Hippolyte Triat – Iron Game History – July, 1995

Weight training is the child of gymnastics. We sometimes forget that before strongmen lifted weights, they went to the palestra to race, vault, climb and practice all the other traditional forms of gymnastics. These early athletes gradually discovered that they could grow stronger and shapelier if they began lifting and working with weight. Gymnasts had trained with primitive weights the days of the ancient Greeks, but no one had created a rational system for using them.