Meet Mike

United States Marine Corps veteran. Professional strongman. Two-time world record holder in neck feats of strength. The man whose initials are on the Neck Flex® MMB Pro Series.

Neck Flex builds the finest head harnesses on the market, and we hold the athletes we stand with to the same standard. Mike Bruce clears it in every direction. He has trained the human neck for more than thirty-five years, holds world records nobody has approached, and has spent his life teaching what he knows to anyone willing to do the work. He is also, by the account of everyone who has met him, a man of honor, integrity, and service to others.

The Marine

Mike enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and graduated at the top of his class of 68 at Parris Island — Honor Graduate, Platoon 2170, Hotel Company. He credits the Corps with making him who he is, and he has carried its values every day since: honor, courage, commitment.

Those are not decorations on a website. Mike does not drink and has never used drugs, and he has stood in front of thousands of students at schools and churches across the country telling them why. When he set his final world record in 2012, he did it as a fundraiser — every dollar at the door going to a Blue Star Mothers chapter sending care packages to deployed service members, and to a shelter for victims of domestic abuse. He closed the show with the most dangerous feat of his career and handed over the checks the next morning.

The competitor

Before the strongman career there was a fighting one, and he won at every level he entered:

• 2× New England Grappling Champion
• Connecticut State Judo Champion
• Virginia Beach State Shootfighting Champion (Professional)
• Western Massachusetts Submission Wrestling Champion (Professional)
• East Coast Shootfighting Champion (Amateur)
• Sampalis Kickboxing Champion (Amateur)
• Full Instructor, Gillett’s Mixed Martial Arts

The strongest neck ever documented

Mike holds two world records in neck feats of strength. He performed a seated neck lift of 300 pounds — lifted off the floor with his head — at a bodyweight of 202. And on August 25, 2012, he had seven 5/8-inch steel bars bent across the front of his throat in under 57 seconds, a feat no other performer has matched. The Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas at Austin, the largest collection of its kind in the world, agreed to recognize the record and place one of the bars in its permanent collection.

He built a 20-inch neck at under 200 pounds of bodyweight, and he also pulled 1,500 pounds off the rack at 202. Strongman Dave “Iron Tamer” Whitley, who bent the bars that night, put it in five words: “Mike Bruce has the strongest neck in the world.”

He retired the throat feat that same night, on his doctor’s advice, after more than eighty performances. He has never encouraged anyone to imitate it.

The teacher

Mike has owned and run The Machine Shop Gym in Somerset, Kentucky for more than seventeen years. He learned the strongman trade under two of the greats — Bud Jeffries, who gave him his start, and Grandmaster Dennis Rogers, who took him on as a student and later stood beside him at the world record. He has taught neck training publicly for two decades, and he is straight with people about it. Asked once whether a big neck lets a fighter escape a locked choke, he answered in one word: no. Then he explained what a trained neck actually does, and what it does not. That is the kind of coach he is.

Why the MMB Pro carries his name

The Neck Flex® MMB Pro Series stands for Mike Machine Bruce. It is his signature model, and he helped design it — a collaboration between Neck Flex and the man with the most trained neck on record.

In his own words, from his own site: “We set forth to raise the bar, and after much time and effort we are proud to present the MMB Pro Series… from the diamond embossed neoprene padding to the highly polished metal buckles, the MMB Pro stands alone. Combining both plate loading and resistance band training platforms, the versatility is unmatched.”

And on the harness itself, published on his own website years before this page existed: “The Neck Flex is the best neck harness on the market because the possibilities of training your neck are only limited by your imagination.” Coaching a reader whose elbows could no longer take plate-on-head neck curls, he was more specific still: “There are many neck Harnesses to choose from. Some are good while many are crap and will break under the lightest load. I suggest you order The Neck Flex. It is a proven product, super durable, heavily stitched.”

The man who built the strongest neck in the world chose this harness, helped design the pro model, and put his name on it. If you want the equipment the authority on neck training uses and endorses, that is the MMB Pro Series.