Implements

The objects, where they are now, and what has been done with them

A few of the lifters left books, and most of them left photographs. Eight or nine of them left iron — implements still sitting in private custody, in museum cases, or in fields beside coaching inns. The implements are the most direct evidence the field has, because the weights have not aged.

The Inch Dumbbell172 lb · 2.38 in handle · forged before 1907

The Inch dumbbell is a single iron globe-style dumbbell with an unturned 2.38 in (60 mm) handle and a mass of approximately 172 lb (78 kg). It was forged for Thomas Inch before 1907 — the exact date is not on record — and used as the centrepiece of his music-hall challenge act for the next half-century. Inch offered a cash prize, at various times £200 then £1,000, to any member of the public who could clean the bell to the shoulder one-handed. The prize was never claimed in his lifetime.

The implement's difficulty lies in the handle, not the mass. A 172-lb dumbbell is well within the loaded weight that elite Olympic lifters move daily; a 2.38-in handle is, for most adult hands, too thick to be fully closed. The bell has been cleaned to the shoulder in the modern era by approximately a dozen lifters, including Mark Henry (1995), Žydrūnas Savickas, Eddie Hall, and Strongman champion Joe Kinnunen. The original is held in private custody in the United Kingdom; replicas have been produced from direct measurements by Sorinex and by Rogue Fitness.

Apollon's Wheels366 lb pair · 1.93 in handle · forged c. 1888

Apollon's Wheels are a pair of railway-truck wheels mounted on a section of axle, used by Louis Uni — "Apollon" — as the finale of his music-hall act from approximately 1888 onwards. The pair weighs 366 lb (166 kg) total and the axle handle is 1.93 in (49 mm) in diameter, untreated for grip. Apollon used the wheels as a stage piece, picking them up from the floor and rolling them onto his shoulders; he is not recorded as having lifted them overhead.

After Apollon's retirement the wheels passed through several hands and were eventually held by the French weightlifting federation, who offered them as an open challenge. Charles Rigoulot performed the first known clean and jerk of the wheels on 3 January 1930, repeating the lift in 1931 and 1933. John Davis, the American Olympic champion, cleaned and jerked the original wheels in Paris in 1949. Subsequent successful lifters of the original or near-replica wheels include Norbert Schemansky, Jean Dabonneville, Mark Henry, Ilkka Kinnunen, and Žydrūnas Savickas. The original wheels are held by the Musée de la Force in Paris.

The Cyr Dumbbell202 lb · thick handle · forged c. 1890

The Cyr dumbbell — a thick-handled globe dumbbell of approximately 202 lb (92 kg) with a handle of approximately 2.5 in (64 mm) — was used by Louis Cyr as the heaviest implement in his stage act through the 1890s and 1900s. Cyr lifted it one-handed to his shoulder, occasionally pressed it overhead, and used it for the kind of grip-and-press demonstrations the music-hall trade required. The original is held at the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas at Austin, where it is on permanent display.

The "Cyr dumbbell" is also a category. Modern strongman competition uses thick-handled, large-globe replicas of the Cyr style as a recurring event, with weights now exceeding 250 lb. The genealogy is direct: the modern competition implement is named for, and modelled on, the original.

The Dinnie Stones188 kg + 144.5 kg · iron rings set in granite · in situ since at least 1860

The Dinnie Stones are a pair of granite boulders sitting outside the Potarch Hotel on the River Dee in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Each has an iron ring driven into it; the larger weighs 188 kg (414 lb) and the smaller 144.5 kg (318 lb), giving a combined load of 332.5 kg (733 lb). The stones predate their lifting career: they were originally counterweights for repairs to the Potarch Bridge in the 1830s. Donald Dinnie, the Scottish Highland Games champion, is reputed to have carried the pair across the bridge in 1860, a distance of approximately 5 m. The original feat is folklore in the strict sense — the only contemporary account is from Dinnie himself, much later — but the stones have been an open challenge in Scottish strength culture since at least 1880.

The first credible modern double lift was made by Henry Gray of Aberdeen in 1972. Subsequent successful lifters include Jamie Reeves, Bill Kazmaier, Žydrūnas Savickas, Eddie Hall, Stefan Solvi Petursson, Tom Stoltman, and a small but growing list of women lifters in recent years. The stones remain at the Potarch Hotel, which now manages access for attempts.

The Inch Challenge SetFour bells, 75 lb to 172 lb · forged for stage use

Beyond the famous 172-lb Inch dumbbell, Inch's "challenge set" comprised four bells of graded weight: 75 lb, 140 lb, 153 lb, and 172 lb. Each had a thick, untreated handle. The lighter bells were used as warm-ups during stage performances and as graduated tests for paying challengers — Inch took on amateur lifters at music halls, who would attempt the lighter bells before facing the heaviest. The full set survived together until at least the 1960s. Their current locations are scattered across British private collections; the 172-lb bell is the one most consistently traced.

The Milo TriplexAdjustable plate-loaded barbell · 1902 onwards

The Milo Triplex was the first widely available adjustable plate-loaded barbell in the United States. Alan Calvert began manufacturing it through the Milo Barbell Company in Philadelphia in 1902. The bar took graduated iron plates, secured by collars, on internal sleeves; the loadable range was approximately 25 to 200 lb in early sets, and considerably wider as the catalogue expanded. The design was not unprecedented — German plate-loaded hantel had existed since the 1890s — but Calvert's Milo was the first to be sold widely in the United States and the first to make precisely incremented progressive resistance available to the American amateur. Original Milo Triplex bars survive in the Stark Center collection, in private hands, and as occasional auction items.

Saxon's KettlebellGlobe-style ringbell, c. 1900

The kettlebell associated with Arthur Saxon — a heavy ringbell of approximately 100 lb used in his stage act for the "two-hands anyhow" routine — has not been firmly preserved as a single identified implement. Several globe-style kettlebells from the Saxon Trio's stage equipment survived into the twentieth century in British and German private hands; whether any of them is "the Saxon kettlebell" in a strict sense is unclear. The implement type, though, is well documented: Saxon used a ringbell rather than a contemporary kettlebell, with a single iron ring as a handle and a heavy cast globe, and the design influenced the early British kettlebell trade through the 1910s.

The Húsafell StoneApproximately 186 kg · basalt · in situ since the eighteenth century

The Húsafell Stone is a roughly oval basalt block weighing approximately 186 kg (410 lb), kept at the Húsafell farm in west Iceland. Its lifting tradition goes back to the eighteenth century, when the local pastor Snorri Björnsson is recorded as having used it as a strength test for his shepherds, with three categories of success: lifting it onto a knee-height ledge, carrying it past a defined post, and walking the full circuit of the sheep pen with it.

The stone is technically outside the 1850–1950 window of this archive, both earlier and later: its tradition is older than the Iron Game, but its profile in modern strength culture rose only after Iceland's strongman generation — Jón Páll Sigmarsson, Magnús Ver Magnússon, Hjalti Árnason — established its place in the World's Strongest Man competition repertoire from the 1980s onwards. It is included here because the lineage of "stone lifting" as a standing strength test, of which Dinnie and Húsafell are the two best-known examples, is genuinely continuous with the music-hall tradition and is the part of the Iron Game that has survived most directly into the twenty-first century.