Many Iron Game fans will recall the name Ray Van Cleef from the pages of Strength and Health magazine. He was an Associate Editor and his column “Strong Men The World Over” appeared for many years. Before all that though, Van Cleef was a great strongman in his own right. Here’s a rare shot that most people haven’t seen before of Van Cleef performing a heavy one-arm snatch of a wagon wheel axle.

The article where this came from was authored by Van Cleef and the inclusion of this picture was to illustrate how one might be able to still train, or otherwise perform novel feats, without having a barbell on hand — a notion that we are definitely on board with.

It’s probably also worth a mention that Ray was a vegetarian.