The Chest Expander for Abounding Health and Building Better Bodies Paperback – September 11, 2013

This is one of the first vintage strand pulling books on the market. I learned about this from 'Strength Lore and Strands' by David Webster. The moves are fairly simple and can be picked up quickly. Chest Expanders and Strands were a very big part of physical culture during the first 3/4 of our last century. Strands can be tucked into a brief case and used for travel, training at work or part of an entire physical culture program including barbells and heavy lifts.Alfred Danks did a superb job on this book. His other Kindle books are worth checking out too. Hope that strongmanbooks.com puts out a lot more rare and vintage reprints. This was a good one as are the books by Thomas Inch and others.

While it does not tell me anything about strandpulling that I did not already know, I value this book for reasons of historical interest. I commend StongmanBooks.com for making these books available.

grat oldtime classic

This book was supposed to be included when one bought one of Danks' Chest Expanders. Much of the same information is also included in, "The Danks System of Physical Culture," offered as a separate ebook. Though dated, the information on using the chest expander, and explanations of the various basic exercises is very valuable for anyone contemplating using this fitness tool.

Not really very in depth but once again historical in scope. There are other more detailed and more instructional books on the subject, still a good read.

I've owned this book for several years, and did attempt to do some of the movements in it, but I've been hamstrung by the fact that you simply can't find Chest Expanders such as he describes, with the strands, as he calls them, or tubes, in the very light strengths, such as 5 lb. or 10 lb., which evidently the manufacturers feel is beneath them to make.I did cobble together some latex bands in the lower strengths, and wrapped them around two lengths of PVC tube to make handles, but it's not quite the same as having a bona-fide handle to hold, designed to be used with stretch tubes.The problem was that the tubes they offer all have a ball inserted into the ends, which has to be done at the time of manufacture, and the minimum length of the tubes is about 60".I need 16" tubes for the chest expander, with the ball insert in each end, to fit into the handles.Even to find expanders, from any source, which have the 5 or 10 lb. tubes is difficult (if not completely impossible) because few of them actually tell you what the resistance rating of the tubes is.Anyway - as my strength has steadily deteriorated, as I have gotten relentlessly older, my lack of physical exertion has not helped the situation, which the Chest Expander certainly would have, if I could get one in the lower strengths that he advocates in this book.The best part of what he says in the book is just that amazing benefits can be realized, using these same very low-strength tubes, and not attempting to pull the ridiculous amount of resistance which almost all of the available chest expanders have.And so I finally did, for the first time, actually get through a series of just one of his moves, using handles I've had for years, with just one single tube, of probably at least 20 lbs. of resistanceThe fabulous part is that you can actually do them with ease, and even in my present state of depleted strength, due to age, which isn't going to get any better without some remedy, which I know this Chest Expander represents. Once I can finally get an appropriate arrangement of handles and tubes put together, and go through all of the moves, of which there are only about six, and learn exactly how to do them, and then actually do them for effect, I will have finally achieved my purpose.After all, that's the reason for the whole enterprise in the first place.No matter how simple a picture or diagram may look on paper, or how much a description of how to do the move tries to explain it, only by actually doing it, and then working on it, to polish and improve your ability to do it properly, will give you the end results you are looking for.But then - Shazam!!!Once you have the correct equipment in place, and the technique firmly lodged in your mind, and have learned exactly how to do it, it is then just a matter of doing something which you already know how to do, and which is easy to do, and you should start to notice results very soon.I am just continually amazed at the ridiculous physical conditioning items that are on the market, which only an already muscle bound person, or perhaps an orangutan, could manage.It's like a catch-22: You can't get in shape without the equipment, and the equipment is so macho and heavy-duty that you can't use it without being in shape.But this man had the secret, long ago, and it's too bad his knowledge died with him.Unfortunately, nobody lives forever.