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Watched Old Wsm Bending. Interesting


Tim71

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I watched the old 1977 "World's Strongest Men" competition, specifically, the bar bending part which Lou Ferrigno won. I always like how they color coded the bars but never put it together until now.

First they bend 3/8 by 2.5 foot which was color coded yellow.

Next, they move onto what is pretty much the standard bar used by a lot of strongmen. 1/2 inch by 3 foot. This is colored blue.

Lastly they move up to the bad boy challenge which is 5/8 inch by 3.5 foot. What is it colored? Red.

I found that pretty interesting but as they always say, there's nothing new under the sun.

I do miss those old competitions though.

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I love watching those old contests. Lou did pretty well in that one. Ken Patera should have won that contest, and by a big margin, but he was 6 years removed from olympic competition and dropped his weight from 350 to 250 while doing pro wrestling. He had something like 6 weeks notice to compete in that show and according to David Webster injured his back a week before the contest in practice. He did manage to get his weight up to 290 I believe but he was a shell of his former self. Bruce Wilhelm was surprised every time he beat Ken because he knew back in the day Ken was so much stronger than him!

As for bending I believe Geoff Capes and a couple other guys bend some bigger stuff than that a few years later. Can't say for sure, its been years since I've seen those old shows.

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You are correct. Bill Kazmaier was the first to bend the 11/16 in 1980. Then in 81, they used cold rolled bars (big mistake) but what was incredible was that both Geoff and Bill bent the 5/8 by 4 foot cold rolled. Then when they went to the 11/16, Geoff injured hisself and Bill tore his pec which altered his whole career.

In 1982 Geoff absolutely smoked the 11/16 hot rolled bar then what was really weird in 1983 a 15 mm bar stopped all of them including Geoff. And it was Hot rolled steel.

In the first competition though I thought it was neat that the color progression was the same as the yellow, blue and Red nails.

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I wonder if its just a coincidence or by design the Iron Mind nails seem to color coordinate. I'm sure Randall could tell us the reason behind the particular color code system they use. I did notice that the CRS at the Tractor Supply Company by me at 5/16 is colored red like the Iron Mind Nail. The other colors don't really line up though.

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I watched a youtube doc and it was called. "20 years of pain, a strong man story" or something along those lines. It said more strongman got hurt with the bending challenge than anything else. Just goes to show, you can be Ox strong and still not strong enough to bend. Just like anything else, your body needs proper conditioning. Brute strength isn't always enough.

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Red, blue, yellow, green, white seem to correspond to the Olympic weightlifting coloring coding going from heaviest to lightest.

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I didn't think about the weightlifting aspect of it. Steel industries color code the different types of steel as well. Black is usually 1018 CRS, white is 12L14 etc.

Yes many people were hurt bending it. I'll never forget Kaz and Capes getting hurt. The really amazing thing is that when Kaz extended hisself that far in 81, for a moment, he actually had the 11/16 CRS moving.

Later on between a wrestling match, he did bend a 3/4 by 4 foot hot rolled bar in that fashion. I think it was back in 1990 or something like that.

Maybe the WSM competition borrowed the color idea from the olypics. They have 3/4 inch bars in the rack behind the compeitors but I could never really tell what color they are.

Later

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Those old wsm comps are awesome!! Kazs eyes/intensity was second to none. Down right scary. And Jon pal was awesome too. "There's no reason to be alive if you can't do deadlift"

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Kaz is incredible. If you look at his relatively small, thick hands, it's truly amazing what he did with the inch. Guy had something like 18 inch forearms though.

I read an interview on some website though were he talked about doing plate pinches and another site he talked about levering some really impressive sledge at one of the WSM competitions between the events. He used to bend 3/4 inch bars in his exibitions and in one of them you can see it looks like he's making a fish out of a bar that appears to be only 3 foot long but you can't tell for sure.

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My favorite kaz line was this:

Kaz: I actually believe I'm the strongest man who's ever lived. Announcer: the strongest man to ever live?!

Kaz: ......yeah, I'll make that statement.

I've thought about that quote a lot over the years sometimes before big lifts to get psyched up.

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My favorite quote was when he deadlifted the silver dollar bar and held it there and said "do you like that Bruce, huh, do you like that?". Then next time he lifted it twice just to grind it in.

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