Mention a grip feat that you doubt

[OldGuy]

True, whenever he tried to pull out the handles from the stones, all he achieved was to lift them from the ground.

[blueshadow]

Lighten up,Nick, nothing in any of the previous posts shows flagrant disrespect for any one! It is just friends voicing opinions where requested! Where would our GripBoard be if we could not express ourselves and opinions were being deleted because someone did not like them?

[Sybersnott]

Nick,

I have my fair share of books/reading materials, and I'm sure most of the rest of us do to.

Roark... I'm pointing out the case where Sandow took Saxon to court.  Anyone that has to take their matters to a courtroom instead of proving themselves on the lifting stage does not deserve the title of strongman, IMHO.

[Roark]

Sandow was lucky to find a judge who did not

understand lifting rules, and to have had this happen

(Feb 26, 1898) when Arthur was still age 19. Sandow

was 30, and would turn 31 within the week.

When Arthur was 30 he would warm up with weights

that had been Sandow's limits.

[Guest Harlan Jacobs]

This will not be a popular post. I have a problem with all most all the claims of the old time strongmen. Why is that all other lifts, like bench,squat,deadlift,clean&jerk,snatch ,the list goes on, have been beaten many times ?  But some of the records from the oldtime strongmen still stand. Face it, we are bigger,faster and more healthy than ever. Where these lifts actualy done ? Or where they just side-show stunts.  Not to disrespect anyone . I know some of you have studied this for a long time. With todays atheletes , I just have a hard time beliving that these lifts are not improved upon just like all other lifting has been. By the way, I belive Kinney. Told you it wouldn't be popular !

[Guest mg6680]

Ditto.

[apdwler]

Why is that all other lifts, like bench,squat,deadlift,clean&jerk,snatch ,the list goes on, have been beaten many times ?  But some of the records from the oldtime strongmen still stand. Face it, we are bigger,faster and more healthy than ever.

Good question. I don't have an answer. Some lifts were practiced a lot more then, but only a few require much technique (for example the one arm bent press). That doesn't explain the majority of lifts.

[Roark]

Harlan,

Apollon would place dead last in his weight category at a

national level bench press contest by today's standards. That

goes for the squat as well, and maybe the deadlift. These are

lifts he is not known for. I am unaware that he ever performed

a press on back, or a two legged squat (have heard of his one

legged squat).

Indeed, Apollon would have lost to Saxon in a bent press contest because Apollon never performed the movement to

my knowledge, and it is a movement of skill and dexterity as

well as strength.

Oldtimers, and please do not dismiss this as insignificant, lifted

unbalanced, non-revolving, awkward weights of various

shapes and sizes. Even the shot loaded bells could be tricky.

I am mentioning Apollon because in my opinion he was the strongest of the greats. But.

If lifts are selected which he was known for (all raw lifts, of course) then he would be the winner in his weight category

today at a national, or world, level event. The grip power alone, which is why he chose some of his lifts based on his hand size, would prohibit current strongmen, unlearned in the

movements Apollon honed through the years, from defeating him. Could today's strongmen hone those skills? Of course. Could they ever match some of his lifts? Perhaps. But he was

a specialist in one arm lifting, WITHOUT dipping for the clean.

Rather than go into extreme detail here, I'll just say that

whether your post is popular or not is irrelevant. You have a right to your opinion, and having had experience for being attacked for my views on Anderson and Inch, I admire your

courage in posting it.

Your view on Kinney is interesting though, because by your own logic, there are much bigger and stronger men these days

than Joe. But again, perhaps they have not trained on the 4;

some men have closed the 3 or nearly closed it on first try, so

one would suspect they, with training, could master the 4. After all, Joe did not nearly close it on first try.

Apollon never had the weakling's advantage of bench shirts and drugs, and based on his respect for the iron, in my view

he would not have used them had they been available, because the one aspect missing among some of today's strongmen is pride.

[gazza]

Mr Roarke

PRIDE!!!Long forgotten in the endless pusuit of records.

Take away the drugs,bench shirts,ply suits,belts,knee raps,

etc and most of the current records would not exist.

Given the fact that some people will do anything for glory,we should be questioning a lot of todays super lifts as well,as i feel on a level playing field tha likes of the bench.deadlift, squat,clean and jerk etc,would be atleast a few hundred pounds short of were they are now,and that unless we train like the old timers,on the same lifts,then these lifts will never be broken.

I think that if Joe Kinneys 4# was good enough for Randy Strossen,enough said as he is the one setting the terms for certifecation on the 3# and 4#.

PRIDE so often replaced by GLORY!!!!!  

[Guest Youngguy]

Here http://www.sandowmuseum.com/page29.html

[Roark]

Youngguy,

By 1921, Hack had stopped heavy weight training

how many years previously? He was how old in 1921?

His fingers appear to be UNDER the spike, so would

he not be crushing his own hand using this position?

Notice his body position in relation to the force applied.

Is this the position a bender would take for this feat?

Suppose the stair post was damaged in this feat?

What object appears to be in his hands?

Is it a #4 railroad spike?

If anyone has ever been able to bend a railroad spike

similar in strength to what is used these days, and in

my opinion, no one has ever been able to do that,

it most certainly would not have been Hack, who was

known for what other feats of bending?

He could have a straw in his hand; don't submit this

photo for verification!

[gazza]

Mr.Roarke

A question regarding Apollon.

Like you i to am a great fan of Apollon and i was wondering,since your knowledge of the old time greats.aspecially Apollon is vastly superior to mine,

i have not heard mention,much in the way of pinching,

apart from the famous pastile,so would you antribute most of his pinching strength to the use of thick bar lifting,

or did he practise pinching more often.

[OldGuy]

If we read of an oldtime strongman who could do what Chris James can do today would we believe it? Probably not, and yet we know that such lifts are possible. If you read what Alan Calvert has to say about the bent press and harness lifts maybe you will be less impressed than you are now. No doubt it was all a hodge podge of genuine stunts and outright deception. A mixture of great strength illusion and showmanship. Look at modern day Russian circus strongman Valentin Dikel (sp) He is enormously strong, but do we really believe that he can deadlift over a 1000 lbs and bend a large British 50p coin?

[Roark]

gazza,

Willoughby, writing in Ironman Nov 1976 mentions lifting a 45

pound plate by the hub, and by pinching 2 45's with flat sides

out, and that Jim Easley of Kansas City had done the latter, and that one writer doubted that 'any of the old-time exponents of grip-strength could have duplicated it'.

Willoughby counters by saying that Goerner could have done it with pounds to spare and that Apollon, 'may have done it even more easily, since his hands were larger than Gorner's (sic) and his gripping strength was colossal'.

I neglected to point out in my earlier post that when seven

of the strongest men in the world tried to clean and jerk or

continental and jerk the Apollon wheels replica, many failed.

Apollon managed this without training and did it whenever the

fancy struck him, and his cleans were what we would call

power cleans- very little dip. None of the seven made the lift

in this manner.

[Sybersnott]

Also correct me if I'm wrong, Roark.... but most of the lifts performed long time ago are NOT performed today, and there is little or no interest in them today.  Back then, you had DB swings, bent pressing, one hand "jerk", two hand "jerk", etc.  Guys like Apollon didn't do bench presses, and mainly concentrated on lifting very heavy weights purely on strength and not so much for "muscle spinning" (today we would call it bodybuilding).

Something has DEFINITELY been lost through the years.  Guys today are interested in looks and NOT in strength!!  Pray tell me... WHAT HAS HAPPENED??  Take the top five stars in weightlifting 100 years ago, and match them against the top five guys today in a show of raw power, and the stars of yesteryear would wipe the floor with our boys in terms of sheer strength!!  This makes me madder than....        

Where do we go from here?  Like Harlan said, this is not a popular post.  Controversy is never popular, but the truth is always the truth.  Roark, please sir... continue on your path to finding out and reporting the truth.  We all thank you for that.  

[Roark]

If you have access to Powerlifting USA, the current

issue, check out Judd Biasiotto's piece. Tells about

some lifter, who with 3" of padding on his back, and

a triple-ply shirt, added 200 lbs to his bench in

just a few minutes. 450 to 650.

The hard part of the lift for him was to get the bar

low enough, LOW enough. The suit was stopping him.

Sad day in Mudville when lifters such as Judd describes

are mentioned in the same breath as the classic lifters,

and Judd is trying to summon some sense to this

situation.