American Hercules: Paul Anderson

A Strong Pillar for His Community and His Nation

By guest contributor Charles Carroll.

The greatest contest of strength is held every year in Columbus, Ohio, at the Arnold Sports Festival. The Arnold Strongman Classic is a spectacle to behold for anyone who is a fan of strength training, as the feats of strength performed here are the toughest strength challenges ever devised. Many will take issue with my statement, since, by name recognition, they assume the yearly World’s Strongest Man contest to be the better. Many make this mistake, since the World’s Strongest Man is much more popular due to its history of being televised, while many have unfortunately never heard of the Arnold Strongman Classic. The World’s Strongest Man contest is a bit of a misnomer when compared to the Arnold Strongman Classic. Many have not realized that while the World’s Strongest Man tests more of a mixture of endurance and strength, the Arnold Strongman Classic is more of a test of pure strength alone. But that’s not the only reason I find the Arnold Strongman Classic to be the better contest; there’s a metaphysical reason for doing so as well. The fact that it is always held in the same spot in the United States every year is a testament to the greatness of America. We should never forget that we have always had the greatest athletes in the world. That athletes all over the world have to make their way to Columbus, Ohio, to prove themselves in front of an American audience is a testimony to this.

America has always valued strength as a virtue. It took great strength to steer and pilot wooden ships across the Atlantic. It likewise took extraordinary strength to cut down the untamed forests and build a civilization from scratch, first all along the coast, and then across the continent as our ancestors spread their civilization from one ocean to the other. Strength was required to lug heavy steel into place to construct our bridges, railways, automobiles, and skyscrapers as our nation industrialized and transformed itself into the powerhouse of the world. But physical strength is not the only kind of strength we value; mental strength and strength of character are just as important. It’s this kind of strength that keeps a community glued together in the midst of crisis that requires firm and decisive decision-making. It’s also this kind of strength that allows a leader to shape society into his image and vision. During the early days of the Revolutionary War, when defeat felt more certain than victory, the strength of Washington’s character kept the hopes alive of the Americans and the soldiers at his side to continue their fight. It took great mental strength for the settlers to brave the unknown wilderness — the same wilderness that was known to swallow up previous explorers without notice, never to be seen again — and to build their vision of civilization amongst a hostile world.

Paul Anderson is the embodiment of American strength, and he is undoubtedly one of the strongest men ever to have existed. When you have the likes of Ed Coan (the greatest powerlifter in history, bar none) and Bill Kazmaier (one of the most iconic and well-known professional strongmen) singing the praises of Paul Anderson, you can easily picture the immense weights Paul put up without having ever having seen or read about the man. Paul was a physical specimen, no doubt, a marvel of nature, but his physical strength was also not the only impressive thing about him. Paul’s strength of character and mind had made him a pillar of his community, church, and our nation, and he put his natural talents in lifting and his strong faith in God toward good use for all those around him. As we learn about this great man, we may see that some of his feats and records may have been exaggerated, but that shouldn’t diminish our respect for him. I’d argue that it instead should augment it even more. In many ways, Paul Anderson is a folk hero for the people of the United States, and the reason people have added some embellishments about him is that the real Paul Anderson was already such an awe-inspiring strongman to begin with that it was only natural for all those who knew him to believe that he was capable of so much more. In many ways, his parallel in the ancient world was Hercules. The people of the time no doubt invented many tales about Hercules, but that is because the real Hercules was so beloved by the people that they continually felt obligated to embellish his accomplishments for their progeny to feel just as awe-struck. But unlike for Hercules, we do have concrete numbers and records for many of Paul Anderson’s incredible accomplishments, despite occasionally coming across some claims that might be too bold to make. Here, we will focus on the verified and believable lifts for the sake of brevity. If you do feel inclined to learn more about Paul Anderson, it will only be a matter of time before you come across the legends that sprung up about him, but that is also what makes him such a fun guy to learn about.

With hindsight, you can tell that Paul Anderson was destined to become a mythic strongman for the American people. His story had all the great tropes that one likes to see when hearing about the most accomplished of men. When it comes to telling of those considered to be the greatest, everyone loves the story where the person of interest is born into circumstances that one would never guess would give rise to his accomplishments. Paul Anderson was no exception to this. Paul was born in 1932 in Toccoa, Georgia, a small, rural town near the Appalachian Mountains. At the young age of five, Paul Anderson was struck with Bright’s Disease, a disease that attacks the kidneys. At first he was given little to no chance of recovering, and his family’s only recourse was to the Lord that their son should survive. Paul was admitted to the hospital in a coma, and the family would have to wait and see how the Lord’s Will would unfold. As we all can tell, Paul would survive this and recover; however, the damage done to his kidneys would constantly plague him his whole life, and he would succumb to a kidney disease at the end of his life. After his miraculous recovery, the doctors ordered his parents to restrict his physical activities. Obviously from these setbacks in his early childhood, one would expect him to be a fragile and weak man the rest of his life, but clearly that was not the case, either.

Paul was born in the midst of the Great Depression, and like millions of other Americans, his family was not spared from its consequences. His father, a construction worker, found it necessary to find work with the Civilian Conservation Corps to keep his family afloat during this time of economic downturn. This required the family to bounce back and forth between Georgia and North Carolina. Eventually when Paul entered fourth grade, Paul, his mother, and his sister would stay put in Toccoa while his father would go out and find work, returning on the weekends to see them. This arrangement would continue until Paul entered his senior year of high school, when his parents moved to Tennessee while Paul remained in Toccoa in the home of his sister and her husband so that he could finish high school with all his friends. Paul graduated from high school in 1950.

Paul played football for his high school, as any good Southern boy did. As all his classmates would recollect about him, Paul was a gifted athlete and one of the most important players on their team. Many also remembered Paul as a very fast runner as well as one being very agile when playing football, something you would not expect of a man who all those years later bulked up to be well above 300 pounds. At the time, however, Paul was not that much larger than his other teammates and would only begin gaining size around his last year playing football. His classmates would all agree that none of them had expected Paul to go on to become such a large mass monster, let alone the strongest man ever to have existed.

Many erroneously believe that Paul was introduced to weightlifting when he went to college; however, his brother-in-law mentions that Paul began lifting weights in high school in order to get larger and stronger for football. Paul did what was necessary to get better for football, but he would only take it more seriously after college. He was such a gifted player that he was granted a football scholarship to Furman University, where he only stayed for just a little over a semester. Feeling bored and dissatisfied with both football and school, and possibly underfed, Paul would return to his parents’ home in Elizabethton, Tennessee, to rethink his life. Fatefully, his life would be decided for him when he crossed paths with the famous lifter Bob Peoples.

Bob Peoples was a legend all by himself. By the time Paul Anderson would meet Bob Peoples, Bob was already a very accomplished lifter and had even set the deadlift world record for 725 pounds at a body weight of just 180 pounds — a record that would stand for over 25 years! Encountering Paul stunned Bob, to say the least. Bob was so incredibly impressed by Paul that he felt compelled to tell the world about this prodigy in the February 1952 edition of Iron Man magazine. Bob would relate that, on that fateful day, he first felt skeptical about all the hype surrounding 19-year-old Paul and his reputation for squatting 500 pounds, but when he first laid eyes upon him, he was so stricken with awe that he referred to Paul as a “superman.” Bob took Paul down into his basement where he had built his homemade gym, in order to test Paul’s squatting power. When asked which weight to start Paul’s warm-ups with, Paul replied he would take 500 pounds. Everyone there, including Bob, assumed that this seemingly braggart teen would fail, but Paul would do a set of two reps very easily with that weight. He then asked that another 50 pounds be added, whereupon he easily repeated a set of two reps, showing no issue. Bob was so astounded that he called for his wife to come downstairs to witness what they were seeing. Paul performed another set of two with ease. This was also done in nothing but tennis shoes, with no wraps or belt! What wowed Bob even further was that he knew that the world record for the squat at the time was somewhere around 600 pounds, meaning that Paul was already within the vicinity of being able to break it given some time. It was at this moment that Bob knew Paul was destined to break many more records to come.

Within the next year, Paul made extraordinary jumps in his weight training. In July 1953, Paul was invited to participate in Bill Colonna’s “strength and health picnic” that was held in Norfolk, Virginia, where Paul showed off his Herculean strength. It was an outdoors event, with the platform built out of planks in such a way that there was a slight slope making the platform uneven. The first feat he accomplished was in the squat, where after warming up, he decided to load the bar up to 760 pounds (later weighed out to 762-¼ pounds), and he laid out an easy single rep. The uneven floor was one thing, but what made this even more impressive was that Paul did this without a belt, knee wraps, or even shoes!

For his next feat, Paul would attempt a clean and jerk with 420 pounds, well above the world record. However, the slope of the platform and the bend in the bar proved too tricky for Paul, and he couldn’t hold the position long enough to jerk it. After giving up on that, he had the weight placed on his chest with assistance from some spotters, and he proceeded to press the weight overhead.

After this outstanding performance, Paul returned to lifting and continued to progress and compete until his first injury, a broken wrist, followed by another, and then followed up by a car accident that broke a few ribs and hurt his hip. These weren’t going to hold him back, and Paul would devise a cast supported with steel rods to protect his broken wrist while he continued to train. Obviously, these injuries did retard his trajectory, but he kept on moving during that time. He would return to compete in the Junior National Championships where he would win with a 350 clean and press, a 290 snatch, and a 390 clean and jerk. Later, on April 16, 1955, Paul went on to have a 402 clean and press, a 315 snatch, and a 425-¼ clean and jerk. The clean and jerk he had now done had tied him for the world record with the legendary Michigan native Norbert Schemansky (someone my grandfather personally knew and loved to tell me about). Just a few days later, on April 22, he would clean and jerk 434 pounds. He would make these numbers official when he competed at the U.S. National Championship a month and a half later, where he cleaned and pressed 390, snatched 320, and cleaned and jerked 435.

While all these were truly challenges of strength for Paul, his biggest challenge would come to test him mentally as well as physically. His trip to Moscow with other American athletes as a part of a peace initiative by the United States would thrust Paul Anderson front and center in the middle of the burgeoning Cold War. It was in Moscow that Paul was not only lifting for himself, but for his country and the entire West. Interestingly enough, he almost didn’t make the cut and was a last-minute substitute for the American team. The National Championship in Cleveland was held the day before the American team would leave for Moscow. It was there that the team was assembled by Bob Hoffman, the American team’s coach. However, despite Paul’s incredible performance, Hoffman did not want to take the young and still inexperienced Paul to Moscow. Instead, he wanted the seasoned veteran Norbert Schemansky, who already had experience competing in front of an international crowd. For weeks before the National Championship, Paul would go back and forth with Bob Hoffman about the Moscow trip, with both being hard-headed about their wishes. Paul would even show up to the National Championship in Cleveland with a passport he had recently obtained, ready at a moment’s notice after the show to be able to fly with the team to Moscow. Unfortunately for Norbert Schemansky, and fortunately for Paul Anderson, Norbert had injured his back. With Paul winning Nationals, Bob Hoffman had to relent to Paul’s wish, and soon enough Paul was off to Moscow.

The spectacle was held in Gorky Park on June 15, 1955, to an audience of around 15,000 Muscovites. Even more Russians were following the results via the television or radio. To 22-year-old Paul, it was shocking just how popular weightlifting was to the Soviets. Paul would even remark a few years later that weightlifting to the Soviets was “equivalent to baseball in the United States.” Weightlifting today may seem like an obscure and often forgotten sport today, especially to Americans, but weightlifting to the Soviet Union really was their baseball. The Russians after World War II had implemented a sports program to sift through their population of 180 million people and find Olympic Champions. By this time they would have registered around 100,000 Soviets as competitive weightlifters. To say that the Soviet people were interested in weightlifting is underselling the reality. But a love for sport isn’t exactly the only reason these people showed up. Everyone knew the political pretext for the whole competition wasn’t about advancing peace, but a competition between two systems that knew only one could survive. Like everything else during the Cold War, this mundane event was politicized to be about which system was superior. For all the spectators that day, they wanted to see proof that Soviet masculinity was far superior to American masculinity, and in turn that the Soviet system was far superior to the American system in terms of promoting human flourishing. All of this wasn’t lost on Paul and his American teammates, and despite being the strongest man on Earth, it was still a lot to bear. This is why he decided to go for a bold, and I mean extremely bold, introduction to the Soviet people.

The first event was the Clean and Press, and this had more significance than the other two events that followed. The snatch and the clean and jerk can be called “fast lifts” while the clean and press can properly be said to be the lift that best tests strength. Today, gym bros often gauge one another’s strength by asking, “How much ya bench?” but back in the olden days, the preferred way to test one’s strength was the overhead/military press. This competition was meant to test which system was the more masculine, and it would be settled with the press. The way the competition was structured was that each lifter got three attempts for each lift, but the competition went ahead and used a rising bar method. The bar would go up by 5 kilos (~11 pounds) each time, and athletes were allowed to make an attempt on it if they wished. If no one wanted that particular weight, then it shot up to the next weight. The Soviet heavyweight was Alexey Medvedev, and he finished his third attempt with a successful 325 pounds. By this point, all the athletes had done their three attempts for the press, except Paul. Paul had yet to do his first attempt. He boldly asked for 380 pounds, which tied with the Olympic World Record at the time, and calmly, yet confidently, cleaned and pressed the weight. For his second attempt, Paul asked for 402 pounds, which earned him jeers from the audience and even the judges. No one had expected anyone would come close to such a weight, especially for this fat-looking American that the Russians had never heard about. The judges had even had to run back to the warm-up area to grab more weight since they did not expect such a request to be made. After meticulous weighing by the judges, Paul was given his go-ahead to make the lift, and after cleaning the weight to his chest, he pressed upward only to get stuck midway through. His second attempt was a failed lift. Suddenly the whole weight of the Cold War weighed down on our Hercules. The audience thought this was a braggart American who was destined to embarrass not only himself, but his nation and all it stood for. Now after some time to rest, he asked again for the same weight — a bold move, but it paid off. Paul, with all his might, cleaned the weight, then fought with all his life to get that weight overhead. Once the judge gave him the signal to drop it, he did. The audience couldn’t believe what they had witnessed, the 400-pound barrier being broken in front of them, and after a brief moment of silence they broke out into cheers for Paul Anderson. Years later, Paul recollected that one Russian man approached him to let him know that “I can go home and die now… I have seen the world’s greatest feat of strength.”

Paul was now known worldwide. Later that year after Moscow, he would walk into the World Championships held in Munich and set the total record. The next difficult challenge awaited him in the Melbourne 1956 Olympics, which ironically was the one everyone assumed he would easily win. Everyone, including Paul himself, thought he was easily going to take the gold. The newspapers in Melbourne joked that all Paul had to do was show up and take his medal while the Russians had decided against entering one of their heavyweights since they thought it was certain he could only at best come second place to Paul. However, three weeks before the Melbourne Olympics, he came down with an illness that hindered his performance. Paul had caught an inner-ear infection that would last to the time when he had to compete. This resulted in endless fevers, losing 30 pounds, and a loss of balance. The doctors at first would not clear him to lift, but Paul would convince them after some incessant begging to wait and see how he felt.

Paul resorted to taking a giant amount of aspirin interspersed throughout the day to get his fever down. While he did get it down just in time for the doctors to clear him earlier in the day, the fever would come back and clock in at 104 degrees. Paul wouldn’t lift until midnight, so he had to cope by going to the movies and taking more aspirin in the vain hope of getting the fever down. Eventually as zero hour approached, Paul would have to suck it up and proceed to start his warm-ups. The once-mightiest lifter in all the world was now at his worst moment. As he later recalled: “It’s ironic, just two weeks before, I didn’t have any competition in the world. But that one night, everyone was my competition. I feel it was God showing me that I need Him.”

Paul pushed through and agonizingly tried to hang in to the end. The event would last around three hours, running from midnight to 3 AM, and if you have ever had to lift while feeling even the slightest bit sick, you’ll understand the pain he went through. Argentina’s Humberto Selvetti would finish his three lifts with a total of 1,102 pounds. Paul was trailing behind him badly, but there still was some hope for Paul to pull off the upset and take home the gold. Paul had dropped his weight all the way down to 304 pounds from the illness while Humberto weighed in at 316 pounds. Paul would now, at a minimum, have to tie with Humberto to win, since the rules of weightlifting specify that in the case of a tie, the lighter contestant wins. Well, that’s easier said than done, because this required Paul, for his three attempts at the clean and jerk, to lift 413.5 pounds to tie Humberto’s total. This weight was the Olympic record for the clean and jerk.

Paul attempted the record weight twice, and twice he failed it. He recognized the impossibility of what he was trying to accomplish, and in a decision that would change the trajectory of his life, he turned to God in prayer, in the middle of his third attempt. After his failed second attempt, he was given three minutes before his third and final attempt. He paced back and forth in a hallway trying to connect with God, but he just couldn’t focus. Back onto the platform he went, and after cleaning the enormous weight to his chest, he felt that it was impossible for him to push it overhead and lock out. But what’s often odd with praying is that one can find God’s assistance in the most unexpected moments. Suddenly, Paul had the ability to focus in and pray to God with: “I’m not trying to make a deal, Lord, no deals, but I must have Your help to get this weight overhead.” Paul suddenly found his strength and hoisted the record weight overhead. He was now the gold medalist for the heavyweights at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Throughout the rest of his life, Paul would mention this event and what the Lord did for him by always reminding his audience: “If I, Paul Anderson, the World’s Strongest Man, cannot make it through one day without Jesus Christ, how can you?”

After the Olympics, Paul would turn professional in 1957, which meant that he would never be able to compete in the Olympics again. In order to make a living, he would travel the country and exhibit his incredible strength to willing audiences. Paul would even give professional wrestling a chance at one point as well. One of his more famous travel shows was a two-week stint in Reno, Nevada, where he would squat an implement that had on each side boxes filled with a total of 15,000 silver dollars. Paul and the event hosts would claim that it was a total weight of 1,160 pounds, but in reality it was more likely to have been 900 pounds. Either way, Paul would squat this weight for three shows on Saturday as well as two shows on Sunday. After that, he would challenge anyone in the audience to come up and squat the massive weight in order to claim all the silver coins. No one could do it, as you might expect.

Paul would do shows like this to fundraise for his ultimate vision. In 1961, Paul and his wife Glenda would open up his Paul Anderson Youth Home, a Christian rehabilitation center for wayward and homeless boys ages 16–21. This facility is still in operation to this day and has a swimming pool, horse stable, and of course a weight room for the young men. Up to this day, it has helped over 2,000 young men get back onto their feet and choose a better path for themselves. In order to keep the funds coming in, Paul continued touring the country, giving speeches as well as performing his lifting stunts up to 500 times a year!

Eventually the fragility of his childhood would come back and take its toll on Paul. Paul’s kidneys failed in 1983, and the only thing that extended his life was a kidney donation from his sister. By 1986, he was forced to undergo double hip replacement, and he would be confined to a wheelchair the rest of his life. On August 15, 1994, Paul would succumb to kidney failure and pass away at his home. Paul exhibited not only physical strength, but strength in faith and character. At the end of his life, Paul would have wanted to be remembered not solely for his strength feats, but instead for his Youth Home, his faith, and his patriotism. We can debate all day about his strength records and compare them to those of modern lifters, but that shouldn’t be the sole reason to remember Paul Anderson. He set an example for all us young American men not only to be strong physically, but to become strong pillars for our communities and nation. That is why he deserves to be remembered fondly as the American Hercules as well as the strongest man ever to have lived.

Sources

“About Paul Anderson,” Paul Anderson Memorial Park.

Clarence Bess, “Paul Anderson, King of the Squat,” RIPPED Enterprises.

Marty Gallagher, The Purposeful Primitive (Dragon Door Publications, 2012).

“Paul Anderson 1932–1994: World’s Strongest Man,” Georgia Historical Society.

“The Uplifting Story of Paul Anderson,” The Paul Anderson Youth Home. Reprinted from Saturday Evening Post Society, 1988.

Dominic G. Morais and Jan Todd, “Lifting the Iron Curtain: Paul Anderson and the Cold War’s First Sport Exchange,” Iron Game History: The Journal of Physical Culture 12, No. 2 (February/March 2013): 16–39.

Jim Murray, “Paul Anderson: Superman from the South,” Iron Game History: The Journal of Physical Culture 3, No. 5 (December 1994): 10–12.

“Paul Anderson (Weightlifter),” Wikipedia.

“Night of the Olympics,” Paul Anderson Memorial Park.

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Bill Pearl, “Feature: Paul Anderson,” The Strongman Project, 2010.

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Brooke Siem, “How Paul Anderson Became One of History’s Strongest Humans,” BarBend, July 31, 2023.

“The Strongest Man In Recorded History: A Documentary On The Life Of Paul Anderson,” DocuVideo by Coleman Video Productions, 1992. Uploaded to YouTube by “N̶o̶ ” on September 10, 2018.