THE OG: Abdominals II

I thought I'd surprise you with a double instalment this week. This one comes with a special French twist (no, not the exercise)...

The beginning position of a trademark Gironda frog sit-up

In yesterday’s instalment of THE OG, Vince Gironda said that the greatest set of abdominals he had ever known belonged to a French Canadian man called Leo Robert. Robert was a Mr Universe in the 1950s. Here’s a picture of him on the cover of a magazine, during his competitive prime.

Robert was a regular contributor to bodybuilding and physical-culture magazines throughout the 1950s, and he wrote a very interesting article about how the French trained their abdominals, in contrast to the Americans. I didn’t know that, in the 1950s at least, the French bodybuilders were considered to have the most enviable midsections in the world. Looking at Leo Robert, I can certainly see why that might have been.

Anyway, I’ve decided to reproduce Robert’s article for you today, so you can consider some of the similarities and differences in methods between Robert and Gironda. It’s clear that Robert and the French methods had a pretty strong influence on Vince’s approach to training abdominals.

What’s particularly interesting about this article, apart from the light it throws on the difference between American and French methods in the late 1950s, is that it shows Vince being Vince, experimenting and trying different things. I’ve enshrined experimentation as one of the Gironda Principles, and this is a great illustration of why. Vince definitely practised what he preached.

One of our great American champions and trainers, Vince Gironda, made a spectacular test with the French method. Though Vince is well into his forties he has the same daring and liking for challenges he had in his youth. A year or more ago, Vince permitted his magnificent body to actually grow fat. Not a vestige of his once great muscularity appeared. Yet by training his midsection with weights on three days and with high set, high rep weightless movements on alternate days, he achieved a sharpness of muscular outline and a richness of muscular texture such as no other present day champion possesses. One of the exercises which Vince claims did the most for him was this same partial situp that I have described here.

The exercises fit with those I described in yesterday’s instalment of THE OG, especially the focus on partial rather than full situps. The frequency with which Vince trained and the number of reps he did, are a different matter, according to Leo Robert. In The Wild Physique (1984), Vince did not advocate high-set, high-rep movements at all.

Still, as I say, it’s clear that Vince took plenty away from the French method of training abdominals, even if he didn’t advocate the method fully in later years.

Before we go any further, remember that you can still get 15% off a full year’s subscription to my Substack if you click this button before the end of the month: