After a year Strongfort achieved a phenomenal form (at the age of seventeen, with one hand he lifted over his head a weight of 130 pounds).

He also adopted the stage nickname Lionel Strongfort and began his own series of shows in vaudeville and circus productions around the world.

[2] In the first years of the twentieth century, he stopped showing, settled in the USA and took up the correspondence course, sales of books, sports equipment and dietary supplements.

[2] Similar to Eugen Sandow and other strongmen of the period, Strongfort equated the muscular male body with heterosexuality.

As a vegetarian, Strongfort disputed this and challenged Saxon to a weight-lifting contest to prove the superiority of a meat-free diet.