How did the Oldtime Strongman Train

[Cody Clark]

Hello

Just wanted to see what people have to say about how the old time strongmen and how they trained. I have always had a interested in th way they trained. Just wondering did they combine everything into their traing like gymnastics, O lifts, Kettleebells, and odd object lifting into one. Or did some just do own thing and just did what worked. I have noticed however that just about all the old time strongman had some type of back ground in gymnastics, acrobratics, or even wrestling. Long before they ever becam strongman. I know that Sandow was a Circus Acrobait before he became a strongman. This probably just added to his success. Saxon said when he was young he climbed trees and did wrestling with his weightlifting when he was 18. Could gymnastics be another secret to the oldtimers strength and power. What do you guys think aboout how the old timers trained.

[Joshua Naterman]

GO to oldtimestrongmen.com and sandowplus.co.uk

Those sites have what you want to know. THe UK site even has all the old training manuals for free. I have downloaded and read many of them.

[AlexX]

Old timers did quite a bit of bodyweight feats. Besides the websites above (great websites btw), read Brooks Kubik's Dinasaur training, Pavel's Power to the people old and professional, Tommy Kono's Olympic Weightlifting and Stuart McRobert's Beyond Brawn to learn how the old school strongmen trained.

[Joshua Naterman]

Hey man! I haven't seen you on here in a while.

What Alex said is great, those are very good books to read. A lot of the old timers' books are hard to understand at first, these books Alex has suggested are more modern and therefore easier to read. There are also more explanations of HOW things work, since we really didn't have that knowledge back in the times of the old strongmen. What they DID understand was how to get results, and it is remarkable similar to what we do here.