The Inch Dumbbell

172 lb 9 oz (78.25 kg) · 2⅜ in (6.03 cm) handle · Thomas Inch's challenge bell

The Inch dumbbell — also called the "172" or the "unliftable" dumbbell — is the thick-handled globe dumbbell that the British strongman Thomas Inch (1881–1963) used as a standing challenge in his stage act. Its difficulty lies less in its weight than in its handle, which is too thick for most hands to close around.

At a glance

• Weight: 172 lb 9 oz (78.25 kg).
• Handle diameter: 2⅜ in (6.03 cm), and it rotates freely.
• Inch's claim: that he had lifted it from the floor with one hand and put it overhead "hundreds of times".
• First documented overhead lift after Inch: Bill Kazmaier, 1990, after cleaning it with two hands.
• First one-hand clean and press: Mark Henry, 2002.

Inch's claims

Inch said he had cleaned the bell one-handed and lifted it overhead many times, and that he had never met anyone else who could get it off the floor with one hand. Strength historians generally accept that he could deadlift it; the overhead part is disputed. Contemporaries who are recorded as failing with it include Arthur Saxon, Maurice Deriaz, Lionel Strongfort and the wrestler Ivan Poddubny, and later Reg Park. A newsreel of 1939 shows Inch, then 58, raising the bell. The handle has a small hole whose purpose Inch never explained; one theory, put forward in an IronMind article, is that a pin through it could stop the handle rotating — this is speculation, not evidence.

Owners

After Inch's death the original passed briefly to Reg Park and then, around 1969–1971, to David Prowse, who kept it until 2000. Prowse sold it to Kim Wood, the former Cincinnati Bengals strength coach, who took it to the United States; after Wood's death in January 2026 it was reported to remain with his family.

Who has lifted it

The Australian Bruce White made the first replica (slightly heavier, at 79 kg) and is credited as the second man after Inch to lift the dumbbell. In 1990 Bill Kazmaier travelled to Perth, lifted the bell from the floor with one hand, and pressed it overhead after a two-hand clean. Magnus Samuelsson lifted it with a thumbless grip in 2001; David Horne lifted two at once, thumbless, in 2002; and in 2002 Mark Henry made the first one-hand clean and press — the lift in the form Inch had claimed. Others have since done the same on the original or on replicas, among them Carl Myerscough.

Replicas from many makers — Sorinex, Rogue, IronMind and smaller grip-equipment firms among them — have made the bell a standard test in grip sport, and records on replicas are not always distinguished from those on the original.

See also: Thomas Inch · The Cyr dumbbell · All implements