way before his financial situation was improved. He went to the contest. He opened gyms up. He got paid certain amounts of money when a gym would open.

Roger Schwab:

I saw him in a couple of openings and we just … It was great because we could talk, and we talked outside of bodybuilding. He was an early young Republican and I wasn’t, but we used to like to bang ideas off of each other. Although we didn’t really agree on too much, we always did it with a smile and we were friends. Again, it was a great time. I mean, Frank Zane was younger than too, but he was appearing in contests and it was around the time that I met Mike Mentzer also. Before that, although you’re not asking, I got a chance to meet John Grimek, who became a lifelong friend, Larry Scott and Reg Park and Steve Reeves. We’re all bodybuilders, but I wasn’t a competitive bodybuilder, but I was certainly interested enough that I made it my business to get to know these guys and to have conversations with them about bodybuilding and outside of bodybuilding. It was wonderful times, as you know.

John Hansen:

Oh, yeah. I envy you to be around at that time and see all those guys. Tell me, what did you think of Arnold in ’73 after seeing him on stage? That had to be incredible.

Roger Schwab:

It was incredible. Quite frankly, he was head and shoulders above the rest, as he was in 1974 also. Although in ’74, Louis Ferrigno started basically … Was the second really big man, if I remember correctly. Of course in ’73, and I think it was … Was it ’73 that Gaines and Butler in Pumping Iron went over the contest with Serge Nubret? I was at that contest in New York. You had to see Serge Nubret to believe it. I mean, he was spectacular, especially in his upper body, and he was symmetrical and very, very sharp.

Roger Schwab:

But as I think either Gaines of Butler said, they turned around to the back and Arnold just surpassed them. He was just better. He’s just more muscular from the back, and certainly, in the legs also, but it was a great, great time. Even though these guys were probably taking steroids at that early time, it wasn’t craziness, and these guys had small weights and they were muscular, and they were still something that you could look up to and say, “I might never look like that,” but it’s great. They were in the realm of real, if you understand what I mean. It was great times.

John Hansen:

Yeah. I think the line that Charles Gaines used in the book Pumping Iron was that, “When Nubret turned around to hit a back pose, it was like the air went out of a soufflé.”

Roger Schwab:

Yeah. I think it was either Gaines who said that. It was correct. He was a little flatter. He wasn’t oiled up as much, I don’t think, and under the lights didn’t do him justice either. But if you saw Serge Nubret in person up close, it was unforgettable physique. I happened to see Sergio Oliva. I was in that Essen in 1972, but I saw Sergio Oliva in Florida in 1971 and I can tell you I don’t know who was better, Arnold or Sergio at their best, but either one could have claimed to be the best, but the other one was right behind them. As you know, they were completely different types of physiques, but I honestly believe that they both realize their full potential. Sergio in ’72 in Essen and Arnold ’74 in New York.

Comparing The Golden Era and Today

John Hansen:

Now, Roger, do you see a lot of the physiques today? I know that physiques are much more advanced. The guys are much, much bigger today and is much better leg development or more ripped in the glutes, et cetera. You were younger back then, so I know your opinion might be skewed, but watching the competitions, when you see someone like Sergio in 1971 and you saw someone like Arnold competing on stage in the ’73 and ’74 Olympia, and you look at these guys, what were you thinking about how they look compared to the guys today?

Roger Schwab:

No comparison, John. There’s no comparison. Even though these guys were bigger than life in the ’70s, they didn’t look bloated. I mean, if you remember Brian Buchanan and some of the … These guys, they all had a small waist … Even Arnold at 235, his waist was small and muscular. I’m a great fan of Dorian Yates, but I believe that the Yates of 1993 in my opinion at his best, changed the field of bodybuilding. Then it was years of Flex Wheeler and Shawn Ray. Well, I supported Dorian because I respected how strong he was. The look of bodybuilding changed.

Roger Schwab:

You probably see it the same way because I look at your physique and I think you realized your potential and epitome, but you never lost your lean muscularity, I would say. Even as big as Arnold was and Serge Nubret and Sergio Oliva, they weren’t grotesque-looking like. I can’t watch it today. I’ve dropped out and I’m not really happy about it, but I really don’t think I had a choice. I didn’t have a choice. When I was judging contests in Columbus, Ohio and in New York, and when you had Mentzer, and Robby, and Boyer Coe, and Ed Corney, and Dickerson, these guys … It was just so spectacular because you watch them year after year. I believe that it was Boyer Coe who once said, “The public expects every year to see a change in us and to see us better, but as you know as a bodybuilder, to any gains that you get after a certain period of time is usually a matter of your leanness and hardness and it’s very difficult to get bigger muscles.”

Roger Schwab:

But you could see the difference each year. I mean, these guys, they compete. It was just who was in the best shape that year. You could see Boyer out of shape in one contest. If you saw him in 1980, I wasn’t in Sydney, but he was spectacular. One year, he was maybe off, and then next year, he was really on. You got to feel like you knew these guys. I did know them. But even if you didn’t, it felt like you knew them and you identified with them, and it was not otherworldly like it is today. That’s all. What goes on with the shoulders and some of the … Today, what is in the shoulders of these people? I mean, it’s not a muscle in there. I don’t know what it is. It is bad, it is bad. Back then it wasn’t, it was wonderful. Great time.

John Hansen:

I agree with you 100%. I mean, I’ve given interviews on other podcasts and I’ve been asked who I think is the best Mr. Olympia of all time and I always think of that picture of Arnold when he’s standing by the trophy with Joe Weider after he won the 1973 Mr. Olympia. To me, that’s like the ultimate Mr. Olympia physique. That’s the epitome. He had the muscle size, the shape, definition. If you were going to define bodybuilding as the perfect male physique, Arnold in that picture looks like he had the best physique in the world.

Roger Schwab:

Well, I don’t think you’re too far off, but I believe that if you’re asking him, he would say walking up the steps in 1974 to go on stage was his best. I tell you, I reiterate you, when I mentioned to him 1973, Arnold can give you a look when he doesn’t agree with you. I got the look, if you know what I mean.

John Hansen:

Yeah, I agree with you. 1974 was the best shape ever, but I was just saying when I think of the ultimate Mr. Olympia physique, I always go back to that picture from standing next to that trophy.

Roger Schwab:

Yeah. No, I agree with you. I believe that you did a previous interview with Roger Callard.

John Hansen:

Yeah.

Roger Schwab:

Callard was around that time also. If you take a look at his physique, he won a couple of titles. He didn’t win the biggest titles, but he was muscular and lean. If they were taking other than supplements, it really didn’t look like it was grotesque. They still look like very, very strong bodybuilders. Ken Waller, even Casey Viator in the early ’70s, they were great but they were nothing like what you’re seeing today.

John Hansen:

Right.

Roger Schwab:

As I said, it was just great times. It was just the era that everything positive was happening, and with women too in the late ’70s.

John Hansen:

All right. Let’s talk about 1975, Roger. I know you talked about walking in the Gold’s Gym with Arnold. Did you know that Pumping Iron was being filmed when you and Arnold and John Balik walked in?

Roger Schwab:

Yes. We knew it was being filmed, and that’s as far as it goes. I didn’t know who was going to be there. I didn’t know we’re going to see Paul Grant because he was from England. You never knew who was going to be at Gold’s Gym, but it was such a wonderful experience. These are the guys who were always in the magazines. It was sunny California and Arnold was the hip, he was the man.

John Hansen:

I imagine you were training at Gold’s that summer when Arnold was prepping for the Olympia, right?

Roger Schwab:

No. As a matter of fact, John Balik, I would come out to California occasionally just to visit him because we had gotten friendly. When he lived back in Philadelphia, he trained Stacey Bentley, if you remember who Stacey Bentley, who’s one of the early female bodybuilders. I went out to California occasionally to visit John, and John was very close to Arnold. As a matter of fact, as you remember, John would give the nutrition seminars that Arnold would give the training seminars, too. I would go out there just sporadically and we would train at Gold’s Gym, you know how exciting it was. It was wonderful, but I wasn’t a regular out there. I just happened to be there then.

John Hansen:

Yeah. Did you get to see Arnold train at all?

Roger Schwab:

I got to see Arnold train on numerous occasions. What I remember most was he liked to train his upper back with a superset of nautilus pullovers and bent-over rows. He would do set after set of that kind of work. I always thought he trained hard. He handled big weights. I watched Zane train with him, I watched Ken Waller, I watched Denny Gable, if you remember all these guys, Dave Draper, Mike Katz when he was out there. They were all like a crew, they all got along, they all trained together. I remember the afternoons when I was out there, we’d go out to the beach and they would lay around in bathing suits and soak up the sun. It was really as the magazines kind of wanted you to see, the golden pens on these California bodybuilders that were just bigger than life and all the women out there. It was wonderful times. It was fun, it was fun. I’m glad I was a part of it. I could tell you an anecdotal story if you want to just hear something quickly.

John Hansen:

Sure.

Roger Schwab:

Probably not relevant, but the first time that I went out to Santa Monica was in the early 1970s. As a matter of fact, I was with John Balik. It was a time when rollerblading was big out in the Santa Monica Pier out in that area. I just gotten out there and it was just an hour or so and we walked out there and these people were rollerblading back and forth. I was in shorts and a T-shirt and feeling pretty good about myself in the California sun. This girl was rollerblading towards me and we made eye contact almost immediately that I just gotten out there, and as she whizzed by me, she looked at me and she said, “Work those calves,” which was funny because my calf starts way up behind my knee and I didn’t … Who knew about genetics at the time. It was really a cool thing. It’s kind of like set the stage and you know you’re just happy to be out there, good times. It was very fraternity-like, they were all friends.

John Hansen:

Right. It shows you how the scene was back then. I mean, how many girls would even notice a guy’s calves today.

Roger Schwab:

Really? You’re younger, and so this was a little bit before your time, but Gold’s Gym was so exciting in those periods of time. It was great because then you would see these guys in the magazines and then they would compete against each other. Outside of the Olympia when they were competing and other guys were competing for the America and those titles, it was close. In the late ’60s, you had Don Howorth and Chet Yorton and Frank Zane and in the 70s It just kept on getting better and better and great competitions in the Olympias all the way up to 1980, which I recused myself because I trained Mike Mentzer before the ’80 Olympia. Then I was in 1981 when all hell broke loose.

Training Routines and Personal Preferences

John Hansen:

Yeah. We’re going to talk about that one day. You were at Gold’s Gym and you would see all these guys train. Well, tell us a little bit more about how they train. You mentioned a little bit about Arnold training his upper back when he was training at Gold’s. Would he train with just shorts and no shoes or anything?

Roger Schwab:

When I saw him train, he was in a variety of different clothing, but he would wear a strap T-shirt and shorts. They all would. They would flex in the mirror and do their thing and it was just like you were seeing John in the old muscle builder magazines. That’s how they would train. They would lie down and they would do dumbbell flyes and they would do bench presses. There was nothing magical about the workouts that they did. Like Reg Park said to me in 1981 when we judged at the Mr. Olympia contest, and I said to him, “How did you train over all these years?” He said, “It was all basics.” He said, “There was not a lot of variety in my training. I trained heavy and hard on the basic lifts.” That’s what he did.

Roger Schwab:

When I was out in California and watched these guys train, I mean, they did concentration curls, but the majority of their training was heavy barbell curls. They did dumbbell flyes and they did heavy bench presses, they did inclines, they did overhead presses, they did squats. They did leg extensions probably too fast and didn’t take them as seriously as maybe they could have the same with leg curls, but squats was a basic exercise. You very rarely saw heavy deadlifts, although Franco used to do them. It seemed like there’s a lot of upper body work and the leg work was primarily squats. It was a great competition on squats, by the way. I mean, some of them put a block under their heels. I remember Arnold did. The ones with longer Achilles or longer tibia from foot to knee put small weights or blocks underneath their heels and squat, and some of the shorter guys like Franco didn’t. Different guys trained in different ways, but I wouldn’t say anybody was training overly to failure set upon set. In those days in California for sure, volume was more of the thing.

John Hansen:

Right.

Roger Schwab:

They didn’t do easy sets either. It wasn’t like fun time. These guys are serious and they were trying to be great, they were trying to be the best. The great thing about it is that all their peers at various times were around them training with them. I mean, even if you’re Arnold, if you have Ken Waller in the gym with you and Corney in the gym and Mike Katz who was so big in the gym training, and even when the guys from Europe came, Serge Jacobs, you remember him I think from Belgium, and Paul Grant who at one time his muscularity was just out of this world, you aren’t going to take it easy when these guys came. You’re going to train hard. The atmosphere was they’re all training hard.

Roger Schwab:

But if you’re looking for some sort of exclusive routine, you know as well as I do, there wasn’t any, and they were training. It was just a lot of training, sometimes morning and night training. Again, I don’t know if they were putting on too much more muscle, but they were staying lean and muscular. It was a great look and they all had it. Some more experienced than others.

John Hansen:

Yeah. Roger Keller had mentioned that when I talked to him. He said that they were always in shape, and then when they would get ready for shows, they would just actually put muscle on. He said they were in shape 12 weeks before the contest and then they would put the muscle on as the show got closer, so they were never out of shape.

Roger Schwab:

You’re exactly right. On the night of the contest, it was who maintained that muscularity and leanness, always depending, as you know, John, about the judging. Even when I wrote the Iron Man, I didn’t make that many friends when I critiqued the contest because you want to be honest and you know as a writer that you … And Ricky could say the same thing, Ricky Wayne. Your work will be everybody’s buddy, but you gain respect if you did it right. I remember like Robert Kennedy had always talked to me that he thought I was a great judge and a great writer because I always told it like it was, although it wasn’t always advantageous being around these guys and not telling them.

Roger Schwab:

Eventually, they respected me and they would come to me after the contest and say, “What did you think? Why was I placed low and why didn’t you think I was as good as last year?” or so forth and so on. Once they trust you and respect you, you could say it and they’d be okay with you. Not necessarily Danny in 1981, who … If you were at the Olympian ’81, Danny was the most in-shape person in that contest, in my opinion, but he placed fifth and he was not very happy about it. But yeah, that’s a discussion for another time, I guess.

John Hansen:

You’ve already talked about Frank Zane because you saw him in the gym and of course you saw him win his Mr. Olympia titles in the late 1970s. What was he like as a personality and as a bodybuilder?

Roger Schwab:

People like to say about Frank Zane that he was an ectomorph, who’s just smaller than the rest who just got into tremendous shape. But the truth of the matter was he wasn’t an ectomorph, he was a mesomorph. He had broad shoulders, he had tiny waist, tiny joints, but if you took a look at his muscle bellies, especially in his quads, his medialis and lateralis was down to his knees. He had muscular pecs. I mean, he had a good back. His calves are long. He wasn’t as big and heavy boned as some of the other guys. But if you take a look, which I’m sure you have, at Frank in his early days when he was a teacher in Pennsylvania, he was heavier, but he was always great.

Roger Schwab:

It was never like he didn’t learn to be really sharp until the late … Actually, I thought ’76, which I thought he might have won the lightweight or with the short man or the division he lost to Franco I believe in Columbus. He was very good. If you remember, he won the IFBB Mr. America I believe in 1967 or ’68, the year after Howorth did. He was good then. I mean, he was great then. The interesting thing that you might find interesting is in 1976, late 1976, the Whitney Museum in New York held a gala for the artistic class in New York, bodybuilding as art. Do you remember that, John?

John Hansen:

Sure. They did that, right, to raise money for Pumping Iron?

Roger Schwab:

Yeah. I went there along with Ed Corney and John Balik and Arnold, and met Frank Zane there. This is late 1976. None of them were really in shape at all. Corney maybe more so than Arnold, and Arnold way more so than Frank Zane, and Frank Zane comes to the Whitney Museum and really, really didn’t look like he could have won Mr. Pennsylvania. I was shocked and I said, “Oh my god, he’s never would even enter Mr. Olympia in 1977.” Well, not only did he enter it and won it, but I couldn’t believe it was the same guy. He was 20 pounds heavier and leaner, and that opened my eyes a little bit. Maybe that’s why they called him The Chemist.

Roger Schwab:

It was really fun to see these guys. I mean, the New York crowd in the art industry or the entertainment industry who saw and thought these guys were spectacular, but somebody like me who’ve been around it for quite a while realized they were all not nearly in shape. But how Zane changed from late ’76 to ’77, and then actually was better in ’78, and in my opinion, realizes potential in 1979 when he beat Mentzer in the Olympia. But a great guy, an intellectual guy, had an outside life, had a beautiful wife, loved to drink fine wine. It was just a class act from the beginning to the end. You knew that he was going to talk to you intelligently. He was approachable, he had no attitude. Just a real man’s man and just a really, really good guy. If you think about it, his professional career spanned from the late ’60s or mid-’60s even to the mid-’80s, so you know he was in shape, for a long period of time, was near the top of his game.

John Hansen:

Yeah. A lot of guys from that era like Chris Dickerson, Boyer Coe, Albert Beckles, Frank Zane, I mean, they’re competing for 30 years from ’60s and ’70s and into the ’80s.

Roger Schwab:

You’re exactly right, but I’ll tell you back when we were younger, especially when I was younger, the word genetics really wasn’t in the vernacular of bodybuilding. I mean, it was like if you had a short bicep, you thought, well, if you do preacher curls, I’m going to lengthen my biceps. Well, I don’t know how you feel about it, but I was always taught in basic physiology that you’re not going to lengthen the muscle. You can increase its cross-section, but you’re not going to shorten the tendon and make the muscle longer. You would think, “Well, this guy has to develop his lower bicep like Larry Scott.”

Roger Schwab:

Well, it wasn’t necessarily going to happen and you got to accept these guys for what they were, like Boyer Coe’s abs. Boyer Coe in 1960, in the late or mid-1960s, as a teenager coming out of Louisiana, he was fantastic physique, just fantastic. Dennis Tinerino, same thing. I mean, these are 19-year-old guys who have more muscle than people in their 30s who have been training for 15 or 20 years. It was just the genetics. We just didn’t know it then why these guys are so great. Casey Viator, his forearms came down to his wrists. Of course Larry Scott showed no visible biceps tendon, neither did Sergio Oliva. Then on the other hand, you had somebody like Albert Beckles who had a short bicep, but a tremendous peak. Freddie Ortiz back in my day was the same thing. You almost had to see it. I mean, there were so many different physiques that you could block their head off and you would know the body just by looking at the body. It was tremendous days. I don’t mean to be drifting off subject but …

John Hansen:

No, no, no. You mentioned seeing Sergio in 1971. Was that when he was in Florida with Arthur Jones?

Roger Schwab:

Yeah. Exactly, and boy was he good.

John Hansen:

Yeah. I remember the pictures of them.

Roger Schwab:

I didn’t see him in Essen in ’72, but I can tell you to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a physique like Sergio displayed in Essen, Germany in 1972. He was spectacular. I think that Arnold realized it. If that competition wasn’t in Essen, I think Sergio would have won that contest. But Serge Nubret was tremendous in that contest, and Arnold was great in that contest. Boy, they were just tremendous days, but when you see … Ricky Wayne wrote a book on Muscle Wars. Sergio came back in the early ’80s, and he probably shouldn’t have come back because by that time, I think he’s … You would know better maybe. It was his right tricep that he tore. The legs, when you get that older, it’s hard to maintain the muscularity in the size of his legs and he just looked like a shadow to me of what he was. But if you take a look at his son today, you know where the genetics were in that family. It’s just amazing. Yeah. Sergio was just otherworldly.

John Hansen:

Yeah. He looks super, super big in those pictures of him in DeLand, Florida.

Idols and Bodybuilders that stood out

Roger Schwab:

Whose physique were you trying to emulate in those days, or who did you look up to and who did you find … Were your views the same as mine or were you seeing it differently?

John Hansen:

No. I think my views are exactly the same as yours. Arnold, of course, I idolize. I mean, he was my physique idol and I would look at pictures of him when I was a teenager and try to develop my physique exactly like his. I think my physique kind of resembled his a little bit. I had a bigger ribcage, wide shoulders, big lats and peak biceps.

Roger Schwab:

But what I noticed about you and him was it seemed to me when I saw you pose that your posing routine was set a little bit like his.

John Hansen:

Yeah, exactly.

Roger Schwab:

His posing routine, you recognized I think, that you emulated somewhat. I think it was an influence in that area.

John Hansen:

I always thought he was a powerful poser, like when he hit the front double bicep and then he slit into that three-quarter back pose and on the side chest and all that, and all the sweeping majestic poses that I thought made him look amazing on stage.

Roger Schwab:

Yeah. I think that you were right. I think somebody who could have really stood next to him … Robby Robinson in the mid-1970s was spectacular. Robby Robinson’s front double bicep, I don’t think anybody matched that, even Arnold … Arnold has a slight twist to his, but Robby was head on and his arms, and his rib cage, and his lats, and his tiny waist … I mean, Brian Buchanan had a smaller waist, but didn’t quite look like Robby did. Those were great days. I don’t think Robby for some reason every September, for some reason, lost it at the Olympia. I don’t think he was ever robbed. I just don’t think he ever really hit his peak as exactly the right time that he wanted to do it. He certainly was an amazing competitor in the mid-’70s.

John Hansen:

Yeah. I was at the Olympia also in the late ’70s as a spectator.

Roger Schwab:

He was favored and you thought he was going to win.

John Hansen:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. In ’77, he was really favored.

Roger Schwab:

Especially. I got to tell you, John, as soon as he walked out, I just knew he wasn’t quite … It was disappointing because I judged him in the Night of Champions. I judged the first Night of Champions, I believe it was ’77, ’76 or ’77. I think Robby won and I said, “Oh boy, he’s going to win Mr. Olympia and boy is it going to be deserved,” but he was not as sharp, he just was not … He wasn’t as sharp in September as he was in May, if I remember correctly. Great contest. It was an exciting time and you can really get excited about it because it was really the time to be there.

John Hansen:

Roger, we’ll talk about that Pumping Iron premiere because you said you were there and you went to that in New York. I remember seeing the pictures of that in Muscle Builder Magazine, and I think also MuscleMag International. But it looked like a great event. They had Robby and Mike Mentzer, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Katz, Ed Corney. They were all posing on stage and they had a lot of stars there. It was a cold January night, right, in New York City?

Roger Schwab:

If I remember, I’m going to take your word for it, but I can tell you one thing, I had a tuxedo on and when we walked in there … Trust me, it was not easy getting into that premiere. You had to know somebody, and I was fortunate enough to know somebody and all of them to get in there. I remember how happy Arnold Schwarzenegger was that night. In Arnold’s strong dramatic accent, he would say, “How wonderful was all the bodybuilders are here tonight,” and he smiled and he was happy and it was … Of course it was his night and it was his movie, I’ll tell you, and boy did that transform everything. Everything happened from that movie.

John Hansen:

Yes.

Roger Schwab:

Just the way bodybuilding just moved into the limelight and became a popular thing, it was great. It was a great time for bodybuilding.

John Hansen:

Was that the first time you actually saw the movie, Roger, at that premiere?

Roger Schwab:

Yeah. Yeah, that was the first time that I saw it. I mean, I saw it subsequently many times, but that was the first time. I certainly didn’t see myself in it. I didn’t because if you look at it, you miss it because there’s only a moment, but I knew I had to be there because I was right there … When you walked in the film crew, I was right there with all the cameras and the guys. Eddie Giuliani, he knew just what he was going to do. They knew when Arnold pulled up, they knew when we pulled up in the car outside and we walked into the place, and it was no more than one minute when we walked in that Ed Giuliani, he was jumping into Arnold’s arms. That was kind of a fun part of that movie.

John Hansen:

What do you think of the movie when you first saw it?

Roger Schwab:

Great, great. How could you not? It was reminiscent of the first time in 19, I think, 59 when Steve Reeves played Hercules. You are too young to remember that probably, but when Steve Reeves played Hercules in the movies, it was … Oh my god, he was the first one. He got us all involved because there was never a muscle man who was a star and all of a sudden Steve Reeves became the king of film. I mean, for a while, he was … I think he’s the most popular actor, maybe not in the States but in the world, in Europe.

John Hansen:

Yeah. I did some research on that for an article I wrote about Steve and they said that he was the most popular movie star in the world for like a year or two at one time.

Pumping Iron’s Impact on the Sport

Roger Schwab:

Yeah, yeah. He looked great. Well, that was different. You never saw anything like that, and so all of a sudden, Steve Reeves on the big screen, he was your hero. It was like Pumping Iron, I mean, it was another period of bodybuilding where all of a sudden it came front and center mainstream and it was great while it lasted.

John Hansen:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). When you saw Pumping Iron, did you ever think that it would have such an impact on so many generations of bodybuilders? I mean, it’s now the 40th anniversary. It came out in ’77 and people are still inspired by it, young kids who don’t know all these bodybuilders except for probably Arnold. They watch it for the first time and they’re inspired by it. Did you ever think it would have that kind of impact when you saw it 40 years ago?

Roger Schwab:

I would love to answer that question if I remembered my feelings at the time, but what I will say now is that I think one of the reasons it was popular is not just because of the bodybuilding, but it was the producers and director of … It was Gaines and Butler who made that film work as much as was Arnold Schwarzenegger because they knew it was hip and they made it hip. They made the idea of Arnold against Lou when the real … Arnold played it to the tee, and Arnold smoking a joint in the movie. They were trying to appeal to a young hip generation and Arnold’s statement that the pump was like coming.

Roger Schwab:

It was like they weren’t just showing guys flexing their muscles, they were trying to make bodybuilding as entertainment and bodybuilding as art, and I think that they were tremendously successful doing it. They developed characters, who you could really like. They created undeserved villain in Ken Waller. They deserved a loving kind of guy who was a little bit lost like Mike Katz. They developed an Ed Corney, who posed like nobody else ever posed before. Then you had somebody bigger than life like Arnold Schwarzenegger. They’re feeding a relatively young kid and they’re bringing Louis’ father into play, and they’re creating drama. It was very well. It was just a smart hip movie, and that’s why I think it was such a success.

Roger Schwab:

How it does today, I don’t know. You might know better than I do, but I do know that everybody who I know who saw it walked away impressed, whether they’re involved in bodybuilding or not. The fact that they chose South Africa to do it … I mean, they didn’t get into the politics and all of everything, but it was lurking in the background and it added to the drama of apartheid Pretoria, South Africa. It brought the weeders into play and it brought the hierarchy into play. You saw a lot of different aspects of bodybuilding and it was very creative, very smart, very hip.

John Hansen:

Yeah, I agree with that. I think both Charles Gaines and George Butler were really smart concentrating on personalities because back then, nobody was really into working out and nobody knew anything about bodybuilding. To the general public, bodybuilders were looked upon as freaks. When the movie focused on the individual personalities behind the physiques, it humanized the film and I think everyone was able to relate to it, even people who never worked out in their life.

John Hansen:

Another thing, Roger, you keep mentioning over and over again in the interview is how much fun it was and how everyone really got along with each other, and they were friends, and they hung out together, and there was a camaraderie. A couple of years ago, there was a movie called Generation Iron and they kept counting it as this generation’s Pumping Iron. When I saw the movie, the biggest difference I noticed between Pumping Iron and Generation Iron was that Generation Iron just really wasn’t fun. The top bodybuilders weren’t hanging out together, they weren’t having fun in the movie. It was just serious bodybuilding and they’re all individuals, separated from each other. When you watch Pumping Iron, you walk away from that movie with a smile and it motivated you, so you wanted to go to the gym. But with Generation Iron, I just didn’t get that same feeling at all.

Roger Schwab:

Well, although I think I described it … Well, I think you hit it more on the head. I think your words that it humanized bodybuilders to the people who saw that movie was really the key because that’s exactly what it did. It made these super men into humans and that you could actually like them, identify with them, laugh with them, have fun with them and really get in their heads a little bit about what they were doing, and how they were doing it, and why they were doing it, and just the overall experience. I’d have to agree with you on that, and I think that that film really helped bodybuilding realize its potential.

Roger Schwab:

Unfortunately, like that I have stated in print that I would state again, I think that first five milligrams of Dianabol that was distributed by CIBA, if it was going to start, it was going to reach its full potential, and I think it went to its end. I think that something they had shown so much promise eventually got destroyed understandably. It was going to go the whole way. It was going to go the whole nine yards and it did. Unfortunately, today, it’s got so much past there. Mohammed Benaziza died offstage. I watched Paul Dillet freeze up in the middle of a contest that he had to be carried offstage. Albert Beckles, I thought we’re going to lose him in one contest.

Roger Schwab:

I mean, all these things happened and it was right before our eyes. That was when I said to myself, “You know what, I guess I’m done. I guess I’m over.” Then after 1982 in Wembley after I head judged that contest, that was the end of it for me and I resigned. They kept writing about it, but that was the end, and you know what, no regrets. I went from the early ’60s to the early ’80s, that was 20 years of my life doing something sort of like the Outer Banks of the inner sanctum. I think I saw it all without getting so close that I didn’t get disillusioned by it. It was great.

John Hansen:

Yeah. Well, I think you hit it on the head too when you said … We were talking about Arnold in ’73 and ’74 and how great all these guys look. They still look human. They still look attainable. Even though some of us didn’t have the genetics to get to that level, you could look at these guys and be inspired and think, “Wow, I’m going to go to the gym and I want to look like that.” Even if you never got to that level, they still look like it was an attainable physique and it was an attractive physique.

Roger Schwab:

That’s right. As I said to you, with all due respect, you stayed involved after all these years. You’ve stayed passionate after all these years. You have trained hard after all these years. You didn’t let yourself go. How many people can you say feel like they realized their potential and stayed involved with the sport and stayed passionate about it and never lost that passion? It didn’t happen so much. I mean, I think I didn’t know Flex Wheeler personally although I watched him many times and I think he said something to the effect that if I wasn’t training, I wouldn’t go into the gym. I don’t think you ever felt that way. I think going into the gym was like instant karma to you. You felt great about doing it and probably felt greater after the workout was over, but I doubt very much that you could give up that aspect of your life.

Roger Schwab:

As a rule, I would say to people, train hard and keep training all of your life and be smart about your training so you can train ’til an old age. I’m 72 and I feel like I train as hard as I did when I was in my 20s and 30s. Might not be. You get sarcopenia when you get older and you lose some muscle, but you’re always fighting to maintain it, and not just aesthetically but physiologically, so your muscles move you and support the skeleton. You want to be strong, you want to walk, you want to be able to move the ambulatory into your old age. I think strength training and bodybuilding is the way to get there. I always thought so and I still believe it today.

John Hansen:

Yeah, I did, too. You look great for 72, Roger.

Roger Schwab:

Thanks, John. Not like you, but I’m plugging away.

John Hansen:

Tell me your thoughts about some of the shows from the late ’70s. You were the head judge at several of the Mr. Olympia contests and you saw Zane win three Mr. Olympia titles.

Roger Schwab:

I can only tell you that if you were in Columbus, Ohio during those shows, I can tell you that none of the bodybuilders like today have to put their hands up to their ears and wait for the audience to start clapping for them. It was like pandemonium. Everybody looked forward to the Olympia, and what was great was that the audience was sophisticated audience, and these were not audiences that knew nothing about the sport, these were audiences that knew a lot about it, and they knew all these stars, and they knew how they look the previous year, and they knew what they expected them to look like the next year. That’s why it was great. They were great, great bodybuilders.

Roger Schwab:

You didn’t know if Roy Callender was going to be sharp in one year and smooth the next. Johnny Fuller. You really didn’t know. Boyer Coe could go look one way to completely than another way. Same with Mike Mentzer. You knew that Ed Corney was always going to be in shape. You knew Frank Zane was always going to be sharp. You saw all that close up and it was like you knew these guys. I did because I was there and I was the judge. But if you didn’t and you were in the audience, it seemed like you were so close to these guys. You’re following them in the muscle magazines. You got a chance to see them and you felt that they were … If they weren’t friends, they were acquaintances, and you really had your favorites, and you really got excited about it. It was just a very heady time to be involved in bodybuilding. It was the epitome of the sport, I would say, right in the ’77, ’78 and ’79.

Roger Schwab:

Of course we’ve discussed, I think not in person, but we’ve discussed that 1979 Mr. Olympia, when it was either Zane or Mentzer. In my opinion, although I trained Mentzer for the 1980 Mr. Olympia, which I’ve recused myself from, I think he was at his peak right when I had him in July before he went to Sydney, but if I’m wrong in taking myself out of the equation In 1979, he was great. When they went to the final pose down between Zane and Mentzer, you really didn’t know before they started posing who was going to win. But as soon as they started posing, I think you can take it from there because I think we both knew, as soon as that posing routine started, that Zane was going to win that contest because he was calm and cool, and had been there before, and knew just what he was doing and Mike … It was just like a rookie compared to a veteran. Zane was the veteran and what Zane lacked in size, he made up for it in detail and he won that contest.

Roger Schwab:

Although I was much closer to Mike than I was to Frank Zane, Zane deserved that contest. Mike came up to me afterwards and said, “How did I lose that?” I said, “In my opinion, you lost it in the posing round. You’ve got too excited and you went too fast and you threw one pose after another and you had a consummate professional right next to you who had been there before, done it before and was already the reigning champion and you lost. You didn’t embarrass yourself, you looked great, but you didn’t win that contest.”

John Hansen:

Yeah. What was interesting with Zane winning three years in a row was that you never really knew if he’s going to pull off another victory. Was he big enough? Was he going to get beat this time by a bigger guy? He really improved his physique every year from when he won in ’77 to ’78. Then like you said, he hit his peak in ’79.

Roger Schwab:

I agree. Honestly, I think that he was going to improve even one more time in 1980, but he got hurt before. But if you take a look at the pictures in Sydney, he was smaller than the rest of those guys, but boy did he had great lines. He really, really looked good. He was just lighter. Then he didn’t enter in ’81 and ’82, which I was a head judge in ’82. None of them came in in great shape in 1982. It was a very disappointing Mr. Olympia in 1982. Viator was great, but Viator to me looked better in 1971 than he did in 1982. That’s just my opinion.

John Hansen:

Wow.

Roger Schwab:

Again, if you got great early in your life, it wasn’t that easy to improve every year. You could get more detail and you could get leaner and finer, but it’s quite a chore, especially as big as Casey was in ’71. How much bigger is he going to get? He just had to refine where he was, but I agree with you, Zane got better and better each year and every win that he got he deserved.

John Hansen:

Yeah. Those were amazing contests that Jim and Arnold put on the late ’70s. They would bring these guys out and then they do a silhouette pose and then all the crowd would scream their name. I don’t think they were even posing to their own music back then, were they?

Roger Schwab:

I think that they were posing to their own music. Do you think that they weren’t? I’m not sure if I remember, but I remember Dickerson used to train to My Way and used to bring the house down. They were difficult years for posing routines. I remember Porter Cottrell, really a good bodybuilder, really a muscular guy. I mean, he didn’t have the size of some of these guys, but you would have some of these guys posing to really dynamic music, and by the late ’70s, they were getting involved in faster and faster music. Porter came out and posed to Over the Rainbow.

Roger Schwab:

To me, it just didn’t work. It was too slow and I commented in print, I said, “Yeah, but you got a bad direction on that.” Did I get heat for that. They didn’t like that at all, and justifiably so, it’s just one man’s subjective opinion, but the guys like Corney and Dickerson knew just what they were doing and knew just the music to pose to and it was tremendous. Then these guys developed their own taste in posing, but to me, and I bet you to you, the most exciting part of the contest by far is when they first walk out. You know right when they first walk out what’s going on, and I remember those days. When they first walked out, you knew who was in great shape and who wasn’t, and you could almost pick your winner in the first two minutes of them walking out on stage. There was nothing like it. There was nothing like a bodybuilding contest at a high level, especially at the Olympia level when these competitors first walked out.

John Hansen:

Yeah, and you never knew what was going to happen, like when Kal did that crucifix pose in 1978 after he got fifth place.

Roger Schwab:

I never quite understood that. I had trained early in the ’70s. Kal trained at a small gym in Philadelphia. He went to California. I mean, he really, really got great in the mid-’70s. His upper body was tremendous, but his legs never really were in … I mean, they’re good. Kal was great, but his upper body stood out and he didn’t win in ’78. Of course there was politics going on there too because Kal was one of the main guys who wanted to form a union in the IFBB. I think there was bad blood then and when he did the crucifix, I think that he had planned that whether he plays second to sixth, he was going to do that, and I don’t really think…he wasn’t as good as Zane and didn’t deserve to win. It was great theater to see it-

John Hansen:

Right.

Roger Schwab:

… but he wasn’t the winner of that contest.

Wrapping Up

John Hansen:

Well, Roger, I just want to say thank you for coming in and joining us on the podcast and talking about the memories of the Pumping Iron years and that golden era of bodybuilding. I hope we can have you on again and I’d like to do another series of interviews about the ’81 Olympia because I know we were both there.

Roger Schwab:

In retrospect, John, I wish I wasn’t there, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I know it was before your time, but really, the early to mid-’60s when Larry Scott was king and what was going on in the Brooklyn Academy of Music was just as exciting as the late ’70s. If you had never seen Larry Scott in his heyday, oh my gosh, and meeting people like Chuck Sipes and George Eiferman, I got to know these guys, and John Grimek, and Reg Park, and even Steve Reeves, and Lou Degni, and Marvin Eder. I mean, these were early days, but boy oh boy, was it exciting times when bodybuilding was young. It was great, great memories even way back then and I’m glad I was alive and I’m glad I saw it all. I think we come from the same page, and again with all respect, I respect who you’re coming from, I respect your passion. You write about it, you talk the talk, but you walk the walk, and I’m glad that you’re in my life and I’m glad we talk, and if there’s anything I can do, you know where I am.

John Hansen:

Absolutely, Roger. I’d love to have you back on the show again and I’d love to hear some of your old stories about the Larry Scott days. You’re right, that was before my time, but I heard that was an amazing time with bodybuilding.

Roger Schwab:

It really was. Thank you very much. Stay in touch with me and I’m sure we’ll talk.

John Hansen:

All right, Roger, thank you very much. Take care.

Roger Schwab:

Best always, John. Take care.

John Hansen:

You, too. All right, thanks for joining us for another edition of the Bodybuilding Legends Podcast brought to you by Old School Labs. Join us next week when our guest will be writer Charles Gaines. Charles was actually the writer of the book Pumping Iron and the novel Stay Hungry, and he was involved of course with the movie Pumping Iron. We’re going to have a great conversation with author Charles Gaines next week on the Bodybuilding Legends Podcast. Thanks again to Old School Labs for sponsoring this site and we’ll see you guys next time.