At age 15, I scoured the three muscle magazines: Iron Man, Strength & Health and Muscle Builder every month for the latest weight training routines of the champion Olympic weightlifters and bodybuilders of the era. I then rushed to the basement to test drive the routines of champions. Some routines were excellent, most didn’t work. One of my goals as a prolific health and fitness writer is to save trainees a lot of time and frustration sorting through the strength and muscle haystack trying to find the golden needle of true progress: Now at almost 72 in 2022 I have been in the iron game for 56 years. It is important to share this vast storehouse of empirical iron knowledge, all lodged in the grey matter of my brain.

One of the most influential figures in my career was John “Mac” McCallum. He burst onto the muscle and strength scene in the 1960s and built a cult following with his superb column in Strength & Health magazine. The “Keys to Progress” series ran for years and presented a viewpoint and tone that struck a resonant chord with alpha males worldwide. Mac was a man’s man, he offered up a vision of the idealized man—then provided a blueprint for morphing yourself into that ideal. In Mac’s way of thinking, the ideal man was large, muscular, athletic and smart. He loved the rugged, functional physiques of the Olympic weightlifter. Mac was generally dismissive of bodybuilders: they were too effete, preening, egotistical and un-athletic. 

First and foremost, Mac’s goal was to become strong. The key to transforming into the idealized alpha male was to grow dramatically stronger. Everything flowed from strength; in order to grow stronger, Mac championed the strategy of getting bigger. How did a man grow bigger and stronger? He first and foremost lifted weights in a very specific and disciplined fashion. Secondly, the acolyte purposefully ate a massive amount of food. The goal was to lift weights hard, heavy, often and with incredible training intensity, or “effort,” as he called it. To “support” the intense lifting Mac wanted athletes to eat big and eat often. The emphasis was on protein but his nutritional approach was the “seafood diet,” i.e. see food, eat it. When it came to packing on muscle size, intense lifting and intense eating will grow a body.

He was also a huge proponent of rest, and deep sleep. He rightly believed that if a man shatters himself to the required degree in weight training—lifting long and often—food and rest are needed to recover and grow. The entire growth equation was simple: lift, eat, sleep, grow. Genius.

Mac’s strategy was lift hardcore and eat like a ravenous animal—purposefully and repeatedly, unapologetically… What a profoundly fun, easy and delightful philosophy for a young man to follow! Eat as many calories as possible from the time you get up until the time you go to bed.
 

There is no school like Old School!
Train, Eat, Sleep, Grow - Repeat!
 

As a stud high school athlete but a tall thin boy, I ate two lunches and drank four pints of milk for less than a dollar. Being an alpha male leader of boys, I routinely had food offerings from other students dropped off in front of me. I was ready, willing and able to do what it took to add muscle and power. Whatever class followed lunch I predictably went narcoleptic. I burned for radical physical transformation. I was forcefully morphing my body. I engaged in lots of aerobic sports activities which kept my metabolism kicking. The lifting built muscle and the copious calories supported recovery and growth. Shot full of teen testosterone and training hard enough to trigger hypertrophy, I grew muscle—lots of muscle. By age 17, I weighed 200-pounds at 8% body fat. I set my first national records and won my first national championships. Only awful grades prevented me from attending a Division I school on a football scholarship. All of my progress was rooted in the profound teachings of Mac.

The goal was forced evolution; we would morph ourselves by exerting our iron will. We would faithfully combine copious and indiscriminant consumption of calories with hardcore weight training. We sought to morph from human to inhuman, from normal into abnormal, from forgettable into gargantuan. We would not become another cog in societal machinery; we sought distinction from our fellow man. We were of the warrior caste. This martial mentality dug its talons deep into me, and by the time I was 14 years old I had been into the hardcore progressive resistance scene for nearly four years. I took my training cues from heavyweights like Bill Pearl, Norbert Schemansky, Reg Park, Paul Anderson, John Grimek, Bill Starr, Terry Todd, Tommy Suggs, Pat Casey and Morris Weisbrott—not in person, but through the pithy, informative, no-bullshit, all-man training articles untainted by any whiff of commercialism.

In 1927 G.I.Gurdjieff wrote "Meetings with Remarkable Men." In it he spoke of his encounters with various mystics: the Aermenian Sarkis Pogossian, the Russian Prince Yuri Lubovedsky, plus an odd assortment of seers and occultists. In describing these characters Gurdjieff wove their stories into his own story. Since the 1960s I too have been on my own journey. I too am a seeker of truth. I too have experienced my own version of Meetings with Remarkable Men. Instead of mystics I have been introduced to a succession of masters in the resistance training, nutrition, cardiovascular training and performance-related psychology that have shaped my ideas on the quest for physical and psychological transformation. To learn more about some of my transformative mentors check out the posts below.
 

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Thanks
Marty Gallagher
Get Strong! Live Long!