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What follows is a portion of Springer Nature’s statement:

With the Coronavirus outbreak having an unprecedented impact on education, Springer Nature is launching a global program to support learning and teaching at higher education institutions worldwide. Remote access to educational resources has become essential. We want to support lecturers, teachers and students during this challenging period and hope that this initiative will go some way to help.

Institutions will be able to access more than 500 key textbooks across Springer Nature’s eBook subject collections for free. In addition, we are making a number of German-language Springer medical training books on emergency nursing freely accessible. These books will be available via SpringerLink until at least the end of July.

The new program is an addition to Springer Nature’s Macmillan International Higher Education (MIHE) division’s initiatives to support academics and students with their teaching and learning during this difficult time. Academics can request ebook samples of MIHE where they already have print editions and can have open access to its course management systems for the books they use.

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You can check out Part 01 here.

Even though in the last entry I just took a look at the exterior front and back covers and was hoping to get into something a bit more meaty in this entry, the first two interior ads, the one on the other side of the front cover and the one on the opposite page before the Contents and Shows and Events schedule page, were similarly interesting and worthy of its own entry.

That’s obviously a great shot of Bob Hoffman, most likely at or around his physical peak. I’ve only really seen photos of him when he was much older and didn’t look like he trained much, if at all. In any case, the testimonials are interesting to read. I also did a quick Google search for “The Road to Super Strength!” booklet, but it doesn’t appear to be online. This was being sold well into the 1940s, though, it seems, as a different ad appears in Popular Science from March, 1946. I wonder if it was updated much, if at all, 8 years later.

This is a strange one. I never really heard of the “Perfect Voice Institute,” but sure enough, some form of the company and information is still around, even though the original is from 80 years ago! Based on this Yahoo! Answers entry, the technique was implemented by Eugene Feuchtinger in 1932. You can actually see Feuchtinger’s booklet at that Perfect Voice link!

The post What can we learn from a fitness magazine from March 1938? – Part 02 appeared first on fullSTEAMahead365.

Before we dive into the contents in future blog posts, I thought it would be nice to see the front and back covers.

As you can see, the same teaser style featured here on the front cover of this magazine from the 1930s is still in vogue today (aka, clickbait).

According to the inside cover, the man on the cover is Jimmy “Muscles” Jackson of the Jamous (sic?) Jackson Trio. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with him, but his physique is definitely impressive regardless of era, just with the somewhat lackluster legs that would be the standard into roughly the mid- to late-1960s.

As would be the standard practice for fitness publications even into the modern era, the magazine was a showcase for the publisher’s products, in this case, Hoffman’s York Barbell company products, which, like this magazine, was founded in 1932.

Hoffman always had a preference for weightlifting over pure bodybuilding, so that’s of course what’s often emphasized in the magazine and here in the ads, but, save for the iron boots, this ad and its products wouldn’t look too out of place today.

As related to my earlier statement about legs and the lack of relative development and emphasis at the time, the exercise demonstrated in the upper right appears to be a freestanding version of a leg extension. I suspect this setup would be even better for freestanding leg curls, however. Otherwise, it’s a very 1930s way to focus on leg development outside of the core weightlifting exercises in the upper- and lower-left photos.

Finally, note the use of the term “SUPERMEN,” along with other superlatives. Comic book hero Superman would make his debut on newsstands on April 18, 1938, which would be one month after the cover date of this magazine. Coincidence? Of course, but it goes to show that it was probably a common term at the time, so it’s only natural that a really strong guy in a comic would be called a Superman.

See you soon in Part 02, where we’ll dive into the interior of this fascinating historical magazine.

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