There was a time when Indian club swinging was one of the most fascinating, and even popular, elements of gym culture. Originally brought to Western Europe and the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was transported from the East India Company, club swinging involved swinging lightweight clubs around the body in a variety of different exercises. As in all else, human nature meant that club swinging soon became a competitive sport in Great Britain and many of her colonial subjects. Therein lies the focus of today’s post. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth...

Continuing my dive into the backcatalogue of Health and Strength magazine is today’s discussion of an important, at least in my eyes, cover from the early 1920s. The cover features T.W. Standwell from, Dublin, Ireland. Standwell was one of the first Irishmen to appear on the cover of Health and Strength despite the fact that Irishmen had long appeared in articles, contests and advertisements. Given that my own research is broadly interested in Irish physical culture perhaps biases me to this image but for those interested in physical culture, and weightlifting, the cover holds interest. At the time of publication,...

Health and Strength magazine began publishing in the late nineteenth century and, up until very recently, was still in circulation. Designed for a British audience, the magazine quickly became one of the most well read and well esteemed pieces of its time. In an age when information on weightlifting was hard to come by, Health and Strength’s biweekly or biannual issues proved to be a treasure trove of information. In time the magazine spread from Great Britain to the far outreaches of her Empire, from Australia to India and everywhere in between. As a historian of physical culture, it is...

Old physical culture dumbbells really are a strange phenomenon. From squeeze grip dumb-bells to old wooden objects, the devices people used to build their bodies in the early twentieth century sometimes defy belief. One of my favorite examples of this is undoubtedly the Sandow ‘ringing’ dumbbell. Eugen Sandow, who was recently covered in a Rogue documentary, was one of the leading physical culture celebrities of his age. Possessing a body that few rivalled but many envied, his creativity and entrepreneurship knew no bounds. From the early 1890s to his death in 1925, Sandow put his name to early health supplements...