Modern strength sport worships the moment:
one maximal lift, one chemically inflated contraction, one viral clip.

Arthur Saxon would have dismissed it as a circus trick.

Who Arthur Saxon Actually Was

Arthur Saxon (real name Arthur Hennig, 1878–1921) was born into working-class Germany and grew up in poverty. He did not emerge from gyms, laboratories, or sports institutes, but from manual labour, travelling performance, and brutal self-directed training. Along with his brothers Kurt and Hermann, he formed The Saxon Trio, one of the most formidable strength acts ever documented.

Saxon is best remembered for his bent press, still considered one of the most technically demanding and revealing lifts of true strength. His verified bent press of 168 kg (370 lb) at ~95 kg bodyweight remains legendary—and tellingly, it was achieved without straps, suits, or chemical assistance.

But Saxon did not regard even this as the ultimate test.

Saxon on Maximal Strength vs Real Strength

In The Development of Physical Power, Saxon repeatedly warned against fetishising single maximal efforts. His view was blunt:

Strength that exhausts itself in one effort is of little practical value.

Elsewhere, he argues that endurance is the proof of power, not its opposite. True strength, he insists, must be repeatable, sustainable, and economical — qualities developed through long, grinding work rather than momentary exertion.

Saxon trained not to demonstrate power once, but to remain powerful while fatigued.

He wrote approvingly of labourers who could "work all day at tasks no trained athlete could endure," noting that gym strength often collapsed outside controlled conditions.

This was not theory. It was observation.

Saxon's Training Philosophy

Saxon rejected specialisation and isolation. His training emphasised:

full-body lifts

awkward, asymmetrical loads

long training sessions

frequent submaximal work

and minimal rest.

He praised tendon strength, joint conditioning, and nervous system efficiency over muscle bulk.

One of his core principles was that muscle size follows strength, but strength does not follow muscle size—a view directly contradicted by modern hypertrophy-driven steroid culture.

Saxon explicitly warned against training methods that produced impressive appearance without corresponding endurance or resilience.

In modern terms, he was arguing against peaking.

Why Steroids Break the Saxon Model

Anabolic steroids reward precisely the opposite of what Saxon valued.

They inflate muscle faster than connective tissue adapts.
They increase maximal output while degrading endurance.
They shorten careers while exaggerating peak numbers.

This is why steroid-era strength sport gravitates toward:

one-rep maxes

brief events

long recovery periods

and athletes who disappear after a few competitive years.

Saxon, by contrast, performed night after night, often after travel, poor food, and physical strain — conditions that immediately expose pharmacological strength as fragile.

Strength Endurance: The Forgotten Test

Saxon believed strength should be measured over time, not moments.

Had he been designing modern contests, they would not resemble World's Strongest Man. They would resemble work.

Events such as:

multi-hour deadlifting at fixed heavy weights

continuous pressing for hours

loaded carries across entire days

repeated awkward lifts with no reset advantage

These are domains where:

tendon health matters more than muscle size

pacing matters more than aggression

pain tolerance matters more than hype

and drugs offer little advantage, sometimes a disadvantage.

It is no accident that early strongmen often outperformed later champions in endurance feats despite inferior nutrition, equipment, and science.

A Personal Aside

This is not merely historical speculation. Anyone who has performed heavy lifting for hours rather than seconds knows how different the game becomes. Past a certain point, brute strength is irrelevant. What remains is structure, efficiency, and will.

Saxon understood this a century ago.

What Saxon Understood — and We Forgot

Saxon belonged to a civilisation that still understood strength as capacity, not spectacle.

He lived before sport was optimised for television, sponsorships, and pharmacology. His conception of power was inseparable from usefulness, durability, and self-mastery.

Modern strength sport, like modern culture more broadly, prefers the peak to the plateau, the image to the substance, the shortcut to the discipline.

Arthur Saxon would have regarded that not as progress — but as decay.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Real Strength

If strength sport wishes to recover legitimacy, it must recover endurance.

Not as an accessory.
Not as a side event.
But as the primary test.

Until then, the strongest men in the world will continue to be those who look strongest for a moment—rather than those who, like Saxon, could still lift when the moment has long passed.