Russian heroes: Alexander Zass and Yuri Malko

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A rare boy in the USSR did not hold in his hands the book "The Secret of the Iron Samson", written by Zass's nephew Yuri Shaposhnikov.

Many people know how in the First World War the Russian hero carried a wounded horse from the battlefield on his shoulders, how he tore the chains and bent metal rods with an intricate pattern, about the system of isometric exercises that he developed and is still used by athletes around the world.

The fate of the "Strongest Man in the World" after the First World War abroad remained a mystery for the majority. He did not look like many strong men of that time, who had massive figures and great weight. His height is 167.5 cm, weight - 80 kg, chest circumference 119 centimeters, biceps - 41 centimeters.

Of course, Alexander Zass had tremendous natural strength, which was the difference between his ancestors. Once, in his native Saransk, he visited a circus with his father. The boy especially liked the mighty strongman, breaking chains, bending horseshoes. At the end of his performance, the artist, as was customary at that time, addressed the audience, inviting them to repeat his tricks. Alas, no one was able to either bend the horseshoe or lift the ball bar with a thick neck off the ground. And suddenly Alexander's father, Ivan Petrovich Zass, got up from his seat and entered the arena. Alexander knew that his father was very strong. Sometimes he demonstrated his strength in front of the guests.

And so the strong man handed his father a horseshoe. To the surprise of the audience, the horseshoe in the hands of Sass Sr. began to unbend. Then Ivan Petrovich tore off a huge barbell from the platform and, straightening his torso, raised it above the knees. The audience applauded like crazy. The circus strongman was embarrassed. He called the uniformist over to him. He ran backstage and brought a silver ruble. The artist raised his hand with a ruble and said: "And this is for your feat and for a drink!". The father took the ruble, then fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a three-ruble note, and handed it to the athlete along with the ruble, saying: "I do not drink! And here you are, but only drink tea! "

Since then, his son lived only in a circus. In the backyard of the house, with the help of adults, I installed two horizontal bars, hung up the trapeze, got hold of household weights, made a primitive barbell, and began to train with incredible persistence. I tried to repeat what I saw. Having mastered the "sun" (large turnover) on the horizontal bar, he began to fly from one crossbar to another, did a back somersault not only on the floor, but also on a horse. Pulled up on one arm several times. But all these activities were haphazard.

He convinced his father to subscribe books on physical development from Moscow. And soon the book of the then famous athlete Yevgeny Sandov, "Strength and How to Become Strong", came. He began to study according to the Sandow system - his idol. But he soon felt that exercises with dumbbells alone could not develop the strength that a professional strongman needs. He turns to the famous athletes Pyotr Krylov and Dmitriev-Morro for help, who did not disregard the young man's request, and soon Zass received guidelines from these athletes. Krylov recommended exercises with weights, and Dmitriev - with a barbell.

He squeezed out two-pound weights simultaneously and alternately ("mill"), pressed them upside down, juggled. With a barbell, I performed mainly press, jerk and press from behind the head. With his own weight of 66 kg, the young Zass twisted (bench press with a deviation of the body) with his right hand 80 kg. But most of all he was attracted by the power tricks that he saw in the circus. And he attended the circus constantly. His sports props began to be replenished with horseshoes, chains, metal rods, and nails. And then he realized that repeated attempts to perform a trick - to break a chain or bend a thick metal rod - bring tangible results in the development of physical strength. In essence, these were the now widely known isometric exercises. Thus, in a purely empirical way (based on experience), Alexander Zass came to the conclusion that athletic strength can be developed by combining dynamic exercises with isometric exercises in training. He later published his isometric system, and this brochure made a splash.

The circus career of Alexander Zass began in 1908 in Orenburg, in the Andrzhievsky circus that toured there. Once in the circus, Zass once worked as an assistant to the legendary trainer Anatoly Durov, then at the athlete Mikhail Kuchkin, and he often said to his assistant: “Someday, Sasha, you will become a famous strongman, I have not seen anyone who would be so strong like you, having such a small height and weight. In general, Zass worked for about sixty years in the circus, and almost forty of them - with athletic numbers.

In 1914 World War broke out. Alexander Zass was drafted into the 180th Vindavsky Cavalry Regiment. Once an incident occurred that struck even those who knew well about the extraordinary power of Alexander. Once he was returning from the next reconnaissance, and suddenly, already close to the Russian positions, he was noticed and opened fire. The bullet shot through the horse's leg. The Austrian soldiers, seeing that the horse and rider fell, did not pursue the cavalryman and turned back. Zass, making sure that the danger was over, did not want to leave the wounded horse. His regiment was still half a kilometer away, but this did not bother him. Taking a horse on his shoulders, Zass brought it to his camp. Time will pass, he will remember this episode and will include wearing a horse on his shoulders in his repertoire.

In one of the battles, Zass was seriously wounded by shrapnel in both legs. He was taken prisoner, and the Austrian surgeon began the amputation. But Zass begged not to. He believed in his powerful body and the therapeutic gymnastics that he developed for himself. And he recovered! Soon he, along with other prisoners, was sent to heavy road work. He made several unsuccessful escapes, after which he was severely punished. The third escape was remarkable. Escaping from the camp, Alexander ended up in the city of Kaposvar in southern Hungary, where Schmidt's circus, known throughout Europe, was on tour. Appearing before the owner of the circus, Zass frankly told him about his misfortune, as well as about his work in Russian circuses. The director immediately suggested that he break the chain and bend a thick metal bar. Of course, the hungry and tired Zass was not in good shape, but with an effort of will he coped with the task. Working in the Schmidt circus, Alexander Zass, at the suggestion of the director, took the stage name Samson. This was necessary for more effective posters.

He was taken to the circus, and soon the news of the amazing athlete spread throughout the city. But one day a military commandant came to his presentation. He wondered why such a strong young athlete did not serve in the Austrian army. On the same evening, it turned out that Samson was a Russian prisoner of war. He was taken to the basement of the fortress, to a damp, dark room. But his strength and will were not broken. He made another escape, breaking the chain connecting the handcuffs and breaking the bars.

Now he gets to Budapest, where he gets a job as a loader in the port, and then - in the circus arena. He was helped by a wrestler, world champion Chaya Yanos, whom Alexander met while still in Russia. This good-natured, powerful Hungarian treated the unfortunate Zass with sympathy. He took him to the village to his relatives, where Alexander's strength gradually recovered. Then he performed for three years in the troupe of wrestlers under the direction of Chai Janos, alternating between matches on the mat with athletic performances.

Once Janos introduced a Russian strongman to the famous Italian impresario Signor Pasolini, who had heard a lot about the athletic capabilities of Zass. The Italian also offered to conclude a contract. The European tour of Zass begins, his fame grows.

In 1923 he received an offer to work in Paris. The athlete will later share his hesitations to "agree - disagree" in his book "The Amazing Samson: Narrated by Himself", published in London in 1925. Zass nevertheless signed a contract with Charles Debreuil's New Circus - on excellent terms, but he did not stay long in Paris either. A year later, Zass went to England at the invitation of the famous head of the British variety show Oswald Stoll.

Arriving in London, not knowing a word of English, Zass … got lost. The gentleman who met the popular strongman simply did not pay attention to the inconspicuous man, 166 centimeters tall, who arrived at the Victoria Central Station. Soon, however, the athlete was found, and since then his photographs have not left the pages of British newspapers. Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow … Samson moves from city to city, performs at the best theater venues - yes, it was in theaters and music halls that athletes of that time demonstrated their strength performances.

Samson was truly unique. Take, say, breaking a chain wrapped around a body. Each new impresario appeared in front of Zass with a thick chain. It was a kind of exam, a "pass" to the stage. But only Samson could demonstrate this number in dozens of variations, tearing metal with different muscle groups. The performance, when Samson was carrying a horse weighing over 300 kilograms on his shoulders across the stage, is a signature one. He repeated it just in public, in the open air. To demonstrate the enormous load on the shoulders, Samson built a special tower. Standing at the top, he supported the suspended footbridge with people on his shoulders. In the most famous photograph, where Winston Churchill is captured in such a group, Zass carries 13 people on his shoulders.

In 1925, shortly after Zass first arrived in England, he met the dancer Betty - she became an assistant in one of his famous acts: he hung upside down under the circus dome, holding in his teeth a rope on which a platform with piano and a pianist playing on it. For many years, Betty played like this, hovering over the arena, until, during a performance in 1952 at Liverpool Stadium, Zass fell down, along with the piano, onto a fragile woman.

Zass developed a truly unique number called "Projectile Man" from what was demonstrated by other strongmen: they caught a 9-kilogram cannon ball, which was fired from a short distance by a cannon. To begin with, Zass chose a core to match himself - 90 kilograms. But even this was not enough for him. Not indifferent to the weaker sex, he knew how to conquer the audience! After long calculations and searches, Samson created a wonderful cannon that fired not with cold metal, but … with a charming girl! The performance was carefully practiced, and Alex produced training "shooting" by his faithful companion Betty. Later, she was replaced by Liliane la Bram, who conquered Samson either with better aerodynamics of forms, or with a lighter weight.

Replacing the jack, Alexander Zass lifted trucks off the ground on one side. Judging by the photographs, he generally had a craving for cars: now in one or another city of Great Britain, his impresario Howard got tired of "road shows", when in one of the squares, with a crowd of people, Samson lay down on the ground, and on it - on his feet, on the lower back - a car with five or six passengers was passing. "A man with a capacity of two horsepower," - called the advertising poster. Zass also practiced horse stretching in public. At the same time, he kept two horses torn in opposite directions.

One of Zass's signature numbers was hammering huge nails into a thick board with the palm of his hand. The British press wrote about this excitedly. David Webster heard a story that once Samson miscalculated a blow and struck right through his arm. Finding himself thus nailed to the board, Zass took the head of the nail with the fingers of his free hand and pulled it out of the tree, like pliers.

So, 1925 - Samson signs a contract and successfully tours in Ireland, then returns to England. The next decade saw the peak of fame for Samson - "The Strongest Man on Earth". It turns out that all the years, until his death, Zass lived in the United Kingdom on a residence permit, never renouncing his Russian homeland. But with the outbreak of World War II, Alexander Zass, who never accepted British citizenship, has problems. In order not to be among the internees, he stops public performances and settles in the city of Pington, where he trains elephants, lions, chimpanzees at the local zoo.

The last public appearance of Alexander Zass as a strongman in 1954 was organized for the filming of the BBC television company. Samson was then 66 years old. He continued to work, however, not in the power genre, but as a trainer, but often included power tricks in his performances. So, at the age of seventy, he carried two lions around the arena on a special yoke!

Alexander Zass died on September 26, 1962 at the age of 79. Buried near London, in the small town of Hockley.

Literature on the topic:

An example from modern times:

Yuri Malko set a record that exceeds the world record 5 times. He moved and pulled over and dragged the wagons with a total weight of 500 tons! According to the athlete, he coped with this incredibly difficult task due to the fact that with the help of special breathing exercises he entered a special psychological state, being in which people are able to work miracles.