Jan. 21, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:54:01
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Two. | ||
| You are the first ever person with a mohawk on this podcast. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| I think, right? | ||
| Is that accurate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Just say yes. | ||
| Make me feel good. | ||
| Definitely the first with a purple and blue mohawk. | ||
| Oh, it's a full rainbow, man. | ||
| Oh, yeah, that's right. | ||
| All the way down the back. | ||
| Very, very nice. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Very nice. | ||
| Now, first of all, I love your fucking handle. | ||
| World's Strongest Gay. | ||
| That's me, yeah. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Is there, in that community, is there acceptance? | ||
| Is there open, is it just about, like, they don't give a fuck just as long as you're a real powerlifter? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, it's, yeah, when I came out, it was super cool. | ||
| Nobody really gave me any shit. | ||
| That's the best part about Strongman. | ||
| You know, I know you had Rob Oberst in here not too long ago. | ||
| He's awesome. | ||
| Yeah, he's something, but I love him. | ||
| You know, he mentioned just, like, the community of strongmen is awesome because, like, we all realize what we have to do to get to this level of sport, and we all have to be a little bit sick and twisted in the head to look at a truck and get excited to pull it. | ||
| So, yeah, when I came out, like, nobody really gave a shit. | ||
| They were just like, all right, as long as you can still lift weights, we don't care. | ||
| Yeah, it mirrors the comedy community in that way. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Like, stand-up comedy community, nobody gives a shit. | ||
| No. | ||
| As long as you're funny and you're doing your job, that's all that really matters. | ||
| And we know some that are in the closet and we're like, come on, man. | ||
| No one cares. | ||
| Come out. | ||
| No one gives a shit. | ||
| It'll probably be funnier. | ||
| Right. | ||
| More subject matter for sure. | ||
| Not holding on to as much. | ||
| It's easier to talk. | ||
| When I came out, just like... | ||
| The weight off my shoulders was unbelievable. | ||
| How long ago was this? | ||
| That was 2014. So I was 22 years old. | ||
| So I was a late bloomer in the gay world. | ||
| Was it like when you were in high school? | ||
| First of all, when do you know? | ||
| You know, I don't know that I have, like, I don't remember, like, I never had, like, an aha moment, per se. | ||
| For me, it was going through high school, like, I was involved in a bunch of stuff. | ||
| You know, I was a cheerleader, actually, also played football, was doing the weightlifting thing, like, was class president, so I had my hands in a bunch of different pots. | ||
| College, super into everything as well, and really just focused on school, and actually dated a girl. | ||
| For like a year and a half. | ||
| In college? | ||
| In college, yeah. | ||
| Did you ever date a boy? | ||
| No. | ||
| But did you like, oh damn, I wish she was a boy. | ||
| She's cool, but... | ||
| It was, yeah, pretty much. | ||
| You know, it was more like a friendship than a relationship, I guess is the way to put it. | ||
| You know, like, we were cool and everything, and everything was going well, but like... | ||
| Nothing else was really going on. | ||
| When you came out, was she like, aha! | ||
| That was the reason I broke up with her. | ||
| Oh, you came out. | ||
| Because, you know, meanwhile, you know, I'm dating this girl, but I'm watching gay porn when she's not around. | ||
| I'm like, ah, this isn't right. | ||
| There's something else going on here. | ||
| So, did you, like, was it gay porn, like, finding gay porn? | ||
| You're like, that's what I like. | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Gay porn is thought of very differently than straight porn. | ||
| Because, like, straight porn, here's the rub in the straight community. | ||
| You look at straight porn, you're like, ah, especially someone like me who has daughters, you go, fuck, somebody probably did something awful to those girls when they were young. | ||
| Like, that's like nine out of ten times. | ||
| And that's why they turned to porn. | ||
| But when you see gay porn, it's like, ah, a couple dudes would like to fuck. | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Even, like, I've had Dan Savage on, and, you know, we were talking about gay porn. | ||
| It's like, they don't think of it the same way. | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| Yeah, so I ended up breaking up with that girl, and I told her, I was like, yeah, like, I think I'm gay, and I need to, like, figure this shit out. | ||
| You know, I'm 22. I want to at least enjoy my 20s, you know, trying to figure out if I like dudes or not. | ||
| Was she like, damn, I turned Rob gay? | ||
| She was not very nice about it. | ||
| Oh, would she freak out? | ||
| Yeah, it didn't. | ||
| It went downhill pretty quickly. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Like, we were living together at the time. | ||
| Because we were in college, so, like, kind of living together. | ||
| And then, like, I got kicked out and was, like, living in my car for a little while. | ||
| So, it was, yeah, kind of a shit show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| She kicked you out? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Bitch. | ||
| She didn't even... | ||
| Did you stay in contact with her? | ||
| No, not even a little bit. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, then like, you know, like six months later, she's like blowing up my phone saying I gave her chlamydia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was like, no, it's not on me. | |
| It's been longer than that, too, since we weren't doing anything. | ||
| Oh, that's hilarious. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't think you keep chlamydia in your system dormant, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wouldn't know. | |
| When you get it, you get it. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I've dodged that bullet, luckily. | ||
| But that seems like one that I think you just get it and then it's bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It doesn't seem too pleasant. | ||
| I mean, I don't think it... | ||
| And that was awkward, too, because all those calls and everything were coming through when I was with my now husband. | ||
| Joey. | ||
| So we were dating at that time, and now my ex-girlfriend is blowing up my phone saying I gave her the clap. | ||
| Was he laughing? | ||
| At first, he was like, what the fuck is going on? | ||
| Because we literally had been dating for two months. | ||
| So it was super new. | ||
| So he's like, what the fuck did I get myself into? | ||
| Right, because you were a noob to the whole gay world. | ||
| Totally, yeah. | ||
| So that's crazy. | ||
| So you become, you decide, okay, I gotta deal with reality. | ||
| I'm gay. | ||
| You meet that one guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you're still with him. | ||
| Still married, yeah, with him. | ||
| We just got married this past March. | ||
| Almost been a year. | ||
| That's kind of crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, you didn't even play the field. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I got real, you know, it's funny. | ||
| Like, I joke about this all the time, because, like, we met in, like, the typical millennial gay way on Grindr. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, I wasn't even out, actually, before we met. | ||
| So, like, on Grindr, I was like that shirtless torso pick, because I was still, you know... | ||
| Good move. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, obviously. | ||
| Show the goods. | ||
| No, they're not that good, but he thought they were, so... | ||
| So he saw me pop up in the area and was like, oh, who's this bitch? | ||
| Messaged me. | ||
| And I thought he was catfishing me because I thought he was way too hot for me. | ||
| I thought he was out of my league. | ||
| So I kind of just got really lucky with the first guy that came my way. | ||
| That's kind of be weird for her, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, imagine being a girl, and you're with a guy, and you're like, man, something is wrong with our relationship. | ||
| I mean, it's literally like the most, like, there's no more other, like, it's me, it's you. | ||
| Or no, it's not you, it's me. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, that is the, it's not you, it's me. | ||
| I don't think there's anywhere to go, you know, higher than that. | ||
| Well, unless you want to go pray the gay away. | ||
| Yeah, that doesn't work, no. | ||
| But that is like a way that some people try to fix it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Particularly like uber-religious folks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It is hilarious, man. | ||
| I think it's frickin' funny. | ||
| I mean, you know, like, and I get shit a lot of, I mean, obviously, like, with an Instagram handle, worldstrongestgay, I get more shit on a daily basis on social media than I can even count. | ||
| And most of it's from, like, religious people. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're sending me Bible verses and telling me I need to convert to Christianity. | ||
| By the way, they're probably jerking off while they're doing it. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Probably thinking about you. | ||
| You need to stop it. | ||
| You need to stop being so gay and delicious. | ||
| My go-to response is, hey man, I don't read fiction, so you keep doing that. | ||
| But I just always think it's funny because they're like, Obviously, I'm very open about my sexuality on social media. | ||
| And World's Strongest Man has been super supportive of it. | ||
| They had World's Strongest Man in June during Pride Month this year and did a whole little expose about me, which was awesome. | ||
| And the comments on the World's Strongest Man, they're like, you're pushing the gay agenda, all this bullshit. | ||
| And I'm like, listen, man, the only agenda we're pushing is I just want to be treated like everybody else and get the same shit that you do. | ||
| I've never once tried to make someone gay. | ||
| Meanwhile, Christians are in my DM saying, you need to convert. | ||
| I'm like, hey, you need to suck a dick. | ||
| The gay agenda is a hilarious phrase. | ||
| There's an agenda. | ||
| I still don't even know what it is. | ||
| So whoever's listening, if you could hit me up and let me know, I'd love to learn about it. | ||
| Yeah, you need to get in a tighter-knit club. | ||
| I guess I do. | ||
| The gay agenda. | ||
| I guess the Rainbow Mohawk doesn't make me that gay. | ||
| But what a hilarious thing. | ||
| It's not like you're trying to get someone to be a Mormon. | ||
| No. | ||
| You're the gay or not gay. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But why does someone think? | ||
| That's the weirdest kind of homophobia to me. | ||
| I had a bit in one of my specials in the past. | ||
| There's two types of people that are afraid of gay marriage. | ||
| It's people that are really dumb or they're secretly worried that dicks are delicious. | ||
| And I share that all the time on my social media, just so you know. | ||
| I think it's fucking amazing. | ||
| But that's what it is. | ||
| Like, worried about the gay agenda. | ||
| Like, they're gonna come get me. | ||
| They're gonna get me to suck those delicious dicks. | ||
| That's what it's like. | ||
| It's like they're afraid. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| I think it's hysterical, to be honest. | ||
| It is hysterical. | ||
| But... | ||
| Well, I was real lucky when I was a kid. | ||
| I was exposed to gay people real young. | ||
| When I was seven years old, we moved to San Francisco. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Yeah, in the 1970s. | ||
| It was gay as fuck. | ||
| And so I was around them all the time. | ||
| Like, my next-door neighbor was this gay couple, and my aunt used to go next door, and they would get naked, smoke pot, and play bongos together. | ||
| Sick! | ||
| Yeah, it was pretty crazy. | ||
| So, for me, that was normal life. | ||
| I was around gay people. | ||
| I didn't even hear the term faggot until I was 11 and we moved to Florida. | ||
| I remember hearing that when I was 11. I was like, oh, wow. | ||
| My friend, his name was Candy. | ||
| Candido. | ||
| He's a Cuban kid. | ||
| And his dad was real mad because gay people were getting married. | ||
| He was reading this newspaper. | ||
| I can't fucking believe this shit. | ||
| He Throws his new paper down. | ||
| And he was a grown man. | ||
| I remember being 11 and goes, why does he give a shit? | ||
| Like, how weird. | ||
| Literally doesn't affect him at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
At all! | |
| But he was so upset. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it was important for me to see because I didn't know people like that. | ||
| So to be around my friend's dad and see him freak out like that, I was like, oh, what a weird thing to waste your time thinking about. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| I mean, that's... | ||
| And you were super lucky to have that kind of upbringing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To not see that... | ||
| Ugly part of, you know, the world. | ||
| Because, I mean, the thing is with me, you know, I'm fortunate enough where, like, not many people, like, talk shit to me in person. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, like, I'm an average-sized strongman. | ||
| Like, I'm not really that big of a dude. | ||
| What's an average-sized strongman? | ||
| You're, like, 300 pounds. | ||
| And I'm the smallest guy that can eat. | ||
| How much do you weigh? | ||
| I'm, like, 285 right now. | ||
| Yeah, that's not average-sized, bro. | ||
| Well, I mean, I just competed this weekend against Brian Shaw and the motherfucker's 420. Yeah, that's large. | ||
| You know, and 6'8". | ||
| I'm 5'10". | ||
| Like, hey man, cool. | ||
| You know, so like, I'm fortunate, like most people don't talk shit to me personally. | ||
| It's like all on social media, but it did happen one time in Texas, of all places. | ||
| I had just finished a truck pull event. | ||
| This guy was like calling me a faggot from the stands, like all this stuff. | ||
| And like, I just stopped and looked and I was like, dude, I suck dick and I'm stronger than you. | ||
| And the whole crowd just kind of went quiet and then he walked away. | ||
| They just went quiet? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think in that situation, I feel like people feel like they're invincible. | ||
| They feel like they have the power. | ||
| Because they're in the crowd? | ||
| Yeah, and they don't expect somebody who's competing to say something back to them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I'm not going to take that shit. | ||
| It's amazing it's only one guy, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That shows you how the times are changing. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Luckily, I was dubbed the unofficial fan favorite at World's Strongest Man this year, so it's really cool to see the support throughout the entire community. | ||
| How do you get dubbed the unofficial fan favorite? | ||
| I was getting the loudest applause whenever my name got announced. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| Yeah, so the announcers just kind of were calling me the fan favorite. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| I'm happy with the way things are going, with acceptance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| It's changing, right? | ||
| It's getting a lot better. | ||
| We're super fortunate, and that's kind of like when I came out. | ||
| I'm lucky because I had this, like, I really don't give a fuck mentality when I came out. | ||
| I didn't care what people thought. | ||
| I didn't care who thought If they didn't like me, they didn't like me. | ||
| I would just cut them out. | ||
| Fortunately, I didn't have to do that. | ||
| How did that transpire? | ||
| Was it because the weight of it gave you so much relief that you felt like who gives a shit now? | ||
| Now I'm free. | ||
| Was it like that? | ||
| There was a lot that went into it. | ||
| So, like, in my mind, I didn't, like, want to come out until I... It seems dumb now, like, until I knew I was really gay. | ||
| And I guess, you know, dating my now husband for six weeks, that was kind of the tipping point. | ||
| And at that point in our relationship, we kind of realized, like, all right, this wasn't just going to be, like, a fling and just having fun. | ||
| Like, we were actually, you know, taking the steps to kind of be committed and see what was going to happen here. | ||
| Not expecting marriage, but... | ||
| So... | ||
| I came out mainly because of him, because he had been out since he was 17. And at this point, we were 22. And I didn't feel like it was fair for him to be in a relationship with somebody that was still in the closet. | ||
| And that was like my biggest motivator for it. | ||
| And once you... | ||
| So you're already happy. | ||
| So you're in this happy relationship. | ||
| So if people are upset at you, you're like, I don't give a fuck. | ||
| I have what I want. | ||
| I'm in a better place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you also... | ||
| I mean, it must feel... | ||
| I'm putting words in your mouth, but it must feel like when you do become out or you do come out, it must feel like not just a relief, but... | ||
| Like, you've solidified. | ||
| You're free. | ||
| You're you. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's exhausting, like, waking up every day pretending to be somebody you're not. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, you literally have to act different than you want to. | ||
| Did you have to talk about girls to guys? | ||
| Like, when you were around, like, yeah, look at her ass, boy. | ||
| I was always just, like, the funny thing is, like, after I came out, like, nobody was surprised. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I feel like I was a guy that was just kind of like in the background, like awkwardly laughing when guys were talking about girls. | ||
| I'm like, haha, yeah, totally. | ||
| But I was just looking at the guys in bulges, you know, right behind them. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Do you remember a year, like when you were young, when you were like, hey, something might be different? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Um... | |
| I think back to middle school, and I think it's just the stereotypical, I was into theater, I was into music, I played sports, but wasn't really that good at them, and actually was a cheerleader in middle school, too. | ||
| I joined my first cheerleading team in seventh grade, and the funny thing is there was tryouts and everything, and I got the fourth highest score out of all the girls. | ||
| So, I figured that was, you know, a little telltale sign as well. | ||
| That was a sign? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not stereotyping male cheerleaders whatsoever, but... | ||
| I have a buddy who's a male cheerleader who's awesome. | ||
| Chappelle's 99.9% sure he's straight. | ||
| Spellacy? | ||
| But he's built like a brick shit house too. | ||
| I mean, collegiate cheerleaders are insane. | ||
| Yeah, but you have to be able to flip through the air. | ||
| People don't understand what cheerleading is, right? | ||
| They think of it as like, yeah, go team! | ||
| No, it's crazy acrobatics. | ||
| Even in high school, I was throwing girls up in the air by myself and catching them overhead. | ||
| You know, like doing shit like that. | ||
| Yeah, that's what's weird. | ||
| Chappelle does this stuff where he grabs them by the feet and flips them in the air and catches them on one hand. | ||
| It's stupid. | ||
| It's bananas. | ||
| The amount of physical power you have to have to be able to do that. | ||
| Timing, coordination. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| I mean, you have to be a fucking savage to throw someone in the air and catch them with one hand. | ||
| It takes a lot of balls. | ||
| A lot of fucking power, too. | ||
| The explosive power. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Most men shitting on cheerleaders could never pull that off. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's fucking hard. | ||
| Can you do all the flips and shit, too? | ||
|
unidentified
|
God, no. | |
| Back handsprings? | ||
|
unidentified
|
God, no. | |
| No? | ||
| Could you do it back then? | ||
| No. | ||
| No? | ||
| No, that's actually one of the reasons why, like, so I, when I was doing it in high school, like, I actually looked to do it in college at the collegiate level. | ||
| But tumbling was, like, a minimum requirement. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, I'm a little too chunky and unathletic. | ||
| So how did you get into powerlifting and strongman type shit? | ||
| Honestly, totally by chance. | ||
| I was working out in my high school weight room one day after school. | ||
| And a substitute teacher happened to walk by who owned a CrossFit gym. | ||
| And he was like, hey, I'm at this CrossFit gym. | ||
| You seem like you like this stuff and you're pretty strong. | ||
| Feel free to come by. | ||
| So I actually started training with him at like 5 o'clock in the morning before school. | ||
| And I found out really quickly I sucked at CrossFit, but I liked lifting heavy shit. | ||
| And this was back in 2009. And walked into the gym one morning and they were like, hey, there's a local strongman contest this Saturday. | ||
| We signed you up for it. | ||
| So when you say you sucked at CrossFit, CrossFit is just a bunch of Olympic lifts and different explosive exercises. | ||
| Yeah, I just wasn't in shape. | ||
| Oh, right. | ||
| So the ability to do massive repetitions. | ||
| To do well in the workouts. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So yeah, so they signed me up for my first contest. | ||
| I was 17 years old. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I had never touched an implement. | ||
| I had just seen it on TV like everybody else in World's Strongest Man. | ||
| Got my ass kicked. | ||
| Took last place. | ||
| But you were 17, and how much lifting had you done previous to that? | ||
| Maybe four or five months. | ||
| Really? | ||
| But at that point, I had hit the 500-pound deadlift. | ||
| And you'd only been lifting for a couple months? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, so you're just a freak genetically. | ||
| In a few lifts. | ||
| In a few lifts. | ||
| I was good at. | ||
| That's a lot of weight for a few months of lifting. | ||
| Yeah, so the contest went horrible for me, but I absolutely fell in love with the sport. | ||
| Ended up at Springfield College in Massachusetts and joined their powerlifting team. | ||
| And that's when I kind of got more of a background in lifting, proper technique and all that stuff. | ||
| And then did another local strongman contest where I met this guy, Matt Mills, who owns a gym, Lightning Fitness in Connecticut, where I train now. | ||
| And he was like, yeah, I'm just starting to get all the strongman equipment. | ||
| You should come down. | ||
| It's only about 30 minutes from your school. | ||
| So I actually would go there every Saturday morning from when I was in college to train strongman. | ||
| And that's when I kind of started competing in the amateur circuit. | ||
| And that's kind of led me on my trajectory to here. | ||
| So you're one of those rare people that actually lives in Connecticut. | ||
| I live in Massachusetts. | ||
| Ah, good for you. | ||
| Right over the border of Connecticut. | ||
| Good move. | ||
| Escape. | ||
| Go over there. | ||
| Work out real quick. | ||
| And then leave. | ||
| Yeah, Connecticut is strange. | ||
| It's something. | ||
| It's a strange place. | ||
| It's a lost state. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you get into powerlifting, and then what was your exposure to truck pulling and all that other crazy shit? | ||
| So really not much. | ||
| The cool thing about Strongman is every contest is different that we do. | ||
| We never do the same. | ||
| I've done the sport for over 10 years now, and I've never done a contest where the events have been the same in that span of time. | ||
| Do you know what it's going to be before you sign up? | ||
| Typically. | ||
| So you know what a series of lifts? | ||
| We get about 8 to 12 weeks notice, depending on the contest. | ||
| So... | ||
| The gym that I was going to in Connecticut, they were just starting to acquire strongman equipment. | ||
| So it was pretty bare bones. | ||
| So we had a steel log for the log clean and press. | ||
| They had some Atlas stones, some farmer's handles, a yoke, and that's pretty much it. | ||
| And then over the years, he would get more and more and more, and now it's turned into this massive 15,000 square foot facility. | ||
| And the gym owner, we call him an equipment whore because every time something new comes out, he buys it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, my exposure to the equipment in the beginning was pretty minimal, but what I did to compensate for that is I just competed more. | ||
| So, I would pretty much, from Springfield, Massachusetts, I drew a five-hour radius from where I was, and any contest there was in that radius, I would do. | ||
| So, in my first three years, I competed probably almost 40 times. | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| How often are these things being held? | ||
| At the amateur level, pretty often, there's usually, you could find, you know, I would say one or two, you know, per month in New England alone. | ||
| Really? | ||
| And then they're all over the country. | ||
| So, you know, I think the cool thing is, you know, like I was really, like I said, I took last in my first contest and that went on for a while. | ||
| I took dead last in like my first eight shows that I did. | ||
| It's like I wasn't good at this thing when I started. | ||
| Now, when did you start being successful? | ||
| 20. So I went to amateur nationals actually in the 200 pound weight class. | ||
| So I weighed in under 200 pounds in 2011. That was my first time at the amateur nationals. | ||
| So I'd been doing it for about two years. | ||
| Surprised myself and ended up taking second place in that weight class. | ||
| Went back to the Amateur Nationals as a 231 and 212 and took second place there. | ||
| And then won the Amateur National Championship in 2013. And that's where I won my pro card and kind of got to that next level. | ||
| But it's such a difficult thing to do that I would imagine doing it 40 times a year. | ||
| Like, you're going to get injured. | ||
| Luckily, I didn't. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, you know, I'm fortunate where I'm so by trade and what I went to school for is I'm an athletic trainer. | ||
| So sports medicine has kind of been my thing. | ||
| So, you know, I've been lucky enough to learn when I was training of when I need to back off, when I can push a little bit harder, what needs to be taken care of and just try to be smart. | ||
| You know, I mean, you know, knock on wood, you know, I've had one serious injury in the 10 years that I've been doing this. | ||
| What was that? | ||
| It was summer of 2018. I dropped a 275 pound atlas stone on my chest. | ||
| Oh! | ||
| Fuck! | ||
| Tore my QL on my low back, broke three ribs. | ||
| Oh, Jesus! | ||
| Put me out of commission for a little while. | ||
| How did you drop it? | ||
| It was at a contest. | ||
| I was in second place by one point. | ||
| So it was the final event of the contest, and I went to push the stone onto the... | ||
| So the thing is, with me being only 5'10", with the Atlas Stones, like, the first box you have to put the stone on is high, you know? | ||
| So this was 75 inches tall, you know, and I'm only 5'10", so that was literally, like, eyebrow height. | ||
| So I had to, like, press it up onto the box. | ||
| And I thought it was up there. | ||
| It wasn't secured. | ||
| It ended up rolling off, fell onto my chest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Fuck! | ||
| And, you know, naturally, that was the first contest my mom had come seen in person in, like, four years. | ||
| Oh, my gosh. | ||
| She was in the stands watching that happen. | ||
| She saw her baby get killed by a boulder. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Perfect timing. | ||
| God damn, dude. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So how long did it take you to recover from that? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| That was in June or July of 2018, and I didn't do my next contest until March of 2019. Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It took me out for a while. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I could have only a 275-pound fucking stone ball. | ||
| And that was the lightest one we had in the series. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| So, just your background in understanding athletic science or exercise science allows you to know when you're being silly and when, you know, you're not going to be a pussy, but you're not going to be dumb. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And I think that's... | ||
| Where it's, that's why I've been lucky, you know, and, you know, kind of stayed injury free because even like to this day, like, you know, so my coach is, you know, pretty well-renowned strongman, Derek Poundstone, who, you know, took second place at World's Strongest Man, and he programmed some crazy shit for me. | ||
| But there are some days where I'm just like, yo, dude, this is not going to fly today. | ||
| When you have a light, like, what's a light day? | ||
| You know, so like, I train four days a week. | ||
| And I get, like, one, like, I call it, like, my bro day. | ||
| It's, like, my bench back in arms day. | ||
| I didn't even know power men do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, so it's more just, like, because, like, bench press is going to, like, build up your triceps. | ||
| It's going to build up the anterior delt. | ||
| It's going to help, like, bench press actually helps your overhead lifts. | ||
| And so I do that, and, like, that's what I consider, like, my light day. | ||
| But, like, I'll still bench, like, in the mid-fours. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| So... | ||
| So, four days a week. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so, how do you structure it? | ||
| Do you do every other day? | ||
| Do you do... | ||
| It all depends on the week, really. | ||
| So, typically, I try to go Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday. | ||
| That's usually my average week. | ||
| So, Tuesday is like my big overhead day where I'll do a strongman movement overhead. | ||
| So, like log press or dumbbell. | ||
| And then a bunch of shoulder overhead accessory work. | ||
| Thursday, my day two is my biggest day, so I squat and deadlift in the same day. | ||
| And that's a workout that sometimes takes four to five hours. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you do big spaces in between each workout? | ||
| So you lift, and then do you have a large amount of time for rest? | ||
| I'll take about 10-15 minutes between sets sometimes. | ||
| We're building up to the Arnold Strongman Classic in Columbus, Ohio this coming March, and we have a max deadlift coming up, and I'm potentially going to be going for a 1,000-pound deadlift. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jeez! | |
| Jesus Christ! | ||
| So to get through a deadlift workout where I'm deadlifting... | ||
| Oh yeah, there's me. | ||
| There's you. | ||
| Look at the bar bending. | ||
| That's what's most fucked up about it. | ||
| So that was 850 pounds on the deadlift right there. | ||
| What is that dumbbell right there? | ||
| That dumbbell was 250. 250 one-arm overhead press. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fucking A. The deadlift, though, is so... | ||
| What is that fucking thing? | ||
| That's called a Hussafelt stone. | ||
| It's like a coffin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Pretty much. | ||
| That weighs 450. Are you wearing a back strap, like a belt? | ||
| Yeah, so wear a belt. | ||
| Does that really work? | ||
| What does it do? | ||
| So it helps build intra-abdominal pressure. | ||
| It also gives some tactile feedback to know where you need to brace. | ||
| So usually, weightlifter is like, we'll put it where we feel weakest in our core, and that's going to help us activate those muscles to be a little bit stronger and more effectively brace to prevent injury. | ||
| Because I never understood how it would protect you from a lift. | ||
| Like if you're lifting heavy weights and you've got that strap around your back. | ||
| Yeah, I guess it's not really meant to protect, per se. | ||
| More just to help add extra support. | ||
| That's the biggest thing. | ||
| So it does... | ||
| You don't do heavy lifts without it? | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| No, I keep it on, yeah, whenever I'm going heavy. | ||
| That's pretty much standard for powerlifters? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Powerlifting, strongman, yeah, we're all wearing, like, pretty heavy-duty belts. | ||
| Now, when you train, do you train doing strongman stuff? | ||
| Like, do you pull trucks and shit like that in training? | ||
| Yeah, so leading up to World's Strongest Man, I knew we had a truck pull. | ||
| We actually got to pull the... | ||
| The Grave Digger and the Monster Jam Fire Truck. | ||
| Really? | ||
| The Monster Trucks at Worlds this year, which is pretty cool. | ||
| How much does the Grave Digger weigh? | ||
| Well, so the funny thing is, it only weighs 15,000 pounds. | ||
| So they had to grab a second one and attach them. | ||
| So we were playing two of them at one time. | ||
| How does one ever say it only weighs 15,000 pounds? | ||
| That's what I want to know, because I suck at that event, so I would like it if it was only one of them. | ||
| That's an event where it must help to be 450 pounds, right? | ||
| Huge, huge advantage. | ||
| You look at guys like me, again, only 5'10", about 285, competing against, in my qualifying group of worlds, was Thor Bjornsson, the mountain from Game of Thrones. | ||
| Yeah, how much does that fucker weigh? | ||
| 6'9", 440. Jesus! | ||
| And that bitch has a six-pack. | ||
| 69440. Yeah, so that's Thor doing the event right there. | ||
| And you can see Gravedigger right behind him. | ||
| And then behind that, they attached with a metal pole to the Monster Jam. | ||
| Oh, so you use a rope to pull you as well. | ||
| Yeah, so it's like you get a little bit of a lever. | ||
| Yeah, there's a second truck right behind him. | ||
| Two trucks. | ||
| That is ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah, so leading up to World's Strongest Man, I actually became really good friends with the firefighters in my local town. | ||
| And I just talked to the fire chief. | ||
| I was like, hey, can I borrow one of your trucks to pull? | ||
| What are you doing if a fire breaks out? | ||
| Hey, we got our friend. | ||
| He's out there pulling it. | ||
| They can wait. | ||
| Yeah, his response was, are you shitting me? | ||
| I was like, I'm actually serious. | ||
| So I actually, I was pulling that fire truck like once or twice a week for like six weeks leading up to World's Strongest. | ||
| How much does a fire truck weigh? | ||
| Depends if the water's in it or not. | ||
| I found that out. | ||
| The first time it wasn't, so it was only about 28,000 pounds and it was actually... | ||
| Oh, only 28,000? | ||
| Yeah, casual. | ||
| That ain't shit. | ||
| The second time the water was in it, so it was 40,000. | ||
| Oh no! | ||
| That was a little bit harder and it made me look like an ass because I had told my friends that I was doing this this time, thinking that it was the same truck and it was as light as it was the first time. | ||
| I was like, alright, I look pretty cool in front of everybody. | ||
| And then I go to pull it and I'm like, fuck, this is heavier. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a lot different. | ||
| That's an extra 12,000 fucking pounds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And so I was training in a 50-foot course, and that 40,000-pound truck, it was taking me almost 90 seconds to pull. | ||
| And that's like 90 seconds of just nonstop work. | ||
| That hurts. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What does that do to your knees? | |
| The knees aren't too bad. | ||
| Honestly, it's just like a full body like burning like everything hurts, right? | ||
| Like nothing feel like your arms are pumped because you're pulling on the rope in front of you Your quads and your calves are just you know pumped to the max at that point. | ||
| I'd be worried about like knees and ankles Am I wrong? | ||
| The biggest injury that you see with a truck pull is the Achilles tendon rupture. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So the Achilles tendon will just pop off when you're trying to pull it. | ||
| That makes sense, because you're just pushing off with your foot and all that pressure. | ||
| Oh, fucker. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Goddamn. | ||
| The sport's really great. | ||
| It's a sadistic sport. | ||
| It's just so crazy to watch people pull two trucks. | ||
| Like a human being pulling two trucks. | ||
| I wish I would see you with a fire truck. | ||
| That's more ridiculous. | ||
| See you pulling a fucking fire truck. | ||
| It was pretty fun. | ||
| I'm sure if you could do it. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| If you could do it, it's fun. | ||
| That's a weird thing with people, right? | ||
| They just love to be able to do something that's hard to do. | ||
| And I think that's why all of us are attracted to Strongman. | ||
| That's why we compete. | ||
| Like I said in the beginning of the show, we all have to be a little bit fucked up in the head to look at a truck and get excited to pull it. | ||
| Yeah, look at that. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| There you are, pulling the truck. | ||
| That's my coach behind it, Derek. | ||
| God damn. | ||
| Have you ever seen the video of the Strongman that throws the barrel up, it hits the bar and falls back, it hits him in the head? | ||
| It hits him in the back of the head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dude. | |
| That was on him. | ||
| Is that guy dead? | ||
| No, he lived. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What kind of a human can survive that? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think it was an empty keg, if that makes it any better. | ||
| Even if it was. | ||
| Even if it was a fucking aluminum barrel bouncing off your skull. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he was knocked out cold for a little while. | ||
| Now, how old are you now? | ||
| I'm 28. Just turned 28 in November. | ||
| Is there a lifespan for doing what you do? | ||
| Because I would imagine, like, you're putting tremendous stress. | ||
| Um... | ||
| You know, I think like we see most of the guys are in their prime like mid-30s. | ||
| I would say like early to mid-30s is kind of like the prime for most strongman athletes. | ||
| But then you got guys like Mark Felix from the UK who's 53 and he's still competing in breaking world records. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Dude, piss test that guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's on all the shit. | ||
| 53. That's bonkers. | ||
| He has the biggest hands in Strongman, so they actually don't fit on an 8x11 piece of paper. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah, so his hands are like 11 1⁄2, 12 inches long. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| That's like shack hands. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| But that's why he, the world records that he gets are all in grip events, ironically. | ||
| And then I have like, you know, the where's the meat hands and can't hold on to anything. | ||
| Goddamn. | ||
| 53. It's crazy. | ||
| It's absolutely crazy. | ||
| And he looks like he's 38. Do you have a picture of that guy, Jamie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I was trying to find, got sidetracked by trying to find his hands in the middle there. | |
| Wow, look at him holding on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's Mark. | |
| Fucking A. Look at the size of his hands. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's crazy. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| They're so long! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That is incredible, though, that he's 53. There it is. | ||
| Some comparisons. | ||
| Yeah, so at the contest that we do in the... | ||
| Look at the thickness in his fingers. | ||
| Those are fucking sausages. | ||
| They're sausages, yeah. | ||
| The contest that we do in England through a company called Giants Live, that's like one of their promo things that they do in the magazines that they give everybody, where they'll actually put a picture of his hand so everybody can compare his hand to their own. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's stupid. | |
| His hands are so big. | ||
| Yeah, that would definitely help, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It would definitely help. | ||
| That's incredible, though, that he's still competing at such a high level at 53. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's wild. | |
| What is that injury he's got there? | ||
| Look at his elbow. | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| It was probably a torn bicep. | ||
| Is that common? | ||
| Super common. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Torn bicep, I would say, is arguably the most common injury in strongman. | ||
| Which lifts usually cause that to blow out? | ||
| Usually you'll see that on an Atlas Stone tire flip or if you're deadlifting with like a mixed grip with the underhand on the barbell. | ||
| Usually the bicep will pop off in the elbow and roll up into the shoulder. | ||
| What are your thoughts about deadlifting on a mixed grip? | ||
| Do you think that you should do that, or should you do it both overhand? | ||
| I mean, if you're using straps, like if you're using straps to aid in the grip and kind of take the grip out, go double overhand. | ||
| Because there's really no point to have a mixed grip and put you at risk of an injury when you don't need to. | ||
| The straps kind of take the grip out of the work for you. | ||
| But for powerlifting, that's not allowed. | ||
| So they have to compete with them. | ||
| They have to deadlift without straps. | ||
| So there's two options you can go with. | ||
| You can go with the mixed grip or hook grip, which hook grip is you wrap your hand around the bar and then put your fingers over your thumbs. | ||
| And it hurts like a motherfucker because the bar is just resting there on your thumb and then pushing down on it. | ||
| But you get a better grip and it, you know, kind of, yeah, just like that. | ||
| That's weird. | ||
| Why would that be easier? | ||
| I don't know, but it works. | ||
| Really? | ||
| If you have a really good pain tolerance, it's the way to go because then you're taking out that bicep from the equation and you won't have any risk of injury with that. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| But that's not the case with like farmer's carries or any farmer's walk or anything like that? | ||
| No. | ||
| So with farmers, like the handles are usually a little bit too big to be able to get like a grip like that. | ||
| So it literally is just a straight up grip event. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I hate them. | ||
| Do you do a lot of training with big, thick grip things? | ||
| I know Rogue has those balls that you can do chin-ups with and shit. | ||
| Yeah, I do fat grips. | ||
| Whenever I do bicep curls, sometimes I'll put just fat grips onto the dumbbells, just doing that, just to work it. | ||
| I do a lot of shrugs, stuff like that, whether it's with farmer's handles or a frame or a barbell or dumbbells. | ||
| And if that's the case, I'll put fat grips on there to try to work the grip as well. | ||
| So that dude is 53 years old and he's still competing at the top of the food chain. | ||
| Do you see yourself possibly doing that? | ||
| Dude, that's 25 more fucking years for you. | ||
| I don't see me doing it for that long. | ||
| I think my goal is to get to like 35 and kind of evaluate where I am. | ||
| I think if I can do this until I'm 35 at this level, that'd be a really good run because I made my first World Strongest Man appearance when I was 25. So if I can go to Worlds 10 years, I'd be really happy with that. | ||
| It's a crazy way to make a living. | ||
| It's a crazy way to spend your time and to pursue your life. | ||
| Because you're banking everything on your body hanging in there. | ||
| Pretty much, yeah. | ||
| When one has a job that at 35 you're most likely probably going to be on your way out the door, how do you structure your life? | ||
| For me, I'm fortunate to have my master's degree in athletic training and sports medicine, so I keep that valid and up-to-date. | ||
| I still do per diem work all throughout New England, just trying to keep my chops up on that whenever I have the free time to do so. | ||
| When you say per diem work, you mean coaching? | ||
| I'll cover high school hockey games or college games and just work as an athletic trainer just pretty much for the day. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You know, just taking care of any injuries, stuff like that. | ||
| You know, that's kind of my wheelhouse, you know, taping, concussion evaluation, all that stuff, injury rehab. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, what kind of, like, I would imagine, when you're talking about these four-hour deadlift squat days, I mean, you must have some serious rehabilitation routine that you go through, right? | ||
| Yeah, you know, I mean, I do everything from, like, self-massage and, you know, I have my own stim unit at home and do that. | ||
| But then I'm also doing recovery workouts on my off days. | ||
| How much those stim things help, those electrical stimulation units? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love them, dude. | |
| I love them. | ||
| What one do you use? | ||
| Compex. | ||
| Compex? | ||
| Yeah, that's the brand that I go with. | ||
| So it's like those glue things? | ||
| Yeah, just little pads. | ||
| You put them on. | ||
| And then the nice thing about the Compex ones is they're pretty much foolproof. | ||
| So it has 12 to 15 pre-programmed settings. | ||
| You kind of punch in what body part it's on. | ||
| And then you just pick what setting you want it on. | ||
| So it's like pain relief, training recovery, competition recovery, muscle activation. | ||
| There's a bunch of different ways to use it. | ||
| And then you just hit go. | ||
| And it goes. | ||
| Oh, so you just... | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| Watch TV or something? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Literally, I have it in my carry-on, so when I fly home tonight, I'll put it on during my seven-hour flight home and use it. | ||
| I gotta get one of those. | ||
| Someone sent me one years back, but I never fucking used it. | ||
| Compaq. | ||
| Someone write that down. | ||
| Yeah, I think they're awesome. | ||
| So along with that, then I do recovery workouts. | ||
| So I'll go to a commercial gym and I'll swim. | ||
| Not well. | ||
| Do hot tub, sauna. | ||
| And then I have a massage therapist and body work person that I go and see. | ||
| I try to see every week, but sometimes it's every other week where they do deep tissue massage, cupping, dry needling, the whole nine yards on me. | ||
| Dude, you're so dense. | ||
| You must have a fucking seriously powerful massage therapist. | ||
| If someone's going to go deep tissue on you... | ||
| He works in pro hockey, so... | ||
| You gotta fucking get in there, man! | ||
| Yeah, he's no joke. | ||
| That's the key, right? | ||
| Is having someone who's really good at strong and... | ||
| It took me a while to find this guy. | ||
| And ironically, like him and I ended up going, we were at college together. | ||
| And he was in the area and I was like, oh, you know, like he's getting his massage degree. | ||
| I know he's an athletic trainer and he has a really good background of the body and injuries and stuff like that. | ||
| Let me see how it works. | ||
| And he lit me up the first time. | ||
| You can't just go to a regular spa and get a deep tissue massage. | ||
| Oh no, I fall asleep. | ||
| Yeah, it feels great. | ||
| It just took an hour. | ||
| I just paid 90 bucks for a nap. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| It doesn't do enough, right? | ||
| No. | ||
| I mean, I tell people, I'm usually more sore when I leave a massage than when I go in. | ||
| But then the next day, I feel great. | ||
| Yeah, it breaks everything loose. | ||
| It seems weird that you can just manipulate injuries or tight spots into pliability, but it does work. | ||
| Well, that's the thing that's like, I've been huge into the dry needling lately, and I think it's awesome. | ||
| So it's pretty much like acupuncture with science behind it. | ||
| So now dry needling is they take these needles and they just sort of shove it into the muscle? | ||
| Yeah, wherever there's a trigger point or tightness or restriction, they'll go in and they don't just leave it there. | ||
| They'll move it around while it's in there. | ||
| And it's not terribly uncomfortable unless there's a spot that's really fucked up. | ||
| But it works great. | ||
| I had some low back pain that was killing me for a long time and it ended up being because of my psoas. | ||
| My hip flexors were super tight. | ||
| He threw a couple of needles in my hip flexors and by the time I got off that table, all of my back pain was gone. | ||
| Have you ever used one of those Sew Right things? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I feel so wrong. | ||
| Those are great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're amazing, but, I mean, they make you see Jesus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're like, ee-gah! | |
| Yeah. | ||
| The design, whoever the sick fuck is that created that, is a genius design. | ||
| Brilliant, yeah. | ||
| With the scoop to it. | ||
| Yeah, it fits perfectly. | ||
| It's comfortable to lay on. | ||
| Sort of. | ||
| Yeah, it digs in there, but you can use that fucker on everything. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Roll back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I'm a big fan of that. | ||
| I'm a big fan of those. | ||
| You have Kelly Starrett's Mobility Wad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That ball. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Those fuckers. | ||
| You lie on that. | ||
| I got those scattered all over the gym out there. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And I use his, like, the voodoo band, the flossing. | ||
| I do that, too. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| You know, because with the stuff that we do, you know, like, my elbows get beat to shit, you know, if I'm doing heavy bench press and, like, even, like, the dumbbell that you saw earlier. | ||
| Like, just having, like, 250 pounds cranked on your shoulder like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just puts a ton of strain in the elbows. | ||
| Like, my elbows get beat up pretty good in that. | ||
| I mean, using the voodoo band is huge for that. | ||
| Well, so that just constricts, and then you do a little bit of an exercise with it, and then you undo it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And then it just reflux. | ||
| And then I kind of manipulate it a little bit, too. | ||
| So sometimes, like, if I have a spot in my elbow that's really killing me, I'll put a golf ball on it, and then wrap the band around the golf ball. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ah! | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then I'll go through that range of motion and move my arm around. | ||
| Yeah, so I'll do exercises like that, but like I said, sometimes I'll throw like the golf ball in there. | ||
| So it hurts like a bitch, but it works great. | ||
| Yeah, I'm a big fan of it. | ||
| I had a little bit of a tendonitis issue in my shoulder, or in my elbow rather, that helped a lot. | ||
| I think it's great. | ||
| Elbow, people using patellar tendonitis on their knees, so all stuff like that. | ||
| And that's the thing, with a lot of strong men in general, a lot of us do that body work and try to stay healthy. | ||
| You have to, right? | ||
| Well, at this level, too, the sport has exploded in the past few years, and my competition season started this past weekend, and the last contest I'll do is in October. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| So it's 10 months long, and as of right now, I have almost 13 contests planned. | ||
| Now, when you have a contest, say if you do some crazy strongman competition, how much time do you give yourself after it's over? | ||
| I mean, I'll be back in the gym tomorrow when I get home. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I just competed on Saturday. | ||
| Wow, okay. | ||
| Well, so you take a couple days off, two days off, and then get right back after. | ||
| Right back into it, yeah. | ||
| Man. | ||
| I mean, that's kind of a special consideration, mainly because the contest I'm going into is seen as the biggest contest in the world. | ||
| So it's the Arnold Strongman Classic in Ohio. | ||
| Only 10 men qualify for this contest. | ||
| This will be my first year competing there. | ||
| So my coach was just like, listen, you can't waste any time. | ||
| We only have five weeks of training, essentially, to get ready for the show. | ||
| Even though I've been prepping for it for the past six months. | ||
| We used to do a UFC at the Arnold. | ||
| That is a crazy show. | ||
| Wild. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| And it's gotten even bigger. | ||
| And there's so many people walking around in baggy sweatpants. | ||
| Baggy sweatpants, stringer tank tops, and then girls in nothing but spandex and sports bras. | ||
| That whole industry is so strange. | ||
| It's so weird. | ||
| The fitness influencer industry. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that's what, like, honestly, it took me so long to get a sponsorship. | ||
| One, because I'm not huge, and two, because I don't have a six-pack. | ||
| Like, nobody wants to look at, like, a chubby, pasty white dude on the front of a, like, of a supplement sponsor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| I know. | ||
| You could be built like this guy and just pick up heavy shit. | ||
| Yeah, everyone's like, oh, cool. | ||
| And they don't care if you're powerful. | ||
| They want you to, like, look like you're dehydrated. | ||
| That's all they care about. | ||
| What looks good on a poster? | ||
| Yeah, are you starving and dehydrated with some spray tan? | ||
| We want you. | ||
| We want you. | ||
| We're looking to be jacked and tanned. | ||
| Yeah, and that was one of the things why it took me so long to get in with some companies and actually get a legit sponsorship. | ||
| Is there anybody? | ||
| Well, that guy, Bjornsson, however the fuck you say his name. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Thor. | |
| The Thor guy. | ||
| He's got a six-pack. | ||
| Close to it, yeah. | ||
| Is that just preposterous genetics? | ||
| It's stupid. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, obviously, the size of him is just preposterous. | ||
| That is Viking, right? | ||
| That is straight Viking. | ||
| And his name is Thor. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, come on. | ||
| That's the generation after generation of marauders. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, his dad is also like 6'8". | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, it only makes sense. | ||
| So, what is the difference between someone that is that big that can stay lean? | ||
| Why can he stay lean? | ||
| I think it's just like... | ||
| I want to think it's like the quality food that he eats, you know, like with him being arguably the strongest man in the world, you know, he didn't win World's Strongest Man this year, but he's been dominant over the past two years. | ||
| Who beat him? | ||
| Martins Lisi is from the U.S. He's actually right here in L.A. Is he? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He just won back in June. | ||
| He's from the U.K.? Is that what you're saying? | ||
| You said you've... | ||
| Oh, U.S. U.S. Originally from Latvia, and now he's lived in the U.S., I mean, for as long as I can remember. | ||
| How big is that fucker? | ||
| He's six... | ||
| There's Martins and me. | ||
| So he's about like 6'3", about 350. So he beat Thor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's crazy. | ||
| He beat a guy that's 150 pounds heavier than him? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| I mean, that's the thing about the sport. | ||
| So the way I qualified for the contest in Ohio... | ||
| The size of that fucker. | ||
| So the way I qualified for the contest in Ohio was by winning the Arnold in Australia. | ||
| And like I said, I'm the smallest guy that does this at this level. | ||
| And I was beating guys like Jerry Pritchett, who's like 6'6", 370. How are you that strong? | ||
| What is the difference? | ||
| I'm a stubborn bitch, Joe. | ||
| Is that what it is? | ||
| I think with me, it took me a really long time. | ||
| Yeah, there's Thor and Martins. | ||
| Look at the size of that fucker. | ||
| God damn. | ||
| And the woman on Thor's right or left is his wife. | ||
| Yeah, I've seen the two of them together. | ||
| She's 5'2". | ||
| Hilarious. | ||
| It is. | ||
| They're going to make a regular-sized kid. | ||
| But yeah, I think I got to this level because I was a student of the sport for a really long time. | ||
| And I studied everything. | ||
| And I think because I took so long to get to where I am, most guys that are at this level, it didn't take them 10 years to get there. | ||
| You know, like, guys like Brian Shaw, like Martins, like, they pretty much got to worlds within two or three years. | ||
| Because there's giant, powerful people that try to figure out the work. | ||
| And for me, it was like, I needed to learn how to make these events work for my body. | ||
| You know, so, like, that's with me, you know, like, so, I have the current American Log Press record. | ||
| And I don't do, like, a typical push press. | ||
| I actually split jerk underneath a log. | ||
| Really? | ||
| And I'm the only pro strongman at this level that does that. | ||
| Why do you do that? | ||
| It's more efficient. | ||
| Why don't they do it? | ||
| It's an athletic, quick movement. | ||
| It takes a lot of time and coordination to learn. | ||
| With me having a background in CrossFit, that's where I learned the split jerk technique. | ||
| And then when I got more into Strongman, I was like, well, I really suck at strict pressing. | ||
| Will you explain that to people, what the difference is? | ||
| So, like a push press is pretty much you get the weight on your shoulders. | ||
| You dip down and then just push the weight up overhead, like pretty much just with like shoulder and tricep power. | ||
| With a split jerk... | ||
| Yeah, you get the implement on your shoulders, you do a little dip, and then you actually throw yourself underneath the log while splitting your feet. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| So it's like a little bit of a dance, almost. | ||
| So this is 455 pounds. | ||
| So you get it up to your chest. | ||
| And then you'll see me. | ||
| I dip and then drop underneath it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Splitting my feet and then catching overhead. | ||
| Jesus Christ, that's a lot of stress. | ||
| So what it does, it shortens the range of motion of the press, but it's kind of one of those risky all-or-nothing moves. | ||
| With a push press, it's brute strength, so you can kind of grind through it and fight it and manipulate the log any way you want. | ||
| But with a split jerk, it has to happen or it doesn't. | ||
| There's gotta be that weird moment where you're like, fuck, this isn't happening. | ||
| I gotta drop this thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| What is that like? | ||
| Throw it. | ||
| Just get it away from you. | ||
| Get it away. | ||
| Holding 450 fucking pounds over my head, you know? | ||
| I'm not taking it. | ||
| I don't care what breaks as long as it's not me. | ||
| Especially after that Atlas stone dropped on you, right? | ||
| Yeah, you know, it's just, for me, it was, you know, adapting that splitter technique. | ||
| It just made sense. | ||
| And that's kind of how I was able to progress to this level and kind of do some things a lot of people didn't think I would do, being this size. | ||
| Now, how much do you eat? | ||
| You must be eating... | ||
| I eat a good amount. | ||
| ...all the time. | ||
| It's not a crazy amount. | ||
| No? | ||
| I mean, I say that like, you know, because I think like... | ||
| But you also said, oh, it's only 28,000 pounds. | ||
| No big deal. | ||
| Touche. | ||
| Touche. | ||
| I think like people get caught up in like these 10,000 calorie eating challenges like Oberst did and Brian Shaw do and stuff like that. | ||
| I'm not that guy. | ||
| You know, like an average eating day for me is probably around 4,000 to 5,000 calories. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh, that's not too crazy. | ||
| It's a lot, but nothing crazy. | ||
| Well, Oberst is so big. | ||
| Huge. | ||
| He's a giant. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You know, like, he was sitting in this chair, like, I'm a little different looking than him. | ||
| He's got double your head. | ||
| His head is so wide, you're like, what are you? | ||
| Yeah, he looks like an ogre. | ||
| He's the real-life Shrek. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| He's awesome. | ||
| I love him. | ||
| Boy, is that fucker huge. | ||
| So the first conversation Rob and I ever had was actually at that contest in Texas when a dude was calling me a fag from the stands. | ||
| And we were hanging out the day before the contest. | ||
| We had never met in person before. | ||
| First interaction we had, we're hanging out in a hotel room, a few of us athletes, and he looks at me and he's like, how old were you when you knew you wanted a dick in your mouth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pfft! | |
| That's the first thing he said to you? | ||
| First thing he ever said to me. | ||
| What'd you answer? | ||
| I didn't know. | ||
| I didn't know what to respond. | ||
| Like, this is the guy I had seen on World's Strongest Man before. | ||
| Like, I've seen him competing for the past, like, three or four years, and that's the first thing the motherfucker says to me. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Yeah, so, obviously, like, we got off into a great start on our friendship, you know, and, like, him and I still talk all the time, and, you know, he's bitter because I took the log press record from him back in April. | ||
| Yeah, he's very upset with that. | ||
| He had that. | ||
| It was his. | ||
| It was his for a while, like, for four years. | ||
| Oh, poor Robert. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| You win some and you lose some. | ||
| That's what competition's all about. | ||
| Records are meant to be broken. | ||
| Now, what is your typical breakfast for you like? | ||
| And how many times do you eat in a day? | ||
| I try to go between six and eight meals. | ||
| So it all depends on when my training is and stuff like that. | ||
| So do you bring little Tupperware containers with you and shit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Everything prepped out. | ||
| And to be honest, I'm pretty boring. | ||
| I don't like to cook. | ||
| I love to eat, but I don't like to cook. | ||
| So I'll pretty much eat the same thing almost every meal. | ||
| So it's pretty much like chicken or beef and rice and veggies. | ||
| Pretty much it. | ||
| That's what Robert was saying. | ||
| Basically, everybody's like rice and meat. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm a fat kid, so I don't like to just eat baked chicken. | ||
| That's why I'm not a bodybuilder. | ||
| I can't look like that because I just like the taste of food too much. | ||
| So I do air-fried chicken fingers to make them healthy. | ||
| That'll be the chicken that I eat, and then I'll throw some sauce on top of it. | ||
| Do you make the chicken fingers? | ||
| I do. | ||
| Do you bread them and everything? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Yeah? | ||
| What do you use for the breading and everything? | ||
| Usually I'll do like panko. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| What's panko? | ||
| Panko breadcrumbs. | ||
| So it's just like a little bit like a more coarse, bigger, you know, a little more crispier, which is nice too. | ||
| Because the texture is like, I don't want it to taste just like mush when I'm eating it. | ||
| Like I like a little crunch, a little texture. | ||
| But in the breadcrumbs, I'll just use plain panko, but I'll add like a ranch seasoning packet to throw some flavor in there, get a little crazy. | ||
| Do like an egg wash, bread them, and then throw them in the air fryer. | ||
| So you don't have to worry about how much you take in. | ||
| So you're basically just eating whatever you want to eat. | ||
| And the reason why you eat so many meals a day is just because you're burning off so much. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And honestly, I just get hungry. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| You're powerlifting all the time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like I said, my deadlift workout will take four to five hours. | ||
| But there's sometimes on the weekends when I'm doing my strongman workouts, I'll be at the gym for like six to eight hours. | ||
| Ugh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Six to eight hours of lifting ridiculously heavy shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, granted, a lot of the stuff we do is like... | ||
| Setting up and breaking down. | ||
| These events are cumbersome. | ||
| They're annoying. | ||
| They're not easy to set up. | ||
| So a lot of it's like just moving weight, schlepping across the gym, and setting these implements up. | ||
| But all in all, yeah, I'll be there for like six to eight hours from the time I get there to when I leave. | ||
| I would imagine you would need a lot of sugars. | ||
| A lot of carbs. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| The shake I drink during my workout is almost a thousand calories. | ||
| What's in it? | ||
| Well, like Gatorade protein. | ||
| I use a carb powder. | ||
| You put Gatorade in a shake and then carb powder on top of the Gatorade? | ||
| Listen, it tastes like an orange creamsicle. | ||
| I bet. | ||
| So you do like orange Gatorade, like an orange or a non-flavored carb powder, and then vanilla protein. | ||
| And that's 1,000 calories? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's also like 64 ounces. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So it's pretty big. | ||
| So it's got to be this balancing act between getting a lot of protein, but getting a lot of carbohydrates and making sure that you're fueling the muscles? | ||
| Carbs are the best thing ever, man. | ||
| Yeah, like carbs, that's like the main thing. | ||
| You know, obviously eating a lot of protein, like I'm probably around like 300 grams of protein a day, between 3 and 350. But carbs, I mean, there's sometimes I'm eating like Almost like 1500 grams of carbs a day. | ||
| And is the reason why you guys prefer rice is just because it's easier to digest than other forms? | ||
| Yeah, it's just easy to eat too. | ||
| Because eating six to eight times is a lot. | ||
| And you just get tired of chewing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| To be honest. | ||
| It's probably great for the jaw muscles. | ||
| Oh, for sure. | ||
| Sculpted chin look. | ||
| And that's why my coach, when he was competing, he used to do chicken shakes. | ||
| What? | ||
| Grind chicken into a shake? | ||
| So he would literally boil chicken and blend it with water. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's nasty. | ||
| And he would drink those because he just didn't want to eat. | ||
| Hold it together, bud. | ||
| Chicken shake? | ||
| A chicken shake. | ||
| Why does that sound so gross? | ||
| I couldn't even. | ||
| I looked at him and I was like, you ever fucking make me do that? | ||
| I'm kicking you in the face. | ||
| So, are you eating a lot of red meat? | ||
| What's your preferred protein? | ||
| I love bison. | ||
| Bison. | ||
| Bison is like my jam. | ||
| Just ground bison. | ||
| Try to go like 93.7 if I can. | ||
| Super lean. | ||
| Yeah, but it all depends. | ||
| Obviously, as a pro strongman, I'm not making that much money. | ||
| More often than not, it's just like ground beef. | ||
| Whatever I can get, that's good quality and gets the calories in. | ||
| Yeah, bison has got a higher protein content, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's a little bit leaner, and it just tastes so much better. | ||
| You get that grass-fed bison? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Farm-raised, grass-fed. | ||
| So how does a strongman make money? | ||
| Do you only make money if you win, or do you make money from sponsors? | ||
| What's your primary income coming from? | ||
| Both. | ||
| So my main income is mainly from sponsorships. | ||
| So I'm sponsored by a supplement company, Blackstone Labs. | ||
| I've heard of them. | ||
| SPD, which is an equipment company. | ||
| They make knee sleeves, belts, elbow sleeves, stuff like that. | ||
| And then a clothing company that's called Kinda Fit, Kinda Fat. | ||
| That's honest. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| It's a lifestyle. | ||
| Kinda Fit, Kinda Fat. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So those are my three biggest supporters. | ||
| And then on top of that, I also do online coaching for strength athletes all over the world. | ||
| So, you know, pretty much I write their weekly workouts, they send me videos, I collaborate with them, get them competition prep and get them ready to compete. | ||
| So those are my two biggest main sources of income. | ||
| And then, you know, on top of that, and then, you know, prize money is just kind of extra on top, you know, bonus, essentially. | ||
| Now, you're active on social media, obviously. | ||
| You have Instagram, which is where I found you. | ||
| But do you have anything else you do? | ||
| Do you do YouTube? | ||
| Do you do a podcast or anything along those lines? | ||
| Do YouTube, yeah. | ||
| So, same YouTube name, World's Strongest Gay. | ||
| You know, and then just launched a website a couple weeks ago. | ||
| So, a lot of content is going to be up there. | ||
| What's the website? | ||
| Robkearneystrongman.com. | ||
| Do you own worldstrongestgay.com? | ||
| I don't. | ||
| Who does? | ||
| Nobody does, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| That's nonsense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, listen, this isn't live, so let's snatch that shit up. | ||
| We might need to get that right after this show. | ||
| Immediately. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Go to worldstrongestgay.com. | ||
| Do you want to double that S? Because that could make it interesting. | ||
| Worlds or World Strong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| Because you need to type in that double S. Type in the double S. It's double S. Yeah. | ||
| It's World's Strongest Gay. | ||
| Let me see that double S. That might not exist. | ||
| If nothing popped up, I'll check it out. | ||
| We're going to get that. | ||
| We're going to give you that. | ||
| We're going to buy it right now and give it to you. | ||
| This is important. | ||
| Because otherwise some dickhead is going to get it. | ||
| And then, yeah, they're going to be like, oh, you can pay. | ||
| He's going to put straight porn on it. | ||
| That's what he's going to do. | ||
| That'd be fucked up. | ||
| That would be fucked up. | ||
| That'd be really fucked up. | ||
| All just vaginas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ten bucks. | |
| You can get it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sick. | |
| Snatch it up! | ||
| Well, it's harder to transfer. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Luckily, we're not live, so as soon as we're done, we'll let you do that. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta own that, man, and just have it divert right to your... | ||
| Right to the website. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Hold on, hold on, hold on. | ||
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
One second. | |
| What? | ||
| It added the HTTP in there. | ||
| Let me double check. | ||
| Oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Don't tease me. | ||
| Still there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cool, cool, cool. | |
| It's amazing when you think about how many websites there are that there are any available now. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Well, it's funny. | ||
| Now that I'm getting more popular and stuff like that, I'll get tagged and shit on social media. | ||
| But there's also an Irish rugby player named Rob Kearney. | ||
| So they'll sometimes tag him or they'll mean to tag me. | ||
| So it's weird. | ||
| Yeah, well, wait until this is over. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Once this goes live. | ||
| Wish it'd be real weird. | ||
| That'd be fantastic. | ||
| How much you must be getting... | ||
| I mean, this is like the first time probably the LBGTQ community has gotten behind a strongman, though. | ||
| I mean, this is... | ||
| And even just a pro athlete in general. | ||
| Really? | ||
| You know, I think... | ||
| Well, that's the biggest reason for my Instagram name, is just showing LGBTQ visibility in pro sports. | ||
| Because it doesn't exist. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, there's a few... | ||
| Well, in fighting the UFC, Amanda Nunes is the greatest woman of all time. | ||
| She's gay. | ||
| Which is great, and that's a cool, but men. | ||
| Different animal. | ||
| You know, I think there's this really big disconnect where people think, okay, lesbian women are allowed to be strong. | ||
| They're allowed to be athletic. | ||
| They can do all these really cool things. | ||
| Gay men have to be feminine. | ||
| They have to be put in this box, and they shouldn't be pro-athletes. | ||
| And that's one of the biggest reasons why I call myself unapologetically open about my sexuality. | ||
| Because the more you think about it, if you even try to think of an openly gay man in any pro sport across the world, there's no really mainstream. | ||
| I think you forgot about Brian Boitano. | ||
| Oh, cliche. | ||
| Don't you remember South Park? | ||
| What would Brian Boitano do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Smartass. | ||
| Brian Boitano, I mean, he's a goddamn trailblazer. | ||
| But yeah, other than figure skating, who? | ||
| Actively competing in a major sport, there really isn't anything. | ||
| And I'm not saying like, you know, strongman is by no means like major or mainstream yet, but we're getting there. | ||
| People know about it. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And I think to see like an openly gay man, you know, I say competing in arguably one of the most... | ||
| Like, hyper-masculine sports in the world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I think, like, when I think of masculine sports, I think, like, UFC and lifting shit. | ||
| Right, yeah. | ||
| Like, right? | ||
| Like, one, you're beating another dude up. | ||
| The other one, it's a bunch of guys standing around a weight being like, oh, I'm gonna pick it up. | ||
| No, I'll pick it up. | ||
| I'll pick it up faster. | ||
| You know, like, it's like Neanderthal almost. | ||
| Yeah, that's top of the food chain manly shit. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So I think it's like super important to see like an openly gay man in a relationship rocking a rainbow mohawk and rainbow tights out on a competition floor. | ||
| I think that makes people feel more comfortable than if you just out there slinging dick. | ||
| If you weren't in a relationship, you were openly gay and just fucking everything that moved, they'd be like, hey! | ||
| This guy can pick up the fucking moon and he can buttfuck you. | ||
| That's dangerous. | ||
| That was like one of my buddies. | ||
| He said, he's like, you know, I'm not afraid of you, but what does scare me is if you wanted to rape me, you could. | ||
| That sounds like he's setting you up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's like, definitely don't rip me, but if you were gonna, this is what I think you should do. | |
| Grab me right here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But yeah, those are definitely, I mean, right after fighting, that is the most manly shit. | ||
| Picking shit up. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So I think that's why I've been so open about my relationship and what I'm doing in the sport and just trying to be more visible for the LGBTQ community in pro sports in general. | ||
| Because like I said before, I get a shit ton of hate messages on a daily basis. | ||
| Do you read them? | ||
| All the time. | ||
| Why do you read them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love it. | |
| Really? | ||
| And I know a lot of people don't, but to me, I use it as fuel. | ||
| There's no bigger fuck you to that person than me winning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So that's how I look at it. | ||
| Like, okay, dude, talk shit about me all you want. | ||
| I'm the American Log Press record holder. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I won in Australia. | ||
| I'm competing against the top. | ||
| I'm one of the top 10 strongest men in the world competing at this Arnold Strongman Classic in March. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's why I love it. | ||
| I love reading that. | ||
| That is a funny thing you said to that guy in the audience. | ||
| I suck at it. | ||
| I'm stronger than you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| but And the crowd goes silent, it's my favorite part. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| Like, if that was California, people would probably start cheering. | ||
| Yeah, well, yeah, it's Texas. | ||
| They're like, what just happened? | ||
| Hey, man, what the fuck? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's right. | |
| Shit. | ||
| Licking wieners. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| But... | ||
| Totally sidetracked. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's okay. | |
| Talking about sucking dick and, you know... | ||
| I get it. | ||
| It's... | ||
| You would think that you would have a lot of sponsors that would jump in because of this, though. | ||
| I would think, because you're open, and because this is such a manly sport, and it's such a non-stereotypical thing, I would think that would be really positive for the LBGTQ community. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, let's talk in a week, Joe. | ||
| Let's see what happens after the show. | ||
| Yeah, well, I'm hoping. | ||
| I'm hoping we can help you, for real. | ||
| And that's my biggest thing while doing this whole thing, is just trying to spread positivity and love throughout the entire world. | ||
| I mean, I talk about the hate messages that I get, but like, The ones that mean a lot are like, you know, I got a message a few months ago from a 16-year-old kid who was on the verge of committing suicide because he couldn't come to terms with his sexuality. | ||
| And he said in his post, like, finding my profile, let him be comfortable with himself. | ||
| You know? | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| That's so cool. | ||
| And it's like, I never expected to be that person just by saying I love this dude. | ||
| But that's sometimes how you get to be that person, right? | ||
| Just being yourself. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And I think that's why this whole thing has kind of blown up into what it is and why I'm fortunate enough to now be working on a documentary. | ||
| What's the documentary? | ||
| So we literally are filming our... | ||
| I just met the film crew this week. | ||
| Those guys out there? | ||
| Yeah, the ones out there. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, I was approached by Andy, who, she was on the set of World's Strongest Man, and she was like, once she saw my husband and I kiss after one of the events, like, lightbulbs just went off, and she was like, there's something here. | ||
| So, I was approached about doing a documentary kind of about my life and about being the only openly gay pro-strong man in the world. | ||
| Now, are there closeted gay strongmen? | ||
| I'm sure there are. | ||
| And they just don't talk to you? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| You're dangerous. | ||
| I know. | ||
| This wild motherfucker with a mohawk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't want bitches coming for my title. | |
| Right? | ||
| You want to keep them in the closet. | ||
| If more cards start coming out, we're going to have to actually have a contest for this shit. | ||
| What if strongmen becomes like the WNBA, where everyone's gay? | ||
| Oh, that would suck. | ||
| No, it'd be great. | ||
| You can't say that. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| I'm just selfish. | ||
| I mean, that's a good argument that sponsors won't show up, though, because fucking everybody knows the WNBA is gay as fuck. | ||
| True. | ||
| But it's bad basketball, too. | ||
| Yeah, it's not great. | ||
| That's not good. | ||
| Like, at least Strongman is like... | ||
| Women's sports is awesome, but I always think of the Family Guy episode where they're talking about the WNBA and they're like, oh, and listen to the fan! | ||
| And it's one guy cheering in the fan and stands. | ||
| Yeah, it's a tough sell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| It's a tough sell. | ||
| But yeah, Strongman shouldn't be a tough sell. | ||
| No. | ||
| And I think that's the cool thing. | ||
| Strongman in England is massive. | ||
| Really? | ||
| We sell out like 15,000 seat arenas in the UK. Whoa! | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It is huge. | ||
| What about here? | ||
| What is it like here? | ||
| Yesterday, or Saturday in Santa Monica, we had about 1,700 people. | ||
| That's a good crowd. | ||
| Decent. | ||
| Decent crowd. | ||
| Where'd you guys do it? | ||
| Right on the pier. | ||
| Oh, no shit. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| They did all the permits and shit. | ||
| Bleacher set up. | ||
| And Rogue was there to live stream the entire event, which was really cool. | ||
| I love them. | ||
| All my shit out there is Rogue. | ||
| They're so cool, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The best. | |
| All their stuff is great. | ||
| We're actually, the organization Giants Live, which is the World's Strongest Man qualifying tour, they're bringing an arena show to the U.S. for the first time since like 2010. That's going to be in Daytona Beach in August, August 15th. | ||
| So that's going to be like the first crack at breaking into the mainstream U.S. arena venues. | ||
| Because like I said, over in the U.K., when I broke the Log Press record this past April, it was in Leeds. | ||
| And it was in front of a 12,000 seat crowd. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| It was unbelievable. | ||
| Why do you think it's so popular over there? | ||
| You know, I think the biggest thing is they don't have sports to compete with like we do here. | ||
| As many sports. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, what do they have? | ||
| Like, decently bad soccer and rugby? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Is their soccer bad? | ||
| Soccer's not great. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I thought England's really into that. | ||
| They are, but it doesn't mean it's good. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| They're not good at rugby either? | ||
| I think they're pretty good at rugby. | ||
| Pretty good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Then they have cricket, but they don't have the NFL. Why is that nonsense? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That is nonsense. | ||
| The one thing I know about cricket was last week a dude got hit in the balls twice in a row. | ||
| Twice in a row? | ||
| That was on ESPN. That's the only reason I saw it. | ||
| They showed cricket on ESPN? Yeah. | ||
| Because he got hit in the balls twice in a row. | ||
| Oh, like in the SportsCenter? | ||
| Yeah, the Not Top Ten. | ||
| Well, they used to have that late night on ESPN is when you would see strongman competitions. | ||
| Yeah, and since, you know, so we're no longer with ESPN. We've been picked up by IMG and CBS, which is great. | ||
| So now World's Strongest Man has aired on CBS and CBS Sports. | ||
| So a little bit more mainstream, which is great. | ||
| Yeah, so it's really exciting. | ||
| I'm hoping the U.S. can kind of pick it up when it comes to these arena shows. | ||
| What can make it more popular? | ||
| What do you think can be done to make people understand? | ||
| I mean, it's fun to watch, for sure. | ||
| I think people need to understand what we're doing. | ||
| I think there's such a big respect in the U.K. for strength. | ||
| You know, like, Eddie Hall, he won World's Strongest Man in 2017, won the contest once and then retired. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Because there hadn't been a winner in the UK since the 80s for World's Strongest Man. | ||
| So, like, he is just a household name. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is this him here? | |
| That's Eddie, yeah, on the closest to us. | ||
| Jesus Christ, besides that fucking gorilla. | ||
| Yeah, so he also holds... | ||
| He even looks like a gorilla! | ||
| He holds... | ||
| He has the deadlift world record, so he's the only person... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe it. | |
| He deadlifted 500 kilos, so he deadlifted 1,102 pounds. | ||
| What the fuck, man? | ||
| Look at the size of this fucking guy. | ||
| So he won World's Strongest Man, and everybody in the UK knows his name. | ||
| And that's actually where most of my fan base is, even, is in the UK, because this sport is so big. | ||
| And you can see the arena sold out there. | ||
| Look at him. | ||
| This is the last stretch. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, one more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck. | |
| See, that's the thing. | ||
| Like, people think strongman's just lifting shit. | ||
| Like, we have to be athletic as fuck to do this, too. | ||
| Wow, the tire's what got it for him. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's crazy that he won with a tire. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We have to run. | ||
| We have to be agile. | ||
| We have to be able to carry stuff. | ||
| We have to be able to lift heavy. | ||
| Oh, that's fifth and sixth place in this video here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Losers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| That dude's neck starts around the edges of his shoulders. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's just a tube. | ||
| Such a fucking nutty sport, man. | ||
| It is, but it's so much fun. | ||
| When you come and see a live event, it's wild. | ||
| The cool thing about Strongman is the fans and the competitors, you want to see everybody succeed. | ||
| So it's one of the few sports where you're cheering for someone as you're competing against them, which is awesome. | ||
| Yeah, that is awesome. | ||
| You're kind of seen as a dick. | ||
| If you finish an event and you walk off and the person next to you is still going, everybody's like, dude, what the fuck? | ||
| Hey, when you compete, do you have patches on for your sponsors or shit like that? | ||
| No. | ||
| So that's the tough part, is you have to wear the competition shirt because there are sponsors that pay To be on the t-shirt. | ||
| Now, in between events, if there's interviews and stuff like that, that's when I'll throw on a sponsor shirt to try to get them some TV time that way. | ||
| But it's also tough because in the UK, all of those competitions are aired on TV in the UK. In the US, the only time people see Strongman on TV is World's Strongest Man. | ||
| But what about YouTube? | ||
| YouTube is growing, and that's massive now. | ||
| I would feel like that would be the big venue for you guys. | ||
| Yeah, you know, you look at Brian Shaw. | ||
| He has, like, I think he has, like, 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube. | ||
| He's just picking up heavy shit. | ||
| Huge, yeah. | ||
| And it's just, like, all about him. | ||
| Like, him and his wife will do, like, eating challenges, or they'll do workouts together. | ||
| As an eating challenge with his wife? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| It's hysterical. | ||
| How big's his wife? | ||
| She's tiny, too. | ||
| How the fuck does he compete? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| How is she hanging in there with him? | ||
| That doesn't even make any sense. | ||
| Women get excited about pizza and eating that stuff. | ||
| The reason why I was asking is because that used to be the thing back in the early days with MMA fighters, that they could make money off of sponsors, sponsors on their shorts and stuff. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, shorts and pants, that's a different story. | ||
| Oh, you can wear sponsors in your shorts? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| So, like, the competition shirt... | ||
| So we get you a JRE patch, and I can sponsor your shorts? | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Well, I mean, I wear spandex, though. | ||
| So, how do you put a... | ||
| You can put a patch on spandex. | ||
| I can figure it out of the way. | ||
| Yeah, we'll have to make that happen. | ||
| That's always my goal. | ||
| Like, I always try to wear, like... | ||
| The Obers is going to get mad. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| I'm going to have to sponsor him, too. | ||
| No, we can piss him off. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's fine. | |
| Sorry, bro. | ||
| He beat you in the log push. | ||
| He beat you in the log press. | ||
| My goal is to try to wear the craziest, most outrageous spandex at every contest I go to. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You need sequins. | ||
| Can you have sequins on yours? | ||
| I haven't yet, and I don't know why I haven't thought about that. | ||
| You need them. | ||
| The ones I wore this past weekend were like swirly rainbow. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| Yeah, it was awesome. | ||
| Hot pink with sequins, bro. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm down for that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For sure, right? | ||
| You need that. | ||
| I love these ideas, Joe. | ||
| This is great. | ||
| These are good ideas. | ||
| Yeah, I'm all about it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Any spandex people listening? | ||
| What kind of... | ||
| Yeah, any spandex designers and constructors of spandex? | ||
| You know how to put together a good sequin? | ||
| You can't... | ||
| The sequins can't fall off. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Because I'll be deadlifting and running. | ||
| Yeah, anchored. | ||
| Especially deadlifting, right? | ||
| Because it's going up your thigh. | ||
| I think we'd have to do the sequins on the sides. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like racing stripes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| Ooh. | ||
| Super gay racing stripes. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| Now, when you are doing this, what kind of shoes do you guys wear? | ||
| Because those guys were running, but I would imagine you'd have to have something that's very flat with serious support. | ||
| I'm super bougie. | ||
| I bring like five different pairs of shoes to every contest. | ||
| But what do you prefer? | ||
| It changes every event. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The brand I go with is Innovate. | |
| I love all their stuff. | ||
| I've never heard of them before. | ||
| It's I-N-O-V-8. | ||
| Is it a powerlifting only brand? | ||
| CrossFit lifting. | ||
| They have lifting shoes that I wear for my overhead events. | ||
| Then I wear their barefoot shoes. | ||
| That's what I do for my moving events and when I deadlift. | ||
| They also have hiking shoes that are anti-slip. | ||
| That I'll use when I do truck pull or pushing events as well. | ||
| No, are they a sponsor? | ||
| Working on it. | ||
| Come on, Innovate. | ||
| They sent me a bunch of stuff for free. | ||
| It's better than nothing. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| And honestly, they're the most comfortable shoes I've worn when training. | ||
| Let me see what that looks like. | ||
| Let me see what them Innovate shoes look like. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Go with the barefoot one. | ||
| Let me see what that looks like. | ||
| They're super light, too. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what I think I like about them too. | ||
| Even though their weightlifting shoes are light. | ||
| Because those are usually clunky and heavy. | ||
| Especially when I'm doing a split jerk trying to move my feet fast. | ||
| The last thing I want is heavy things on my feet. | ||
| Those are the lifting shoes that I have. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| So the platform in the back? | ||
| Yeah, so they have a raised heel, about three quarters of an inch. | ||
| Now that's for when you're lifting, it's almost like standing on plates, right? | ||
| Yeah, so that'd be like if you're squatting using that. | ||
| And then I like it for overhead lifts just because it gives you a little bit more stability. | ||
| Now why do you have to stand on plates? | ||
| What is the idea behind that, to raise the back heel up? | ||
| Raising the heel, it takes out the issue of ankle mobility in a lift, like a squat. | ||
| So, there's a lot of restriction in the ankle and the Achilles if they're tight. | ||
| And that'll either cause or prevent you from your knees tracking properly. | ||
| It'll put extra strain on the hips and on the ankles. | ||
| So, doing that, it kind of takes the ankle complex out of the motion and makes the movement easier. | ||
| It can keep a more upright spine, a little bit more comfortable lift. | ||
| So, that's usually the thought process behind it. | ||
| So when you have that elevated heel, then you don't have to stand on plates or anything like that. | ||
| You just use it just like that. | ||
| Yeah, just a shoe. | ||
| So it's interesting that you wear different ones for different events. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the pulling for the truck tire one, you use a hiking one, is that what you're saying? | ||
| So this will be my first time using that. | ||
| Typically, we use rock climbing shoes. | ||
| Oh, which are real grippy. | ||
| Super grippy, and especially like we're pulling on asphalt usually. | ||
| So it'll dig into the asphalt. | ||
| These ones that I have from Innovate now, they're like anti-slip and they have gripping treads on them. | ||
| So I'm going to be using them for an event called the Wheel of Pain coming up at the Arnold Strawman Classic, which is based off of the movie Conan the Barbarian, where you see him pushing that big implement. | ||
| So they actually, Rogue recreated that implement for the Arnold. | ||
| Yeah, if you can pull a picture of that, it is the most badass thing ever. | ||
| Arnold. | ||
| This is like a $300,000 piece of equipment. | ||
| Oh, they even did it with the carving and shit. | ||
| Dude, that's so cool. | ||
| Wild. | ||
| So you literally just have to push it. | ||
| So those big wheels are filled with sand, because they obviously don't want to make it too easy for us. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And you just have to push it in a circle as far as you can in 75 seconds. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| That's, everybody looks fucking exhausted. | ||
| Oh, 60 seconds, even better. | ||
| It just hurts, man. | ||
| Oh, it looks like it hurts. | ||
| It just is, it's like, I mean, you know, like, I mean, you work out. | ||
| So it's like, imagine even doing something like as simple as like rowing on an erg for 60 seconds, just all out, nonstop. | ||
| This guy's pushing on his head. | ||
| Yeah, so this last year was the first year they did this event. | ||
| And they changed the rules this year. | ||
| Where you have to keep your hands on the implement like that, like Brian's doing right there. | ||
| Because someone was just using their head? | ||
| Yeah, so they don't want anybody to do that anymore. | ||
| That seems like that would crush all your vertebra. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you have to keep your hands on the implement at all times and push... | ||
| Like that. | ||
| What a dope design, though. | ||
| I mean, it really does look like something out of Conan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It looks unreal. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's fucking cool as shit. | ||
| It's so cool. | ||
| It's all carved out of wood, too. | ||
| Who built that fucking thing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rogue. | |
| They just hired artists to carve it? | ||
| Rogue has everybody. | ||
| I mean, anything you could think of, they have people to make it. | ||
| Their fucking Echo Bike is the greatest cardio machine thing that I've ever used. | ||
| Best and worst, because it hurts so much. | ||
| It's the best. | ||
| But look at this fucking thing with the snake heads and everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What a genius. | ||
| You could see it rolling back when you let go, and that's because there's sand in those big wheels. | ||
| So you have to push it against sand. | ||
| So now they have to deconstruct this and bring it back and put it back together again? | ||
| Because it's not like you could fucking ship it like that. | ||
| And this is the only contest they use it for. | ||
| They use it one time a year. | ||
| He's using his shoulders. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's Russian. | ||
| What do you expect? | ||
| Oh, Russian. | ||
| You shoulder. | ||
| That is a crazy thing, though, that you can kind of use your shoulders and push with your hands. | ||
| Yeah, so this will be the second time we're doing this event, so they switch it a little bit, have to keep your hands on the implement at all times, and then it's just push until you can't anymore. | ||
| God damn, that's bananas. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, everybody looks so tired! | |
| I mean, this is one of those events where usually the medics will come over with oxygen afterwards. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And he's got that Russian beret on, too. | ||
| So he actually is in the Russian military, too. | ||
| Is he really? | ||
| Yeah, he's like the Russian equivalent of a green beret. | ||
| And he does strongmen on top of that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a manly motherfucker. | ||
| He's scary. | ||
| He's the next guy to come out of the closet. | ||
| He's super nice, but you know... | ||
| Guaranteed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at him. | |
| You know, he's definitely probably killed some other fuckers. | ||
| He is so free. | ||
| Rob is so free. | ||
| Why can I not be? | ||
| I don't even think his English is that good. | ||
| No? | ||
| No, it's so bad. | ||
| But they also, I mean, these Eastern Europeans are smart because they'll play dumb on purpose to not listen to the rules and then try to bend them. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Sneaky fucks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're like, I don't know, but they fucking know. | ||
| How many Russian guys win it? | ||
| Because you would think that would be a thing. | ||
| You think of strong people, you think of Russians. | ||
| Eastern Europeans are always in the mix. | ||
| But honestly, dominating across the board lately has been U.S., Iceland, and that's about it. | ||
| Is it because we have the best steroids? | ||
| It could be. | ||
| It might have something to do with it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What kind of testing do they do? | ||
| They just look at you? | ||
| I mean, they test us. | ||
| Do they? | ||
| They don't tell us what for. | ||
| Oh, so nobody gets in trouble? | ||
| No. | ||
| I got caught for weed. | ||
| What? | ||
| Well, I mean, they said, do you smoke? | ||
| I was like, well, it's legal in Massachusetts, so yes. | ||
| And they're like, okay. | ||
| Yeah, they're like, all right, cool. | ||
| I mean, they don't want us, like, taking Coke or, like, you know, stuff like that. | ||
| That's what I would worry about, right? | ||
| It's like someone getting on amphetamines. | ||
| Yeah, no, they do test for that. | ||
| Like, they test for, like, you know, prescription pills and stuff. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't know about that. | ||
| You'd fucking get really strong on that shit, apparently. | ||
| You'd probably rip everything apart. | ||
| I was going to say, you'd probably break your body. | ||
| Yeah, you'd probably not understand the boundaries at all. | ||
| No, you'd just go. | ||
| I had a buddy of mine who got in a fight, he was on PCP, and a dude bit off his finger. | ||
| And he didn't even realize it. | ||
| Now he has a toe that they took. | ||
| They took his second toe and curved it. | ||
| So he could still punch. | ||
| So if you shake his hand, his right hand when he shakes you, he's got the... | ||
| That takes a new meaning to shake a leg. | ||
| His pointer finger, his index finger, is curved. | ||
| That's weird. | ||
| It's curved permanently. | ||
| So he never has like a flat hand. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| And it's his fucking toe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's wild. | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| My old boxing coach. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Shout out to Joe Lake. | ||
| But yeah, so they don't want us taking that kind of stuff. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But pretty much that's it. | ||
| That makes sense, just because it's fucking dangerous, too. | ||
| Dudes that have heart attacks, like you're pushing that thing on some kind of... | ||
| It is wild. | ||
| The amount of medical testing we have to go through before a contest is crazy. | ||
| I would imagine. | ||
| Your heart. | ||
| The medical packet that we have to get filled out by our primary cares for World's Strongest Man is like... | ||
| 48 pages long. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's wild, dude. | ||
| So they bring you in for an exam. | ||
| How long does that take? | ||
| We have to get it done on our own. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| So they send, after the invites are done and after the lineup is set for World's Strongest Man, you get the email that it's like, here's the medical packet you need done by this date. | ||
| And you pretty much have to make an appointment with your primary care. | ||
| And get it all done. | ||
| So what does your doctor say when you come to him with that fucking 48-page packet? | ||
| Well, luckily I've gone to her a few times with it, so she knows to block off some time. | ||
| So she knows what's up. | ||
| Yeah, you know, but it's smart. | ||
| Because we have to get an EKG, we have to do stress testing, we have to get a full blood panel done. | ||
| They have to look at everything, because they don't want somebody dropping dead on TV. That makes them look pretty fucking bad. | ||
| Yeah, they would have to make sure that you're not already over-trained too, right? | ||
| Like increasing levels. | ||
| Yeah, so they look at everything. | ||
| I mean, it's a full blood panel. | ||
| Like I said, they do the EKG. They look at the heart. | ||
| And then it's obviously a full medical history as well. | ||
| Just everything from parents to past diseases to what runs in the family. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| by these competitions, are you? | ||
| No. | ||
| So if you tear your fucking hamstring off, it's all on you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Fuck, man. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| God, that seems crazy. | ||
| It's ballsy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's risky. | ||
| Yeah, real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Real risky. | ||
| I mean, that seems kind of crazy that during the competition itself, you're not covered? | ||
| It's all on us. | ||
| Even those medical packets, like they say, all fees associated with this are up to the athlete's expense. | ||
| And they don't pay you that well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Fuck. | ||
| If you win, you make decent money. | ||
| I mean, it's not a lot. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, like, to win World's Strongest Man, you make, like, 50 grand. | ||
| Really? | ||
| That's it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For the strongest motherfucker out there. | ||
| To be the strongest man in the world. | ||
| That should be worth a million bucks. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| That's the number. | ||
| I mean, but look at it. | ||
| So, like, World's Strongest Man's been around since the 70s. | ||
| I need to see six zeros. | ||
| You're going to win the strongest man in the fucking world? | ||
| That's what I'm talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on, man. | |
| We need you in the sport, Joe. | ||
| This is bullshit. | ||
| Pony up the money. | ||
| Seems like somebody should be able to pony up a million bucks. | ||
| I would love it. | ||
| Some big company. | ||
| I will say, we talk about World's Strongest Man and Giants Live and that whole series, but then we also have the Arnold Circuit. | ||
| So there's two big pro circuits for Strongman to choose from. | ||
| The Arnold Circuit, they've definitely elevated the game. | ||
| So the Arnold Strongman Classic in Ohio is kind of seen as the most elite competition in the world because only 10 guys qualify for that contest. | ||
| World's Strongest Man, you get 25. And then the prize money in Ohio is better than World's Strongest Man. | ||
| It's almost double, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| For Arnold? | ||
| So each of the Arnold International shows, it's standard prize money. | ||
| So the Arnold International shows, there was one here in Santa Monica this weekend. | ||
| There's Australia, South America, South Africa, Europe, Canada. | ||
| I think that's it. | ||
| But we all know the prize money going into each show because it's the same at every one. | ||
| So it's like 10 grand for first, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1. So they pay out top six. | ||
| But they also pay all of our travel there. | ||
| So it's not too bad. | ||
| No. | ||
| But then the big motivation is to get to Ohio, right? | ||
| Where first place is 85 grand. | ||
| And they pay out all 10 athletes. | ||
| But like third place at, I think it's second or third place at Ohio makes just as much as World's Strongest Man. | ||
| So this is probably why you have to compete 40 times a year. | ||
| It's kind of imperative. | ||
| And the thing is, to be honest, I didn't really do that well this past weekend at Santa Monica, so I didn't make any money. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Which is a bummer. | ||
| It is a bummer. | ||
| For me, it was more like a gauging. | ||
| I was trying to gauge where I was at going into Columbus. | ||
| The events were really similar. | ||
| So do you do that, like you have to be careful to not go too crazy in one of these events? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because you'd blow something out? | ||
| I definitely held back this weekend. | ||
| I think I could have hit another gear if I needed to, but already having my qualification to the big show, mentally I don't think I'd have been able to turn it on like I need to in Ohio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And when is Ohio? | ||
| What dates? | ||
| First week of March. | ||
| So the contest is the 5th and 6th, I think, or the 6th and 7th. | ||
| So you have nothing between right now, which is January 20th, and March. | ||
| So how do you ramp up? | ||
| What is your schedule like to prepare for something like that? | ||
| So, the biggest thing, so we look at the events, right? | ||
| So, you know, I mentioned we have the max deadlift. | ||
| So, my goal is to deadlift 1,000 pounds, which would make me the first person under 300 pounds body weight to do that in history. | ||
| Whoa! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| How close are you? | ||
| I pulled 970 in July. | ||
| Jesus Christ! | ||
|
unidentified
|
God damn, that's a lot of weight. | |
| So, we're close. | ||
| Right there. | ||
| We're close. | ||
| And you're only 28. Yeah. | ||
| You're gonna get stronger. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So, if you don't get to 300 pounds, if you don't gain too much weight, you can nail it. | ||
| I don't want to. | ||
| Like, I was almost 300. I was like 298 at World's Strongest Man in 2018, and I was a fat fuck. | ||
| It was gross. | ||
| Like, I look at my husband, I was like, why did you want to, like, lay next to me? | ||
| Like, I had neck rolls on my neck rolls. | ||
| I'm like, I was gross. | ||
| Isn't that a thing like some dudes like bears? | ||
| They like them big and hairy? | ||
| Well, he does. | ||
| And I totally am a bear. | ||
| But, like, I was an ugly fucking bear, dude. | ||
| A bear just going into hibernation. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I look at pictures. | ||
| My head looked like a fucking blueberry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was like, what was I thinking? | |
| But, like, honestly, like, 285 is, like, kind of my sweet spot. | ||
| Because I'm still getting stronger, getting a little bit leaner, and getting better at the sport. | ||
| So, like, I don't see a reason to get any bigger. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I honestly do think 1,000 pounds is doable right now. | ||
| Well, it seems like if you're 30 pounds away, if you're doing that much weight, 960... | ||
| I mean, look, 30 pounds to a deadlift for a regular person, that's an extra 30 pounds, that's a lot. | ||
| But not when you're already doing 970 fucking pounds... | ||
| Yeah, and to go back to the prep and the ramp up to this contest, this weekend the deadlift was a 7.75 for reps in a minute. | ||
| And I pulled six, which is okay. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
| But I probably could have pulled seven or eight if I needed to. | ||
| The winning number was nine. | ||
| And ironically, everybody that finished ahead of me in that event has already deadlifted over 1,000 pounds. | ||
| So that made me feel pretty good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But leading up into these next few weeks, I'm going to start working. | ||
| My heaviest deadlift I did before this contest was 850 for one. | ||
| I'm going to start working up into that low to mid nines in the next couple of weeks and probably have my last heavy, heavy deadlift probably three weeks before the contest, two and a half weeks before the contest. | ||
| And then do you deadlift at all leading up to the contest? | ||
| If I do, it'll be light. | ||
| Very light. | ||
| And I say light relative. | ||
| It's a relative term. | ||
| 600 pounds. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you're just trying to let your body recover. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's something a lot of people think, like, people forget, like, when we're training this hard, like, we're beat to shit. | ||
| And, like, we're, like, we get stronger when we rest and recover. | ||
| So I really don't exercise or lift, like, the week of a contest. | ||
| Like, I'll do my recovery workouts that I talked about before, where, like, I'm just kind of swimming, hot tub, sauna, that stuff. | ||
| But I won't lift any weights. | ||
| And that's because my body, my central nervous system, everything just needs a break. | ||
| And you get stronger over that period of time. | ||
| And it's amazing. | ||
| Does it make you feel like you maybe are overtraining in other ways? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| Because if you do that, get that much stronger when you take a week off, it almost seems like you should do that more often. | ||
| No, because I think you need to get to that point where you need it. | ||
| You need to get beat down. | ||
| You know, like there are some strength coaches out there that like, you know, we call it a deload, right? | ||
| So it's like where you're ramping up, ramping up, going super heavy, then you back off for a little bit, right? | ||
| And so that's what we call a deload. | ||
| And there's some coaches that give that every fourth week of their program, regardless. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| And I don't agree with that. | ||
| Because I don't think anybody can work that hard for three weeks to beat down their body enough where they need it every single fourth week. | ||
| Normal people don't train hard enough to need regular deloads. | ||
| The deloads, the guys who practice that way, are they winning? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| No. | ||
| I see a lot in the powerlifting community where it's just like squat, bench, deadlift. | ||
| But in all honesty, I feel like you have to earn your deload. | ||
| And that's what my coach does with me. | ||
| I went almost six months without a deload leading into this contest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus Christ. | |
| And that happened about a month and a half ago, and I knew I needed it because I was tired every day, regardless of how much sleep I got. | ||
| I didn't want to go to the gym. | ||
| Every time I'd get to the gym, I was fucking miserable. | ||
| I just wanted to leave. | ||
| I didn't want to look at anything. | ||
| I didn't want to talk to anybody. | ||
| And I texted my coach. | ||
| I was like, I need a fucking break. | ||
| And he was like, all right, cool. | ||
| I was waiting for you to get to that point. | ||
| But it's like, I feel like it's something you have to earn. | ||
| Because people think they work hard. | ||
| But they don't really know what that means until they're actually pushed to do something. | ||
| And that's where I got to that point. | ||
| And that's why these next five weeks are going to be super crucial in my training to this contest. | ||
| Because I'm going to beat my body to shit over these next five weeks. | ||
| And my husband will probably get pissed off at me because I'll be a prick one or two times at least. | ||
| But this is the biggest competition in the world and I know what I need to sacrifice to get to that point. | ||
| And that's going to mean long training sessions, really hard training sessions, and I'm, you know, just like I said, I'm just going to beat my body down just to reap those rewards at the end of it. | ||
| Yeah, that's got to leave you super exhausted. | ||
| It hurts. | ||
| And cranky and just like, ugh. | ||
| Yeah, you know, like, I can't remember the last time I woke up in the morning feeling good. | ||
| Oh, you must be in pain all over the place, right? | ||
| Yeah, it all hurts. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But whatever. | ||
| Can still do cool shit. | ||
| Do you get MRIs and get shit checked out? | ||
| Nah. | ||
| No? | ||
| I'm sure I have herniated discs and stuff like that. | ||
| How could you not? | ||
| My orthopedic's actually one of my closest friends, ironically. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| You know, but like, his whole thing is like, as long as you're feeling good, like, why look into it? | ||
| Right, because then you might freak out. | ||
| You think about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| If you don't know it, it's not going to hurt. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But if you see it, then you start thinking. | ||
| It's like, oh, shit. | ||
| Yeah, I've got to imagine your discs are awful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's why it's so impressive that that guy is 53. I was actually 6'3 when I started the sport. | |
| That's why it's amazing that that guy is 53 and still able to lift such insane amounts of weight. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| I mean, it's so impressive. | ||
| And there's actually still a guy here in L.A. who owns a gym called The Training Hall. | ||
| In Thousand Oaks, that's where Martins trains. | ||
| His name is Ode Haugen. | ||
| What a name. | ||
| He's 72 and he still does some strength competitions too. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah, like he still deadlifts like over 500 pounds. | ||
| Oh, I've seen that guy online. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And Ode is awesome. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| Yeah, he's like the nicest dude ever, but like he has arguably the best grip in the world. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| At 72? | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| My God. | ||
| Yeah, he's a freak. | ||
| Now, that's him. | ||
| Yeah, I have seen him. | ||
| Yeah, that is incredible. | ||
| That guy's that jacked. | ||
| Yeah, and he's like 73, I think. | ||
| Yeah, he just turned 73 this weekend was his birthday. | ||
| The training hall. | ||
| I know where that is. | ||
| Yeah, right in Thousand Oaks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know where that joint is. | |
| Yeah, that's only like 20 minutes away from here, man. | ||
| Yeah, so that's where Martin's, the current world's strongest man, trains. | ||
| And then Ode is the owner of that place. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's amazing that he could still get after it at that age. | ||
| And he's so cool. | ||
| That's all of his grip toys. | ||
| So he has those things called the Blob, which they're literally just like... | ||
| Probably three-inch wide weights, and they're smooth on the side, where you have to pick them up in a pinch grip style. | ||
| And just hold on to them? | ||
| Yeah, thick dumbbells. | ||
| He has the crush grip stuff. | ||
| Now, what kind of people come to his gym? | ||
| Just regular folks? | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| There's competitive powerlifters, strongmen, Olympic weightlifters, and then just your average person. | ||
| And that's kind of the thing. | ||
| People think, especially my gym back home at Lightning Fitness, People think, like, you have to be a competitor to go train there. | ||
| Like, the gym owner, like, we have everybody from, like, professional strongmen. | ||
| We have a woman that squats over 700 pounds. | ||
| Jesus! | ||
| What does she look like? | ||
| She's a sweetheart. | ||
| I love her. | ||
| Katrina, she's amazing. | ||
| What are those thighs like? | ||
| They're bigger than mine. | ||
| Oh my god, 700 pounds. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's awesome. | |
| How big is she? | ||
| She competes like 181, I think. | ||
| And I think she's maybe like 5'7". | ||
| She must be a fucking tank. | ||
| Yeah, she's great. | ||
| I love her. | ||
| God, that's so strong. | ||
| But then we also have like 65-year-old grandmothers that are working out at the same time in our gym. | ||
| Oh, that's cool. | ||
| Well, you have to if you want to pay the bills, right? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, the gym I go to, like, we have, like, over 250 members right now, so it's pretty big, but, like, you know, we're also in a 15,000 square foot facility that has the best strength equipment, you know, on the East Coast, I would say. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Yeah, like, the gym we go to, like, in the strongman and, like, strength world is, like, world-renowned. | ||
| Have you ever been to Westside Barbell? | ||
| I haven't. | ||
| Dude. | ||
| You gotta go there just to meet Louie Simmons. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| I mean, I've met him in passing. | ||
| You know, like, I hear stories about him where, like, he, like, tore his bicep. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And he was in a sling for, like, three days and got pissed off, said, fuck this, and just extended his arm really fast, popped the bicep off again, then started bench pressing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| Because he just couldn't wait for it to heal. | ||
| He told me that he had his shoulder reconstructed. | ||
| He got shoulder reconstruction. | ||
| And then his first day back, they made him max out and bench. | ||
| I'm like, why? | ||
| I mean, there's guys like Greg Panora, who was a guy that was in the West Side vs. | ||
| the World documentary, where he ruptured his patellar tendon, got the surgery done, I think it was the next day was on the bench bench pressing with his leg like fully extended in an immobilizer like he was busting the staples he was like dripping blood through the bandages like but you know they had to train man. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Now, going back to what I said, luckily I have my background in sports medicine, so I don't do shit like that. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, because talking to Louie, I was like, why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| So you gotta fucking do it. | ||
| That's what you gotta do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at him. | |
| There's Louie. | ||
| Crazy bastard. | ||
| He looks like a mutant. | ||
| And he still does this shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Look at that crazy... | ||
| Is that tape or tattoos? | ||
| That's a tattoo. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All over him. | ||
| Right, and he's got the Captain America armband tattoo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Look at the build on him. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And he's been doing this shit since the 60s. | ||
| Yeah, look at him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Have you seen that documentary? | ||
| No, I haven't. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| I heard it's awesome. | ||
| It's super cool. | ||
| West Side Against the World. | ||
| You talk about just intense, badass motherfuckers that all they care about is the record board in their gym and competing. | ||
| Well, we went in there to interview Louie. | ||
| It was a fucking trip. | ||
| It was a trip. | ||
| And then we went and checked out his gym. | ||
| He gave us a tour of the gym. | ||
| That's sick. | ||
| It was one of the rare ones that Jamie and I did. | ||
| I saw that video. | ||
| Which one? | ||
| That we shot like walking around the gym. | ||
| Oh yeah? | ||
| We never did anything with it? | ||
| We should put it on YouTube. | ||
| Well, if you ever find yourself in Connecticut, Joe, I know how much you love the state. | ||
| I fucking love Connecticut. | ||
| I love it when I see it when I'm passing over in a plane. | ||
| We'll bring you into our gym. | ||
| I would definitely do that if I was there. | ||
| It's wild, man. | ||
| What's it called again? | ||
| Lightning Fitness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Lightning Fitness. | |
| What part of Connecticut one more time? | ||
| It's in South Windsor, Connecticut, so it's just outside of Hartford. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So you drive a little bit to get there. | ||
| About 45 minutes each way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But there's essentially two sides of the gym. | ||
| There's the strongman side and the powerlifting side. | ||
| The strongman side has every piece of strongman equipment you can think of. | ||
| So we have Atlas Stones from 60 pounds to 530 pounds. | ||
| We have logs. | ||
| We have monster dumbbells. | ||
| We have the farmer's walks. | ||
| There's turf. | ||
| There's tires from 250 to 1,000 pounds. | ||
| Then the powerlifting side is where we have the monolifts, all the squat racks, and then all the isolation bodybuilding machines as well. | ||
| So it's like a 15,000 square foot gym. | ||
| And do you live in Springfield? | ||
| Just outside Springfield. | ||
| Western Massachusetts? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, Western Massachusetts. | ||
| A town called Wilburham. | ||
| Oh, I know where that is. | ||
| I used to do gigs out in Western Massachusetts a lot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No shit. | |
| Yeah, when I lived in Boston, I used to drive out there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where? | ||
| Pittsfield. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Like real Western Massachusetts. | ||
| Oh, yeah, man. | ||
| Basically like New York State. | ||
| Holy cow. | ||
| Yeah, I did Amherst. | ||
| Okay, yeah. | ||
| So I just left working full-time. | ||
| I worked in the boarding school world for a long time. | ||
| Did you? | ||
| That's why I'm in the Western Mass area. | ||
| And we lived in East Hampton, which is a super, super awesome little town. | ||
| Yeah, so that's wild that you're up there. | ||
| Western Massachusetts is a trip. | ||
| It's a cool spot, man. | ||
| It's not bad, man. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| Cold as fuck, though. | ||
| Right now it sucks. | ||
| My husband flew home this morning and we got a snowstorm yesterday. | ||
| I'm flying home tonight and I'm going back to six inches of snow, so that's great. | ||
| It builds character. | ||
| Some of my favorite people live there. | ||
| It's really cool because we get four seasons. | ||
| There was a stretch this summer where it was like 110 for three days in a row. | ||
| Really? | ||
| It was super hot. | ||
| That's just global warming fucking with you. | ||
| At least you get the appreciation for summer. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And even in the summer, it's like between... | ||
| I would say we have an average between 85 and 90 every day in the summer. | ||
| So it's pretty warm. | ||
| Where's the strongman hotbed? | ||
| If you want to be an actor, you move to LA, right? | ||
| If you want to be a strongman, is there a place where you go to? | ||
| I really don't think there is. | ||
| It's because, like, I would say in the U.S., there's only like four or five guys that are doing it really, really well at a really high level. | ||
| You know, it's me, Oberst, Jerry Pritchett, Brian Shaw, Martins. | ||
| And then there's Nick Best in Vegas as well. | ||
| So probably like six of us. | ||
| And we're all over the place. | ||
| You know, there's me. | ||
| I'm the only one on the East Coast. | ||
| And then there's Brian in Colorado. | ||
| Martins is out here. | ||
| Jerry's in Phoenix. | ||
| Oberst is, I think, is in Iowa now. | ||
| I think. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Nick Best in Vegas. | ||
| So we're kind of spread out all over the place. | ||
| And that's a cool thing. | ||
| I get hired to do seminars all over the U.S. and all over the world where gyms will pay me to come into their gym for a weekend and teach people from my experience and different gym lifts and stuff like that. | ||
| So that's pretty much it. | ||
| There's really no one place. | ||
| Powerlifting has West Side. | ||
| But there really isn't that culture around strongman. | ||
| Would there be any benefit to training with some other top level guy? | ||
| Like, you know, like for fighters, they want to go and train in the gym with his other top level fighters. | ||
| Cause they push each other and inspire each other and iron sharpens iron, all that jazz. | ||
| And, um, at the top level, we tried to do that as much as possible. | ||
| None of us are willing to move our families and our lives around just for that. | ||
| Because we realize what the sport is. | ||
| Fighters, it'd be worth it when you're making a million bucks a fight. | ||
| For us, it's not that level. | ||
| But Martins, he flew out to Massachusetts this past summer to train with me. | ||
| Even though he had just won World's Strongest Man, there's events that I'm better than him at. | ||
| And that's why he flew out to me, because he had a contest coming up where those events were in it. | ||
| What events do you really shine in? | ||
| Log press is my bread and butter, as we talked about. | ||
| Then there's the yoke walk, which is, you know, the crossbar with stands, pick it up on your back and walk with it. | ||
| You know, that's one event that I'm really well known for as well, and that's one that Martins tends to struggle at. | ||
| Why are you so good at that? | ||
| What's the deal? | ||
| People call me like Fred Flintstone of Strongman. | ||
| Like, I just move my feet really, really quick. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| For some reason, I just like feeling super heavyweight on my back and moving quick with it. | ||
| You know, World's Strongest Man, we had 1,350 pounds on that thing. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| Damn, that's so much weight. | ||
| It was a bitch. | ||
| And that was actually at the end of a medley. | ||
| So we had a farmer's walk that was 330 pounds per hand. | ||
| And then we had to pick up a 1,000-pound yoke and then the 1,350-pound yoke. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Yeah, and I was the only one in my group to actually finish that event, which was pretty wild. | ||
| Goddamn you. | ||
| At the end of something like that, all your tissues must be so torn apart. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was like, I mean, you talk about cranial pressure. | ||
| I felt like my eyes were purple. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Just from all the blood in your head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| It was wild! | ||
| Yeah, I would imagine, right? | ||
| That kind of cream. | ||
| Have you ever... | ||
| Do you know what happens when you fly in a jet that's going like... | ||
| The G-forces and stuff? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| You know you have to... | ||
| They call it hooking, where you hold on to the handle. | ||
| You've got to go like this. | ||
| And then you're forcing blood. | ||
| That's pretty much what we're doing when we do it. | ||
| Because with Strongman, when you have 1,300 pounds on your back, you're not going to breathe that well. | ||
| Like, you can't really expand your lungs and your ribs to breathe properly. | ||
| So you're almost holding your breath. | ||
| So, and that's with most of our stuff, like, I hold my breath whenever I do moving events, and I just try to exhale and inhale as short and as small as possible, just to get enough so I don't pass out, pretty much. | ||
| Does anybody pass out? | ||
| Oh, all the time. | ||
| One of my good friends at World's Strongest Man in the Philippines in 2018, we were carrying a 330-pound sandbag, and the way he carried it was just resting around on his diaphragm, and he didn't pick it up high enough to go onto the platform, so he just ran into the platform, fell backwards, and was just out cold. | ||
| And Magnus Vermagnusen is standing right next to him. | ||
| Another awesome name. | ||
| Great name. | ||
| Didn't twitch, didn't move a muscle. | ||
| He just goes... | ||
| That's all he did. | ||
| He's done. | ||
| He must have died. | ||
| So it was just like, I mean, passing out is kind of like a normal part of what we do. | ||
| I can only imagine. | ||
| It doesn't sound good when I'm saying it out loud. | ||
| Well, it makes sense though. | ||
| I mean, the fucking exertion. | ||
| Does anybody have heart attacks? | ||
| Not typically. | ||
| It has happened. | ||
| How often has it happened? | ||
| The only person that comes to mind is a guy, I can't remember what year, his name was Jesse Mironde, and he did have a heart attack in the gym when he was training. | ||
| And that's how he passed away. | ||
| And he was only, I believe he was only 28 or 29 years old. | ||
| It happens in Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Guys get heart attacks training. | ||
| And then, you know, I mean, another thing is like sleep apnea because the guys are so big. | ||
| So that caused a lot of stress on the heart. | ||
| Do you use a CPAP machine or anything? | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I don't need one. | ||
| You know, I'm pretty fortunate that I don't have that issue when I sleep. | ||
| You know, but a previous coach of mine, Mike Jenkins, he passed away in 2013. Yeah, it's not good. | ||
| It's basically like not sleeping. | ||
| Yeah, and suffocating yourself. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| So a lot of the guys at this level do, but that's mainly because of their size. | ||
| Dude, I have it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I have a fat tongue in my neck. | ||
| But that's all the years of fighting, like, with that neck musculature and all that development there. | ||
| Yeah, for some reason, like, I've kind of, you know, dodged the bullet. | ||
| Most football players have it. | ||
| Most powerlifters have it. | ||
| I think once you get around that 300-pound body weight, like... | ||
| Do you snore? | ||
| Not terribly. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hmm. | |
| Interesting. | ||
| On planes I do, but that's because my fucking fat mouth just opens up. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Yeah, planes. | ||
| It's not a good place to sleep. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, or just sit in general when you're near 300 pounds. | |
| It's so fascinating to me when you think about people that explore the boundaries of what a human body is capable of. | ||
| And Strongman is like... | ||
| There's guys who do David Goggins, who do the ultra marathons, but Strongman is like... | ||
| That's another form of this extreme pushing of the boundaries of what a body is capable of. | ||
| And when you look at the progression of the sport, it just hasn't slowed down. | ||
| Like, if anything, it's gotten even, like, the weights keep getting heavier every year. | ||
| Everybody keeps getting faster. | ||
| And all of us are like, when the fuck is this going to stop? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, like, we show up to a contest and they're like, alright, there was literally a contest in 2018 where the deadlift was 880 pounds for reps. | ||
| That's so much weight! | ||
| Like, what the fuck, dude? | ||
| And there was a motherfucker that pulled it for five. | ||
| That is so much weight. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's crazy. | |
| And so it's like, all of us are like, where does it stop? | ||
| Where does it stop? | ||
| You know, like, the log press world record is 502 pounds overhead right now. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| You know, it's just like these crazy outlandish numbers. | ||
| But, like, the people, like, we keep doing them. | ||
| So I guess we're doing it to ourselves to a point. | ||
| I guess so. | ||
| But do you, like, what is pushing it? | ||
| Is it just that... | ||
| Is it a preconceived idea of what's possible? | ||
| And now that the bar has been moved, now you realize that? | ||
| Or is it just that people are more scientific about their training now? | ||
| I think that's what it is. | ||
| And it's also like the evolution of equipment over the years. | ||
| With Rogue being our main equipment sponsor now, they make all strongman equipment. | ||
| So regular people have strongman equipment in their gyms. | ||
| They're like PT clinics that have farmer's handles in them for people to work on core musculature and posture when they're walking. | ||
| I think just like the general availability of strongman equipment has made it easier for people to train it more regularly and get better at the events. | ||
| Because we have to practice. | ||
| You know, like being strong is great. | ||
| But you have to be able to manipulate the movement and manipulate the implement to work. | ||
| And that's where just like the training and the practice portion of it comes in. | ||
| So I think that's why we've seen, you know, a lot of these weights being pushed so much further. | ||
| Because everybody pretty much has regular access to these strongman implements now. | ||
| It's interesting to me that you're saying that the weights are getting heavier and people are getting faster. | ||
| And then I'm thinking, how long have people been doing this? | ||
| When was the first strongman competition? | ||
| I mean, strongman dates back to the 1700s. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Like that kind of shit? | ||
| Like barrel throws? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I mean, when Rob was on, he was talking about the show Strongest Man in History. | ||
| That was just on History Channel. | ||
| And they went back into the history books to look at old, quote-unquote, strongmen doing these feats of strength. | ||
| I think one of the most notable names is Louis Cyr, a guy from Canada who was about my size, actually, and is revered to be one of the strongest men in history. | ||
| And so when he was doing like these dumbbell lifts and these back lifts and these hip and thigh lifts and stuff like that. | ||
| So Strongman's been around for a long time, but World's Strongest Man didn't become a thing until the 70s. | ||
| That's when World's Strongest Man, I think 77 was the first year of World's Strongest Man. | ||
| And that's when it kind of became a sport, you know, and not just a kind of a hobby, I guess. | ||
| So how do they determine what stuff you're going to do for the World's Strongest Man? | ||
| Did they have a panel of experts that sit down and devise each individual event? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's come a long way from what it was in the 70s. | ||
| I mean, they used to do medleys with potato sack braces back at World's Strongest Man a long time ago. | ||
| Now it's a little more standardized, where they do have a committee where it's people from the strongman circuit and judges and stuff like that, but they also bring TV execs, because they want stuff that's going to look cool. | ||
| And I think that's a great thing, because you don't want to, like, stuff that is cool to me isn't going to look cool to somebody that doesn't know anything about the sport sometimes. | ||
| So, when they choose the events, like pulling two monster trucks, like, okay, one, you have to be strong as fuck to be able to do it, but it also looks really cool on TV. So they try to find that marriage of both of those things to make it the most pleasing to the average person. | ||
| Difficult, but also impressive. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| You know, like the deadlift event. | ||
| They don't have us. | ||
| That's Mark Felix. | ||
| Yeah, so this is one of the world records that he did. | ||
| And how old is he when he's doing this? | ||
| This is 53. Jesus Christ. | ||
| So this was actually just this past July. | ||
| This was at Wembley Stadium. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Or Wembley Arena in London. | ||
| The Hercules Hold. | ||
| What a great name. | ||
| So each of those pillars weighs 400 pounds. | ||
| And he's just chilling. | ||
| And you just have to hold it as long as you can. | ||
| The size of his fucking shoulders. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That is preposterous. | ||
| It's dumb. | ||
| That dude has preposterous muscles. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| How long does he hold this fucker for? | ||
| He goes over one minute. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| I mean, it's crazy. | ||
| So this is a world record at this point. | ||
| After this is 122, he drops it. | ||
| What kind of breathing are you doing here? | ||
| Does it help to breathe in deep and heavy? | ||
| During an event like this, it's... | ||
| He looks 30. That is crazy. | ||
| That's exactly. | ||
| Dude, black don't crack. | ||
| They're not lying. | ||
| That guy looks amazing. | ||
| So, with an event like that, it's more just trying to relax and getting into a calm mental state because you don't want to be super revved up because you're not moving. | ||
| You're just focusing on your grip. | ||
| And that's the biggest thing for an event like that. | ||
| But then there's also events where like, okay, when you're maxing your deadlift, you do have to hold your breath. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, it's different for everything you do. | ||
| Yeah, there's the hands. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| His hands are enormous! | ||
| It goes up to his wrist. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| That's amazing, though, that he could hold those fucking things for that long. | ||
| It was like a minute and 20-something? | ||
| A minute and 23 seconds. | ||
| And for reference, I was at that contest and did it for like 42 seconds. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Now, how do you prepare for something like that? | ||
| Do you... | ||
| Like, you don't hold those things. | ||
| Like, do you just work on your grip? | ||
| No, usually, honestly, set up, like, a pulley system in the gym. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| So, use just, like, regular handles that you use on, like, a cable machine. | ||
| Set up a pulley on, like, a squat rack or, like, one of the rogue rigs. | ||
| Have loading pins coming down, stack weights on that, and then... | ||
| Just hang. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck. | |
| Or even just doing something as simple like pull-up holds. | ||
| Like, dead hangs from a barbell. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or from a pull-up bar. | ||
| How long can you dead hang for? | ||
| I've done over a minute. | ||
| That's impressive for guys that heavy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Honestly, my shoulders usually get tired before anything else. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Before your hands? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just from holding it. | ||
| You must have, like, crazy tears all over the place and shit. | ||
| Like, have you ever got your labrums checked or anything like that? | ||
| Good. | ||
| It must. | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| I mean, I'm looking at you pressing that 250-pound thing over your fucking head. | ||
| Like, that's not normal shoulder pressure. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| But, like, if you do it safely and correctly. | ||
| But, you know, it's also taken 10 years to get to that point. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| You know, like, it's funny. | ||
| You know, like, I have the American Log Press record, but, like, overhead was my weakest lift when I started the sport. | ||
| I sucked at putting stuff overhead. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's kind of crazy. | |
| You just focused on it so much. | ||
| Yeah, and like I said before, I became a student of the sport, so I was looking at what was working for other guys, what wasn't working, and trying to find that balance of what I could make work for me. | ||
| So, luckily, yeah, like I said, I've been pretty injury-free and healthy the entire time. | ||
| That's pretty amazing. | ||
| Well, listen, man, I appreciate you coming in here. | ||
| Yeah, thank you so much. | ||
| I hope this gives you some more attention and let people know how fucking impressive it is. | ||
| I appreciate it, Joe. | ||
| And I really love your Instagram, man. | ||
| You're an inspirational guy. | ||
| You're very positive. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's a happy, fun page, too. | ||
| It's cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I appreciate it. | |
| I try. | ||
| And that's everything I post and everything. | ||
| Like I said, I try to spread the message of love, positivity, and just inspiration with everything that I do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, no pun intended. | ||
| I'm pulling for you to get that 1,000 pounds. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And I appreciate you being here, man. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thanks, Joe. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Great to meet you. | ||
| Bye, everybody. | ||
| That was awesome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sweet. | |
| That was really fun. |
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