The Back Lift

c. 1860 – 1920s · Supported partial lift

In the back lift the lifter stands bent beneath a heavy platform resting on trestles, braces it across the back and raises it a short way clear of its supports by straightening the legs. It gave the largest figures of the nineteenth-century strongmen. Louis Cyr's back lift of eighteen men in Boston in 1895, usually quoted as 4,337 lb (1,967 kg), is the best known.

At a glance

• Louis Cyr: 4,337 lb (as usually quoted), eighteen men on a platform, Austin and Stone's Museum, Boston, 27 May 1895. Earlier: 3,536 lb of pig iron at Berthierville, Quebec, in 1888 (as reported).
• Warren Lincoln Travis: 4,140 lb before witnesses; in 1927 a back-lift endurance record of 5.5 million lb — 5,500 lifts of 1,000 lb in 3 hours 9 minutes — which stood until Howard Prechtel broke it in 1982.
• Paul Anderson: 6,270 lb, reported from 12 June 1957; long listed by Guinness, then removed in the late 1980s for lack of evidence.

Description

A strong platform rests on two trestles or supports at about the height of the lifter's hips when bent. The lifter gets underneath, back flat against the underside, knees bent and hands braced — usually on the thighs or on a low stool — and then straightens the legs, lifting the platform an inch or so clear of its supports before lowering it. Loads were iron weights or, more theatrically, people standing on the platform.

Mechanically it is a very short-range lift with the load carried close to the line of the spine, so the totals are far larger than in any full-range lift. That is why back-lift figures run into thousands of pounds.

Rules in competition

In the strongman era the back lift was an exhibition and challenge feat, and the terms — what counted as clearance, whether the load was weighed or estimated — were set by the performers and promoters. Arguments usually turned on the weight of the platform and the people standing on it. The lift was never an Olympic or international federation event. It survives in all-round weightlifting organisations, which keep records for it under their own rules.

Disputed and unresolved

Cyr's 1895 figure was reported at the time as a record for the style, but it is an estimate of the weight of eighteen men plus a platform: a total of 4,300 lb would need the men to average more than 200 lb each, even allowing for a heavy platform. Some accounts describe the lift as nearer a straight-legged press. It is best given as "about 4,300 lb, usually quoted as 4,337 lb".

Anderson's 6,270 lb rests on limited contemporary evidence and was withdrawn by Guinness; Joe Roark's examination of it in Iron Game History sets out what is and is not known. It is a post-period claim and is not directly comparable with Cyr's.