Logan Christopher assumes a bridge position: balanced on his feet and the back of his head, back arched, belly up, with his arms straight up in the air and a large kettle bell in each hand. A stack of three concrete blocks is placed on his stomach. A sledgehammer-wielding assistant winds up and lets fly. Concrete bits spray in all directions.
Logan Christopher assumes a bridge position: balanced on his feet and the back of his head, back arched, belly up, with his arms straight up in the air and a large kettle bell in each hand. A stack of three concrete blocks is placed on his stomach. A sledgehammer-wielding assistant winds up and lets fly. Concrete bits spray in all directions.
Christopher gets to his feet, squinting in the bright sunlight, and lifts his shirt to reveal his stomach, a little pink from the impact, to a crowd of spectators clustered among black and blue balloons in the back corner of a Scotts Valley shopping center parking lot. The spectacle is half-grand opening, half-infomercial for Christopher’s new gym, Legendary Strength. By this point, the 25-year-old has already folded one metal pin—thick as a grown man’s finger and three times as long—in half with his bare hands, then bent an even larger one using his thighs for leverage; he’s torn one phone book in half and, upping the ante, “notched” a second by ripping a deep V from it.
Christopher doesn’t exactly look the part of a strong man. For one thing, he’s missing the Lycra bodysuit, but for another he’s not a huge guy. He stands 6 feet 2 inches and weighs 185 pounds. Growing up, he says, “I couldn’t even do a push-up—I wasn’t born with any strength.” Four years ago, though, he became interested in old-time feats of strength and began training himself to perform them.
The day’s main event is one such feat, originally performed by a 19th-century strongman known as the Mighty Atom. To complete it, Christopher’s assistant twists his long blond hair into a bun, knotting it with a metal ring. Into the ring the assistant inserts a hook attached to a chain anchored on both ends of the front bumper of a pick-up truck.
As Christopher crouches on all fours, a spectator calls out, “Can you carry another 250?” and jumps into the truck’s bed, followed by two girls from the audience and a little boy. His assistant puts it in neutral and, like an ox, Christopher pulls the truck from one end of the parking lot to the other, giving an entirely new meaning to the term “yoked.”
