Strand pulling is where strongmen would exercise by pulling on springs or rubber tubing, much like we do today with resistance bands.
I found pictures of Eugene Sandow’s developer, another old-school strongman from the same era, which essentially was a type of chest expander that could be anchored to a door and had straps or, as he called them, stirrups so you could attach them to your feet turning it into a full body trainer.
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I’m using exercises from Eugene Sandow as well as a York course I found and a little bit from Reg Park’s cable course. One of the things you notice about Reg Parks chest expander is it had a lot of springs on it, so you could effectively use it to progressively overload an exercise.
The quality of these photos isn’t the best, but sometimes we just have to work with what we got.
For our first exercise, we are going to warm up with thrusters. This is from the Sandow collection of exercises. Because it’s a warm-up, we’re not doing it to failure. I did 2 sets of 15 reps.
Next up is side presses. That’s what I’m calling them anyway. I’m doing them in front of me, which is a variation Sandow showed. He had a behind-the-back version which is how the York program did them too. I felt these in my upper back, shoulders and triceps.
Chest expanders, despite their name, aren’t well known for being very good at building the chest. The York program I have only shows one pressing movement, and because of the length of the chest expander, it would be a short range of motion.
Because Eugene Sandow’s developer attaches to a door, he has 3 excellent movements. I did chest flyes in my workout, but he also has a straight arm raise with a supinated grip, that’s great for the upper chest and front delts.
The last one he has is a cross-body fly which provides an incredible chest contraction.
For legs, I chose a York exercise which I’m going to call a lying leg press. I felt this one in my glutes, too; not a lot of selection for quads in these exercises.
Next, I did pull-downs from overhead as these are a classic chest expander exercise. Again very much an upper back builder.
The chest expander exercises don’t do a very good job hitting the lats. Eugene Sandow has the best one, but the anchor is set to low, and you’d get a lot better results if you turned around and did them with the anchor set higher. Like I’m doing here with my Torrobands.
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For hamstrings, I did band good mornings from the York program, putting my forearms through the handles and hooking them into the bend of my elbow.
Sandow has a pretty good hamstring exercise that I modified slightly using a wall or door anchor. I set the anchor up higher than my feet. Then when I pull my legs down, you’re getting maximum resistance on the hamstrings instead of having your skeletal structure taking the resistance like when the bands aligned with your body.
For my triceps, I did the archer move, one of Reg Park’s favourites. Like many of these exercises, while you mainly feel it in your triceps, it works your rear delts and upper back too.
For the biceps, I went with the standing curl from the York program, but I prefer using the wall anchor as I can adjust the tension better.
I had fun with Sandow’s bicep/tricep exercise, where he had his arms up and out, away from his body part of the range of motion was the biceps, and part of it was the triceps. Not a great arm builder, just an interesting movement I would never have thought to do.
No chest expander workout would be complete without what Reg Park called a pull-out in front.