22. Strength School
class: tweeners, special events | impressiveness: 3/5 – 5/5 | factors: massive pre-set of gimmicks | requires: various gimmicked items | watch full episodes (1, 2, 3, 4)
Psst… want the secret to becoming the WORLD’S STRONGEST MAN?
You Do? Sweet. The secret is…
…hard work and years of training.
I know. It’s disappointing. But that’s only because you asked the wrong question:
If you were crafty enough to ask “What’s the secret to looking like the world’s strongest man, but without any actual training or effort?” then you, my friend would have what it takes to enter our version of “Strength School.”
Some of my favorite episodes of Scam School were when we taught you to fake your way into (almost) duplicating the feats of the world’s strongest men. Our guest co-host and teacher was a former world-champion arm wrestler and 100% genuine strongman: Dennis Rogers. Dennis has appeared on dozens of TV shows, holds numerous world records, and has been called “pound for pound, the world’s strongest man.”
…and lucky for us, he gets ticked off by all the strong-man fakers out there. Ticked off enough to share the secrets used by cheaters to fake authentic strongman feats.
If you haven’t seen these episodes already, they’re definitely worth checking out. Dennis’s talent and strength is truly amazing.
How To Rip a Phonebook in Half
So in one of my favorite episodes, Dennis taught us a few tricks to tear phone books and decks of playing cards in half by baking them in an oven, to make them more brittle. We grabbed two phone books and a few decks of cards, threw them in the oven, and baked them for about 40 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. After their time in the heated oven, the cards were made much more brittle, so that folding them in half would cause them not to bend or crease, but simply snap in two like a twig.
Even after the cards and phone book were brittleized (yes, that’s a real word… look it up in the ‘shwoodtionary), I still needed to use proper tearing technique to get them to snap in half. And for that, it’s important to think of your grip on the cards as serving only one purpose: to keep them in a solid block. If your grip can keep the cards or phonebook as a solid block, you should be able to use a hard twisting motion to start tearing through the cards. As you continue twisting each of your hands in a different direction, the block of cards/phonebook should tear right in half.
The amazing part of this is that after a few practice runs with the baked cards, you’ll find that you understand the leverage well enough that you can actually tear a real, unprepared deck of cards.
Bend a Nail or Wrench With Your Hands
We also learned how to cheat and “steal leverage” to bend a large nail. We sewed a pair of “cheater pipes” into some standard work gloves: simple, hollow steel pipes placed right along the palm of each hand, with a hole just inside of the thumb on each glove.
To set up your bend, explain you’re going to do the impossible: bend an 8-inch, heavy-duty spike with nothing but your own strength. You can even start acting like you’re about to do it with your bare hands, but then pause and explain that you ought to wear some safety gloves to keep from messing up your hands.
When you put on the gloves, insert each end of the spike into the empty hollow of each cheater pipe, and you’ll discover 2 things: (1) in this setup, you’re no longer bending an 8-inch spike, but a structure over a foot long, giving you much more leverage, and (2) the gaps in the pipes slightly change the angles of the bend, essentially giving you a “head start” on beginning the bend, which is usually the hardest part.
Watch Demonstration (External link)
It’ll take a little effort to set up your gloves, but man will this one impress people.
Bend a Frying Pan and a Horseshoe With Your Bare Hands
Remember, there’s two ways to fake feats of strength: by using leverage amplify your own strength, or by weakening the object to be manipulated. To roll up a frying pan, hit up the dollar store. You should be able to find a super-flimsy pan for just a couple of bucks. As long as you don’t let anyone inspect them up close before the bend, it should look pretty impressive when you roll it up.
A horseshoe will do a much better job at convincing someone you have actual strength. Start with a genuine horseshoe and use an angle grinder to grind down the center until it gets so thin you can comfortably bend it. Conceal your work with a few strokes of paint, and the end result should be a heavy horseshoe that you can hand out for inspection. It’ll feel heavy and solid, yet you’ll be able to bend it with your own bare hands.
The Human Link/Tug of War:
When Dennis performs it, this is a true feat of nothing but pure grip strength: two iron triangles with ropes attached are held tightly in his hands as two volunteers pull with all their strength in opposite directions.
Amazingly he’s got the goods to keep them from breaking his grip… and it’s not even a cheat. Dennis has even performed a version of this trick holding back four Harley-Davidson motorcycles, pulling in opposite directions. Hell, he’s also done this preventing two airplanes attempting to take off in different directions.
Read that last sentence again, then re-evaluate your life.
To cheat our way to duplicating the effect, we crafted similar-looking triangles, but with an important difference: ours had a welded peg-and-hole design that allowed us to physically link the two handles, which meant I never had to even flex a muscle.
Fists of Fury: This one’s super easy, and you can do it immediately. Ask a friend to hold their arms out straight in front of them, with hands balled into fists placed vertically, one atop the other. Challenge them to use their strength to resist you knocking their fists off of each other, then use just a couple of fingers to slap their fists in opposite directions. The leverage is so far against them that they won’t be able to hold back.
The leverage is so awkward that even I could knock Dennis’s hands off each other.
To reverse the scam, set up your fists in what looks like the same way, but with one major difference: extend your thumb from your lower fist and wrap your upper fist around it. Now it’ll look the same, but there’s no possible way he can knock your fists apart.
Payback: Here’s a quick way to get the drop on a friend and slap the hell out of him. Tell him you’ve got something to show him, and then have him hold up 2 fingers on each hand (like he’s giving two peace signs). Have him nestle all 4 fingers together as shown…
…then with your left hand, grab all four fingers tightly as you start slapping him around with your right. The combined friction and leverage will keep his hand bound and he’ll be helpless to stop you.
Oh, also: run.
The Ultimate Setup: This one’s a classic bar stunt of strength: Announce you’re going to prove that you are stronger than everyone else in the room, combined. To prove it, walk up to a wall and place both your palms on it. Then have everyone else in the room line up behind you, each placing his hands on the shoulders of the person in front of him. As one big line, the challenge is to use their combined strength to push you up against the wall… and amazingly, they won’t be able to do it.
This one is partly due to leverage, but mostly because the strength of each person is lost on whoever they’re leaning against. Because just as each person is pushing forward, they’re also pushing backwards against the person behind them. The net effect is that you really are only resisting the person directly behind you — everyone else just resists each other.