Once in awhile I hear of some performing strong man, or strong woman, one of whose stunts involves basically staying
put while resisting some tremendous effort by man, machine, or horses to dislodge them. There was a strong man named
Siegmund Breitbart in the 1920’s who used to stand pat while
an airplane, attached with a line to his hair, attempted to
take off, and he was able to keep the plane on the ground.
Or coming down to more recent times, Ricky Jay once presented a TV special based on “Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women”, and one of the guests was a slightly built woman who
probably weighed 110 pounds. Also on the show was a recent
Olympic swimmer, who was asked to lift this woman off the floor. He did so easily, but then Jay asked the woman to
“resist being lifted”, and then the swimmer could no longer
do it, supposedly. It was as if she was bolted to the floor. The woman also did a stunt werein she held a broomstick horizontally at chest level, and facing her,
the swimmer and another person also gripped the broomstick
and attempted to dislodge her by pushing on the broomstick.
Incidentally the woman was wearing semi dressy shoes and
standing on a shiny wooden floor.
How are all these stunts possible? No matter how strong a person is, how can they “resist being lifted?” Or in the case of Siegmund Breitbart, even if he had the strength to
hold 10 airplanes back, how did he manage to stand his ground?
I had an old “secrets of magic” book somewhere that talked about this subject. IIRC, the small woman could resist being moved by deflecting the force to a different angle. I don’t remember the specifics, but if I find the book I’ll post more of it. Not sure how you could avoid being lifted though.
Have your friend put his arms around your waist and lift you up (straight up–no bending or other leverage allowed.)
Now, relax and close your eyes…concentrate on the image of your feet being welded or otherwise attached to the floor.
Keep this image in your mind as your friend lifts you again.
Quite often, your friend won’t be able to.
My speculation is that this exercise causes the liftee to subconsciously redistribute his weight so that his center of gravity is awkward for the lifter, but I’m not sure.
And I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t be effective against airplanes or other machinery.
Well, there could also be a couple other factors involved. One is the idea of “dropping” your weight, whic is basically lowering your center of gravity for flexing your knees and such. If the guy doing the lifting was using a technique that centered on leverage, rather than sheer lifting power, then it’s possible to shift your weight to minimize their leverage. Greco-Roman wrestlers do this all the time.
Secondly, was there a particular way in which the guy was told to lift the girl? If so, perhaps their were subtle variances between the first and second tries that made ot more difficult.
Finally, there is a certain psychological factor here. If you’re told that you won’t be able to on the second try, and the other things I mentioned above come into play, then you might well find it much harder to lift someone.
This is mostly idle speculation, of course, and I certainly didn’t see such a demonstration. That said, I have also witnessed firsthand demonstrations by martial artists that I cannot fully explain without resorting to fanciful thinking.
It’s all about leverage and making the body rigid and difficult to grasp at a balance point. I am 6’ 2" and I can bench press 300 + lbs. If one of my children “wants” to be lifted it’s like picking up and carrying a feather even for my 5’ 11" 150 lb 13 year old daughter. If they don’t it can be extraordinarily difficult even for my 90 lb., 9 year old. It can be done, even with resistance, if they are light enough, but it’s hard to do.
I probably could not pick up my 13 year old unless she cooperated.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that any lifting feat is all about leverage.
Lifting with just the arms is little more than using the leverage provided by the elbow and shoulder.
Lifting with the legs is mostly just using the leverage available through the knees and hips.
Just as there are ways to maximize the leverage (using the back and butt muscles to help lift,) I’m sure there are ways to minimize the leverage (by shifting or dropping the center of gravity or some other trick I haven’t though of.)
What the limits are of this minimization, I have no idea.
warning I am not much help in this post
I vaguely remember some trick where the liftee would flex their arms, so that the upper arm is pointing straight down and the forearm straight up. you would try to lift the person by placing your palms face up against their elbows.
problem is, I can’t remember if that makes lifting easier, or impossible. and I am all alone right now, so I can’t check.
As for resisting the airplane, it’s possible the airplane wasn’t as powerful as you think. If the engine was rated at 200 horsepower, that sounds pretty impressive. But he was fighting against the pull from the propeller which would be less than the full force of the engine. Also, most planes back then had fixed-pitch propellers which only worked their best at cruising speed, so they wouldn’t have a lot of thrust from a dead stop.