The life of Alexander Zass is one of the most epic tales in strongman history. Superhuman feats of strength, revolutionary training methods, jailbreaks, heroism and tragedy. We’re going to cover it all.
Alexander Zass was no ordinary strongman. They called him Samson and he may just have been the strongest man in the world. His story is pretty crazy so get comfortable.
Alexander Zass was born in 1888 in a city called Vilna, which is now called Vilnius and is the capital of Lithuania, though at the time it was still a part of the Russian Empire. The family was very poor and struggling to get by, so just a couple years after Alexander was born they moved East to a town called Saransk where they had an opportunity to work as peasants. From a very young age the boy was subjected to constant hard manual labor out in the fields, which combined with an abundance of food made Alexander an exceptionally strong lad.
On the farm he got to work with animals as well, he found he had a special connection with the horses and dogs, something which would play a major role later in his life. As is often the case with Bronze Era strongmen, Alexander’s inspiration was sparked when at 12 years old his father took him to see a circus. The show absolutely fascinated the boy and while he saw a great variety of acts, there were three which captivated him the most.
First was the beautifully trained dogs, which could do tricks he couldn’t even imagine doing with his own animals. Second were the powerful physiques of the mighty wrestler who were so muscular yet at the same time so quick that it was hard to believe. And finally the strongmen who broke chains with their bare hands and bent iron bars like they were little wires.
When the circus paused between shows, Alexander and his father left, despite the boy’s pleas to stay for the next spectacle. But Alexander simply could not get the thought of the circus out of his mind, he was obsessed. Determined to make his way back to the circus, when they stopped for a meal on their way home, the boy snuck out and made a beeline straight back to the circus to catch the final performance of the day.
Once the show was over, Alexander snapped back to reality and realized his father would most certainly be looking for him. His father was a very strict man that didn’t shy away from corporal punishment. So, fearing his father’s wrath, the boy decided he would spend the night at the circus.
He hid in a crate while the circus shut down for the night and then spent several hours exploring the circus tent. He especially wanted to see if he could lift the weights he saw the strongmen throwing around earlier, but he couldn’t even get them off the floor. After a bit of sleep and as dawn was breaking he began his 15 mile walk back home.
His father, unsurprisingly, was not too fond of Alexander’s escapade. Though you would think he would at least be happy to see his son home safe. But nah, he got his cattle-whip and basically beat the sh*t out of the poor lad.
As if that wasn’t enough, the boy was then banished to a segregated room in the house where he was left alone for days, only fed the occasional bit of stale bread and let out strictly to continue his work in the fields. Quite a different lifestyle compared to what most of us were doing at 12 years old, eh? Alexander’s father was not done with his punishments though.
In order to keep the boy from getting distracted by the circus again, he decided to send him away with a shepard to a remote village on the steppe where, for a year, he was to take charge of around a thousand animals, including hundreds of camels, cows and horses. Finding pastures for all these animals to feed and seeing that none of them strayed away was an exceptionally demanding job for any man. But Alexander was just a boy and he had no help other than a pack of dogs.
At first he hated the grueling job but as time went on he began to enjoy being around all the animals. Rather than whipping them to get his way, he wanted to befriend them and he spent his days diligently training the animals to be obedient to him. Though in his mind he continued to dream of the circus and he would eventually even use these farm animals to successfully recreate many of the circus tricks he saw the animals perform that fateful day.
He would also build his own strength any way he could, including wrestling with the biggest dogs and climbing tall trees. A skill which would prove useful for keeping an eye on his animals. When Alexander returned to Saransk to continue with his usual duties, his father noticed the boy continued to have an obsession with the circus, but he was determined to keep his son on the straight and narrow.
When he wasn’t working the fields, he forced the boy to study for the profession he found suitable for him, which was that of a train driver. It was a path which the boy had absolutely no interest in, but he also had no other choice than to obey his father’s wishes. Just when Alexander was beginning to accept what he considered to be the boring life he was relegated to, everything changed once more when in the newspaper he came across an ad for a book written by none other than the great Eugen Sandow.
This reignited his desire to become a circus performer, so he quickly used his pocket money to order the book, which he studied carefully. This is where he learned that if he wanted to become stronger, he had to start exercising with weights. He wished to order a set of dumbbells but he didn’t have the money, so instead he built his own.
His first inventions were very crude, just some stones attached to each end of a stick. Amazingly though he did make some gains as he used increasingly heavy stones to progressively overload his exercises. All of which, by the way, was done in total secrecy as he had to keep his training hidden from his father.
One day, while he was at the railway, he had an idea to upgrade his dumbbells. Basically these old freight cars had a decent sized metal seal on the doors which was used to ensure the contents of the cars hadn’t been tampered with during their journey. Alexander snuck onto the railway during the night and cut these heavy lead seals off of about 20 cars, he then took them home and buried them behind his house.
The next day he heard talk in the town about this mysterious crime on the railway. The investigators couldn’t wrap their heads around why so many seals were broken off yet nothing was actually stolen from inside the train cars. He waited a couple days for the commotion to die down and then he dug up the seals, melted them down and forged 2 proper pairs of dumbbells.
One light and one heavy. Which he could use to follow Sandow’s system. This is such a funny story, imagine going through all that trouble just to get dumbbells to train with.
It’s kinda like how your grandpa would tell you “back in my day I had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow uphill both ways”. Well back in Alexander’s day I guess you had to forge your own dumbbell by stealing train door seals in the night. He made decent progress with Sandow’s system, but he was never satisfied with his strength.
He was convinced he needed some more personalized training to take his gains to the next level, though there was no way for him to join a physical culture school since he lived in such a remote area. So instead he started corresponding with some Russian physical culture professors by mail. These new systems of exercise gave him even greater strength, by this time people began to take notice and most people in town realized that this boy was in fact stronger than most men.
Alexander’s next obsession was grip training, he wanted to develop powerful fingers. He trained by bending thick green twigs and carrying stones for long distances with a pinch grip. When the boy finally built up the courage to reveal his new abilities to his father, he didn’t get a beating because this time his father was actually impressed.
Instead the father recognized the opportunity and challenged a local strongman who was specifically known for his freakish grip strength. He put a lot of money on the line, betting that his son could defeat the strongman in a contest. So, many people gathered to witness as Alexander and the strongman went head to head bending iron bars and lifting stones.
But when it came breaking a chain with their hands, the strongman was bested. Likewise with the final test which involved breaking free from a sharp iron bar which was bent tight around their necks. Alexander managed to bend the bar open and remove it from his neck, showing great courage as the sharp edges made deep cuts in his hands.
The strongman however couldn’t free himself from the bar and, admitting defeat, had to ask for Alexander’s help to finally get it off. Both of them were bleeding profusely but the winner was clear to see. Man it’s pretty funny to read about the crazy sh*t these old school strongmen did, even as teenagers.
Can you imagine in 2024 setting up a “strength contest” in your town square where you have a kid mangling his hands to break free from a sharp trap squeezing his neck. Like no wonder these guys turned out so freakishly strong, there were definitely no participation ribbons back then I’ll tell you that much. Even though Alexander’s father made some decent money off the contest and the boy became somewhat of a local legend, his life really didn’t change much after that.
His father still couldn’t see any future in the strongman business, so Alexander continued working on the estate while studying to become a train driver for the next couple of years. When he reached the age of 18 it was finally time for him to move to another city called Orenburg to start a 6 month apprenticeship at a train depot. It was a depressing move for the young man as he considered it the final nail in the coffin of his ambitions.
But just as he was walking to his first day of work in this new city, Alexander came across a poster for the circus. The same attraction he felt as a young boy rushed through him again and he immediately forgot about his job, instead heading straight to the large tent in the distance. Mesmerized, he sat through performance after performance and as crowds came and went, the manager took notice of the young man that just didn’t seem to want to leave.
When confronted, Alexander confessed his fascination with the circus and to his surprise he was offered a job on the spot. Of course he had to accept, even if it meant abandoning the career he had spent so long preparing for. Unbeknownst to his family, during the next couple of years he worked his way up from a general laborer to a proper performer in various circuses.
He was trained to perform a large variety of acts which made him a skilled trapezist, marksman, swordsman, wrestler, equestrian acrobat and wild animal trainer, but above all what made Alexander Zass special was his strength. After several years in the circus, his manager selected him to be one of the lead performers in their upcoming tour and he was instructed to put together his own strongman act. It was finally his time to shine.
This is how Alexander described his ideas for his first headlining strongman act quote “To demonstrate the powers of resistance that I held in my chest, I proposed to let all the wrestlers walk over me at once while I laid on my back under a wooden platform which rested only on the top part of my body. And to show the strength of my teeth, jaws and neck, I proposed to hang from the roof of the circus with my feet in rings, while two of the heaviest wrestlers sat in a sling which I would hold and spin around in my teeth. These should be my main feats.
Other smaller tricks - such as balancing a table on my forehead, on which was to be a man seated on a chair, playing a musical instrument - and walking on my hands on sharp nails -I intended to place in between for variety and to provide me with a rest. ” I guess you really do need to be a special kind of badass to consider walking on your hands on sharp nails “rest”. World War 1 erupted when Alexander was in his mid 20s and like most men of his age, he was drafted straight away.
He was sent to a cavalry regiment at the front in Austria-Hungary. This was a particularly dangerous and quick-moving regiment which was often sent deep behind enemy lines. He rode on a beautiful and brave buckskin stallion.
Unsurprisingly, the two would form a deep bond. One day they got hit by Austrian bullets and while Alexander was unscathed, the poor horse fell to the ground as it cried out in pain. The standard procedure in this case, of course, would be to make your way back to your trench and abandon your horse.
But as Alexander looked into his horse's eyes, he knew he valued him too much to simply leave him there to die. So instead, he would lie there, playing dead next to his horse in the middle of no man’s land, waiting for nightfall. When the sun finally set, he pulled off one of the most epic feats of heroism of the war.
Alexander literally picked up his horse and carried it back to his trenches. This sort of thing sounds impossible at first, except we are lucky enough to have a photo of him carrying a horse, even knee deep in water. Imagine that.
And to further prove that it is in fact possible to carry a horse, here is a video of a modern, Ukrainian strongman called Dmitriy Khaladzhi doing just that. Alexander was sent back to battle with a new horse and just a couple weeks later tragedy would strike once again. He got knocked out of action during a bloody encounter with German troops when an artillery shell blew up next to him, obliterating the horse he was on, badly wounding both of his legs and leading to his capture.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself in a prisoner of war camp in Esztergom. Initially it looked like he would lose his legs, but after multiple operations by Hungarian surgeons and lots of self-administered physical therapy, he managed to make a recovery. From there he spent the following year in captivity, doing hard labor for little food.
The conditions were so bad that he began thinking of a way out. Having seen multiple of his comrades mowed down for attempting to escape, he knew he had to plan his moves carefully. Alexander and one other fellow prisoner plotted their escape for weeks.
They secretly gathered food and spent their nights slowly digging a hole under the fence in a quiet part of the camp. When conditions were just right and under the cover of a particularly dark night, they finally made their escape. Though after several days of desperately wandering around the forests, their food ran out and they were forced to go into a town to try to find a meal, where they were quickly discovered and taken back to the prison camp.
Not the slightest bit deterred by the whole ordeal, the beating that he received and his punishment of solitary confinement, Alexander once again began plotting his escape as soon as he was moved to another camp. Not that the second time went any better though, he was again captured on the run and put in solitary confinement. After months went by he was transferred to a camp in Törökszentmiklós where he was tasked with training and taking care of horses.
This is where he made his third escape, but this time his luck truly ran out. He was captured and when it was discovered that he had tried to escape 3 times already, the military tribunal gave him a life sentence in a top security fortress. Only sparing him the death penalty because none of his escape attempts involved violence.
He was to be put in solitary confinement with his hands and feet chained up, in the cold, damp and dark basement of the prison for the duration of the war. The conditions were miserable, but really his biggest worry came from watching the strength and physique he spent so long developing waste away. Even though he had plenty of time, with his hands and feet chained up there was seemingly no way for him to train.
So it was actually here, in these deplorable conditions, that Alexander developed his revolutionary system of exercise. He found that by pulling and pushing against the shackles that constrained him and also the bars of his cell, he was able to regain his lost power without even moving his body. The training was horribly painful, since, as you can imagine, the cuffs were digging into his skin and making him bleed the entire time.
But he kept at it, straining his muscles hard for 15 to 20 seconds at a time, then resting and repeating over and over. He was of course using what we now call “isometric exercise”. This is just another of the many examples on this channel of how getting strong and jacked is nothing more than a mindset.
Think of aaalll the excuses people make for themselves when it comes to fitness. Yet the fact is that if you’re determined enough, you can find a way to get results even in the most unfavorable circumstances. Even though his training might have appeared senseless.
It turns out that keeping up his strength would likely end up saving Alexander’s life. By this point the war was going very poorly for the Central Powers and when news came to him that he and the other prisoners were about to be sent to France to dig trenches on the Western front ahead of a major advance by the Allies, he knew that this would probably end up being a death sentence. Not too happy with the prospect of getting blown to bits while digging a trench for his enemy, Alexander began plotting his fourth and most daring escape.
This one truly reads like something out of a cartoon. First he used his newly regained strength to break the chains on his body. Then he broke one of the bars of his cell which he had been loosening out of its socket for weeks and used it as a lever to bend apart the two remaining bars just enough for him to slip through.
From there, under the cover of darkness he made his way outside. The outer part of the prison was sloppily guarded since no one expected the prisoners to make their way through a moat and a giant wall that secured the perimeter. But Alexander Zass was no ordinary prisoner.
He swam across the moat and then used a makeshift rope and hook to climb up and down the other side of the wall. Free again at last, he made his way to Budapest where he managed to join a circus and stay undetected for the remainder of the war. It was here in Budapest that he first took on the stage name Iron Samson, or simply Samson.
It was a reference to a biblical figure that possessed superhuman strength. Samson is what Alexander would be known as for the rest of his professional life. When the fighting ended and freedom of movement was once again possible, his career finally had a chance to thrive.
He performed as a strongman in the most prestigious venues all across Europe during the early 1920s. Then in 1924 he moved to England, achieving great success by touring Britain with a lucrative contract. Some of the feats of strength he performed regularly included breaking chains by expanding his chest, breaking chains with his fingers, hammering large nails into thick planks with the palm of his hand, resisting the pull of two horses, suspending a piano and pianist from his teeth while hanging upside down, other heavy lifts with his mouth, carrying a piano, pianist and a dancer on his back all at once, bending a short iron bar into a U shape with his bare hands, bending long and thick iron bars into all sorts of shapes, lying on a bed of nails while a stone was hammered on his chest, supporting the weight of many men on his chest while continuing to breathe and having a loaded truck drive over him.
While some of this might sound like trickery and there were certainly many skeptics, even back then. The fact is that Samson’s feats always held up to scrutiny and he was willing to prove his strength to anyone, under any conditions at any time. Perhaps another thing that made his strength so hard to grasp was his size.
You see he wasn’t a typical giant strongman, like say Apollon or Louis Cyr. Alexander was lean and muscular, but all things considered he was pretty short and small at just 168 centimeters or 5 foot 6 and a bodyweight of 75 kg or 165 pounds. It’s hard to truly rank his strength since he never really competed in some kind of sanctioned contest, but certainly in terms of circus strongmen he was considered to be among the very best at the time and many didn’t hesitate to call him the strongest man in the world.
Alexander took quite a different approach to training compared to the world of physical culture, that’s because he considered his muscles to be of secondary importance. Rather his main priority was always to develop his tendons, as he believed having powerful tendons was the secret to extraordinary strength. He had this to say, quote “Without tendons we would turn into jelly.
Tendons must be trained. In my experience, a man of large composition is not necessarily strong, just as a man of modest composition is not always weak. I do not believe in big muscles if there is no real strength in the tendons.
You can see many physical culture enthusiasts who have very large muscles. However, what is the point in having these muscles if there is no rudimentary strength in the tendons. They can not fully use the strength of their muscles during the moments that truly test their strength.
This is why their strength is sheer illusion. One gets the best increase in tendon strength when their power is applied to a motionless object. They become stronger from the resistance, and not from the movement.
" So this was the core principle behind Alexander’s system of training: to become strong by building powerful tendons with isometric exercises. But anyway to finish the story, Alexander Zass stayed in England for the rest of his life. He was performing as a strongman into his 60s until one day tragedy struck.
He was suspending a piano and his assistant, a woman named Betty Tilbury, from his teeth as he had done countless times over the years. However this time the rope snapped and his assistant Betty fell to the floor with the piano crashing down on top of her. She survived, but only barely and she suffered a broken back.
This traumatic event, which happened in the 1950s, finally forced Alexander to give up the strongman life. Though he continued working with animals up until his death in Essex in 1962 at the age of 75. He didn’t have any family at this point and he could never let go of the guilt associated with the accident.
So he ended up leaving his entire estate to Betty Tilbury. How exactly he died I’m not sure, I’ve got one source saying he died heroically trying to save his animals from a fire, and another saying he was murdered. I guess you’ll have to make up your own mind on that one.
So that my friends, was the story of the great Alexander Zass, AKA Samson. If you would like to learn more I would encourage you to check out two books which heavily inspired this video. The first is called “The Amazing Samson” which was written by Alexander himself back in 1926.
It’s a really charming book because he wrote it in English just a couple years after moving to England and yeah… I’ll just say you can definitely tell it’s actually him that wrote it. However the book doesn’t talk much at all about his training. For that you’ll have to check out another book called “The Mystery of the Iron Samson, The Life and Training of Strongman Alexander Zass” this is a modern translation of a Russian book which also covers his life but unlike the other one, includes specific information and illustrations about his training.
Finally I would like to ask you all about isometric training, is it something you’ve tried? If so please tell us about your experience in the comments. Anyway that’s all for today.
This was one of my most ambitious videos for sure, so if you made it this far I would really appreciate it if you showed your support by dropping a like and subscribing to the channel. Thank you for watching.
