1711 replies to this topic

[RJMooreII]

It reminds me of an old web-page How to Be Rich Like Bill Gates.
The first entry was 'choose your grandparents very carefully'.

[droc]

Genetics are overrated.

DROC

[Ironhand]

Genetics is great. I'm 70 and my mother is 99 and planning her 100th birthday party. You'd better believe I'm rooting for her!

[Munthasem]

Droc. Don't think I'm somewhat a kid in the candy store about that bodyweight stuff but combining the basic compound lifts with gymnastics is one of the ways to get both big and strong while still maintain and increase your flexibility and speed. Another great thing to reach explosive power are oly lifts and elastic tube work.

If you stress your cns with packing some serious poundages on your squat, deadlift, bench, military press and bent over row, with enough protein rich food and rest, you'll most certainly advance both in muscle mass and in strength. The strength training is simple and there's nothing fancy about it. Train, eat, sleep, repeat. A simple stuff with compounds such as one or two warming up sets with lower weight for about ten reps, than put the weight you can handle for 1 - 3, maybe five reps at max for about 3 to 5 working sets and after that strip off some weight and do another set of 10 reps.
These workouts are short, but intensive. Get in there, warm up, bang the work sets, pump additional set with smaller weight, drink your protein shake (Whey and you can put a little of gloucosis in) and rest.

As far as bodyweight exercises concerns, add them to prevent getting stiff from weights. Do some gymnastic bridges, various pushups, pull ups, dips, ab work and if you want you can try stuff like falcones, iron crosses, ice cream makers, muscle ups and stuff like that.

Elastic tubes are great because they tend to dense a muscle a great deal, which also can serve as an injury prevention. Of course it's not an ironclad rule that you have to do all of that but you can get both big and fast combining these.

Edited by Munthasem, 26 April 2012 - 12:07 PM.

[TheDarkslayer]

A tiny Cimmerian, but still a Cimmerian!

Would you say this guy has a Conan physique?



DROC

[Kortoso]

Probably a stunt as much as anything else.

[droc]

Droc. Don't think I'm somewhat a kid in the candy store about that bodyweight stuff but combining the basic compound lifts with gymnastics is one of the ways to get both big and strong while still maintain and increase your flexibility and speed. Another great thing to reach explosive power are oly lifts and elastic tube work.

If you stress your cns with packing some serious poundages on your squat, deadlift, bench, military press and bent over row, with enough protein rich food and rest, you'll most certainly advance both in muscle mass and in strength. The strength training is simple and there's nothing fancy about it. Train, eat, sleep, repeat. A simple stuff with compounds such as one or two warming up sets with lower weight for about ten reps, than put the weight you can handle for 1 - 3, maybe five reps at max for about 3 to 5 working sets and after that strip off some weight and do another set of 10 reps.
These workouts are short, but intensive. Get in there, warm up, bang the work sets, pump additional set with smaller weight, drink your protein shake (Whey and you can put a little of gloucosis in) and rest.

As far as bodyweight exercises concerns, add them to prevent getting stiff from weights. Do some gymnastic bridges, various pushups, pull ups, dips, ab work and if you want you can try stuff like falcones, iron crosses, ice cream makers, muscle ups and stuff like that.

Elastic tubes are great because they tend to dense a muscle a great deal, which also can serve as an injury prevention. Of course it's not an ironclad rule that you have to do all of that but you can get both big and fast combining these.

yup, love it

[Konorg]

Probably a stunt as much as anything else.

no way man the man was strong! Remind me to tell you about when i used to train with him back in the day

[droc]

Probably a stunt as much as anything else.

Stunt or no stunt, the man is impressively strong.

DROC

[Arthyron]

Looks like he's pressing himself down rather than pressing the weight up.

it's a very technical lift and yes the bar does stay in teh same position as you bend over.
My goal is to hit 400 pound in the bent press with either hand.

I really hope you're joking. Arthur Saxon was the only man in history able to bent press over 370, and he was miles ahead of *anyone* then or now. The heaviest bent press I've ever heard of in modern times is around 185.

Probably a stunt as much as anything else.

Stunt or no stunt, the man is impressively strong.

DROC

That's no stunt, it's quite real. It's the same kind of stuff I used to do all the time (I've been on a year plus hiatus from strength training due to lack of motivation). Zass is one of the legends of that form of strength training, known primarily as "Oldetime Strongman." He was well known for his chain breaking abilities which were on par with Joseph "The Mighty Atom" Greenstein. The feat he did with the bending of the steel bar in to a complicated shape is known as "scrolling." I talked quite a bit about Oldetime Strongman in some of the earlier pages in this thread as I recall, if any of you would like to learn more about it.

[Cuchulain]

HELP!!! I need to improve my grip strength. I was doing deadlifts a short while ago and my hands were giving out, I know they're the limiting factor in my DL right now. What are your favourite exercises for improving grip strength for deadlifts? Thanks DROC

try using a wooden chair, holding it by the end of one leg and moving just the wrist in a hammering movement. the goal is to to reach the point of holding the back post of the chair doing the same movement with the chair's feet pointing away from you.

start with the back leg of the chair, close to where you sit on it and just close enough that you can control it with only the forearm you are working on. work with the same chair leg until you can do it from the very tip of the leg then move to the front leg. Once you can do it from the tip of the front leg then move to the back post of the chair until you can do it from the tip of the chair back.

Hope that helps

[MilkManX]

I just started practicing the Bent Press with a KB(only 35 lbs right now) but I plan to get a 53 and 70 soon.

Fun lift.

I do it the the way I saw Dave Whitney do it with a KB Clean and then into the Bent Press.

[Munthasem]

Some of the Conanesque wrist strength.

[Konorg]

Looks like he's pressing himself down rather than pressing the weight up.

it's a very technical lift and yes the bar does stay in teh same position as you bend over.
My goal is to hit 400 pound in the bent press with either hand.

I really hope you're joking. Arthur Saxon was the only man in history able to bent press over 370, and he was miles ahead of *anyone* then or now. The heaviest bent press I've ever heard of in modern times is around 185.

Probably a stunt as much as anything else.

Stunt or no stunt, the man is impressively strong.

DROC

That's no stunt, it's quite real. It's the same kind of stuff I used to do all the time (I've been on a year plus hiatus from strength training due to lack of motivation). Zass is one of the legends of that form of strength training, known primarily as "Oldetime Strongman." He was well known for his chain breaking abilities which were on par with Joseph "The Mighty Atom" Greenstein. The feat he did with the bending of the steel bar in to a complicated shape is known as "scrolling." I talked quite a bit about Oldetime Strongman in some of the earlier pages in this thread as I recall, if any of you would like to learn more about it.

Nope no joke on my Bentpress goal mannnn!

[JainkhulTamhair]

Probably a stunt as much as anything else.

You're completely right, and lucid, which seems to be a rare quality on this page sadly.

I've seen when on a trip in Europe some gypsies break chains, which were made of "pot metal" (zinc alloys) and other special effect material. They hold up to a few pounds but break when enough pressure is put on them. They don't have quite the same aspect as cast iron, so some patina is applied on them .
It's done with an acidic solution which darkens the surface and the same treatment was made in front of my own eyes, including the treatment done on duralumin stunt swords, some which were rectified after simulated medieval jousts by simply pressing/bending them repeatedly against a cement wall. They were billet cut, but hand finished.
Some circus strongmen break finer iron chains but it's less impressive: the links are too fine to impress anyone, moreover the public could not check anything (if the links had been soldered properly, etc) , they try brass or aluminum too.

check decorative chains in supply stores, some are cold or hot worked but not always soldered (the aluminum ones are rarely soldered)

In one circus, a guy bent some frying pans with "tefal" written on them.
They're made of a tough aluminum alloy and my euro buddies had a whole collection at their place, apparently it's a good brand, but the alloy is easy to bend if your hands are strong enough, no need to be a super trained freak.
I personally tried an american made steel pan of thickness 1/30 " on the rim, 1/24" on the sides and the bottom was the thick type clad with pure copper (you cannot see the copper plate, it's sandwiched between the lower plate and the bottom of the pan)
I pressed it against my chest and at first it seemed I could not bend more than a few fractions of an inch but I curled it two-thirds, the bottom clad plate being quite hard.
After a little research online I found out it was cheap "stainless" which was not anywhere close to 18/20 stainless nor 300 or 400 series stainless. A steel which is cold worked in presses.

In the times of A.Saxon and friends, many similar feats were simply stunts: on the vid we clearly see he's not even forcing that hard. Thousands of similar stunts were performed, often the initial conditions were simply not verified in due form (such as when Houdini invited "officials" to check his cuffs, the hinges of the box and other details: accomplices or simply paid officials). We all know Houdini had special stunt locks, cages and hinges and was himself a master lock picker, concealing a hinge axis or a pick on him. Often his models were official locks but modified by him, some were custom made, there are so many books written about his methods, it's no secret.

A very important detail is that Houdini succumbed to the "strongman" fashion and himself performed several "feats" : he swam under a frozen river for example, and this crap started to affect his mental as well. He ultimately claimed he could take a punch in the stomach may it be from the strongest person alive , but a canadian amateur boxer punched his guts inside out and he died miserably from internal bleeding. I find this extremely sad.
He was no real martial artist and even then, it would have been difficult to not get injured one day or the other with this kid of childish "bet".
I'm not saying that all strongmen without exception were magicians ( or cheaters in other words), but most were, and the real strongmen performed lifts and throws essentially, not breaking or bending unverifiable houseware/prisonware/construction material (chains, poles, bars, locks)

Try pressing a lock made of M2 tool steel with bare hands. Try breaking or bending a cemented motorbike U lock, even a cheap 20 dollar model.
Real construction grade chains supports hundreds of kilos and some models support tons. They're virtually unbreakable by human means, and that even if you're able to throw a piano in mid-air, no human has the power of a hydraulic industrial press, simple as that.
Even if we did, some steels are so tough and hard you need an industrial cutter (oxyacetylene, laser, abrasive wheel) to cut them (they won't break) , and nowadays these alloys are kind of common. Anyone heard of brands like masterlock and such? They're not space age materials! Kids use them for their bicycles!

Should we all believe people when they say things such as "I know one guy who can run 5 times as fast as a cheetah" ?
After all, in engineering notation, 5x is not a world of difference when dealing with great numbers (such as speed of light, for human appreciation there isn't a perceivable difference when comparing say 1/20th and only 1/3rd of speed of light) , but considering that the maximum running speed ever observed for a human being is some sort of absolute limit, we can't simply just put a number between 0 (not included) and 9 as a factor, since we're not dealing with quantics!!
We all know the fastest human ever observed officially can barely compete with a cheetah, so forget about being five times faster. A simple and effective analogy.

Now let me tell you something. I've read a bit on this forum page and was surprised to see so much credit is given to "old-timers" and their exagerated claims such as lifting a wooden stage with hundreds of people on it, flexing hard steel bars etc.

I helped a friend build his house even though I'm no construction worker and he thought I couldn't bend rebar because he couldn't (the difference is he never did any form of strength training in his entire life) . He was dead wrong.
I trained my wrists with all sorts of methods (I'm on the brink of having a carpal tunnel problem ) and it's really not difficult to bend rebar on your knee and if it's long enough without any pivot, let's say between both hands put apart as far as possible or with one end planted in the ground.

Nothing exceptional. These "old time strongmen" had good strength but very few of them were really exceptional, the competitions they held between themselves were often a mess leading to disputes of all sorts (sometimes fights), trials, debunked tricks and whatever. I'll never understand why they had to pretend they were even stronger than what they really were. Why pretend to lift 250 people all at once for example? It's just STUPID.

A real feat is having Franco Colombu exploding a hot water bottle by breathing like a SOB in it. But tricked bent presses and breaking/bending thick hardened steel chains is for people who spend their time daydreaming.

I saw a Wuxia movie where a funny dude put a solid brick on the fire discreetly then plunging it in cold water , then without anyone aware of this preparation, smashed it to pieces with his bare hands to impress some thugs who happened to be there.

these tricks are known worldwide and I'm surprised people here believe this sort of thing. Some guys apparently spoke already of alloys and such but I had first hand experience watching shows and going backstage, not to say that I've trained for 11 years in weightlifting. Wake up dudes.

Edited by JainkhulTamhair, 03 May 2012 - 05:14 AM.

[JainkhulTamhair]

Kortoso, I forgot to speak of the weak link trick. A famous circus trick I've seen since I was a boy. It consists of using a relatively sturdy chain, but with one link left unsoldered of finely cut in the right spot then pressed back together to hide it's been altered.
The unaltered links are strong enough to hold a medium weight person or even more, but that is done when not having the altered link in the middle.
Only when the chain is put around the waist, chest or whatever body part, will the altered link be subject to pressure and simply...POP open. You can use a fake link made of a different material too.
Any amateur bodybuilder can perform the trick when putting such a stunt chain around the chest , suffices to empty the lungs, pull the lats back and when the chain is locked in place, breathe strongly and force with the lats to augment in volume: the chain will simply pop.
The trick is old as the world.

Edited by JainkhulTamhair, 02 May 2012 - 04:32 PM.

[mario]

anthony quinn's character zampano, does a trick like that in the old fellini movie la strada...

[Konorg]

Probably a stunt as much as anything else.

You're completely right, and lucid, which seems to be a rare quality on this page sadly.

I've seen when on a trip in Europe some gypsies break chains, which were made of "pot metal" (zinc alloys) and other special effect material. They hold up to a few pounds but break when enough pressure is put on them. They don't have quite the same aspect as cast iron, so some patina is applied on them .
It's done with an acidic solution which darkens the surface and the same treatment was made in front of my own eyes, including the treatment done on duralumin stunt swords, some which were rectified after simulated medieval jousts by simply pressing/bending them repeatedly against a cement wall. They were billet cut, but hand finished.
Some circus strongmen break finer iron chains but it's less impressive: the links are too fine to impress anyone, moreover the public could not check anything (if the links had been soldered properly, etc) , they try brass or aluminum too.

check decorative chains in supply stores, some are cold or hot worked but not always soldered (the aluminum ones are rarely soldered)

In one circus, a guy bent some frying pans with "tefal" written on them.
They're made of a tough aluminum alloy and my euro buddies had a whole collection at their place, apparently it's a good brand, but the alloy is easy to bend if your hands are strong enough, no need to be a super trained freak.
I personally tried an american made steel pan of thickness 1/30 " on the rim, 1/24" on the sides and the bottom was the thick type clad with pure copper (you cannot see the copper plate, it's sandwiched between the lower plate and the bottom of the pan)
I pressed it against my chest and at first it seemed I could not bend more than a few fractions of an inch but I curled it two-thirds, the bottom clad plate being quite hard.
After a little research online I found out it was cheap "stainless" which was not anywhere close to 18/20 stainless nor 300 or 400 series stainless. A steel which is cold worked in presses.

In the times of A.Saxon and friends, many similar feats were simply stunts: on the vid we clearly see he's not even forcing that hard. Thousands of similar stunts were performed, often the initial conditions were simply not verified in due form (such as when Houdini invited "officials" to check his cuffs, the hinges of the box and other details: accomplices or simply paid officials). We all know Houdini had special stunt locks, cages and hinges and was himself a master lock picker, concealing a hinge axis or a pick on him. Often his models were official locks but modified by him, some were custom made, there are so many books written about his methods, it's no secret.

A very important detail is that Houdini succumbed to the "strongman" fashion and himself performed several "feats" : he swam under a frozen river for example, and this crap started to affect his mental as well. He ultimately claimed he could take a punch in the stomach may it be from the strongest person alive , but a canadian amateur boxer punched his guts inside out and he did miserably from internal bleeding. I find this extremely sad.
He was no real martial artist and even then, it would have been difficult to not get injured one day or the other with this kid of childish "bet".
I'm not saying that all strongmen without eception were magicians ( or cheaters in other words), but most were, and the real strongmen performed lifts and throws essentially, not breaking or bending unverifiable houseware/prisonware/construction material (chains, poles, bars, locks)

Try pressing a lock made of M2 tool steel with bare hands. Try breaking or bending a cemented motorbike U lock, even a cheap 20 dollar model.
Real construction grade chains supports hundreds of kilos and some models support tons. They're virtually unbreakable by human means, and that even if you're able to throw a piano in mid-air, no human has the power of a hydraulic industrial press, simple as that.
Even if we did, some steels are so tough and hard you need an industrial cutter (oxyacetylene, laser, abrasive wheel) to cut them (they won't break) , and nowadays these alloys are kind of common. Anyone heard of brands like masterlock and such? They're not space age materials! Kids use them for their bicycles!

Should we all believe people when they say things such as "I know one guy who can run 5 times as fast as a cheetah" ?
After all, in engineering notation, 5x is not a world of diffference when dealing with great numbers (such as speed of light, for human appreciation there isn't a perceivable difference when comparing say 1/20th and only 1/3rd of speed of light) , but considering that the maximum running speed ever observed for a human being is some sort of limit, we can't simply just put a number between 0 (not included) and 9 as a factor, since we're not dealing with quantics!!
We all know the fastest human ever observed officially can barely compete with a cheetah, so forget about being five times faster. A simple and effective analogy.

Now let me tell you something. I've read a bit on this forum page and was surprised to see so much credit is given to "old-timers" and their exagerated claims such as lifting a wooden stage with hundreds of people on it, flexing hard steel bars etc.

I helped a friend build his house even though I'm no construction worker and he thought I couldn't bend rebar because he couldn't (the difference is he never did any form of strength training in his entire life) . He was dead wrong.
I trained my wrists with all sorts of methods (I'm on the brink of having a carpal tunnel problem ) and it's really not difficult to bend rebar on your knee and if it's long enough without any pivot, let's say between hand put apart as far as possible or with one end planted in the ground.

Nothing exceptional. These "old time strongmen" had good strength but very few of them were really exceptional, the competitions they held between themselves were often a mess leading to disputes of all sorts (sometimes fights), trials, debunked tricks and whatever. I'll never understand why they had to pretend they were even stronger than what they really were. Why pretend to lift 250 people all at once for example? It's just STUPID.

A real feat is having Franco Colombu exploding a hot water bottle by breathing like a SOB in it. But tricked bent presses and breaking/bending thick hardened steel chains is for people who spend their time daydreaming.

I saw a Wuxia movie where a funny dude put a solid brick on the fire discreetly then plunging it in cold water , then without anyone aware of this preparation, smashed it to pieces with his bare hands to impress some thugs who happened to be there.

these tricks are known worldwide and I'm surprised people here belive this sort of thing. Some guys apparently spoke already of alloys and such but I had first hand experience watching shows and going backstage, not to say that I've trained for 11 years in weightlifting. Wake up dudes.

Having done the bentpress for a number of years I can say the bentpress is not a trick,plus the book "The Truth About weightlifting" by Alan Calvert first published in 1911 address both the real feats of strength of the old timers as well as the fact 'some " did indeed fake it..

Chapter 2 page 17:

A professional lifter will almost always carefully conceal his real records and at the same time will exaggerate the feats which he preforms on stage.

(note a professional was a person who earned a living by putting on prefermances back then,and many times had 3 or more shows to do DAILY,so the wise thing to do would to have lifted on stage far less then what they really could lift,and for the dramatic effect amp up the nummbers of the bell to make it look like for more,but they typically had a challenge bell there that they could lift that was ruggedly heavy so they could put any challengers in their place,And i'd like to note that thwere was thos ethat where on the up and up about what they coudl lift.
Note
also an amature back then where those who competed in organized weight lifting meets and where lifting to set legit record not to earn the greenback
and mentioning Arthur Saxon he was indeed certified as successfully Bentpressing 370 pounds.)

Page 95-96 of The Truth About weightlifting
Arthur Saxon states that his chest measures 46 inches normal,his upper arm 17 inches,and anybody who has seen Saxon will readily credit his claims.Saxon looks far bigger then those lifters who say they have 19 inch biceps and 50 inch chests. He seems to be as honest about his measurements as he is about his lifts.


The reason I qoute form his books is the fact he was a man who cute through the BS to get to the real facts,he even called Eugen Sandow in that book on the fact that his true measurements where listed in a book sandow wrote right along with his fake measaurements he listed for his stage shows.

[Kortoso]

Yes, those old-time strongmen were showmen first and athletes second.

Konorg, I don't know why you spend so much time kneeling before them, so to speak. Their knowledge, skill and strength has long ago been surpassed. And none of their records can be double-checked.

[Konorg]

Yes, those old-time strongmen were showmen first and athletes second.

Konorg, I don't know why you spend so much time kneeling before them, so to speak. Their knowledge, skill and strength has long ago been surpassed. And none of their records can be double-checked.

well when the training info of today can be written in a straight forward manner without the techno-jargan,and they start promoting 100% drug free bodybuilders and such annnd I can see a modern day bodybuilder or powerlifter duplicate...no surpass Herman Goerner's one hand dead lift of 727½ pounds ,his rectangular fix with 154¼ pounds. his 297½ pound barbell with one hand,or one of them beat Arthur Saxon's 370 pound bentpress etc then I will look to present guys.


Remember I am of the Brooks Kubik school of strength training ,and thus I hark back to the days of "DRUG FREE","Prohormone free" training,take these modern pro-bodybuilders etc dudes of their drugs and their strength would fizzle