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| Age 11 |
As we've said before, Tim likes to test his strength by crushing things with his legs. He discovered another way to do that and this is an account of one incident.
There is a place at Tim's house where there are two walls fairly close together. In fact, the space between the walls is just a little longer than the length of Tim's legs. If he sits down between the two walls with his back to one of them his feet come about 2" short of the other wall.
One day Tim discovered that he could sit between the walls and put an object between his feet and the other wall and then crush it by straightening his legs.
"Do you have something you need crushed?" he asked me.
"Well, there's stuff in the garage that needs throwing out that you can squash before we put it in the garbage can. It's on the floor in one of the corners," I replied.
Tim went off to the garage to find something he could work on.
Soon he returned with an old, broken VCR in his hands.
"How 'bout this?" he said.
"Well, I don't know if you can do that - it's pretty big."
The VCR was just a cheap one we had owned for a while. It was mostly plastic parts with a metal bottom. It didn't work any more so we were throwing it out.
"Let me try", said Tim.
He had his training shorts on. He said, "I'll need my cleats!" and off he went to get them.
Tim put his cleats on and tied the laces. Now he was ready.
He sat down between the two walls. I put the old VCR on end between the wall and Tim's feet. He was able to rest his feet against the VCR with his knees bent. His calves were stretched as he pressed his toes against it.
"OK, go" I said.
Tim began to press against the VCR. He first worked on straightening his knees. His quads jumped up into ridges and he slowly worked his knees downwards. The VCR was making cracking noises as his toes pressed harder and harder on the front panel. His cleats crunched through the plastic, destroying the buttons and the tape door. Tim's calves were stretched and tight as piano wire.
Now his knees were straight and he held his quads flexed. He started to work on contracting his calf muscles.
We later measured the force Tim can generate with just his calf muscles while sitting between the walls with his knees straight. It's around 450lb!
Tim's calves started to shorten and flare out. He now had his eyes closed as he concentrated on generating maximum force.
Tim's toes pressed harder and harder as his calves slowly but smoothly contracted. The large veins on the sides of them began to show as the pressure increased. There were more crunching sounds coming from the VCR now. Tim's quads remained flexed hard as his knees locked down.
All of a sudden, the VCR gave way to the force of Tim's muscles. With a loud sound of rending plastic and crumpling metal his feet compressed the VCR all the way against the wall. His calves contracted to maximum and ridges of muscle sprang up around the edges of them. Hard ridges of muscle showed in the outsides of his legs. Bits of internal parts rained out of the buckled bottom of the VCR. Tim's cleats pressed into the bent front panel and split it in two.
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| Age 11 |
Tim opened his eyes and relaxed for a moment.
"Let me do some more, " he said.
He turned the bent and broken VCR around sideways and set it between his feet and the wall.
He started to work on it again. This time his legs, already pumped from the first effort, pressed the VCR against the wall even harder. His calves contracted. I could see them widen and veins pop out on them as he applied more pressure. The VCR crumpled under his feet with more sounds of breaking plastic and bending metal. The already broken front panel popped off and the remainder was compressed to about 2 or 3" high. The ridges of muscle on his calves were covered with tiny veins which popped out as he held the pressure for about 10 seconds. Tim reached down and put his hands on his calf muscles to feel them while they were still contracted hard - he really enjoys his own muscularity.
Tim stood up and put the destroyed VCR under his feet. He stood on it and began to do calf raises on it.
"Give me some weights", he said
I got a couple of 25lb dumb bells and he took one in each hand.
He continued to do his calf raises with the extra resistance using the bent remains of the VCR as a block. His cleats pressed it down with each flex of his calves. His muscles showed clearly as they contracted under his skin. The VCR became a little flatter each time. He watched his feet as he crushed the remains of the VCR flatter and flatter. Tim continued with his workout and moved his feet around on the VCR every few raises. The VCR got a little more bent and a little more broken each time Tim pressed his toes down on it. Each time he rose up crunching noises came from under his feet.
Finally, after doing 50 calf raises with the 2 25lb weights, Tim stepped off of the ruined VCR.
"OK, that's done", he said.
It sure was. The only part of the VCR that was even close to its original size was the metal bottom and that was bent into a U shape with the ends touching. All of the plastic parts and the mechanism were completely broken and distorted into almost unrecognizable pieces. There were cleat marks in almost every piece. Small electronic parts had been smashed flat under his cleats.
With a kid around as strong as Tim is, we didn't need to spend any money on any trash-masher appliances. He can do anything those machines can do for just the price of some tuna sandwiches!
