Friday, January 24, 2025

Videos for the Reading Impaired

 Here's a couple really good Youtube videos I stumbled across lately:



Look at that casual 285lbs muscle clean and press from Hepburn!





11 comments:

  1. The most amazing feat was when Doug balanced a man with one hand while the same man was doing a handstand. Words don't do it justice, you have to see it to believe it! I'd like to know how he did an even more impressive feat where he cleaned and pressed a barbell with an man balanced on top of the bar while doing a handstand. That picture is worth a 1,000 words! Surely Doug was one of the strongest men to have ever lived!

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    1. I like some of the hand-balancing things people did back then too.

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  2. Have always been amazed at Roy Hilligenn, another of the ones like Grimek who combined Olympic lifting with a world-class physique.

    LOL...wishing I could have heard what Hepburn diplomatically omitted saying regarding the USSR success: "If the fuckheaded governments of Canada and the US provided the same financing, promoting, and popularizing of Olympic weightlifting which the Soviet lifters enjoy, the fucking Commies would learn who really can produce the best lifters!..."

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  3. After watching the video of the Bethnal Green Gym, I googled their webpage. There's a photo of a whiteboard with some comp. results and in the upper right corner it reads, " 3 new ways to lift more: 1. Get Stronger, 2. Get Stronger, 3. Get Stronger." I love that.! Also love the pics on the gym wall of Eddie Pengally's lifting. What an awesome place!

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  4. I only remember seeing pics of Roy Hilligenn in the muscle comics when he was in his 50's. He looked good then but he looks great in the video! His waist so tiny and the double biceps pose from the back- POW!. I also remember seeing a pic of Hepburn doing a hand stand on the top of a basketball backboard - maybe on this blog. In the strength world, the stuff Hepburn was doing back then had to be like Roger Bannister's sub 4-minute mile or Bob Beamon's 29'-2" long jump. Beyond what was considered possible. That's a great trio of vids! Thanks to our trio of Contributors!

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  5. Continuing on with the stalwart lifting institution of Bethnal Green, The Wigan Snake PIt of British lifting, it is incomprehensible to me for a gym to be continuously viable as a training facility for straight 99 years!!! Just contemplate how many training and workout facility trends have come and gone over the last century. It is an example of incomprehensible continuity! Bethnal Green deserves much more publicity than it is receiving. Offhand, one would think a very insightful book about Bethnal Green's history could be produced. Come to think of it, there is much untold about past British lifting icons which should be either revisited or make available. Specifically, the contributions of Bill Pullum Sr., Tom Inch, Alan Mead and Syd Devis for strand pulling fans, right up to David Webster and Al Murray, etc. and beyond. Tremendous amounts of expertise and knowledge which has NOT been found wanting by the advance of science and time. In fact, a lot of the contemporary lifting-bodybuilding knowledge bank sprang off of what the aforementioned learned by trial and error.

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  6. Regarding Hepburn's gym, and Hepburn himself...both were exceedingly hardcore/old school, and I type that with extreme admiration for both. Unlike today, it wasn't the array of equipment in Grandview--heck, a few barbells on the floor, a squat rack and a wooden bench press!-- or the social "services" that brought people in. It was the "dig in and do it" atmosphere, a lot of the inspiration emanating from Hepburn himself. At the same time, I was a little surprised to see some semblance of a women's training section. While there weren't probably many female clients, the ones who came had to have some gumption.

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    1. JAN...has always been the reality, agreed: beyond a squat rack and a flat bench, all else is frosting on the cake. Muscle can't distinguish a paint can filled with stones from a precision-milled dumbbell, but it can distinguish "digging in and doing it" from going through the motions.

      Heck, how many stories have we heard of rusted axles and scrapyard metal being some iron famer's initial equipment? And, how many of us old-timers ourselves have or still use similar? (one of my barbells is an old cart axle with steel-rimmed spoked wheels that weighs 120 lbs, which accepts Oly plates so I use for deads and rows).

      Just, lift the damned weight. But, lift it like life depends on it.

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  7. I have been past the spot where Doug's gym was in Vancouver. Now there is a strip mall with a coffee shop called "Bump & Grind Cafe"

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