York Barbell Strength Spectacular 2000

By Tom Black

     For the third year in a row I attended the York Barbell Strength Spectacular.  I've attended every year since the inception of this event and have always gone on Sunday to witness the strongmen events and Hall of Fame induction ceremony.  Once again, the Spectacular did not disappoint.  This event has improved every year, but I did miss the arm wresting that they had last year. 

     After going to the gym at 6:30 and doing my squat workout I set out on a two hour drive to York.  I arrived at the end of the lightweight men truck pull.  Oddly enough I witnessed one of the fastest pulls of the day as soon as I arrived, regardless of body weight, but did not realize until after the heavier men pulled the truck that the time was surprisingly fast.  As we have seen from the World's Strongest Man competitions, being very large definitely has it's advantages in the truck pull, so when a "little guy" of 200 pounds pulls faster than the big guys you know he's strong.  I didn't get his name but I'm sure he'll stick out when York Barbell posts the final results (he may have had one of the best times of the day regardless of body weight).

     I missed the tire toss, but there was a company selling videos there and they were playing back the tire toss from earlier in the day so I got to see a little of the event.  There definitely were some long tosses of what looked like a pretty heavy tire.

     I milled around between events, going to the York store and picking up some back issues of Hard gainer and "Rock Iron Steel" by Steve Justa.  The store is better stocked than ever before, and they have definitely anticipated what the crowd at the Spectacular likes to buy.  They have plenty of Ironmind crushers available and a large number of hard to find books.  They had many of my favorite iron game books such as Dinosaur Training by Brooks Kubik, the Mighty Atom book, the aforementioned Justa book.  They also had back issues of Milo and Hard gainer

     Of course throughout the event you could rub elbows with Hall of fame inductees past and present, including Bill Kazmaier.  I've seen Kaz twice now at this event and I am really impressed by his demeanor and general friendliness.  People were talking with him throughout   the day and he spoke at length with everyone.  He wore a tank top most of the day and was HUGE.  I think he is actually in better shape now than when I met him 2 years ago at the first Strength Spectacular.   Even though there were many big power lifters and bodybuilders there he was the biggest, bar none and his arms were unreal.  I was most impressed with Kaz when  he gave away over 300 personalized and signed pictures.  I was ecstatic to get a signed picture of Kaz lifting the Inch Dumbbell replica over his head in 1990.  I consider this one of the great strength feats of all time.  Most really strong men, if they can move the weight at all, lift the Inch dumbbell about 1 foot off the ground.

     The strength competition continued with the push press with a 2-inch barbell.  The organizers were quite befuddled to discover that the rubber coated iron plates did not slip onto the bar!  They went and got a whole stack of regular iron plates that barely slipped onto the bar.  I thought that the rules called for a strict Military style press, but all the competitors pushed with their legs, and thus had much higher lifts than in a strict press competition.  I was disappointed in this, but I suppose it was better because at least the competitors where consistently giving the lift everything they had.  Paul Sheedy, winner of the 1998 event, blew away everyone with a 300 pound opener and 340 pound second attempt.  I wasn't watching how strict he pressed the weight because I was busy getting a picture, but it didn't seem like he dipped at all.  All this with a 2 inch bar that makes the lift even harder.  My guess is that the weights also did not rotate on the bar because they fit so tight, this would add to the difficulty as well.

     When Kaz was signing the pictures I noticed that he had a dumbbell handle on the table with a sleeve around a standard Olympic thickness tube that made the handle around 2.5 inches thick, just like the famous Inch dumbbell.  I guessed correctly that Kaz would perform some type of heavy dumbbell lift.  During the press competition they set up the dumbbell with 170 pounds of weight plus the handle (said to be 176 pounds total).  As Kaz sat down for a massage at least 50 people, including many of the competitors of the strongman competition, tried to lift the dumbbell.  It was quite clear after many big guys tried to lift it that it was in no danger of leaving the ground.  As Kaz got his massage he stared at the dumbbell like it was a seven-course dinner for a starving man.  His intensity and focus were amazing.  He didn't even seem to blink, even when people walked up to and tried to lift the dumbbell.   I also tried to lift the dumbbell, even though I had done my grip workout the day before and didn't have a chance.  Even with fresh hands it is doubtful that I could lift the dumbbell because I only could manage 175 pounds on Ironmind's Rolling Thunder, and this handle was at least an eighth inch thicker than the Rolling Thunder. 

     They rolled the dumbbell onto the driveway and I had a great  vantage point right behind Bob Hoffman's statute.  No one could stand in front of me to obscure the picture, but I was not sure what Kaz would be able to do with this heavy dumbbell.  Because of this I cropped the picture too wide and I am not real happy with the result (with digital pictures you don't want to waste precious pixels).  You can see from the picture that Kaz lifted the dumbbell up about a foot, which is similar to how the Inch dumbbell is lifted when really strong guys manage to move it at all.  I was impressed, but Kaz apologized and said that he may have been over trained on the lift.  I was quite inspired by his lifting the dumbbell and decided that I would have to make my own.  I had been planning to make one for a while by gluing 3/4 boards together around a handle and then rounding the wood off to make a handle.  I made my handle within a week of seeing Kaz and made it even thicker at 3 inches.  I managed to clean and press 72 pounds with the 3-inch handle, and I have to say it was wild to attempt to lift such an imposing apparatus.   I'll have plans for this soon on my web site, so check back in a month or so. 

Last in the competition was the wheelbarrow lift and carry for time.  The women lifted the device with a keg and sandbag.  The first woman who went did the course in under 9 seconds and they decided that they must have timed it wrong because the other competitors (which included Shannon Pole-Summers, a national champion Powerlifter) went much slower.  She was allowed to rest as the other competitors pushed the wheelbarrow and when she went again she still blew everybody away with a really fast time of around 10 seconds.  It was clear even without a stopwatch that she went the fastest, she ran the course at a breakneck speed.  When the guys went none looked as impressive as this one woman in terms of speed.

     I left after the race, not staying for the awarding of the prizes for the competition.  It started to sun shower after I left and I was treated to 3 different rainbows on my way home, two of which were complete from end to end and one the brightest I had ever seen.  I felt this was a fitting end to a good day.

Copyright 2000, Tom Black