Beyond the Universe Book Reveiw

Book Review

Beyond the Universe: The Bill Pearl Story

by Bill Pearl with Kim Shott

Reviewed by Ken O'Neill

Bill Pearl has done it again! To top off a career that includes several best-selling encyclopedic training books, he has now written his autobiography. Anyone interested in the Irongame -- especially bodybuilding -- must read it. For if there is a Grand Master of the sport, it is the legendary Bill Pearl.

As a whole, the Irongame has precious few enduring legendary figures. For one thing, most competitors retire prior to their middle years. Once the victories are over, they move on. And our attention moves on as well, occupied by the latest champions and their achievements. Publications maintain a "now" focus, never looking back, alienating readers from the enduring sources of wisdom. If we consider the enduring icons of the past century of the Irongame, precious few names come easily to mind: John Grimek, Steve Reeves, Paul Anderson, Bill Kazmaier, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bill Pearl.

Of them, Arnold's story is best known because he is the only bodybuilder who has retained a full-time press agent for most of his public life.

Of those few names listed above, two remain the rock bottom foundation of the sport, leading and never abandoning exemplary lives of fitness while exhibiting exceptional reputations based on their humility and integrity: John Grimek and Bill Pearl. When Grimek reached an age when it was time for him to step down from doing exhibitions, he thereafter directed all such requests to Bill Pearl.

Grimek did not leave behind a body of published works. We know of him only through secondary sources. Pearl, on the other hand, remains the major contributor as a champion, coach and published author. Now in his early 70s, he's cut back on training a bit: these days he trains six days weekly, at an hour and a half per workout!

In recent decades he's become the most highly sought-after spokesperson for resistance training fitness, logging thousands of air miles annually to represent the sport.

Many people have discovered Pearl's record breaking achievements from one of his training books. His first publication, Keys to the Inner Universe, more than 600 pages of "how to" workout information, set a standard no other author has attempted to emulate. In that book, Pearl showed that the limits to all around training with any piece of equipment are limited ownly by one's own imagination.

He did that by means of hundreds of illustrations showing how to use virtually all equipment available at that time to do just about any movement. Ironically, he could not find a publisher matching his vision or imagination, thus being forced to self-publish. Now roughly 25 years later, the book is still in print and has been translated to numerous languages.

After his publication of "Keys", he wrote a smaller training book, Getting Stronger, drawing from "Keys", while applying those keys to sport specific applications. After that he published Getting in Shape.

What sets Pearl's books aside from other works in the field is that he doesn't dispense secrets. Instead, he lets the reader in on the wisdom of a lifetime of training. There are no secrets. Each person must experiment, while keeping in mind that progressive resistance training is at the core of all training.

One of the ironies of bodybuilding is that we only know its leading figures through visual images. We rarely know a thing about them as people, and ask such things as:

What drove them to get started with training?
What did their journey to championship consist of?
What character development occurred along the way?
What adventures were undertaken?
What successes and failures have they encountered and endured?
What kind of lives did they really live?
What have they learned?
What wisdom have they accrued?
How did training open deeper dimensions of life for them?

Bill Pearl's Beyond the Universe breaks fresh ground on a number of fronts. When reading Beyond the Universe, one senses knowing Pearl in a comfortable way, not as somebody bigger than life, not as a "star," but as a genuine human being.

Bill has succeeded where other's have failed in bodybuilding, caught, as they were, in the pitfalls of a fleeting glamour while a title holder, the personal emptiness after the titles, the masks of self-deception. He reveals a success coming from having traversed the journey of one essential human nature through a life dedicated to an ideal at once down to earth and ethical.

After winning the Mr. America and Mr. Universe titles in the early 1950s, Bill's career might just as well have gone the same direction of everybody else's in those days: after the big titles, the game was over. Other than Grimek, no one but Pearl has had an enduring presence and influence in the sport.

Throughout the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, Pearl would train for the NABBA Mr. Universe, entering and winning it every few years. And with each event, his physique had matured. Along with Reg Park, he was noted for incredible raw power in the basic lifts as well.

I'm personally pleased that George Coates' article for the Rader's Ironman Magazine of 1971 is included in "Keys."

Arnold Schwarzenegger's meteoric rise to fame in the Weider sponsored IFBB contests all but made Arnold the poster boy for bodybuilding in the late 1960s through the late 1970s. Weider's magazines set out to present Arnold as unbeatable and without rival. So brazen did the hype become that it was claimed no one could beat Arnold.

Pearl, Reg Park (then in his late 40s), and others decided enough is enough. Arnold was challenged to compete with them, not in an IFBB contest but, instead, in open competition. The NABBA Mr. Universe was chosen as neutral ground. The story we've heard for years is that a very worried Weider organization held Arnold back from competing in London that year, all based on his contract with them. That's been the gossip for 30 years, and gossip not contradicted in print. Pearl weighed in that year at 242 pounds at 5'10.5" tall, compared to Arnold's 230 at 6'2".

The title "Beyond the Universe" suggests differing meanings, some even metaphysical. A rich variety of meanings are found in the book. For beyond the title lies the man, behind the public image of Pearl's awesome fulfillment of his potential for physical development is found the man. He grew beyond the inherent narcissism of being a title holder. Despite his immense development, Bill is usually seen in long sleeve shirts. We learn of all the "business" deals that came along over the years, ones mostly benefiting others. We learn of his successes finally coming as an author.

Then in the late 70s, Bill retired from the gym industry. He moved with his wife Judy to a farm in rural Oregon. For more than a decade they lived in the farm's guest house. The main house served as a dormitory for athletes who came from the world over to train under Bill's supervision at his "Barn."

He refit the farm's barn to become a world-class private gym. That made for a transition from gym owner to master coach.

One chapter is a photo journal reading like a "who's who" of athletes who came to train under his guidance. We also learn about his antique auto collection, antique bicycle collection, and various other endeavors, now housed in the Pearl farm, under the the multifaceted banner of Bill Pearl Enterprises.

The final chapter may surprise many. Along with Frank Zane, Bill and Judy have become close friends with East Indian spiritual master Shri Chimnoy, who is noted for amazing yogic-based feats of strength. Bill recounts considerable information about that relationship without taking the average reader into the real depths of yogic voluntary control of what Western Science continues to misunderstand as "involuntary or autonomic nervous system functions."

With a lifelong interest in hypnosis and other tools known to unlock the sleeping giant within us all, Bill indirectly points the reader to greater truths.

The book ends with several photo journals. Of considerable interest is a series of photographs of early exercise machines from turn-of the-twentieth-century to today's standard equipment revealing that most of our new equipment merely streamlined the design of equipment that has been around for more than 100 years.

A must for every training library!