"They All Said This Was The Phonebook That Couldn't Be Torn...

But They Were All Dead Wrong"

Dear Friend,

Phonebook tearing is a classical feats of grip strength that wows em' every time. Many people have heard about someone who could tear a phonebook or have maybe even seen someone do it on TV once but few people have actually seen it done in front of their very eyes. When they do, it is always something that they will never forget.

A few days ago I was able to accomplish an amazing feat of phonebook tearing at Matt Furey's Health, Strength and Power seminar: I was actually able to tear a phonebook in half while in a full nose-to-the-floor bridge. Maybe the ol' Fure-Cat has a picture or two of that feat, I will have to check on it, but I do know that when I did it, the capacity crowd went wild and pandemonium was runnin' loose!

I'm not too shabby at this feat but the undisputed King of phonebook tearing is Dennis Rogers followed closely by his protege Pat Povilaitis.

An old saying goes something like: "Aint no horse that can't be rode and aint no cowboy that cant be throwed" but I highly doubt there exists a phonebook that Pat can't tear asunder (Yeah!) especially after Pat told me about something he did recently.

You have to understand, after knowing Pat for a while now, I now expect to hear "You won't believe what I just did" on a regular basis. Just after Christmas, Pat did a thing that was so mind-boggling crazy that...well, I'll let Pat fill you in on the details:

"About a year ago, I began getting into tearing phonebooks in a big way. During a visit to Iron Sport Gym (In Glenolden, PA)around that time [Iron Sport Gym Owner] Steve Pulcinella showed me a phone book that he kept in the lobby of his gym which he beleived was impossible for a human being to tear. It was easily the thickest phonebook I had ever seen (in terms of pages) and it was also in the small format, slightly less than 8" wide x slightly less than 10" long, making it an incredibly difficult tear.

Tough? Yeah. Imposisble, Hmmm, I filed that one in the back of my mind. It just so happens that the day before Christmas I took a trip down to The Iron Sport Gym with some good friends of mine.

After basically destroying myself for about two and a half hours bending, tearing, lifting etc, all of us were hanging out at the front counter shootin' the breeze. I suddenly remembered about that monster phonebook and asked Steve if he still had it around. With a smile on his face, he opened the cabinet and pulled it out. As he slammed it down on the front desk he said "it just can't be done, no human can tear this."

Although I was definitely feeling the last few hours of training, I was confident I could do some damage. Before I took a crack at it, I told Steve that I would make the tear nice and neat in case he wanted to keep it as a souvenir and so there would be no question that this was a legitimate tear.

I told Steve to let me have a shot...

The look on everyone's faces was priceless when I handed Steve the two pieces of the now-torn-in-half book.

Steve said it was one of the most impressive things he had ever seen and he had seen plenty of amazing feats as a gym owner and World's Strongest Man Contestent. He really doubted it could be done by a "normal" human being and he was right about that.

This feat was especially gratifying because I really didn't feel like I had any strength left after training, and I did it in the lobby of Ironsport, in front of a good crowd of people who know a thing or two about strength."

I will let these pictures speak for themselves:

Now that is tough.

Train hard.

John Wood signature

John Wood

P.S.Want to tear phonebook like Pat? Learn from the man who taught him by clicking this link.

Crazy, But Powerful

336 Pounds of Fury

To order both of these DVDs as a set along with a Limited Edition gift from both Pat Povilaitis and Dennis Rogers, click here.

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"They All Said This Was The Phonebook That Couldn't Be Torn... But They Were All Dead Wrong"

"They All Said This Was The Phonebook That Couldn't Be Torn...

But They Were All Dead Wrong"