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.

Lionel Strongfort

Lionel Strongfort was born Max Unger in Berlin in 1878 and died in 1970.  He was a stage strongman performer and issued a correspondence course in physical development like many of his peers.

Oldtime strongman has its customary short articles here.  And Bob Whelan has a brief biography reprinted here.

Alois P Swoboda

Alois P Swoboda was born in Vienna in 1873 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1881 with his father, Adolf.  He died in 1938.  In between, he wrote and published a course that he called “conscious evolution”, amongst other works.

The emphasis of his training appeared to be on isometric exercises, typically using muscle groups against each other for resistance.  In this, he was similar to Charles Atlas and others.

Frederick Tilney

Frederick Tilney was born in Norfolk, England in 1895 and died in 1977, just a year before I was born.  He was a popular writer for various bodybuilding magazines and a ghost writer for correspondence courses in physical culture.

His autobiographical work “Young at 73” is a challenge to anyone who thinks that age must get the better of them.

Al Treloar

Al Treloar was born Albert Toof Jenkins in 1873 and died in 1960.  He was the winner of the first American bodybuilding competition, organised by Bernarr MacFadden.  Some commentators say that Staff Sergeant Alfred Moss should have won but was marked down for his (magical) tattoos.

Oldtime strongman has comments here.

George Walsh

George Walsh was a weightlifter and bodybuilder who trained under W A Pullum.  He wrote an article on the snatch in 1946, which is reproduced on The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  Here he is again, espousing the properties of the same lift.

Alexander Zass

Alexander Zass was born in 1888 and died in 1962.  He was a Russian circus performer and professional wrestler.  He was said to be physically quite small, at 5’5” and 164lbs (166cm and 75kg) but incredibly strong.

Zass favoured isometric exercises to gain strength.  Some of his strength feats are captured in this gallery (but the captions are in Russian) and this blog has some interesting background that seems to tie in with the gallery pictures.  His isometric system seems to have spawned a whole subculture of trainees using his methods.

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:

• it is possible to retain a great deal of strength and health into old age if you are prepared to put your mind to it;
• there is more in common between weightlifting and bodybuilding than many people today would care to admit;
• I still want magical tattoos like Staff Sergeant Alfred Moss.

So that was the last set of strongmen from the Sandow Plus site.  Next time, I’ll write about Max Sick and Monte Saldo from the Maxalding site!

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

Tags:   Al Treloar · Alexander Zass · Alois P Swoboda · Eugen Sandow · Frederick Tilney · George Walsh · Lionel Strongfort · old school weightlifting · strongmanNo Comments