USAWA

by Thom Van Vleck

Some of the old timers may have heard of Slim “The Hammerman Farman”.  He was famous for being able to lever very heavy sledge hammers.  He had incredible forearm development.

I always wanted big muscles and big arms were at the top of my list.  My Uncle Wayne had 20 inch arms and did a standing press of 370 pounds back when it was still one of the Olympic lifts.  My Uncle Phil was a bodybuilder and a great arm wrestler. He had huge forearms.  I wanted to be like them.

But my arms are long and spindly.  I started out with 12″ arms when I first started lifting.  My forearms were even smaller.  I started my quest then to find exercises to develop the forearms and I came across Sledge Hammer Levering in an article in the old Peary Radar IronMan magazine.

The photo above of Slim illustrates the first exercise.   The arms are held straight.  You can do one arm with one sledge or two arms with two sledges.  The arms are kept straight and the sledges are lowered only bending the wrists until you touch the face.  Then the wrists are straightened lifting the sledges back up. I used this exercise regularly.

The second exercise I call the “Crucifix.  It is similar to the basic lever but with the arms out to the side.  Like the first exercise it could be performed with one or two hammers. Slim had several other feats he performed with sledge hammers.  Over the years I did leverage wrist work off and on.  Including Weaver Stick type exercises.

Then about 20 years ago, me and some friends started a “Strongman Evangelism” show along the lines of what Paul Anderson used to do.  Performing feats of strength while delivering a Christian message.  Paul learned early on that the average person wasn’t impressed with just lifting weights.  They had no context.  So he started performing strongman stunts.  We did the same and one of the first “feats of strength” I thought about was the sledge hammer lever.

I had a splitting maul that weighed 16lbs.  A splitting maul is a sledge hammer on one side and an ax handle on the other.  At the time I could lever a 12lb sledge hammer.  But I wanted to be able to do the 16lber with the ax blade pointed down!  How do you train for that!

Part 2:  How I trained for the Sledge Hammer Lever.