To those of you who’ve stayed the course, congratulations, and to newcomers welcome.
This is the final post in a long series about the remarkable weightlifting insights that we can learn from the oldtime strongmen. The majority of the resources on the internet can be found at Sandow Plus and Maxalding so please do visit them and dive into the many books and pamplets that you will find there.
However, I have tried to find any other resources that I can (although I did give up after page 10 on Google) and refer to them as appropriate. So if there is a Wikipedia page or a reference on a mainstream strength or fitness website than I will probably have it linked.
Who I’ve talked about
To look back and see who I’ve been rattling on about, you can follow these links:
- Eugen Sandow
- Apollon, Otto Arco, Edward Aston, Don Athaldo and Charles Atlas
- William Bankier Apollo, Sanford Bennett, Joe Bonomo, Zishe “Seigmund” Breitbart and H Broom
- Martin “Farmer” Burns, Ottley C Coulter, Louis Cyr, Alfred Danks and Don Dorans
- James Evans, Herman Goerner, The Good Brothers, George Hackenschmidt and Bob Hoffman
- Thomas Inch, Prof. K V Iyer, George F Jowett, Siegmund Klein and Earle Liederman
- Bernarr MacFadden, Antone Matysek, Staff Sergeant Alfred Moss, Lieutenant J P Muller and Adolph Nordquest
- Bobby Pandour, Harry B Paschall, W A Pullum, Tony Sansone, Arthur Saxon and T W Standwell
- Lionel Strongfort, Alois P Swoboda, Frederick Tilney, Al Treloar, George Walsh and Alexander Zass
- Max Sick (Maxick) and Monte Saldo
The Golden Age of Strongmen
As I’ve been going along, I’ve been trying to keep a record of when the various strongmen were alive. This picture shows my representation of this remarkable generation.
What I’ve learned
I’ve learned a huge amount since I started this series and it’s hard to put it all into words. I thought about trying to systematise all of the lessons learned and decided against it.
Here it all is in it’s messy, unadulterated glory. Enjoy.
- Edward Aston was probably the most honest and upfront about the type of training he did;
- all of the strongmen probably trained with dumbbells and barbells at some point;
- the training was probably mostly pulls, presses, jerks and cleans;
- the training was probably lower reps and higher sets than most bodybuilders would use today;
- they ate meat, vegetables and fruit and drank lots of milk;
- the mind-muscle connection is important and I have probably been neglecting this;
- isometric training might be a way to improve strength and muscle gains (Christian Thibaudeau has written about this);
- marketing was just as much an issue in those days as it is today;
- bending steel is probably overlooked as a way to develop strength by many people (including me);
- the bent press probably gets a lot less airtime than it should;
- rope climbing is good for building big biceps (now I just need somewhere to hang a rope from);
- people quibbled over their measurements just as much then as they do now, if not more;
- if you’re going to drive nails into blocks of wood, don’t rest them on your knees;
- it’s very easy to focus on the success of a rival who has come before you but that’s not necessarily the best way to proceed, you just guarantee them more exposure;
- Zishe Seigmund Breitbart is probably my favourite strongman ever;
- wrestling is probably overlooked as a way to develop strength;
- if you want to be really, really strong, then it helps to be really, really big;
- the combination of good GPP and frequent sub-maximal, low rep lifting that comes with manual labour (like lumber work) is almost certainly the key to exceptional strength;
- it could be quite fun to try and pick up some of my friends using one arm
- 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;
- Yorkshire seems to have had something in the water that creates strongmen. If we can bottle it, we could make a fortune;
- the fascinating history and heritage of the vintage strongmen, like Inch, live on in modern times through our attempts to match or even surpass their feats;
- Mark Henry is a monster;
- 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;
- I want magical tattoos like Staff Sergeant Alfred Moss;
- you can be quite small and really very strong and in percentage terms it may be advantageous;
- it is possible to be in good shape and strong into old age;
- if you want to be really, really good at something, learn it from someone who has already been there and done what you want to achieve; and
- people are more likely to remember you for a small number of really good lifts than for a large number of mediocre ones.
Did I miss anything obvious? Let me know in the comments.
Please subscribe, follow me on Twitter and like my Facebook page.
Tags: Eugen Sandow · old school weightlifting · strongman · strongmen2 Comments
[...] I did a series about some of the great oldtime strongman material that you can find on two websites, Sandow Plus and Maxalding. In many of those posts, I [...]
[...] and 1990s but all good things must come to an end. So just like the round-up that I did for the oldtime strongmen post series, here is a round-up for the World’s Strongest Man [...]