Bodybuilding as a competitive sport began on September 19, 1901, when Eugen Sandow staged the “Great Competition” at London’s Royal Albert Hall. But the impulse to build a stronger, more impressive body is far older. Greeks were lifting weighted stones and training with progressive resistance as early as the sixth century BCE. The journey from ancient stone lifting to the modern Mr. Olympia stage spans roughly 2,500 years.
Strength Training in Ancient Greece
Long before anyone posed under stage lights, the Greeks treated physical development as both practical and cultural. Soldiers trained with weights and gymnastics before battle, athletes used a variety of resistance methods before competitions, and gymnasium culture thrived across city-states. The tools were simple: stone dumbbells called halteres, typically weighing between 2 and 9 kilograms, used for swinging exercises and to gain momentum during the long jump.
The most famous artifact from this era is Bybon’s stone, a roughly 143-kilogram block inscribed with a boast: “Bybon son of Phola, has lifted me over head with one hand.” Bybon lived in the early sixth century BCE, making this one of the oldest recorded feats of strength. Whether the inscription is literal or exaggerated, it tells us something important: people were already testing, measuring, and celebrating physical power nearly 2,600 years ago. This wasn’t bodybuilding in any modern sense, but the underlying idea, that you could systematically train your body to be stronger and more impressive, was already firmly in place.
Eugen Sandow and the Birth of Physical Culture
The person most responsible for turning muscle-building into a spectacle was Eugen Sandow, born Friedrich Wilhelm Müller in Prussia. Sandow started as a circus athlete touring Europe before arriving in London in 1889, where he entered a strongman competition and beat the reigning champion. That upset earned him instant fame.
What set Sandow apart from other strongmen was his focus on how the body looked, not just what it could lift. He posed in ways that highlighted symmetry and muscular definition, and he even offered private viewings of himself, often naked, after his public performances. He published training guides, marketed exercise equipment, and built an entire brand around the idea that an ordinary person could sculpt their physique through disciplined training. Sandow essentially invented the concept of the physique as a product to be displayed, admired, and sold.
The First Bodybuilding Contest: 1901
In 1901, Sandow put that philosophy on stage. His “Great Competition,” held on September 19 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, is widely considered the first true bodybuilding contest. Competitors were not judged on how much they could lift. The event’s rules stated explicitly that “prizes will not be awarded to the men with the biggest muscles, but to those whose development is most symmetrical and even.” That distinction, prioritizing appearance over performance, is what separates bodybuilding from weightlifting and strongman competitions.
The judging criteria included general development, balance of development, the condition and tone of the tissues, and the general health and condition of the skin. W. M. Murray from Nottingham took first place, beating D. Cooper from Birmingham and A. C. Smythe from Middlesex. The emphasis on proportion and aesthetics over raw size set a template the sport would follow for decades.
The Weider Era and the IFBB
Bodybuilding grew steadily through the first half of the twentieth century, but it lacked a unifying international organization. That changed in 1946, when Ben Weider established the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB) to bring recognized standards to the sport and generate broader interest. The IFBB became the governing body for competitive bodybuilding worldwide, sanctioning contests and creating a framework for professional and amateur divisions.
The Weider brothers, Ben and Joe, also shaped the culture surrounding the sport. Through their magazines, supplement companies, and training systems, they turned bodybuilding from a niche pursuit into a commercially viable industry. By the mid-1960s, the infrastructure was in place for the sport’s signature event.
Mr. Olympia and the Rise of the Pros
The first Mr. Olympia competition took place on September 18, 1965, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. Larry Scott, known for his remarkable arm development, won the inaugural title. Mr. Olympia was designed to be the ultimate professional contest, open only to athletes who had already won major titles, and it quickly became the sport’s most prestigious stage.
That same year, Joe Gold opened the first Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, California, featuring homemade equipment in a no-frills setting. The gym attracted elite bodybuilders and earned the nickname “the Mecca of bodybuilding.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dave Draper, Lou Ferrigno, and Franco Columbu all trained there during the late 1960s and 1970s, a period now remembered as bodybuilding’s Golden Age.
The cultural breakthrough came in 1977, when the docudrama Pumping Iron hit theaters. Filmed primarily at Gold’s Gym in 1975, it followed Schwarzenegger and Ferrigno as they prepared for the Mr. Olympia contest. The film became a surprise hit, introducing bodybuilding to millions of people who had never set foot in a gym. Gold’s Gym more than tripled its membership prices on the back of the attention, and Schwarzenegger parlayed his new fame into a Hollywood career that made him one of the most recognizable people on the planet.
Women Enter the Sport
Women’s bodybuilding arrived in the late 1970s. The first official female bodybuilding competition was held in Canton, Ohio, in November 1977. Called the Ohio Regional Women’s Physique Championship, it was won by Gina LaSpina, who is considered the first recognized winner of a women’s bodybuilding contest.
Two years later, promoter George Snyder organized the Best in the World contest in 1979, the first IFBB-sanctioned women’s event that awarded prize money, with the winner taking home $2,500. In 1980, the first Ms. Olympia (originally called the “Miss” Olympia) was held, establishing the top professional tier for women in the sport. Women’s bodybuilding grew rapidly through the 1980s, though it also sparked ongoing debates about muscularity standards and judging criteria that continue today.
Modern Divisions and the Sport Today
For most of its history, bodybuilding had a single competitive format: get as big, lean, and symmetrical as possible. But as competitors in the open bodybuilding division pushed past 250 and even 300 pounds, the sport began creating alternative categories that rewarded different physiques. The IFBB introduced the Classic Physique division, which made its international debut at the 2018 Arnold Classic Europe in Barcelona. Classic Physique imposes weight limits relative to height, steering competitors toward the more proportional look associated with the Golden Age rather than the mass-dominant approach of modern open bodybuilding.
Other divisions now include Men’s Physique, which judges competitors in board shorts and focuses on the upper body, and several women’s categories ranging from Bikini to Wellness to Figure. The result is a sport that looks very different from Sandow’s 1901 competition in scale and spectacle, but still operates on the same core principle he established: the body itself is the performance.