Story and photos by: Me
With the ease of a leisurely afternoon jog, Steve Schmidt of Leslie, Mo., broke the Guinness World Record for the teeth lift at Clark's Championship Gym in Columbia. Schmidt not only beat the record set in 2005; he more than doubled it by lifting 221.5 pounds 50 times in one minute. The previous record was 24 repetitions with 220.5 pounds.
After wowing the crowd with his record, Schmidt went on to bend nails, spikes and horseshoes with his teeth. "I'm just a little winded," he said. Schmidt, who is a cattle farmer by profession, said he stumbled upon the feat of teeth lifting while browsing through a magazine. He uses no special dental care to toughen his bite and said he doesn't even use toothpaste. "I just use a homemade herbal soap that's made out of coconut oil, that's all." he said.
Schmidt said he has been training in the teeth lift for a couple of years, and it was during Christmas time that he realized he could be a champion. "I got the Guinness book for Christmas, and I went out the next day and broke the record," he said. Having lifted weights since 1977, Schmidt says he trains in this way "because it's a confidence builder and it makes you feel good and look good too."
While Schmidt made his record-breaking day seem like just another average workout, he revealed his humanity after his superhuman performance. "My neck will be really sore in the morning."
Once Schmidt's fanfare had died down a little, there was still some rumbling inside Clark's Gym. Dave Deversdorf decided he'd break a record too — his own. Deversdorf boosted his national record with the Roman Chair Bench Press by lifting 260 pounds. Clark's owner Bill Clark was there to certify it, and yet another champion emerged. Not to be outdone, three members of the gym decided to do an all-day strongman competition known as the Zercher Strength Classic. The Zercher is an all-day competition, where participants sometimes lift more than 11,000 cumulative pounds. "It's probably one of the hardest strength feats in the world," Clark said.
