Hand Balancing Archives - www.oldtimestrongman.com

Bobby Pandour

Posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2021 by John Wood

One of the all-time great physiques belonged to Bobby Pandour of Poland. He was an excellent at muscle control as well as hand balancing so much so that he performed an act with his brother Ludovic in the Ringling Brothers Circus in the early 1900’s. The Pandour Brothers also headlined as “The Herculean Marvels” coast-to-coast on the Vaudeville circuit.

Jack LaLanne’s Hand Stand

Posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2021 by John Wood

Jack Lalanne was always a big proponent of hand balancing. Here’s Jack holding a perfect hand stand while Happy, the white German Shepherd, looks on (and does a balance of his own!)

Glenn Sundby

Posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2018 by John Wood

Glenn Sundby was one of the biggest “names” at the original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, CA, co-founded USA gymnastics, helped establish the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame and was the editor and chief of several successful gymnastic magazines. Sundby was born in Minneapolis, MN and as a youngster, became fascinated with gymnasts, bodybuilders and Hollywood stunt men. At 5 feet, 5 inches, he was a perfect “top man” and eventually teamed up with wrestler and bodybuilder George Long as a traveling acrobatic group. Not long after, Sundby’s sister Delores joined the group. They famous as the Wayne-Martin Trio appearing at nightclubs, carnivals, The Ed Sullivan Show and even with Spike Jones and his Musical Depreciation Society (how you know you have REALLY made it!)

Just for kicks, on December 29, 1949, Sundby walked down all 898 steps of the Washington Monument on his hands. At various points in time, Sundby was the editor in chief of “Acro-Chat,” Acrobat Magazine, Modern Gymnast, and International Gymnast magazine. Here’s Glenn doing a little light reading at his desk.

The Incredible Arms of Clevio Massimo

Posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2018 by John Wood

It was said that Clevio Massimo’s family was descended from great Roman athletes of antiquity. That certainly isn’t too difficult to believe, Tony was one of the most muscular men who ever lived and excelled at a number of great feats. He could support a piano and player in the Tomb of Hercules position, bend spikes and tear phone books. Massimo was also a great Hand Balancer and wrestler — he only weighed 190 pounds but you would never think it looking at his pictures.

Jimmie Payne

Posted on Friday, April 20th, 2018 by John Wood

Jimmie Payne was one of Jack LaLanne’s good friends and training partners at the original Muscle Beach scene in Santa Monica, California. Payne’s background in hand balancing served him well, first as a lifting champion, then as a physique title holder (He competed in the Pro Mr. America four times) and finally as a stage athlete. He and his lovely partner Cindy Layne performed across the country as “Payne and Layne.”

He was no slouch in ‘normal’ lifts either, accomplishing a straight-arm pullover with 160 pounds, deadlifting 500 pounds for 8 reps and a standing press with a pair of 115-pound dumbbells.

Clevio Massimo Strongman Poster

Posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2018 by John Wood

An old poster of the strongman Clevio Massimo during the time he appeared on the stage throughout the country, depicting some of the feats of strength he included in his act: harness lifting, the One Arm get Up, Kettlebell Crucifix, card ripping, hand balancing etc. He included quite a variety; many not illustrated here, and his ability as a showman only enhanced his fine performances. Massimo also played the violin in one portion of his act to prove he was a capable musician as well as a genuine strongman.

Master Hand Balancer Professor Paulinetti

Posted on Monday, December 4th, 2017 by John Wood

Handbalancing goes back a long way although the man that took it to a whole new level was Professor Paulinetti. He perfected many of the most difficult hand balancing feats — and was the first man to accomplish the incredibly difficult one-arm planche. Professor Paulinetti was also the mentor to famed hand balancer Bob Jones. In fact, the image above once belonged to the personal collection of Bob Jones. On the back it is written that this photograph was taken in Italy around the year 1900.

Hepburn’s Hand Balancing

Posted on Friday, November 10th, 2017 by John Wood

Hand Balancing was part of Doug Hepburn’s regular training program. He figured the the increased blood flow to the upper body while in the inverted position would be good for building his pressing strength. Given his track records, there certainly may be something to that. Here’s Doug as the ‘bottom man’ in a unique feat: that’s a 205 pound barbell and a 170 pound man he’s holding overhead. This picture is more impressive than it may appear when you consider how they got in that position in the first place – a feat in itself. This picture was taken just after Doug established a new world record in the press with a lift of 353 pounds.

Heidenstam’s Handstand

Posted on Saturday, November 4th, 2017 by John Wood

Oscar Heidenstam is known as the Father of British Bodybuilding. In 1937, he won the “Mr. Britain” contest on his first try and went on to win the 1939 “Mr. Europe” title, the first British bodybuilder to do so. Later, he became president of not one but two bodybuilding promotions: The World Amateur Body Building Association (WABBA) and the National Amateur Bodybuilders Association (NABBA).

Heidenstam wrote many books on physical training including “Modern Bodybuilding” which can be found in The Iron League.” Above, Heidenstam, a life-long devotee of gymnastica and hand-balancing, easily goes down a flight of steps on his hands — he was 45 years of age at the time.

Try Hand-Balancing! by Sig Klein

Posted on Friday, October 6th, 2017 by John Wood

Try Hand-Balancing!

Sig Klein’s “Lost” Course Shows You How!

The Maestro, Sig Klein, shows his stuff, holding a handstand on a sturdy bench. This wasn’t all though, several full range handstand pushups followed.The details of this movements and several more variations are covered in “Try Hand-Balancing.”

WHEN YOU BUY A COLLECTION, you never know what you might find…

That was sure the case just recently when a big box of “forgotten lore” yielded a very interesting discovery: it turns out that the great Sig Klein wrote a course on hand-balancing that no one today (including me) had ever heard of before.

As you are probably aware, we are BIG fans of all things hand-balancing, and, of course, we are big fans of Sig Klein, so this training guide was certainly worth its weight in gold to us on many levels.

We immediately made plans to shine it up re-release this course again to the world so that everyone could once again benefit from Sig’s teaching.

First, we had all the text transcribed so that we could lay it out more readily. Second, we carefully re-scanned each image at the highest resolution possible in order to avoid the dreaded moire (checkering) effect… blemishes, specs, age spots and imperfections in the images were digitally edited and/or removed, and finally each scan was, enlarged, cropped, centered and leveled.

Our original plan was to put out this “lost” course as a hard copy, and you know how we like to do it, taking a lot of time, effort and great care in paper selection, layout and all other aspects of the presentation so that you end up with something in your hands that you can be proud to own.

We still intend on doing that at some point, but it recently came to our attention that a lot of people might also like to get an electronic copy. There are, of course, advantages in either case, but the immediate bottom line is that, with most of the layout work done, we could get an electronic copy up and ready to go in a matter of days and make it available immediately.

And so we did… and, as of the time of this writing, the electronic Kindle version of “Try Hand-Balancing” by Sig Klein is current climbing the charts over on Amazon.com.

Now, just to give you an idea of the kind of information that is covered in this course, here’s quick a look:

The THREE most important reasons to give your lower body a rest and increase the strength of the upper body by turning your training upside-down!

Why hand-balancing is and can be of the utmost importance for women and how a several groups of women easily show up their male counterparts

The simplest method for practicing your hand balancing skills — a skill that you should be able to do easily, even if you have never even attempted a handstand before

The two important factors that you must take into consideration when using the wall for practice

A simple-as-pie elementary exercise that will help you learn to position your feet correctly

How to perform the basic movement that will help you bridge the gap into advanced advanced exercises and movements

The two simple calisthenic exercises that will increase your hand-balancing skills

The spectacular hand-balancing feat that can be done with a simple chair, which is also a fantastic abdominal strength builder

Why Sig Klein believes every human being should be able to manage the weight of his body under all conditions

How hand-balancing builds steady nerves and quiet tempers through strengthening “concentration”

How to perform the highly impressive “Tiger Bend” and the small detail that finally allowed Sig Klein to conquer it. Also, why brute strength alone may not get the job done.

A three image sequence on how to perform the push-up-to-hand-stand on low parallel bars and why the low parallel bars are more of a challenge than high parallel bars for this movement

Details on the handstand bench push-up and its variations. How many times can Sig perform this movement?

The highly impressive “free” barbell hand-stand, and why Sig Klein says it is “only the b-e-g-i-n-n-i-n-g”

How to perform the Planche on low parallels

What Sig Klein feels is the biggest secret of hand-balancing success, and why you won’t get far without knowing it…

Additional Instruction from John Wood!

But that’s not all! Sig Klein wrote this course roughly seventy five years ago, but the principles which make hand-balancing work are eternal. When I embarked on my own hand-balancing journey, unsurprisingly, I learned from and practiced many of the movements that Sig discusses in his course. Since I went from knowing absolutely nothing about hand-balancing to being able to hold a “pretty good” one, (especially for a former nose-guard) there were a few additional details that I wanted to share along with what can already be found in Sig’s course.

So, in the latter pages of the course, I have put together TEN tips, tips, techniques and pieces of advice that I wished I knew when I got started, or which I learned along the way. Here’s an idea of what I mean:

The biggest mistakes that I made with my first hand-balancing effortss, why I initially quite and the completely random experience at an amusement park that occurred about a decade later pulled me back in

The biggest Secret to hand-balancing success – yes, Sig covered it already, but I wanted to list it again just to make absolutely sure that it sinks in.

How long will it take you to be able to hold a handstand? Everyone progresses at different rates, but I can tell you how long it too me, and the markers that I like to use.

What to do in case you have a bad workout …and the foolish mistake that *I* made that lead to one of the worst hand-balancing workouts that I ever had, something that I sure never repeated

How my early hand-balancing workouts will differ from my later ones, and the types of movements I recommend putting your focus toward early on

How to break up your training into three distinct phases: the “conditioning” phase, the “practice” phase and the “mastery” phase and the specific types of training that should happen in each

What my early hand-balancing workouts looked like, how long they generally lasted and why that time frame was important

The simple way that I like to keep track of my exercises to ensure progress is taking place

“Strait talk” on using the wall for your practice, when it is important and when it is a good idea to stop using it.

How often to train.. what I learned about frequency, and how often I currently practice

Why being “never satisfied” is a good thing when it comes to hand-balancing and how to make it work for you

A discussion on training environment, and how you can avoid the mistake that I made that made my wife very angry

Mental training for hand-balancing, a lesson from a Jedi master and how to not be your own worst enemy

The two visualization techniques that I use, and how they help me improve in my sleep!

IMPORTANT: Try-Hand-Balancing by Sig Klein is currently ONLY available in electronic format on the Kindle and available from Amazon.com. The order button below will take you directly to the order page on Amazon.com where it can be purchased. If we go ahead with a PRINTED version we will make an announcement once it is ready.

____$9.99 (Click this button to order from Amazon.com)