Slim and Fit Books: Women Only Workouts

I grew up believing that everyone lifted weights and did sit-ups. I loved to watch my father roll a tennis ball from his palm down the inside of his forearm, then pop it off his biceps; it always made me giggle. The younger of my two older brothers began weight training when I was about 8 years old. In our “rumpus room” Mike would study the bodybuilding magazines and work out with the “weights” our dad had made for him out of cement-filled coffee cans. My younger brother and I used to sit on Mike’s shoulders to increase the resistance when he did push-ups. All of this was so much fun!

How I Became a Bodybuilding Big Shot

It was an honor to present Jack LaLanne with a plaque from the
California Governor on his 90th birthday in 2005. (l-r) Laura,
Mike Dayton, Jack and Elaine LaLanne.

I was a ravenous reader from a very young age, and I’d spend hours poring over all my brother’s magazines. I had the biggest crush on Michael Landon, who had been a bodybuilder before the TV series Bonanza and then Little House on the Prairie made him a household name. When my brother Mike went to Pennsylvania in 1967 to compete in the Teenage Mr. America contest, I was 14 years old and waiting on pins and needles. The phone call was short—long distance calls were expensive back then—but Mike had won!

Mike took a city bus back from the airport to our Oakland Hills home and walked into the house with a 5-foot trophy that was taller than me! I was so proud, and on that day bodybuilding was imprinted on my brain as a really cool thing to do.

The trophy was so big that Mike had to dismantle it to get it on the plane, but during the flight he cradled a couple of the smaller “sub” trophies and regaled a few passengers with his accomplishments. Mike was, and is, the entertainer.

This was one of the early issues of Strength
Training for Beauty, published at a time when
women’s bodybuilding was still about beauty.

Once he was home I relived every minute of his victory, as he would recount the hours and minutes of his national debut. I felt his fear as he walked from behind the curtain to center stage with all his competitors. He told me how tough the competition was, but as he was called out time and time again, he knew he was going to finish high up.

For hours I had watched my brother rehearse his posing routine and practice the isometric tension that made his muscles stand out. As he told me about the contest and how he’d stood in front of the audience, I tensed my own muscles, adjusted my feet and pulled my little shoulders back to appear the best for the judges.

In bodybuilding contests the judges look at the group and then call contestants out for comparisons. As Mike recounted the contest, I watched him puff out, just as he had stood at the contest, and hear his number called out, again and again and again. At that point I was his audience, watching him step up to win Best Abs, Best Arms, Best Legs and then finally, AAU Teenage Mr. America. At that time my brother was the youngest ever to win the Teenage Mr. America title.

I wrote "How I Became Teenage Mr. America" by Mike Dayton, and sent it off to Ironman magazine, which published the piece. I continued to write more articles—using my brother’s byline—about the bodybuilding lifestyle and training. Then I ventured off and wrote stories about my brother under the highly original “ghost” name of Larry Donahue.

My brother Mike was one of
the top bodybuilders of the 1970s.

My brother went on to win the professional Mr. America title in 1976, while I was working on my master’s degree in mass communications. I began submitting more articles about my brother to martial arts and bodybuilding publications. By this time many of the articles were showing up under my own byline. Then, I began working for the bodybuilding heavyweights, Muscle and Fitness and Flex magazines, edited at the time by a longtime associate, Bill Reynolds, who had started his career in my native Oakland-Berkeley neighborhood.

In 1983 Bob Anderson, then-publisher of Runner’s World magazine, decided to cash in on the women’s bodybuilding phenomenon and sought me out to be editor of the first mainstream women’s bodybuilding magazine, Strength Training for Beauty. At the time doors were opening for women to enter new careers and meet men on an equal footing, both intellectually, and economically. I believed I was doing a great thing for women who wanted to be all that they could be physically, and on equal footing with the men.

Well, here's where that old hindsight rule comes in. My promotion of women's bodybuilding may have steered us off course for a few years, but I'm happy to have that experience to get us back on track today. What I've learned is that women need to be the best women can be, physically. But this time around it's by our standards, not the men's.

So that’s how this skinny 5-foot-3 girl wound up being one of the most prolific writers in the field of bodybuilding and fitness during its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s. I’ve interviewed and hung out with the top coaches, trainers and physique stars over the last 40-or-so years. I've spent the last 20 years applying all that knowledge to workouts specifically for women. And not women in the 1980s, but women with today’s mindset and lifestyle. What I'll teach you will hit a chord, and finally make some sense out of this wacky body we live in.

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