GOLDEN AGE NUTRITION: Chuck Sipes

Learn all about the nutritional principles that sustained the man they called "the Iron Knight"

For me, it’s Chuck Sipes. As far as I’m concerned, no other Golden Age bodybuilder lived the ideal of bodybuilding as an heroic enterprise better than Chuck. An athletic freak and force of nature Chuck may have been — standing 5’9” at 220lb, he bench-pressed 570lb in his garage with a bench and no rack, humping the weight up onto his chest from his hips — but his rough exterior belied the true heart of gold that lay within.

A devoted Christian, Chuck retired from the sport in disgust at the growing prevalence of anabolic steroids — even though he could have used them to reach the pinnacle of the sport, having already placed second to Sergio Oliva in the 1967 Mr Olympia — and instead spent much of his free time providing tutelage to fatherless troubled young men who were in danger of spending the rest of their lives in the clutches of the California prison system. Chuck had been a lumberjack, one of the reasons for his enormous forearm development, and remained a keen outdoorsman till his dying day. His love of the outdoors, and his belief in the healing powers of simple living in the bosom of mother nature, formed the basis of a program of mentoring that took place for many decades, and helped turn around the lives of dozens, maybe even hundreds of young men.

So Chuck didn’t just look like a hero. He was one. I tried to capture this as best I could in the opening to his chapter in my book Three Lives of Golden Age Bodybuilders, where I imagined Chuck leading one of his expeditions into the California wilderness and how the young men in his care started to feel themselves opening up in the presence of this powerful father figure:

For a week now they have followed him, climbing further into the mountains. From time to time they stop, and he points out to the young men some species of tree or plant, a bird of prey high above, circling in the cloudless sky – even a mountain lion across the valley beyond. They look at these things, but observe with just as much wonder the enormous musculature of the man’s outstretched arms and shoulders; and when he walks in front of them, the vast spread of his back, the neck that seems to have been transplanted from some mythical creature, and his calves, like two thick joints of ham, above the ankle socks and boots. They have seen men like this before, but never outside the pages of a comic book. In the afternoons, when the sun is less intense, they find a shaded spot, drop their packs and exercise together. When night comes, they sleep soundly under a canopy of stars none of them have ever seen back in the city.

Now, in the evenings, after supper, under his guidance their talk moves from the usual chit-chat, jokes and things young men talk about to a more serious topic: how each of them has come to find himself on the wrong side of the law. At first, the young men have trouble opening up. It’s not easy to talk like this. Nobody has ever listened to them before. Their thoughts and feelings have never mattered. But this seems to be his real superpower: he shows them that they do matter. They are not just victims of circumstance, the ever-present criminal element of society, but masters of their own destiny. They have a choice. When they return home in three weeks’ time, each of them will be determined to be a better man – to be just like Chuck Sipes.

This essay is in danger of becoming a meditation on themes best left to Jordan Peterson for now. Plus it’s a Wednesday afternoon and I don’t feel much like crying about the plight of young men, terrible though it may be.

What I really want to talk about is Chuck’s approach to nutrition. In my GOLDEN AGE PROGRAMME FOR SIZE AND STRENGTH, I’ve already introduced you to the basic keep-it-simple-stupid principles of Golden Age bodybuilding, which apply to both training and nutrition. Golden Age bodybuilders relied overwhelmingly on whole foods, especially nutrient-dense animal foods (organ meat, red meat, chicken, eggs, milk, cheese) to fuel their muscle growth. Although many used supplements, including early protein powders like Rheo Blair’s, supplementation was still in its infancy and so they remained, as the name cautions us not to forget, supplemental to a proper diet.