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I have already written about the great articles you can find on Sandow Plus about Eugen Sandow, the “father of modern bodybuilding”.  In this post, I have written a brief introduction to some of the other strongmen featured on the Sandow Plus site.

James Evans

James Evans was the author of “10 minutes a day”, a short book published in Canada in 1944 on achieving health through muscle control.  He was a small man, only 5’3” and weighing just 148lbs but achieved a clean and press of 200lbs.

Herman Goerner

According to Wikipedia, Herman Goerner was born in Saxony, Germany in 1891 and died in 1956.  He was a famous German strongman, particularly well known for his grip strength.

Amongst other feats, Goerner pulled a one-handed deadlift of 734.5lbs, pulled a two-handed deadlift of 595.5lbs using just 2 fingers of each hand, achieved a pinch lift of 111 lbs, and leg-pressed 24 men for a total weight 4123lb, on a plank with the soles of his feet.

Compared with other strongmen of the period, Goerner still gets a fair amount of press and is widely discussed on the internet, as you can see here:

• RossTraining has some more biographical detail about Goerner’s life and lifts. 
• Brooks Kubik has written about Goerner’s deadlift variations.
• Oldtime Strongman Training has some background and various details.
• Charles A Smith wrote a fantastic hymn to Goerner’s achievements back in 1986.
• Diesel Crew brings Goerner up to date with some modern comparisons.

The Good Brothers

The three Good Brothers, Harry, Walter and Bill, were weightlifters and strongmen from Eastern Pennsylvania.  There are several short articles about them and their business, the Good Barbell Company, on Oldtime Strongman.

Bill was the most successful of the three brothers and won 7 Senior National Weightlifting Titles from 1930 to 1937 and competed in 2 Olympic Games in the 75kg weightlifting category (1932 in Los Angeles and 1936 in Berlin).

Walter Good competed in the 1936 Olympics as well as his brother Bill and Harry wrote books (which can be found on Sandow Plus here) and established the “Good Barbell Company” in the late 1930s.

George Hackenschmidt

According to Wikipedia, George Hackenschmidt was born Georg Karl Julius Hackenschmidt in Estonia in 1878 and died in London, England in 1968.  You can read more about him at the Art of Manliness here

Hackenschmidt is credited with two remarkable innovations, the professional wrestling version of the bear hug and the hack squat.  He is also credited with holding the bench press world record from 1898 to 1916 with a lift of 361lbs until Joe Nordquest pressed 363lbs.  It was not until Doug Hepburn that the 400lbs mark was passed.  And as you know, everything went a bit weird after that…

Bob Hoffman

Bob Hoffman was born in 1898 and died not that long ago in 1985.  He founded the hugely influential business, the York Barbell Company and was a prolific writer.  His writings can be found here at Sandow Plus.  There are one or two short articles about him on Oldtime Strongman.

You can find some interesting articles about the York Barbell Company and how it has affected York County, Pennsylvania here.

So what have I learned so far?

In reading about these great strongmen, I have started to form a few opinions of my own.  They may be right or wrong but it will be interesting to see if I still hold them once I’ve worked through all the material on the Sandow Plus site!  Anyway, after reading through the works of these strongmen, I think that:

• deadlifts of all kinds are probably a key to overall strength as well as grip strength;
• strength and fitness has been a big business for a very long time;
• 400lbs is a really, really, big bench press for normal human beings;
• wrestling is probably overlooked as a way to develop strength.

So that was Evans to Hoffman.  Next time, I’ll write about Inch to Liederman!

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Tags:   Bob Hoffman · Eugen Sandow · George Hackenschmidt · Herman Goerner · James Evans · old school weightlifting · strongman · The Good Brothers1 Comment