Karl Norberg: 82-Year Old Superman - Ed Lolax (1975)

 

and I would like to give readers of Iron Man magazine an updated story on Swedish born Karl Norberg. Weightlifters and strength athletes in the United States and throughout the world have heard of Karl's tremendous feats of strength, and he is popularly known as "The Strongest Man in the World for his Age." 

His most notable feat of strength, a 460 pound bench press at age 73, was witnessed by Ed Lolax (who was and still is Karl's workout partner), nine years ago at the San Francisco Central YMCA. 

Today, at age 82, Karl is still going strong. When we members of the Sports Palace Gym recently celebrated his 82nd birthday in January, he bench pressed 315 pounds. The birthday party and strength exhibition was shown on channel 5 television and throughout Northern California.

Karl Norberg was born into a very large family of 14 children on January 5, 1893. Out of necessity to help support the large family of 8 boys and 6 girls, he went to work in a sawmill at age 12. He worked a full day which was (in those days) from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Later on he went to work on the railroads and in the logging camps and saw mills in Sweden. 

During World War I he served in the Swedish army. After the service he was back working on the railroads and in the woods until "hard times" brought him to the United States in 1932. Here he was lucky enough to get a job as a longshoreman and an Alaskan fisherman. 

Karl was known around the San Francisco waterfront as "The Big Swede" and his remarkable strength is still a legend there. Karl is very proud of the fact that he never missed a day of work due to illness in the 26 years he worked as a longshoreman. He worked there from 1932 (he became a United States citizen in 1937) to 1958 when he retired at age 65. During the years he worked there he didn't have much time to train with the weights but he did his own version of weightlifting and practicing feats of strength. 

Standing, photo right

with four of his brothers. 

One of the most famous feats was holding 100 pound sacks of flour in each hand overhead and lowering them out to the sides in a crucifix position. At the time that Karl was doing this he was told by some of his friends that the world record for the crucifix lift was held by George Hackenschmidt with 90 pound dumbbells in each hand. 

Karl also used to playfully do presses for reps overhead with a 240 pound coworker. He also did one arm deadlift with a piece of dock equipment that weighed 550 pounds. This piece of equipment had a handle on it and Karl was the only man around who could pick it up off the ground and complete a one arm deadlift. 

Karl first ventured into a gym in 1940. The place was the San Francisco Central YMCA . . . 

   

. . . and during his first day there he walked over to a barbell loaded to 230 pounds, picked it up and military pressed it. He was 47 years old then and weighed 225 pounds at a height of 5'10". 

He also loaded up a bar to 650 pounds and deadlifted it but this was not enough exercise for him so he walked around the gym with the 650 pound barbell.

Obviously Karl has been gifted through heredity with great natural strength and he tells me that his father was considered the strongest man around where he lived in Sweden. The father got this title because he was the only man around who could pick up a full grown horse in the back lift. 

Toward the end of 1940 the San Francisco Central YMCA had a famous visitor who was Mr. America and also the United States weightlifting champion. The visitor, John Grimek, was later to write, "Karl Norberg is the most naturally strong man I have ever met." He came to this conclusion during a weightlifting exhibition he was giving while touring the U.S. When he was demonstrating the clean & press some of Karl's longshoreman friends were yelling that they had someone who could press as much weight as he was doing and would he let the longshoreman come up onto the stage. 

Grimek agreed and the longshoremen encouraged Karl to go up onto the stage with Grimek. Karl picked up the 240 pounds that was on the bar, palms out, and curled it to his shoulders where he pressed it palms out (reverse grip press). Grimek did the lift the same way and they then proceeded to lift 250-260 and 270 in this manner (challenge!). Karl stopped at 270 to a thundering round of applause. Grimek made this weight then went on to make 280. 

When one considers that Karl had no practice or technical training with the weights and that he was one month away from his 48th birthday, it is no wonder that he would have to be considered the most naturally strong man in the world at that time. 

For the next 17 years until Karl was 65, he had very little time to train with the weights. World War II and the years following kept him busy on the San Francisco waterfront. Then came the Korean was for several years which kept the longshoremen as busy as the World War II years where Karl said he sometimes worked triple-8 hour shifts without a break. 

Karl had a small set of weights in his garage at home totaling about 200 pounds, and he said he didn't lift them very often since he was always so busy with work. When the longshoring would have periods where it wasn't too busy, Karl would work on an Alaskan fishing boat "pulling heavy nets of salmon onto the boat." 

Karl feels that the hard physical work he has done all of his life helped him to become the strongest man in the world for his age. This is no doubt true, and when one combines this with good heredity, the love for hard physical work, and perhaps performing feats of strength, it all adds up to Karl Norberg.

Some of the feats of strength performed while Karl was on the waterfront have already been mentioned. However, I would like to mention a few more . . . 

Walking up stairs on his hands was a frequent exercise along with hand-balancing on his hands and thumbs. 

He did one arm pushups and could hand balance himself on one thumb which is quite remarkable for anyone, let alone a big man weighing close to 230 pounds. 

After retirement Karl spent the next two years between 65 and 67 working around his home and lifting weights that he kept in his basement. He had an accident while doing repair work on his home and this caused a very serious knee and back injury. Karl had one knee injured and operated on when he was younger and now this accident injured his other knee. His doctor told him that he shouldn't lift any weights because it would bother his back and his knee. However, the doctor apparently underestimated his determination to do physical exercise and to try and make his back get better. 

Karl joined the San Francisco YMCA between 67 and 68 years of age and felt that between doing weightlifting exercises and taking steam baths he could be his own physical therapist for his back. He was also written up in a weightlifting magazine by the late Ray Van Cleef and was shown in the magazine holding out an 80 pound dumbbell in each hand in the crucifix lift.   

 

Doing the crucifix lift with these 80's along with the 405 bench press made Karl a world famous strong man to the many people who hadn't heard of him. (I'm not sure but I think the world record was 90 pounds in each hand for the crucifix lift at this time). 

But wait, there was more to come, because Karl did his world famous 460 pound bench press at age 73 while weighing 260 pounds. 

He also did a straight up and down seated press with 330 pounds; a sitting on the floor press with 310; and a sitting on the floor clean & press of 10 reps with 110 pound dumbbells. To clean the 110's while sitting on the floor is in itself a remarkable feat of strength, but then to press them in this position 10 strict reps also takes herculean strength. 

Karl also took the Olympic lifting bar and did sets of 8's in the curl. He sometimes would work up to doing a very strict curl with 205 pounds (all of these lifts were done at age 73 which should make them all "Age Group World Records").

To my knowledge no one has ever heard of anyone near Karl's age who can duplicate or even come close to his upper body feats of strength. On the day that Karl did the 460 bench press, Bill Stathes . . . 

. . . one of America's best bodybuilder-weightlifters, commented to me that the press was quite easy for Karl. We had been spotting him and I had to agree with Bill that Karl could do more in the next few weeks. We both felt that 480-500 was easily within Karl's capabilities. 

Then, a very unfortunate thing happened a few days later. Karl was working around the YMCA gym in his capacity as an instructor and he was asked to help move a very heavy rack loaded with weights. The rack tipped over on Karl's right side and since he had a hold of it, he tried to stop it. He pretty much did with his great strength, but he injured his right arm and shoulder in the process. His right arm and shoulder have never been the same since that accident, but this has not stopped Karl from still maintaining his title as the world's strongest man for his age. He kept getting special treatments on his shoulder and kept plugging away with the weights even though he admitted at times to having quite a bit of pain in his right shoulder. However, his love for exercising with the weights and his great determination have helped him to keep working out three times a week except for a period of time between 81 and 82 years of age when he had prostate surgery. Prior to this he had diabetes which he got under control right away and now he takes only one pill a day for this. His doctor told him that he had never seen a senior citizen anywhere near Karl's age recover so fast from diabetes and a major surgery. 

The above mentioned illnesses happened to Karl not too long after he had appeared in Iron Man magazine with pictures of his 80th birthday party held at the Sports Palace Gym. For the past three years, he and I and the manager and owner of the Sports Palace, Jim Schmitz, have trained together at 12 noon on Monday/Wednesday/Friday at the Sports Palace. 

As I mentioned earlier, Karl and I have trained together at the San Francisco Central Y together. This started in 1960 when we first met there and continued up to three years ago when we started training at the Sports Palace. We have become very close friends over the last 15 years and needless to say, Karl has developed new friendships since training at the Sports Palace. He is very popular with all of the lifters there and when he walks into the gym for his noontime workouts his smile and jovial manner bring a little sunshine into the lives of all of us.

Karl's three times a week workouts consist of 10-12 sets of bench pressses; lockouts on the power rack; triceps pushdowns in front of chest on the lat pulldown machine; lat pulldowns behind the neck; dumbbell curls; leg raises and stretching exercises. 

He is an early to bed, early to rise man and he tells me that he starts each day by getting up in the morning and doing his "string pulling." The strands he pulls are two thick, rubber ones, and he an pull three at a time. However, he likes to do reps with the two strands by pulling them first behind the neck and then in front of his chest. 

Right now at age 82 Karl's massively muscular chest is 55"; arms 19; forearms 17 and he has an enormous 9" wrist. This is at a bodyweight of 250 pounds. 

His diet has quite a bit of fish and cheese in it and he takes multiple vitamins daily. 

As of this writing, Karl has broken his age group world record bench press of 315 pounds. A few days ago Lolax and Jim Schmitz spotted him on a bench press (which he made) of 325 pounds! Karl then tried 330 right after this and almost made the lift in perfect style. He is determined to keep training hard and to break his own world record bench press at his 83rd birthday party next January. 

Enjoy Your Lifting!