Where Are They Now? – Iron Game History – February, 1990

Philadelphia lawyers of the weightroom can mount a pretty convincing argument supporting the view that the toughest strength feat is the chin-up (the pull-up), the ultimate playground exercise. Asked to “make a muscle,” the skinny playground urchin manfully flexes his arm and pops up a little ball of biceps. (What other muscle is there to “make”?) Perhaps as a response to some jungle memory, the urchin pulls his chin over a bar, clenched in blood-drained fingers, and in the process releases the monkey in himself, indeed in all of us whose initiation into our great game had more to do with chinning than with barbells.