William Bankier (a.k.a Apollo, the Scottish Hercules)

William Bankier was born in Banff, Scotland in 1870 and died in 1949, having been involved in a number of sports in addition to performing as a strongman on stage.

He was particularly famous for lifting an elephant.  He did this as a belt squat, using a sling so that the animal could be suspended beneath him.  It also seems he was something of a gymnast, being said to be able to do a backward somersault over a chair holding two 56lb weights in his hands.

His arm strength and biceps development, he attributed to rope climbing.

Bankier lived much of his life in the shadow of Sandow and this comes across very obviously in his book, “Ideal Physical Culture”.  Bankier details how he challenged Sandow, discusses his methods and even criticises the measurements that he claimed.

Sandow claimed to have been 5’9 and 202lbs but Bankier alleges that he was only 5’6” and 176lbs.  Moreover, with the measurements Sandow claimed for his chest (48”) and arms (19.5”), Bankier asserted that Sandow would have had to weigh 252lbs and it’s easy to see where he’s coming from…

Sanford Bennett

Sanford Bennett (born in 1841 and died in 1926) was a curious character who devised a sequence of exercises to be performed before rising each morning!  He started exercising late in life but it was said that he seemed to grow younger with the start of his programme, rather than older.

Joe Bonomo

Joe Bonomo was born in Coney Island in 1901 and died in 1978.

Early in life, he befriended Charles Atlas, who also worked on Coney Island, and who became a good friend and mentor.  After winning a physique contest, he began to work in the early action cinema films, doing stunts and feats of strength.

In consequence of his screen work, he received a lot of fan mail, some of it inquiring after his secrets to strength.  He capitalised on this as his predecessors had done with postal courses.  Injured during an action sequence, he was forced to retire and began a successful career as a businessman, marketing his own persona to sell a range of different products.

Miriam Linna has written a brief biography of his colourful life and how as his star waned, the star of Joe Weider came into the ascendant.

Zishe Seigmund Breitbart

Zishe “Seigmund” Breitbart was a famous Jewish strongman, born in Poland in 1893.  He died tragically at the very young age of 32 following an injury he sustained driving a nail into a block of wood in 1925.  He was buried in Berlin.

His stage performances were more theatrical than the British strongmen of the same time.  Rather than lifting weights for numbers, he bent iron bars into floral patterns, drove nails into oak beams with his hands, supported vehicles on his chest and held ropes attached to heavy objects with his teeth.  He even demonstrated the ability to bite through steel with his teeth!  You can see more of this sort of thing here.

He was taller than many of the other old-time strongmen, at 6’1” and weighed 225lbs.  More about his statistics and history are available here.

H Broom

H Broom (whether Herbert or Harry, I can’t be sure) came from Hull (yet another Yorkshireman!) and trained under Max Sick and Edward Aston.

As a middleweight, he lifted 225lbs (102kg) one-hand-anyhow overhead for a world record and pressed 170lbs (77kg) with two hands for 29 reps!

He developed a large business out of physical culture, including (of course) postal courses but also dumbbells and other devices.

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 have learned that:

• bending steel is probably overlooked as a way to develop strength by many people;
• the bent press probably gets a lot less airtime than it should;
• rope climbing is good for building big biceps;
• 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; and
• Zishe Seigmund Breitbart is probably my favourite strongman so far.

So that was Bankier to Bennett.  Next time, I’ll write about Burns to Dorans!