Henry "Milo" Steinborn

14 March 1893 – 9 February 1989 · Siegburg → Orlando, Florida

Henry "Milo" Steinborn was the German-born lifter and wrestler who brought the heavy squat to American attention. In the early 1920s, before squat racks were standard equipment, he would tip a loaded barbell of around 550 lb up on end, rock it onto his shoulders, squat with it, and lower it the same way. The manoeuvre is still called the Steinborn lift.

Origins

Steinborn was born Heinrich Steinborn in Siegburg, in the Rhineland, on 14 March 1893. He was in Australia when the First World War broke out and, as a German national, was interned there as an enemy alien for the duration of the war; accounts agree that he took up lifting and wrestling seriously in the internment camps. After the war he made his way to the United States, where he was lifting in public by 1921.

The work

Steinborn first gained prominence in America in 1921 with lifting demonstrations at Hermann's Gymnasium in Philadelphia, and he also trained at Sig Klein's gym in New York. He weighed around 210 lb. The nickname "Milo" connected him with the Milo Bar-Bell Company of Philadelphia, founded by Alan Calvert. From 1922 he turned to professional wrestling, which became his main career: he wrestled until 1953, taking part in one of the early tag-team matches in 1930 and later wrestling alongside his son Dick Steinborn. He later settled in Orlando, Florida, where he opened a gymnasium on Orange Avenue and for many years promoted wrestling, retiring in 1978.

Notable feats

• Squats with a barbell of about 550 lb (250 kg), lifted onto the shoulders without a rack, from 1921. Figures of 550 to 553 lb are given, and he is said on at least one occasion to have done five repetitions with 551 lb.
• Popular accounts also credit him with a one-arm snatch of 218 lb (99 kg), a one-arm jerk of 255 lb (116 kg) and a two-hands clean and jerk of 375 lb (170 kg); these are less securely documented.

The squat figure is the central one. Without a rack, a lifter could squat only what he could first raise to his shoulders; by up-ending the bar and rocking it onto his back, Steinborn handled weights well beyond his clean. The technique demanded strength and timing in roughly equal measure, and few contemporaries cared to try it. The American lifter and writer Mark Berry was reportedly among the spectators who hailed it as one of the great feats of the age.

Method

Steinborn's demonstrations coincided with growing American interest in the squat as a training exercise, which writers such as Mark Berry promoted in the following decade. Steinborn himself kept squatting into old age; obituaries reported that in his seventies he was still doing deep knee bends with 400 lb.

Legacy

The Steinborn lift is the legacy. It is still performed occasionally, as a demonstration of skill as much as strength. More broadly, Steinborn is credited with helping to establish the heavy squat in American strength training. He died in Orlando on 9 February 1989, aged ninety-five.

Disputed and unresolved

Some figures attached to Steinborn appear inconsistently in popular sources and are best treated with caution, including his clean and jerk and the elephant he is said to have lifted at a Chicago exhibition. The weight and number of repetitions in his famous squats vary between accounts, from about 550 lb to 553 lb. His birthplace is sometimes given incorrectly; his obituary gives Siegburg.