Crawford regained his record on March 12, 1891 by swinging a pair of ten pound clubs for a full seven hours while averaging seventy full swinger per minute. Crawford was also an accomplished dumbbell lifter and bicycle racer. He stood 5ft 8in and weighed 149 pounds.
1. The clubs were to be 2 pounds each and to be 24 inches long.
2. To Swing 50 complete circles each minute.
3. No rest or stop allowed during the 25 hours.
4. No aid of any sort allowed.
5. To swing no fewer than 70,000 complete circles for the record.
6. There would be two judges present at all times to watch the swinging.
Burrows commenced swinging his clubs at 9:18 pm on Wednesday evening. At 10:18 pm the next day, he officially met his mark of 25 continuous hours of club swinging but he didn’t stop there. At 11:33 pm, he finally put down his clubs having established the mark of 26 hours and 15 minutes of continuous swinging. The above photograph is from that evening (I’m quite curious about the axes.)
A few years later, in 1913, Needham swung a pair of 3 lb. 3oz clubs for 100 hours and 4 minutes to establish a new record. Not only that, during one of his memorable endurance swinging performances, Needham allowed his barber to give him a shave, while continuing to swing, of course! Needham engaged in several memorable Endurance Club swinging matches against Harry J. Lawson.
This picture was taken in 1910, and it was worth the very long trip by steamship to Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia where Lawson set a (then) endurance club swinging world record of 73 hours, 8 minutes with a pair of 3lb. 3 oz. clubs.
One of the reasons that Lawson traveled such a long way was to challenge the great Tom Burrows to a match…
