Here's my second video from the very enjoyable 2013 New York City Open Weightlifting Championships, held in Garden City, NY on March 24, 2013:

With all the split-screening in the video, you may want to head over to YouTube or Vimeo to watch this on a larger player.  In any event, the third and final video from the 2013 NYC Championships, which will cover the heavier men's weight classes and which will likely be in a bit of a different style, should be up within a week or two.

Heart & Steel: The Strongman Steve Schmidt Story (2012)
by Brenda Black
141 pp. (Biography)
steveschmidtmo.com

Steve Schmidt is an an impressive strongman.  He holds several United States All-Round Weightlifting Association (USAWA) records, including a 2,520-pound hip lift and 7,253 back lifts of 1,115 pounds each (for a total of over 8 million pounds) in under three hours.  He's in the Guinness Book of World Records for lifting a 100kg (220-pound) weight fifty times in a minute—using only his teeth.  He routinely puts on strongman shows at fairs and festivals, where he bends horseshoes, steel bars and rebar, and donates the proceeds to charity.  (He also bends steel bars across the bridge of his nose without any padding, which . . . wow.) 

As a tribute to Schmidt, Heart & Steel shines.  The book covers Schmidt's strongman feats in admiring detail, as well as providing some insight into his childhood, work ethic, faith and family life.  Apart from being devoted to his wife, Schmidt appears to be a fundamentally independent soul: he avoids doctors, is deeply religious but seems mildly distrustful of formal worship, and seems to be generally self-sufficient on his Missouri farm.   He is a believer in both hard work and fair play; early in his lifting career, he traveled to prisons to compete against the inmates, even though "I had to go through seven doors and competed with some pretty scary guys," because "[t]hose were fair competitions … they couldn't get the drugs" (steroids).  Years later, he agreed to attend a competition (and potentially set some new records) only if it happened to rain on the day of the event, because otherwise he had work to do on his farm.  In sum, Schmidt comes across as genuinely decent, humble, and highly focused.

Champion by Choice (2008)
by Richard "Lucky" Luckman
149 pp. (Autobiography)
(Available at Amazon.com)

Champion by Choice is the autobiography of Richard Luckman, who became a powerlifting phenom in the early 1970s while in prison for armed robbery.  The story is full of potential; my problem was that the powerlifting-focused book I wanted to read is very different from the general life history that Luckman wanted to tell.

The book starts briskly enough, with a short but frank history of Luckman's troubled young-adulthood, which landed him in jail.  And Luckman does a great job of explaining how, once incarcerated, he found focus and self-worth through a growing interest in powerlifting.  Luckman's straightforward, blunt descriptions of his competitions lack suspense, but that's OK: we still get a solid sense of the difficulties and rewards of being a world-class athlete while in prison.

But by the mid-1970s — or almost exactly 50% of the way through Champion by Choice — Luckman largely lost interest in competitive lifting.  And his autobiography loses focus as a result: the entire second half meanders through Luckman's romantic interests and work history through the decades after he left prison.  Some of this is amusing, but the constant string of "and then I went here, and then there, and then here . . ." becomes numbing.

Here's a short video reflecting on the lessons weightlifting can teach about life generally.  Featuring Heather Farmer and shot at the 2013 New York City Open Weightlifting Championships (promoted by Artie Drechsler) on March 24, 2013.

Knights of Iron documents the powerlifting program at the Woodward Academy, a residential facility for delinquent boys.  Powerlifting, we are told, has given these troubled young men a concrete goal, and the focus and drive to excel.  And excel they do: at the start of the film, the Woodward team has already won the USA Powerlifting High School Nationals for five years running, and is going for its sixth title.

That being said, here are some of the moments we get to watch during Knights of Iron:

• An extended sequence of beginning drum students practicing on drum pads.
• Another extended sequence of the boys packing for Nationals, traveling to the airport, boarding the plane, getting off the plane, and traveling to their hotel.
• An especially excruciating (and long) segment of the boys sightseeing.

To be blunt, Knights of Iron is dull.

Strong!
Dir.: Julie Wyman
Featuring: Cheryl Haworth
76 min. (Documentary)
StrongTheFilm.com


It's hard to write a negative review of Strong! the film, because I'm so impressed by Cheryl Haworth the person.  A champion weightlifter with two Olympic games (including a Bronze medal) under her belt, Strong! follows Ms. Haworth as she strives to compete in her third Olympics (the 2008 Beijing games).  Of course, Ms. Haworth has accomplished a tremendous amount already in her chosen sport by the time the film's story begins -- and, as we learn, has sacrificed a good amount to reach those goals.  

But for all Ms. Haworth's successes and struggles, Strong! fails to tell a compelling story.