Adam Glass is holding a Feats of Strength Competition over at his blog, I decided to enter with a rather unorthodox bending style.
This is possibly the maddest thing I’ve attempted so far, no doubt I’ll get some strange looks and comments from people in the grip community but you can’t rip something you haven’t tried!
Competed in the second leg of the World of Grip Strongest hands competition today. Was really happy with my results, setting personal bests in all events. In the two hands pinch I got 59.1kg, a gain of 5.2kg over my last result 3 weeks ago. Weaver stick to rear was 2.7kg, an additional 0.1kg over last time, and on the Rolling Thunder I managed 58.7kg.
The next event I will participate in will be in April and I am hoping to start closing in on 70kg on the two hand pinch.
On Tuesday I saw Fear Factory live at Manchester Academy 2. They were fantastic, playing a good blend of their new album, Mechanize, and older tracks from digimortal, demanufacture etc.
All in all the gig was everything I had hoped for, a lot of my favourite tracks, heavy as hell, and left me wanting to punch through a wall and bench press a truck!
The Mighty Atom written by Ed Spielman is a fantastic insight into the life of Joseph Greenstein aka The Mighty Atom.
The Mighty Atom is the best biography I have read to date, relegating Anthony Kiedis’s ‘Scar Tissue’ to second place. The writer details Joseph’s beginnings as a sickly child, his running away from his family to be cured by a strongman in a travelling circus. Throughout the book you are humbled by the aura of this magnificent man, the feats performed by this 5′ 4″ 140lb man are seemingly inhuman. Feats such as chewing through chains and ripping up horse shoes with his bare hands, not to mention stopping a propeller plane from taking off by attaching a rope to his hair!
The book contains images of clippings from newspapers of the times to back up the claims of some of these outlandish feats, it even contains the recipes to some of his products. Yes, I forgot to mention, Joseph Greenstein wasn’t a brutish man, he may have been extraordinarily strong but he was a gentle soul helping others whenever he could and a loyal husband and a father of 10 (eventually 8 as he lost two children at young ages). Joseph spent the later years of his life travelling the United States teaching people about the power of the mind, about how to keep the body and mind healthy (stay away from sugar and white flour!) and selling his soaps, liniments and other products.
I have to thank Josh Hanagarne for recommending this book, it was a fantastic read. The book is now out of print, but I highly recommend you trying to find a copy in your local library.
Decided to give WordPress a go as my old blogging software just wasn’t doing it for me. Going to transition everything over here slowly and try and make a bit more of an effort to post regularly.