Are You Too Small To Be Strong?

When you look at the strongmen today compared to yesteryear its a huge margin and I don't mean the number of men but by physiques. When you think of strongman you think of weightlifters, big burly monsters who can deadlift well over 700 pounds and bring up a 800 pound tire or lift super heavy stones. As you keep looking at what these beasts can do you're forgeting that there are much smaller guys who posses a different kind of strength that no monster can touch.

Let me make a point that these men are well under 200 pounds and know how to set their mind to take on feats that require 100's and 100's of pounds of pressure and I mean steel bending, phonebook tearing, horeshoe bending, nail biting, ect. When you try to visualize what these guys can do you're first thought is its impossible and you'd have to be a giant to pull them off. Well heres a few guys i'm going to name off the bat that can do feats that would make even a 300 pound lifter's jaw drop.

Joe "Mighty Atom" Greenstein- Pound for pound one of the strongest men to walk the earth. Grew up in a really bad and tough polish town and was told by doctors at a young age he wouldnt survive his 18th b-day. Made a solem vow that will never happen and learn the ways of internal power and preserveriance. In many years to come he would be a vaudville star and a powerful strongman at only 5'4 and 150 pounds. Even at that weight he broke steel chains on his chest, bent the toughest steel bars and spikes and even laid on a bed of nails while a truck went up sat on him and went back down. He lived to be in his late 80's and even then he was a force to be wrecking with, had tendons that were like steel rods and was a good catch wrestler so he had the best of both worlds. His legecy lives on in some great men old and modern and in the iron game he's never forgotten.

Dennis Rogers- Possibly without question the strongest man at 168 pounds. This is a guy like Charles Atlas was puny as a teenager and didnt show in any way of muscular strength. As a young man in his 20's he became an Arm Wrestler at 140 pounds and beating some of the best in the world even heavy weight armers. Its said he has won many many awards in the sport and yet didnt satisfy him so he learned the tricks of the trade and became a strongman. He became content with the fact that even at 165 pounds and only 5'8 he wanted to very strong and have powerful tendons. His big break came in 1993 when he held back two airplanes for a matter of 20 seconds i believe. From that day on he traveled far and wide putting on shows for more people then any strongman dead or alive and went on countless television shows mostly Oprah and Regis And Kathy Lee. One of his greatest feats next to holding the planes was the ability to snap off shackles and chains. Overall never underestimate the power a man of small size can posses and no matter how you put it he always has something to prove.

Pat Povilaitis aka The Human Vise- Like Dennis and Atom he isnt a big man but yet has the strength of one. An upincoming master strongman Pat has shown what it takes to put himself in a feat where it could either hurt him or kill him and he can pull off any feat thats thrown at him or what he comes up with. He even owns a couple records that can never be touched unless you're a smartass and wanna die young. His most shocking feat is not bending steel and closing a number 3 COC gripper (280 pounds of pressure) but tearing a phonebook in 5 peices vertically which is called a quantuple vertical tear. Now if someone can have that kind of strength I would love to posses that. He's a great asset to the iron game and will be breaking records many years to come.


If you want to get a glimpse of what these guys do and what feats they used i'd reccomend these 3 sites that can help any strongman or strongman entusiast posses strength beyond imagination. Here you go:

www.dennisrogers.net

www.humanvise.com

www.functionalhandstrength.com


Yours in Power & Might

Ben