Thursday, October 11, 2007

  • Bicep Training With William Bankier, The Scottish Hercules

    • William Bankier was a performing strongman and wrestler at the turn of the century who went by the name of Apollo, The Scottish Hercules.

    For his act he would harness lift an elephant and perform a backward somersault over a chair, carrying a 56 lb weight in each hand.

    According to David Willoughby, The Scottish Hercules had a rather unusual method for building his biceps:

    "Rope climbing, using a rope one a half or two inches in diameter would be difficult to improve upon as an exercise for developing the arms and grip. If climbing rope in the vertical direction should prove beyond one's strength, the bottom of the rope could be fastened so as to fix the rope at any desired angle.

    This climbing of the rope on an angle is an exercise which "Apollo" ( aka William Bankier) aka "The Scottish Hercules" used to develop his bicep strength.

    From a single climbing and descending of a 30 foot rope each day (which took about two minutes) he obtained infinitely better results than did an acquaintance who devoted a half hour each day to light exercises especially for the biceps."    		William BankierWilliam Bankier

    (Looks like it worked!)

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    Posted by John Wood @ Thursday, October 11, 2007

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    Sunday, August 26, 2007

  • Rope Climbing For Strength and Development

    • Rope climbing has always been one of the "unsung" exercises of strength development.

    In terms of building incredible grip and upper-back strength, few exercises can compare to rope climbing.

    As documented by David Willoughby, William "The Scottish Herculese" Bankier, for example, used a 10 minute rope-climbing workout to develop his incredible bicep strength.
    		Rope Climbing
    And keep in mind that the training of many of the old-time physical culturists originally stemmed from gymnastics in which rope climbing has always been very popular.

    Here's a look at the only book that I know of written specifically on rope climbing techniques. The Rope Ladder, Knotted Rope, Inclined Rope, Vertical Rope, Double Ropes, Traveling Ropes and Rope Swinging are discussed.

    Just as today, a quality 3-strand manila climbing rope was preffered. In competitive rope climbing, the goal was to make it up a 20 foot rope as quickly as possible. The "finish line" was a round, black, wooden disc known as a tambourine. The record for climbing a 20 foot rope is an incredible 2.8 seconds!

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    Posted by John Wood @ Sunday, August 26, 2007

    www.oldtimestrongman.com

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    All Contents, Including Images and Text, Copyright © 2010 by John Wood and Thunderdome Media Inc., Not to be reproduced without permission, All Rights Reserved

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