Thomas Inch

7 February 1881 – 12 December 1963 · Scarborough, Yorkshire → London

Thomas Inch was a music-hall strongman, mail-order trainer, magazine writer, and showman whose chief contribution to the Iron Game is an implement: a 172-pound dumbbell with a 2.38-inch handle that few have ever picked up cleanly. He claimed the British professional title in 1910 and held a version of it through the 1920s.

Origins

Inch was born in Scarborough, on the Yorkshire coast, in February 1881. He performed locally as a teenager and turned full-time professional in his early twenties. He moved to London around 1905, where he based himself for the rest of his career. His early competitive work was in the British amateur and professional weightlifting circuit, in the form of the era's contest lifts: the bent press, the one-arm clean, the two-hands continental.

The work

Inch performed a stage act at music halls across Britain, ran a mail-order strength course, and wrote a long series of articles for Health and Strength and Superman magazines through the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. He also coached privately, including the British amateur champion Edward Aston. He was prolific, opinionated, and litigious; his writing on technique is among the more extensive of any English-language strongman of the period.

His public act centred on his "challenge dumbbells" — a graded set of four, of which the heaviest, the 172-pound bell with the unturned 2.38-inch handle, was the one he offered to the public. He toured with the dumbbells to halls across Britain, offering a cash prize — at various times £200, then £1,000 — to anyone who could lift the heaviest bell to the shoulder with one hand. The prize was never claimed in his lifetime.

"It is not the weight that defeats the man. It is the handle. The bell is heavy enough; the bell will be heavy enough for as long as it exists. The handle is the question."

Notable feats

Inch's documented competitive figures include:

• Right-hand bent press of approximately 304 lb (138 kg), London, 1911 — Inch's best public bent press, witnessed by other British professionals.
• Two-hands continental jerk in the region of 320 lb (145 kg).
• Right-hand snatch at around 165 lb (75 kg).
• Lifting his own challenge dumbbell — 172 lb / 78 kg with a 2.38 in handle — to the shoulder one-handed, on stage, repeatedly through his career.

The Inch dumbbell is an artefact of grip rather than absolute strength. Its mass — 172 lb — is well within the loaded weight that elite Olympic lifters move every day. Its handle, however, was forged thicker than convention and not knurled or turned down: 2.38 in (60 mm) diameter, equivalent to a fat axle. Lifting the bell from the floor to the shoulder requires the lifter to maintain a closed grip on a handle that, for most adult hands, cannot be fully closed. The bell has been cleanly lifted in the modern era by perhaps a dozen people, including Mark Henry, Žydrūnas Savickas, and Eddie Hall.

Method

Inch's mail-order course, repackaged in numerous editions through the 1920s, was conventional for its time: progressive resistance with a barbell, isometric "muscle control" drills, deep breathing, dietary moderation. His more interesting writing is technical — long detailed articles on the bent press, the one-arm snatch, the structure of the wrist for thick handles. These are still useful and form a substantial part of the English-language record on the lifts.

Legacy

The Inch dumbbell is the legacy. The original bell, after Inch's death in 1963, was held by his estate and then the British Amateur Weightlifting Association; it is currently held in private custody but has been brought out for public attempts and exhibitions. A small number of replicas — by Sorinex, by Rogue Fitness, by individual blacksmiths — have been produced from direct measurements of the original. The implement has become the standard test of grip in professional strongman, the way the Apollon's Wheels became the standard test of clean strength.

Disputed and unresolved

Inch claimed at various points that he had lifted his bell with each hand, performed it in a contest setting, and could repeat the lift on demand. The single-handed lift to the shoulder is well-attested in the British strength press of the 1910s. Whether Inch performed the lift to overhead — that is, all the way to a full press or jerk — is contested; the most reliable English sources (David Webster, Ron Walker's contemporaneous reports) say no.

The handle diameter was, for many years, given as 2.5 in. The figure 2.38 in (60.45 mm) is taken from direct measurements made by David Webster and David P. Willoughby on the original bell and is now the accepted figure. The bell's exact mass is given as 172.5 lb in some sources and 172 lb in others; both round to the same lift.