The endless road led me back to the Grip Factory for a steel bending masterclass. Multi time world record holder and organiser David Horne is legendary in the world of grip and is dedicated to keeping alive strength traditions from an age some have forgotten existed.
In the UK (and maybe many other places) strongmen traditionally rubbed shoulders with singers, dancers, musicians, stage magicians and speciality acts. Live public performances of this sort in music halls were called Vaudeville and later Variety. Cinema and Television largely killed them off, but not completely.
As a teenager I read about circus strongman Joseph Greenstein (The Mighty Atom) who bent nails and horseshoes in an amazing book of strange facts. I’d been obsessed with the strength and strongman competitions since first watching on TV when I was three years old. Were these music hall strongmen comparable to the giants who lifted the cars and barrels on the annual Worlds Strongest Man competition? And could I ever get close to that sort of strength?
In 2000 and 2001 I was in 5 heats of the UK Strongest Man competition, training out of my garden gym eating hearty dinners and working on building sites. I was strong enough to be in it, never close to winning it. I got an appreciation for what was involved and branched off to become an amateur travelling entertainer of sorts pushing trucks, flipping over tractor tyres and doing escapology at village fairs, school open days and minor charity events. It was wonderful and scary to present a live act to an audience used to using a remote control. I read that Harry Houdini would keep his audiences in suspense, waiting sometimes 20 minutes before revealing he was free of his chains whilst a band played. Conversely, I found my remote control addicted audience had an attention span between 90 seconds and 4 minutes. I performed accordingly.
A few years later this thing called the internet was starting to get big and I wonder now if the scrolling generation would even pause their games or conversations, let along put down their handsets. Of course, it’s easy to lament technology and its faults. Without it I wouldn’t have discovered many opportunities that I used to miss, often hearing of what I wanted to be involved in only after it had occurred. It was via the world wide web I saw David Horne doing strongman things in the old style. Like many others who I eventually crossed paths with I figured I’d meet him at some point. I was right.
In the steel bending master class we learned the mechanics of bending nails, bolts, steel bars and then the art of breaking them. It’s more involved than I had imagined – as in everything there is technique to be applied – brute force only goes so far but it’s always useful to have. To weaken the metal enough to break it, multiple bends are made, the quicker the better. The amount of effort and sweat involved to do this is surprising. David says it’s ideal for older guys – breaking something in the half hour before dinner is more time effective than the trip to the gym that was left too late.
There were triumphs. Seeing my classmates struggle and overcome was worthwhile. It took me 9 minutes to bend a nail into an “S” shape – nowhere near the 22 minutes that bending the horseshoe into a heart took back in December. Driving home with sore hands and a big smile I reflected that were I ever to take this stunt onto the road – like David Horne is doing again this year – I’d have to get much quicker. The doom scrolling audience likely won’t have the patience to wait.
See you down the road.
Thanks,
Dan
