The Original Body Builders: How Greek Halteres and Celtic Gabal Stone Lifts Built the World's First Strongmen
History Unplugged Podcast3 Helmi

The Original Body Builders: How Greek Halteres and Celtic Gabal Stone Lifts Built the World's First Strongmen

Fad workouts have been with us for decades, but they go back much further than we realize. Long before CrossFit, Zumba, P90X, Tae Box, Jazzercise or Jack LaLanne, we had 19th century strongmen. These mustachioed showmen were the first global fitness influencers. They hauled trunks of weights onto steamships, toured the world, then sold exercise equipment through the mail. The most famous was Eugene Sandow, who broke chains, and created with his own body a "manned cavalry bridge" where he would lie down while men, horses, and a carriage were driven over his body. He even fought a lion in front of an auditorium and won, although the lion was almost definitely sedated.

Today’s guest is Connor Heffernan, author of “When Fitness Went Global: The Rise of Physical Culture in the Nineteenth Century.” In this episode, we discuss:

  • Ancient Egyptians were basically doing CrossFit thousands of years ago. They trained with swinging sandbags that look exactly like modern kettlebell flows.
  • One of the first exercise practices to experience globalization was Indian club-swinging. Indian club-swinging, originating from the heavy training clubs used by Indian wrestlers and soldiers for centuries, was observed and adopted by British military officers stationed in India during the early 1800s.
  • Early diet culture was a carnival of quack science. Victorian fitness magazines were filled with miracle tonics, starvation cures and pseudoscientific meal plans. Many of our “new” diet trends are rebranded versions of schemes first marketed with sepia portraits and dubious testimonials.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jaksot(1075)

The Last King of America: George III, His Battles With Madness, and Being a Thoroughly Underrated Monarch

The Last King of America: George III, His Battles With Madness, and Being a Thoroughly Underrated Monarch

Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon: a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities (picture the preening, spitting, and pompous version in Hamilton). But in 2017, t...

1 Helmi 202242min

Dragons Exist In Nearly Every Culture’s Mythology As a Mirror of Their Fears. What Are Ours?

Dragons Exist In Nearly Every Culture’s Mythology As a Mirror of Their Fears. What Are Ours?

We live in the golden age of dragons – they appear in Game of Thrones, most film adaptations of the works of J.R.R. Tolkein, and nearly everything tangentially related to fantasy. They date back mille...

27 Tammi 202250min

Harry Guggenheim: The Elon Musk of the Gilded Age

Harry Guggenheim: The Elon Musk of the Gilded Age

Harry Guggenheim was a man of impressive achievements and staggering wealth. While most commonly known for the creation of the famed Solomon Guggenheim Museum, Harry was also the co-founder of Newsday...

25 Tammi 202238min

Are Cities Humanity’s Greatest Invention or an Incubator of Disease, Crime, and Horrific Exploitation?

Are Cities Humanity’s Greatest Invention or an Incubator of Disease, Crime, and Horrific Exploitation?

During the two hundred millennia of humanity’s existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. From their very beginnings, cities created such a flourishing of human endeavor—new profe...

20 Tammi 202256min

Revolutionary Monsters: Why Lenin, Mao, Castro, and Others Turned Liberation into Tyranny

Revolutionary Monsters: Why Lenin, Mao, Castro, and Others Turned Liberation into Tyranny

All sparked movements in the name of liberating their people from their oppressors—capitalists, foreign imperialists, or dictators in their own country. These revolutionaries rallied the masses in the...

18 Tammi 202225min

Robert E. Lee Was America’s Most Gallant, Decorated Traitor

Robert E. Lee Was America’s Most Gallant, Decorated Traitor

Robert E. Lee was one of the most confounding figures in American history. From Lee’s betrayal of his nation to defend his home state and uphold the slave system he claimed to oppose, to his traitorou...

13 Tammi 202254min

Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Contentious Path to Emancipation

Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Contentious Path to Emancipation

In a little-noted eulogy delivered shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Frederick Douglass called the martyred president “emphatically the Black man’s president,” and the “first to show any ...

11 Tammi 202254min

Henry Kissinger Used Cold Realpolitik to Create Order in the Middle East. Did it Work?

Henry Kissinger Used Cold Realpolitik to Create Order in the Middle East. Did it Work?

More than twenty years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Today’s guest, ...

6 Tammi 202252min

Suosittua kategoriassa Yhteiskunta

olipa-kerran-otsikko
sita
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
kaksi-aitia
i-dont-like-mondays
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
uutiscast
poks
antin-palautepalvelu
rss-nikotellen
kolme-kaannekohtaa
rss-murhan-anatomia
mamma-mia
yopuolen-tarinoita-2
aikalisa
meidan-pitais-puhua
rss-haudattu
rss-palmujen-varjoissa
mystista
loukussa