The Garage Gym Online

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.

Bobby Pandour

Bobby Pandour was born Wladyslaw Kurcharczyk in Poland between 1876 and 1882. He and his brother, Ludwig/Ludovic, were champion gymnasts and went to England in the early 1900s with a performance involving skills on the horizontal bar and hand balancing, as well as posing and muscle control.

Like many gymnasts, he was not a large man, weighing only 160 pounds at 5’6″ in height.  Despite his small stature, he had an impressive physique as can be seen in photographs.

He had a reputation for only using small, 10lb dumbbells.  The reasoning being that it was the concentration behind the movement of the weight and not the weight itself that caused the resistance.

Harry B Paschall

Harry B Paschall was born in 1898 and came to strongman by watching the performances of Saxon and Sandow.  He was most famous for his cartoon creation, Bosco.

W. A. Pullum

W. A. Pullum was born in 1888 and died in 1960 and was widely regarded as one of the best pound-for-pound weightlifters in the world at that time.  He achieved a number of records, wrote articles and was a successful teacher.  His name lives on in the strength equipment business, Pullum Sports. 

Tony Sansone

According to Wikipedia, Tony Sansone was born in New York City in 1905 and died in 1987.  He was a successful bodybuilder and model.  To the best of my knowledge he did not write a correspondence course but there are various articles about him on Sandow Plus.

Arthur Saxon

According to Wikipedia, Arthur Saxon was born Arthur Hennig in 1878 and died in 1921.  He was famous for the bent press (with a record of 370lbs) and the two-hands anyhow (with a record of 448lbs).  He often performed with his brothers Herman and Kurt as the Saxon Trio.

T. W. Standwell

T. W. Standwell sold a mail order correspondence course for bodybuilding in the 1920s.  Otherwise, I have not been able to find much more out about him.

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:

• the bent press is a fascinating lift.  For a one-handed lift to be so close to a two-hands anyhow just amazes me; and
• you can be quite small and really very strong and in percentage terms it may be advantageous.

So that was Pandour to Standwell.  Next time is the last in the series and it’s about Strongfort to Zass!

For a list of my key articles by category, please check out this index.

Tags:   Arthur Saxon · Bobby Pandour · Eugen Sandow · Harry B Paschall · old school weightlifting · Sandow Plus · T W Standwell · Tony Sansone · W A PullumNo Comments