A Website Dedicated to the Study of Strength, Health, Fitness and Sport Across Centuries, Countries and Contests.
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of speaking with Alyssa Ages, an independent journalist who is also a strength fanatic. At the time Ages was working on a novel about the mindset of strength athletes (specifically those competing in World Strongest Man/World Strongest Women style events). The book has subsequently been published and I... Continue Reading →
How did you become a strength performer in the early 1900s? It's not a trick question but something that I've become fascinated with in the past two weeks. This was a time before mainstream competitions. This was a time before social media and it was a time when to be strong was to be truly... Continue Reading →
Olympic weightlifting for men dates to the very first Olympic games in Athens in 1896. The first iteration for women came in 2000 at the Sydney Games. It took until 1987 for the first world weightlifting championship for women versus 1891 for men. Likewise, the first recognizable meets for women only came in the 1970s... Continue Reading →
Written by D. Haddleton, of Sydney, Australia in Health and Strength Magazine, in November 1964, the following article presents an 'old school' method of training the abs. It features several exercises long forgotten by the modern weightlifter, making it both an invaluable piece of Iron Game history and valuable training aid. Really want to kick-start some ab development?... Continue Reading →
I should be untruthful did I follow the example of certain strong men who have made it their business to say they are weakly invalids at the commencement of their training, but, by the secret method, made themselves into strong men … Arthur Saxon, The Development of Physical Power (London, 1905), 3. I'm hurt, I'm... Continue Reading →
I am currently working on my next book project, this time studying the history of women's Olympic weightlifting in the United States. Funded, in part, by the Olympic Studies Center, I had the pleasure of studying the International Weightlifting Federation's minutes and magazines from the 1970s to the present day. Housed in Lausanne, Switzerland, this... Continue Reading →
The following post is taken directly from Thomas Inch's 1920s work, On Strength. Inch, as we have previously discussed on Physical Culture Study, was one of the early and influential British physical culturists. Inch was a weightlifter, weightlifting organizer and a prolific writer. He wrote for several decades with Health and Strength magazine, likely contributed... Continue Reading →
I was flicking through some old strength magazines during the weekend and came across a lift that I doubt many of us are familiar with. Called the 'Seesaw' press, it is essentially a standing dumbbell shoulder press but instead of pressing both dumbbells at the same time, you alternate between reps. As you lower one dumb-bell, you... Continue Reading →
Having previously discussed the history of the squat exercise, today's post examines the creation of the Rader Chest Pull, an exercise that Peary Rader, one of the Irongame's biggest names in the twentieth-century, often used in conjunction with the squat. Typically Rader would inform trainees to perform this exercise directly after a set of twenty... Continue Reading →
Just a quick word of thanks to everyone who voted in Common Ground Network's Publisher Prize. My book, The History of Physical Culture won the prize thanks, in no small part, to the votes from people who read my work every week on this website. I began this website in 2014 and, scarily, am nearly... Continue Reading →