IS
BODYBUILDING REALLY A SPORT?
And If So - Why?
By Bill Dobbins
When
it comes to public recognition and acceptance, bodybuilding has come a long
way in the past few decades. In
the 1960s, a movie like "Don't Make Waves" featured Tony Curtis making a fool out of a big, dumb bodybuilder
(played by the Blond Bomber, Dave Draper) in order to slip into his girlfriend's
bed. Can you imagine such a
thing happening today in an Arnold Schwarzenegger film? Even an alien predator can't terminate
Arnold the movie star, so a pencil-neck pretty boy would hardly offer much
competition.
Bodybuilding
competition has also achieved a remarkably high profile in a very short
time. All the major networks
have featured top-level physique contests, and a whole range of IFBB and
NPC events are regularly telecast on cable sports networks like ESPN. The 1990 IFBB World Amateur Championships
were held in Malaysia with the complete cooperation and participation of
the Malaysian government and was telecast live nationwide.
Ben
Weider, President of the International Federation of Bodybuilders, has been
tireless in his efforts to persuade the International Olympic Committee
to include bodybuilding in the Olympic Games and has met with considerable
success in achieving this lifelong goal.
But
in spite of all this progress bodybuilding, there are still those that refuse
to accept bodybuilding on the most fundamental of grounds---they don't believe
bodybuilding is really a sport at all!
Instead, they contend it's some sort of theatrical exhibition, or
a muscle-oriented beauty contest.
The
gist of this argument goes like this:
(a) In a bodybuilding contest, all the competitors
do is flex and pose. They are
judged almost entirely on how they look, not on the basis of any athletic
performance. There is nothing
inherently athletic about flexing and, while posing make take a lot of skill,
it is not that athletically demanding.
(b) The athletic effort that bodybuilders
make is done when they train with weights in the gym. But they are not judged directly on the basis of that effort---on
how much weight they can lift or how many reps they can do with a given
weight. Any increase in strength,
power, speed, endurance, agility or coordination they might achieve---all
of which are legitimate athletic qualities--- is strictly an incidental
by-product of the workouts, not the primary goal.
(c) The real point of bodybuilding training
is to change body shape, proportion and conformation, which may result in
the development of an aesthetically outstanding body, but does not constitute
a sport in the traditionally accepted meaning of the word.
But
are the meanings of concepts like "sport" and "athlete"
really all that clear and well-defined?
People use these words as if they know exactly what they mean, but
when you look at the etymology of these terms it becomes evident that they
don't really denote precisely what popular opinion thinks they do.
For
example, here are some definitions from the Oxford English Definition, which
not only gives definitions, but describes how the meanings of words have
changed over the course of history:
ATHLETE
- (derived from words meaning "to contend for a prize")---A
competitor in the physical exercises---such as running, leaping, boxing,
wrestling---that formed part of the public games in ancient Greece and Rome.
ATHLETIC
(1) Pertaining to an athlete, or to contests
in which physical strength is vigorously exercised.
(2)
Of the nature of, or befitting, an athlete; physically powerful, muscular,
robust.
SPORT
(1)
Pleasant pastime; entertainment or amusement; recreation, diversion. (Particularly associated with the taking
or killing of wild animals, game or fish.)
(2)
Participation in games or exercises, especially those of an athletic character
or pursued in the open air.
(3)
To engage in, follow, or practice sport, esp. field-sport; to hunt or shoot
for sport or amusement.
Obviously,
when we speak of "sport" nowadays we rarely include "field
sports," that is hunting and fishing. Sport, in the modern sense, usually refers to "contents
in which physical strength is vigorously exercised." But there are plenty of exceptions.
Look in the sports pages of any daily newspaper and you'll see coverage
of golf, bowling, table tennis and even motor racing.
Not really the stuff you'd expect to the ancient Greeks to include
in the Olympic Games.
The
modern Olympic Games also involves some events the ancient Olympians might
easily fail to recognize. Synchronized
swimming? Rhythmic gymnastics?
What's next---competitive cheerleading?
In
point of fact, the modern definition of sport is extremely flexible and
includes a wide-range of competitive events involving physical skill. Some of these demand high levels of traditional
athletic abilities such as strength and speed; some do not. The standard of performance in sports
like basketball and football, for example, have risen dramatically over
the years due to improvements in our knowledge of physical training. The athletes in these sports are therefore
bigger, stronger, faster and have more endurance, so they play that game
that much better.
In baseball, on the other hand, experts feel that today's players aren't really that much better than those of several decades ago. Why? Because baseball is much more a game of special skills and split-second timing than generalized athletic ability, so the fact that modern baseball players are usually better overall athletes than their counterparts in the past has made relatively
little
difference in the level at which the game is played.
But
sports can also be categorized another way. There are sports of objective measurement---how many, how much,
how far, how high, how fast---and sports of form---such as gymnastics, diving,
or synchronized swimming. In
measured events, if you cross the finish line first, nobody cares how good
you looked doing it. Proper
technique may help you to throw a javelin farther, but you win or lose based
on the length of the throw, not on the beauty of your execution of the throw. But in sports of form, how high you go,
how far, how wide, how fast and other "measurement" considerations
are not evaluated directly, but only to the degree that they contribute
to the grace, beauty and aesthetics of the physical movements of the athlete's
body.
So
where does this leave bodybuilding?
It isn't a sport of objective measurement, like powerlifting. Nor is it a sport involving the execution
of a series of aesthetic movements. (Even the "free posing" round of a bodybuilding contest
doesn't really involve the evaluation of the movement of the body; rather
the judges are charged with evaluating the body while it's in motion.)
Therefore, if bodybuilding is really a sport, exactly what kind of
sport is it?
The
term "plastic" in this case, means the molding, shaping or
sculpting of physical form. Bodybuilding
is often described as the sculpting of the muscles of the body, and this
is exactly what it is. When the bodybuilding takes place as part of a sports competition,
the ultimate result is judged according to aesthetic standards, just as
gymnastics or diving is. This
result is achieved by athletic means, a lot of hard, difficult and intense
physical training. In fact,
the demands upon the body of training and diet programs followed by world-class
competition bodybuilders are so incredible that only highly gifted, superbly-conditioned
athletes could be expected to bear up under stresses of this magnitude.
World-class
bodybuilders are, and have to be, exceptional athletes. Bodybuilding training in the gym is a
demanding athletic activity. And
it is this training that is directly responsible for shaping and sculpting
the body into the final plastic form that will be judged on stage in a bodybuilding
competition. The mass, shape,
proportion, symmetry, and definition of the physique, the degree of muscle
separation, the low body fat and resulting display of striations and "cuts,"
are all the result of highly strenuous athletic workouts in the gym plus
the discipline of following an eating and nutrition program designed to
yield maximum muscle mass with a minimum of body fat.
Bodybuilders
are sometimes criticized because they become so muscular, develop so much
bulk, that other of their athletic abilities suffer. But this simply means they are specialized, just as
all elite athletes tend to be. As
far as athletic bodies are concerned, "form follows function." You look like what you do. Bodybuilders may not be good marathon
runners, but long-distance runners generally can't lift much weight, either.
Gymnasts tend to be small, compact and muscular.
Discus-throwers are beefy and powerful. Golfers do not succeed because of the height of their vertical
leap, and are rarely slam-dunk artists, while all the physical power in
the world doesn't help sink a three-foot putt on the final hole of the U.S.
Open with the tournament at stake.
So
bodybuilders are indeed athletes, the training they go through is highly
athletic, the ultimate result, the competition-prepared bodybuilding physique,
is a direct consequence of that training, and the plastic form of this physique
is what the competitors are judged on in a bodybuilding contest. Therefore, while competition bodybuilding
is artistic, it's not an art form; and while it has theatrical and dramatic
elements, it is not theater. It's
a sport. And it satisfies every
criterion as to what an athletic contest or a sport ought to be.