Maxick

28 June 1882 – 1961 · Bregenz, Austria → Buenos Aires

Maxick — born Max Sick in Bregenz — was a small, very strong lifter whose stage act and teaching were built on "muscle control": the voluntary isolation and contraction of individual muscles. After coming to London in 1909 he developed, with Monte Saldo, the Maxalding system, sold by post for decades afterwards.

Origins

Max Sick was born in Bregenz on 28 June 1882 to Swiss parents; his father died young and he took the surname of his Bavarian stepfather, later becoming a German citizen. He was a weak and sickly child — he is said not to have walked until he was six — and began making his own weights at about ten. When his parents destroyed them, he turned to exercises of muscle control instead. He joined a local athletic club at fourteen, trained as a mechanic, and at about twenty-three moved to Munich, where he trained in a gymnasium and worked as an artist's model. He stood just under 163 cm (5 ft 4 in) and weighed around 67 kg (147 lb).

The work

In the German music halls Sick made his muscles twitch in time to music. The South African physical culturist Tromp van Diggelen saw the act and persuaded Sandow to invite him to England; he arrived in London on 26 October 1909. A match with Thomas Inch for the professional middleweight title did not take place, as Inch was putting on weight and declined to meet him at middleweight. Maxick made his British debut on 19 January 1910 with a continental clean and jerk of twice his bodyweight.

His match with Edward Aston at the Granville Music Hall, Fulham, on 4 August 1910 ended when Maxick strained a shoulder and withdrew; a rematch at the Holborn Empire on 14 December 1910 was abandoned unfinished to make way for the evening performance. He became a business partner of Monte Saldo and William Bankier, and in 1913 gave demonstrations in South Africa.

At the outbreak of the First World War he chose to be interned in England rather than return to serve in the German army. Afterwards he travelled widely, returned to Germany, left again after 1933, and finally settled in Buenos Aires, where he ran a gym and health studio until his death in 1961.

Muscle control

Maxick claimed that his physique and strength came largely from muscle control. His book Muscle Control, or Body Development by Will-Power (London, about 1910) sets out a course of exercises done in front of a mirror without apparatus, in which the pupil learns to contract each muscle or group separately — the biceps, the abdominals, the latissimus — while relaxing the rest. With Monte Saldo he turned the method into the Maxalding mail-order courses, which were still being sold in the 1970s; the two also wrote Health, Strength and Will Power. The practice survives in bodybuilding posing; claims that it builds strength on its own are not supported.

Notable feats

• Continental clean and jerk of twice his bodyweight, London, 19 January 1910.
• Against Aston, 1910: a two-hands clean of 264 lb, though he failed the jerk after injuring his shoulder on one-hand attempts of around 208–212 lb.
• A stage feat, reported but not measured: lifting a man about 20 kg heavier than himself into the air with one hand, sixteen times, while holding a mug of beer in the other.

Disputed and unresolved

His date of death is given as 10 May 1961 in some sources and 5 October 1961 in others. Precise figures for his best lifts vary between later accounts and are not repeated here beyond those tied to dated contests.