| Bigsteel
Readers Gallery
Welcome
to the Bigsteel Readers Gallery. Over the years
people have been kind enough to send me pictures of things they have done,
not with the idea for publishing on Bigsteel, but just sharing their
accomplishments. I've wanted to start a gallery of these pictures,
but never had enough at any one time to start up a page. If you
would like to have a picture here, go to this page.
It appears that
Bigsteel has already outgrown this format and now I will switch to
individual pages for each person in the Gallery. I'll probably redo
them all, but lets start with another entry from Stefan Straub and Steve
McGranahan.
|
Below are pictures of Greg Matonick.
These pictures of Greg performing feats of strength were taken in the
1980's, however, after a long lay off due to two (2) serious car accidents
causing severe shoulder damage and being diagnosed with diabetes, Greg has recently been bending
steel among other things again. The first picture to the left is
Greg bending a 34" half-inch piece of rebar across the bridge of his
nose. This was performed December 6, 1985 at a Bench press contest.
The middle picture is Greg bending a 3/8"x12" spike on October
22, 1983. The final picture is Greg blowing up a hot water bottle in his gym, an
awesome feat of strength that has never been seen on Bigsteel
before. Editor's note: this is a very dangerous feat since the air
can blow back into your lungs- do not try it, I mean it! In those
days Greg also bent 60-penny nails un-braced as well as horseshoes. Greg could
also bend a 4-foot x
1"x1/2" bar, the same dimensions that Slim the Hammerman is
known to perform in his
shows. Greg, now 52, is once again doing strength shows along with
motivational and inspirational talks to youth groups and adults. |
 |
 |
 |
Below is Police Officer Kevin Mc Bride,. 6'2" and
240-pounds of America's finest, and obviously tough as a
brick. The lift he is performing is a variation of the
Herman Goerner Brick lift. Actually, as it turns out, there
is not a very clear description of Herman Goerner's lift, and this is the
way Kevin decided to do it. I believe Goerner actually pinch lifted
the bottom brick, but Kevin's
lift is also a valid, and difficult, way of lifting a stack of
bricks.
|
 The first picture Kevin sent was too dark so he took some more
and in the process made a new PR, 10 bricks! I tried this
and could only muster eight 4-pound bricks and it was hard. |
This is Nik Straub doing a one finger curl dumbbell curl with 40-pounds. The weight is strictly curled
in a concentration type curl movement and Nik can perform 10-reps
with this weight! Nik has great forearms and wrists for grip strength, his potential is extremely
high. Nik  also enjoys levering sledgehammers and will no doubt
exceed what I can do if he sticks with it (or maybe
already). Seeing the size of his wrist
and forearm, I feel I need to work harder than ever before to obtain
my goal of a strict to parallel lever of a 17-pound sledgehammer,
otherwise Nik will beat me to it! At 245-pounds, Nik can perform a concentration curl with a
115-pound dumbbell and bench press 295-pounds, as well as rep the #2
gripper.
Just in case you don't notice, I've
given Nik the biggest picture on this page, and considering the size
of his arm, he needs all the space he can get! Both Nik and his
brother Stefan below have recently being training the one hand deadlift
with a dumbbell. They each lifted 220-pounds.
|
 This
is Nik's brother, Stefan Straub, doing an unusual lever with a
sledgehammer. Stefan is only 15 years of age, yet is already closing the #2
gripper for reps, and can do a one hand deadlift with a
180-pound dumbbell, which is over his bodyweight of
170-pounds. I estimate the torque on Stefan's wrist in this
picture to be about 120-inch-pounds, and considering that this is an
awkward position for the hand, that is quite a bit of torque.
I think both Nik and his brother Stefan will be future Captains of
Crush on the #3 gripper. You saw them here first! |
|
This is Arne
Persson performing a very strict plate curl on
a preacher bench. Not only is this an excellent feat of
strength, it illustrates one of the best ways to do the exercise.
Using the preacher bench eliminates body swing that could be used to
"cheat" the weight up. The plate is a 15kg Eleiko
plate (33-pounds) and Arne's best is 10-reps in strict style (wow). |
Arne describes his
wrist during the curl as not dorsal flexed. As with many
grip and wrist strength feats, what makes this difficult is the
torque caused by the plate. I've calculated that a 35-pound
plate is 2.8 times harder to do than a 25-pound plate and a 45-pound
plate is 4 times harder than a 25-pound plate. Think
about that if you try this feat with a mere 25-pound plate, which is
very difficult for most people. (March 18, 2003)
Arne has sent me pictures before, inspiring
the Sept. 2001 article "A
Virtual Journey."
|
|
Shades of Sorin!
This is Rick Walker, recent Captain of Crush,
showing the creativity of a
great Grip Master. Rick is pinch lifting a round electric
motor with a width of around 5.5". The plate and chain
brings the weight up to 38-pounds, a huge lift on this very wide
implement. Rick is already zeroing in on the famous Beef
Builder Elite, a bear of a gripper, stronger than the Ironmind
#3. Rick has also sent me a picture of himself lifting a
120-pound anvil by the horn. To give an idea of Rick's overall
strength let me add that he has recently deadlifted 600-pounds for 3
reps. That should give you an idea of the hand strength
required for this related feat.
|
Here
are two more pictures of Rick Walker. Rick sent me many
pictures, but I choose these two for very particular reasons. The
first picture shows Rick with a #3 gripper in his right hand, and
an 8-pound hammer in his left. I picked this one because I
could not duplicate it myself. First, I'm still very shaky
with the #3 gripper and two, it would take a very long hold to get
the hammer into place as well.
|
I picked this picture because I am envious that Rick owns an
anvil. It weighs 120-pounds and Rick picks it up so casually
it is amazing. I mentioned to Rick before
he sent this
picture that I have not seen many pictures of sledgehammer
levering on the Internet (or anywhere else for that matter) and
thought his pictures would be a good start to the Readers Gallery
because the sledgehammer and anvil were such unusual lifting
implements. |
Copyright March 2003
|
