The Back Lift

c. 1860 – 1920 · Supported partial lift

The back lift was the largest-weight category of the late-nineteenth-century strongman tradition. The lifter stood beneath a platform set on trestles, raised it perhaps an inch off its supports by straightening the legs and lower back, and held the load momentarily before allowing it to return. Louis Cyr's figure of 4,337 lb (1,967 kg) at Sohmer Park, Montréal in 1895 anchors the category.

Description

The setup: two trestles or supports, on which a wooden or iron platform rested. The lifter positioned himself beneath the platform in a hands-and-knees or low-crouch position, with the upper back braced under the platform and a strap, harness, or hand position taking some of the load. Audience members or weighted blocks loaded the platform to the announced figure. The lifter then straightened the legs and lower back, raising the platform a small distance — typically one to three inches — off the trestles. The platform held the lifted weight visibly off its supports for a brief interval before the lifter lowered it.

The back lift is, mechanically, a partial deadlift performed at the very top of the range of motion, with the load supported close to the body's natural standing height. The leverage advantage is enormous; even so, the absolute weights moved are larger than any full-range lift recorded in any era.

Rules in competition

Back-lift contests of the 1880s and 1890s required that the platform clear the trestles fully, that the load be announced and verified by weighing, and that the platform be held momentarily in the cleared position. Disputes typically centred on whether the platform had cleared or merely tilted on the trestles, and on the accuracy of the announced load.

The category was widely contested in North American music-hall and circus settings through the 1890s and 1900s. It was effectively retired with the consolidation of the modern Olympic lifting programme in the 1920s; the lift was not in the IWF rulebook.

Record progression

• Louis Cyr, Sohmer Park, Montréal, 1895 — 4,337 lb (1,967 kg). The platform held eighteen men. Witnessed and reported in the contemporary press.
• Warren Lincoln Travis, c. 1907 — variously reported in the 4,000–4,500 lb range.
• Paul Anderson, 1957 — 6,270 lb (2,844 kg) back lift, although the lift's status in modern Olympic-era classification is contested. Anderson's lift is post-period for this archive but is the standing modern claim on the category.

Cyr's 4,337 lb is the firm music-hall-era figure. The Anderson 6,270 lb is post-period and was performed under rigging that has been disputed by historians; whether it is straightforwardly comparable to Cyr's is unresolved.

Disputed and unresolved

Back-lift figures depend critically on rigging: a rocking platform, a tilted axis, or a partial clearing can flatter the announced weight. The strongest historical positions are: Cyr's 4,337 lb is well-witnessed under conditions reasonable by the standards of the period; Travis's larger figures are partially attested; and the post-period Anderson figure is contested even within its own time.