BUD COUNTS at age 20, 5:8, 170 This Is on early picture of Bud who has since developed considerably greater bulk, has ans 3 inches Biggor This is AMG photo ZR 133, 13 catalog of Bud $1.30.

aining but

tics. While In

engages in considerable the navy he was active in boxing AMG photo XG14-M Additional pages 10 and 11 of XG13

2 color sets $5.

COMPETITION CAN KILL YOU. The spirit of the game is an exciting thing, and when he is performing before a great crowd or is eager to gain a coveted prize or title, a contestant may well go beyond the goal he believed possible for himself. Long before the body has told him to stop, that it couldn't stand any more but he ignores these waming "limitations" and his will power carries him through. Which is the most glorious and stimulating-a runner whose lungs are searing and heart pounding till it seems It must break as he gets over the goal line, a boxer whose face is a pulp that he cannot see out of but he still fights on, a weightlifter whose whole face is a mass of almost bursting blood vessels as he tries to put an outrageous poundage above his head? While some can take this kind of punishment without apparent harm, others have been maimed for life and/or had their life shortened by excessive competition. In our own field, none of the barbell magazines will tell you of the famous lifters who have suffered blood clots in the eye, varicose veins, displaced backbones, etc as a direct result of heavy lifting (and if we were to give their names they would crucify us).

Many of the bodybuilders will have no part of heavy weight competition and have been ridiculed for this by lifters. The best bodies rarely come from heavy lifting and naturally we who put out bodybuilding books believe having beautiful proportions to be far more important than lifting 5000 pounds off the floor. (We do not mean to belittle the extraordinary lifters and we say more power to them but we do eamestly believe that heavy lifting can prove a greater strain than some bodies can stand will prove a great detriment to them.)

We hope this little essay will not encourage other lazy people (like ourselves) to be completely non-competitive. There is a happy medium in all things. And while it may be foolish to drive ourselves beyond the point of reasonable endurance, should we be content to stay as stationary vegetables?.

Letters from Readers: REGARDING OBSCENITY "You plous hypocrites at Physique Pictorial make me sick. You make a big pretense at being the champions of anti-censorship freedom of thought, etc., and yet you babble out on page 19 of your last Issue how you disapprove of photos 'appealing to the baser emotions'. Now just who are you to determine that sensual emotions are base? and what right have you or anyone to criticize anyone for what he wants to think or read or see. You are SICK, SICK, SICK, just like the rest of the morons in this county who think there is something 'dirty' and bad about sex and the human body. The only thing dirty about either is what hypocrites like yourself try to read into them. There was a day when society demanded rigid confomance to religious views and an athiest or agnostic or even a member of a different sect was promptly bumed at the stake. Thank God we've outgrown that. But now some pious segments of the social group demand a uniform compliance with so-called morals (and when they say morals they automatically mean sex-morals) and modesty standards. It never occurs to them that if a magazine or book violates their standards they can just ignore it, but rather they cry out that their little children have been so poorly reared that they have an insatiable appetite to see pictures of the unclothed body and read about sex (all for kicks) and that in so doing their whole lives will be ruined. If you really want to help your readers why dont you list the addresses of companies who sell nudes?" JL, Athol Washington. EDITOR'S REPLY: Like Justus Pilate we would like to call for the basin of water, cleanse our hands and ask "What is Truth?". We cannot give logical answers to some of JL's questions. We can only feebly suggest that "society" must be educated gradually, in slow steps., that just as it rebels against other forms of culture, physical culture and its pure unadomed representation is more of a jolt that the general social group can absorb unless it is considerably watered down. Open warfare gains little, might cause a loss of everything. Co-existence, but not appeasement impresses us as the most sensible course.