Thomas Inch

Thomas Inch was born on December 17, 1881 in Scarborough, a seaside town on the North Yorkshire coast. He became interested in bodybuilding and strength as a young boy, bodybuilding through manual labour.[2]

In 1902, aged 19, Inch was declared by a major 'strongman' publication as the ‘World’s Strongest Youth, enhancing his notoriety. His inspirations included Eugen Sandow, having seen the German ripping a pack of cards in half and throwing the split deck into the audience. Inch was said to have caught one half of the pack, proceeded to split that in half in the audience, and throw is back at Sandow.[3]

Unlike many professional strongmen of his day, Inch focused on standard lifts with barbells and dumbbells and left the hoisting of wooden barrels, heavy sacks of grain, pianos, or holding back a team of horses, to his contemporaries. His one exception was that he sometimes lifted human beings in the bent-press; a complicated, one-hand movement to watch.

He is known for the Thomas Inch dumbbell, known as "172", a dumbbell that weighs 172 lbs and 9 ounces(78.27kg). It was extremely difficult to lift, partly due to its weight, but primarily because its handle was very thick (2 3/8 inches(6cm) in diameter) making it difficult to hold on to without an outstandingly strong grip. There were allegations that there was a hole in the original 'bell, in which Thomas would place a nail, allowing him to arrest any rotation whilst lifting it. On 22 June 2002 Olympic Weightlifter, professional wrestler and champion powerlifter Mark Henry completed a successful one-hand clean and jerk of the dumbbell.[6]

Inch claimed that in his lifetime he never encountered anyone who could lift the 172 from the floor to overhead using only one hand. Even further he claimed that no one could clear it off the floor. He said he had overheaded it literally 'hundreds of times' sometimes lifting it twice in the same performance.[7]

In 1909 Inch, still only a middleweight, refused to compete in a weightlifting match against the Austrian strongman Max Sick (Maxick), who had recently arrived in London. However, by 1910 Inch had become a heavyweight and so relinquished his middleweight title to Edward Aston, and a competition was quickly arranged against Sick.[8]

• Inch on Fitness (1923)
• Away with Nerves (1946)
• Manual of Physical Training (1947)
• Boxing for Beginners, from Novice to Champion (1951)