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.
Bernarr McFadden
According to Wikipedia, Bernarr MacFadden was born in Missouri in 1868 and died in 1955. He founded the magazine Physical Culture and built a successful publishing business.
In addition to the extensive material on Sandow Plus, there are a lot of resources on the internet about MacFadden. Here are just a few:
- The Bernarr MacFadden official site;
- Bob Whelan has found two interesting books on Bernarr McFadden;
- Modern lessons from Bernarr MacFadden from National Geographic;
- Oldtime Strongman has a brief entry; and
- Clarence Bass weighs in with quite a long article reviewing Mark Adam’s book about MacFadden.
Antone Matysek
Antone Matysek was born in 1892 and died in 1963. He won the Strongest Man in America in 1922 and appeared regularly as a professional strongman.
He is credited with devising dumbbells that could be loaded onto barbells by having holes in the handles.
This extensive series of posts on Oldtime Strongman show Antone:
- doing a Roman Chair exercise holding a man above his head,
- lifting a kettlebell bigger than his head,
- lifting a three-person bicycle over his head with one arm; and
- performing a reverse curl with a 3” diameter bar.
Staff Sergeant Alfred Moss
Staff Sergeant Alfred Moss was in the British army but little is known about him. He won the British Army Gymnastics Competition in 1900 and in 1902 he was a contender in the British preliminaries for Bernarr Macfadden’s Best and Most Perfectly Developed Man” competition. It is said that he was marked down for his extensive tattoos.
Oldtime Strongman has a few posts on Moss but I find it interesting that their photos show Moss with his tattoos on his left arm but the photos Sandow Plus show them on his right arm. Perhaps they were magical tattoos?
American Bodybuilding makes the connection between Moss’s army career in India and Indian club training.
Lieutenant J.P. Muller
Lieutenant J. P. Muller was a successful Danish athlete who was born in 1866 and died in 1938. He established a system that attracted a great deal of attention from various parties, including Chess Grandmasters.
Adolph E Nordquest
Adolph E Nordquest was called the “young Sandow” because of his remarkable resemblance to Eugen. He was born in 1882 and died in 1960. He had a substantial build, weighing 200lbs at just 5’8”
Bob Whelan has an easy-to-read version of Young Sandow’s story.
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:
- I wish I could get my Roman Chair set-up to work;
- lifting people over your head (whether riding a bicycle or not) is cool; and
- I want magical tattoos like Staff Sergeant Alfred Moss.
So that was MacFadden to Nordquest. Next time, I’ll write about Pandour to Standwell!
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