Jowett's 1926 Neck Chapter, Transcribed From the Book

How this page came to exist

The Key to Might and Muscle has never been freely digitised. For two weeks the entry for Jowett on the figures page read “Status: not yet read — a physical copy has been ordered and Chapter XI will be transcribed on arrival.”

The copy arrived. This page is that transcription, made from the book itself — the Wm F. Hinbern modern reprint (Farmington, Michigan, © 2000) of the 1926 original, photographed page by page in August 2026. Every quotation below carries the page number it sits on. The 1926 original is in the public domain.

Jowett, George F. The Key to Might and Muscle, 1926. Chapter XI, “How a Columnar Neck Creates Nerve Force,” pp. 144–153. Page references are to the Hinbern modern reprint edition (2000). Transcribed from a physical copy owned by this site’s publisher, 13 August 2026.

The title page styles Jowett “Founder and President of American Continental Weight Lifters’ Association. One of the World’s Strongest Athletes.” He was a wrestler and blacksmith-strongman turned prolific physical-culture author, and this book was one of the era’s standard training volumes.

The thesis: the neck as the gauge of the man

Jowett opens the chapter by explaining what he looks at first when sizing up a body builder:

“the neck has always been the true indication of the quality and quantity of his concentrated nerve power. A strong healthy man always has a powerful neck, and he always will have one.” (p. 144)

And the argument runs to a rule he considered infallible:

“Every man who is endowed with a powerful neck is possessed of great concentrated energy. This rule never fails. Look at any athlete who is vigorously strong and you will see that the tape measure gives him a much larger neck than the average.” (p. 147)

This is the “index of vitality” school of neck-training rationale — the same family of argument Macfadden had made in 1911, as traced on how the rationale changed. Jowett was not being eccentric; he was restating what his era believed, with more conviction and better prose than most.

Why he said free movements and hand pressure fail

The chapter’s most practically important passage is its dismissal of unloaded training — and it is an argument this site’s manual resistance page makes on modern grounds a century later:

“The one form of exercise to which the neck will not respond is free movements. You must remember that the neck is very powerfully constructed and when fairly developed carries a great mass of muscle about it…” (p. 147)

Hand resistance gets a probationary role only:

“Some commence by using the hands as a form of resistance. If your neck is very weak, it is not a bad idea to practice that for a couple of weeks. But if you want to test your neck strength, you will find that it can easily resist any pressure from the hands. In other words, the neck is stronger than the arms. Therefore, it is not logical to expect to achieve any distinct success by employing a weaker resistance.” (p. 147)

“The neck is stronger than the arms” is as compact a statement of the case for equipment as anyone has written since. It anticipates by a century the reason every published protocol that produced measurable gains used an external, incrementable load — see what the studies actually used.

The bridge, done as a neck exercise

Jowett’s treatment of the wrestler’s bridge contains a distinction most of his contemporaries missed and most gym lore still misses:

“develop their powerful neck from bridging. True, from bridging, but not in bridging. What I mean is that their development is obtained from going up into the bridge and not in holding the bridge… I consider a bridge nothing else but a support. No man can lift anything like the weight he can support in the wrestler’s bridge.” (p. 148)

The movement, not the hold, is the exercise. His technique instruction (p. 149): lower the shoulders to the ground from the bridge, then “by prying and pressing the head against the floor, raise into the bridge position again… Let your neck do the work.” His progression: when that becomes easy, “just hold a light barbell at arms’ length throughout the exercise.” And his targeting cue: twist the head from side to side while bridging, rolling onto the temple, “so that each time you bridge you roll onto the temple… be sure and make it a neck movement and not a motion done with the sway of the body” — flexion-extension for the trapezius, rotation under load for the sterno-mastoids (p. 149).

For what a century of subsequent experience says about loading the cervical spine at end range this way, see bridging — the movement Jowett programmed deliberately is now the one this archive files under highest-risk, and Hackenschmidt’s 1908 gate (perfect the bridge before loading it) remains the sane version of the idea.

The head sling: harness training, 1926

The chapter’s alternative programme opens with this:

“You commence by making a sling, with a hook attached, which will fit on the head and fasten below the chin. Take up your position with the hands upon the knees and the body bent well forwards from the waist. Then hook a kettle-bell to the sling and exercise the neck by bending the head forward so that the chin touches the chest. From that angle raise the head backward as far as possible. For the next exercise, turn the head from side to side. The first will get the trapezius, and the second exercise will catch the sterno-mastoids.” (p. 150)

That is head-harness training — flexion-extension and rotation under a hanging load — prescribed as a make-it-yourself sling in a mass-market book. The purpose-built version had existed in the patent record since 1891, but Jowett’s sling is the earliest prescription of harness-style loading this archive has transcribed from a period training book. A second variation (p. 150) has the trainee lying on a couch, head past the end, sling resting on the forehead, lowering the head backward and raising it “by bringing the chin towards the chest” — recognisably the lying weighted neck curl still programmed today.

He also gives a partner drill — a front headlock resisted by pulling, pushing and twisting rather than escaping (p. 151) — and, for the historical record rather than for imitation, his own exhibition stunt: a barbell-anchored head-throw from the floor to a standing position, which he admits he had “rarely seen duplicated” (pp. 150–151). This archive records that one as a circus act, not a programme.

The claim that has not held up

Two sentences at the chapter’s close of the wrestling section overreach:

“No matter how severe the neck play, there is never any danger of blood congestion, as some try to make believe… These are extreme examples, but they go to show the extreme limits to which the neck muscles are capable of resisting without any detrimental effects.” (pp. 151–152)

“Never any danger” and “without any detrimental effects” are not claims the modern record supports, and this site will not launder them: the cervical spine has real, well-documented failure modes, tissue tolerance lags strength adaptation, and the loaded end-range positions Jowett programmed are precisely where the risk concentrates. See safety and contraindications. The “creative nerve force” physiology that titles the chapter — the neck as the wellspring of the nervous system’s “generative supply” (p. 146) — is likewise a period doctrine, not an account of how nerves work.

What does stand up is the observational core: that boxers of the bare-knuckle era who caught blows on the head “always displayed a strong neck” (p. 152) — an intuition about impact tolerance the modern concussion literature would eventually quantify, as documented on neck strength and concussion risk — and his admiring account of the fisherwomen of Brittany and England’s east coast, who carried loaded baskets on their heads and “had beautifully shaped necks, which were undoubtedly the reason for the wonderful development of their bodies” (p. 152). Whatever the causal arrow, it is a 1926 author documenting trained female necks as objects of admiration, in an era that mostly ignored women’s training entirely.

The nine necks

The chapter ends with the passage that earns it a place in this archive — a roll call, from a man who had seen every strongman of his generation up close:

“All the greatest men I have ever known, who displayed great concentrated energy, carried a columnar neck and a perfect bodily poise. George Hackenschmidt had one of the most imposing necks I ever saw. Every part was perfectly moulded. Nordquest, Travis, Steinborn, Cadine, Dandurand, Fournier, Klein and Coulter, among a few that I can immediately call to mind, all own beautifully formed necks, which are pillars of power, and their wonderful general physique and remarkable strength is positive proof of how a columnar neck can invigorate the whole body with its creative nerve force.” (pp. 152–153)

Hackenschmidt first — the man whose 1908 programme is the most complete of the era — then Nordquest, Travis, Steinborn, Cadine, Dandurand, Fournier, Klein and Coulter. Note the last name: Ottley Coulter’s papers, together with Jowett’s own, are held at the Stark Center and have never been digitised — the same archive flagged on the figures page as this project’s largest unswept source.

What neck exercises did George Jowett recommend in 1926?

Five, in Chapter XI of The Key to Might and Muscle: the wrestler’s bridge performed as a repetition movement — lowering the shoulders and pressing back up with the neck, progressed by holding a barbell at arm’s length, with head rotation added to reach the sterno-mastoids; a homemade head sling loaded with a kettlebell, worked in flexion-extension and rotation from a bent-over stance; the same sling used lying on a couch with the head past the end; partner resistance against a front headlock; and, as exhibition rather than training, a barbell-anchored head-throw. He explicitly rejected free movements as useless for a developed neck and allowed hand resistance only for beginners, “for a couple of weeks,” because “the neck is stronger than the arms.” The programme’s logic — external load, multiple planes, progression — is the same logic every effective neck programme has used since; the equipment has simply improved. See choosing a harness for the modern descendant of his sling.