Latest / The You Project / #1634 Next To Him, I'm A Runt - Luke Reynolds

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#1634 Next To Him, I'm A Runt - Luke Reynolds · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I get a team. Welcome to another installment in the podcast.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Craig Anthony Happer, Luke. What's your middle name? Mate? What's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: your middle name?
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: William Luke, William.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Reynolds, Craig, Anthony Harp of the You Project. No, Tiffany
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and Cook, just us two alpha males. And it's not
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: often I feel like a beta male or the lower,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the much lower primate. But today I feel like that
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: because he's all fucking man. Thanks for coming on the show, mate.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: No, thanks for having me on, Craigs.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: It's really good to sort of e meet you, I guess,
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: and have a bit of a chat Andy, and I
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: appreciate it.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Well, now the way that we met is basically through
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: social media, which is not uncommon these days. But you
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: follow me, I follow you. You have a look at
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: my stuff. I have a look at your stuff, and
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I went bibby bobbedy boo. I often jump in profiles
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and have a look at who's commenting or liking or whatever,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and I had a look at yours. I went, he's
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: an interesting cat. So can you just rather than me
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: read something that's going to bore people, just give my audience.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: It's kind of about ninety countries too, so a lot
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of mostly Australia, but also quite a lot of international
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: listeners as well. So give us a snapshot of what
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: you do and who you are.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, everybody, I'm good to be on here. I'm
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: with Reynolds, Australian, thirty nine years old. I'm a professional
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: strongman competitor, professional armlifter, professional highland games athlete. I'm also
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: an actor and I was a coach. I don't do
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: much coaching anymore in the strength side of things, and
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: I also have a regular day job as well on
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: top of all of that. So I've done a favorite
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: of media stuff over the years as well, a lot
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: of commentary, life commentary, of strong man events, MC work.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: I quite enjoy the media side now now that I'm
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: sort of late in my career. Yeah, I've been in
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: the strong man scene for seventeen almost eighteen years now,
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: been all around the world with it, and yeah, that's
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: pretty much where I'm at.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: A lot of guys, like in a lot of sports
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: thirty nine, you know AFL, you'd be out the gate,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of fights ten years out the gate,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: but in strength events, mate, that's not always like there's
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of dudes give or take, who are late thirties,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: early forties, and some even beyond that who have been
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: very very competitive at a high level well into their forties.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Right, so it's not even fifties.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So now if you were
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: a lady, I wouldn't ask this, but fuck it, what
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: do you dimension? Sunshine?
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: What are you?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: How tall are you? And what are your.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Weigh These days?
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: I'm in my lightweight era, I guess if you like,
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: because I'm doing more of the arm lifting stuff, so
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: it's more grip strength related. It's not so much full
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: blown pro strong man anymore. I don't need to be
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: as big, but I'm six or seven and I like
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: to sit around one fifty so kg or that's what's
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: that about? Three thirty pounds for the.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah three so yeah for our American listeners, three thirty
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: for our British listeners, it's like twenty five stone or something. Yeah,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: that's all the people who use normal weight one hundred
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and fifty kicks. What were you at your biggest?
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: So probably around late twenty nineteen, I was doing a
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: lot of the Arnold World Series. I was sitting obviously
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: same height six seven, I got up to around one
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: hundred and seventy three kg. I never quite cracked the
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: sort of one eighty four hundred pound thing, but I
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: didn't need to either. A there's sort of a happy
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: meeting we have to strike with strongmen where depending on
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: your height, of course, you don't want to blow out
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: too much. You want to the bigger you get, you
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: can potentially get stronger, of course with more muscle mass,
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: but then there's a tradeoff in strongmen where you can
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: with some of your athleticism and ability to move which
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: is a big part of our sport as well. It's
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: not just powerlifting. We've got to do your static lifts.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: You've also got to have the capacity to still move
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: and breathe a bit. So getting too big can be
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: a can be a hindrance to that. So it depends.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. As an ex SISE scientist, I watch you guys
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: do the stuff that you do, and I remember years ago, mate,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: when you were fucking not you would have been just around.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: But years ago I used to watch the wide world
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: of sports, the strong man right, which is you know,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: but when I was a kid watching like some of
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: these Swedish dudes and some of these fucking vikings, right,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: which you probably still compete against. And I just you know,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: as a kid, to me, they were like superheroes. Especially
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: picking up the balls. Fucking hell, the Atlas stones, that
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: just seems that just seems uncomfortable, unnecessary, but also awesome
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: at the same time, because like you can't not only
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: do you have this ridiculous weight, there's no fucking handle.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: It couldn't be harder to pick up, you know how
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: heavy are those Atlas stones.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: It's funny you mentioned the Wide World of Sports stuff
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: with the strong Man, because the strong Man World Series
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: it used to be done here, that was on the
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Wide Water Sports in the nineties. Actually, David Harsley Craig
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: read Derek Boyer, those guys were early strong Men legends
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: in Australia. They're actually good friends and mentors of mine.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: So they're the guys that helped me sort of come
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: into the sport. They were at the end of their
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: careers and I was at the very start of mine,
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: and I got my start with a lot of those guys,
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: obviously well into the two thousands. I kicked off in
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: about two thousand and eight, but Yeah, it has a
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: long longer history here than I think people realize. When
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: it comes to the outlets stones, they're the iconic strongman movement.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: I guess it's very unique to our sport. So back
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: when you were watching, they probably topped out about aundred
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: and sixty kg starting around ninety two one hundred, and
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: then incrementally get heavier, usually sets of five or six stones.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: These days, the sets you'd see it.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Like a Giant's live event or a World's Strongest Man
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: or even Australia Strongest Man. You'll see them go up
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: to two hundred kilos in a series or a little
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: more when it comes down to max stone lifting. When
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: you're just you know you're chasing large singles. I was
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: the first in Australia with along with my friend Jordan Stephens,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: we were the first in Australia go over two hundred kilos.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: We held the record for some time, but the world
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: record now sits with Tom Staltman at two hundred and
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: eighty four kilos for a single stone.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Which it's that's over six hundred pounds, right.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: It is, Yeah, six hundred and two seventy two and
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: he's sitting at two eighty four. It actually blows my mind.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: I've been around the sport and I've seen these guys
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: come through. I've competed with most of those top guys
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: internationally and here, and it even blows my mind to
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: think that those are the kinds of numbers we're at
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: these days Stonelift, and it's just absolutely astronomical.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: It is. I mean, like I think one of the like,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I'm loving this conversation and I've selfishly wanted to talk
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: to you just because I'm fucking you know, I'm a
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: geek with all this stuff. I've spent my life training athletes.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I've spent my life lifting weights. I'm not genetically gifted
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: like you. I'm just an old fucking idiot. But but
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously I'm fascinated with strength and power and
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: athleticism and speed and agility and high performance. I've been
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: around it my whole life, right, But it's it's interesting
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: to you know. I even struggle to sometimes when I'm
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: talking about a concept as a podcaster, Luke, I'm always
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: aware of my audience and explaining not that they're my
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: audience are not highly intelligent. They are, but everybody knows
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: more or less about different topics, right, So if I'm
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: talking about the brain or the mind, or human behavior
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: or excise physiology or you go, okay, So there will
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: be a percentage of people who understand, you know, the like,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: what the fuck lifting a six hundred and something pound
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: round ball off the ground means, But most people won't.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: You can't really get that in perspective, you know.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: But it's a hard thing to quantify for the average
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: person if they've not lifted a stone. Like once you
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: get to say eighty kilos on a stone, your average
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: drops out of the conversation and to lift it and
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: then you know, other than the diameter of the stone
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: itself will actually increase, but even that stops at around
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: twenty three to twenty four inches, even at the biggest stones,
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: because they'll be made with the lead core insteads because
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: you can't just keep exponentially going wider and it just
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: increases sign difficultly. It would be impossible you'd be up
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: out of thirty inch stone. Then not even Tom Stone
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: we can get his arms around. But yeah, it is
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: a hard thing to quantify for people because even in
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: a gym, people have lifted a bar with weights on it.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: In a say deadlift situation, and you can see there's
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: lots of plates on there, and you can see what
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: two hundred and eighty kilos would look like for those
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: at home. If you use in twenty kilo plates had
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: to be six plates aside and then a ten on
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: each and that's two hundred and eighty kilos and that's
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: probably beyond the reach of most people. You know, we're
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: talking one percent of the world may ever lift that
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: or less. And you think that that's in a concrete
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: in a concrete ball is just yeah, like you said,
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: with no handholds, a little bit of tacky which is
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: like a pine residence, quite sticky on your arms. But
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: even that is fallible and you saw it file the
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: other day in the Shore Classic. For a lot of
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: the guys, it's not guarantee, so you can have equipment
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: failures there. But yeah, to quantify that, it's it's really
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: it's insane to think about. You know, we've got guys
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: in New so sorry, in Australia and New Zealand doing
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty kilos stones. Now they've left us
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: for dead. Us old guys that have sort of that
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: kicked it off, cracked it over two hundred set of
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: the records and then they've been left for dead, and
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: which is perfect because that's exactly what the next gen
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: ration through should do. They stand on our shoulders and
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: we stand on the ones before us, and then they
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: take it further and they push push the limits. But
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: we've even got females in this country and around the
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: world that are doing over one hundred and fifty kilo stones.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, the world record is held by Nicole Jenrich,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: which was Austray strongest woman. She holds the world record
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: forratless stones at one hundred and eighty kilos or thereabouts. Now,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: so we're talking numbers that guys were barely doing twenty
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: five years ago in strong men on stones and now
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: being lifted consistently by females.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: It's just crazy. That's grown.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing good and so so many questions. All right,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: so just explain to people. They people who have never
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: seen this, so they pick pick it up off the ground.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: So the balls on the ground, everybody, or the stone,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: let's just call it a ball because it's easy to
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: it's a fucking concrete And what's in the middle of
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: the heavy ones? Did you say lead.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the original stones were carved from sandstone, right,
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: and some of the sets here in Australia, the ones
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: to watch on white water sports, they were sandstone carved
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: in the here in your South Wales. But the modern
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: ones are made generally out of concrete and they'll put
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: lead and things inside them to make them denser, of course,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: so that you don't have to go too big them.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: So yeah, you're talking like a beach ball sized stone
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: on the ground.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Yep, do you know what I'm loving right now? This
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: is going to embarrass you and make you feel weird.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: But when you do podcasts, lou Hey, everybody, don't listen
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: for a moment when you do podcasts with someone you've
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: never met and never known, and I really I try
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: to do other than I've known a bit about you
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: through your like I've never heard you interviewed. I've never
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I watched a quick blurb on the Rock
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: and I saw you in that momentarily the Young Rock,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: which will chat about what I love is you're such
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a fucking good communicator. It makes my job so easy
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: because sometimes you get people who are really good at something,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: but they're not very good on a podcast. So thank
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: you for being good. All right. So when people pick
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: those fucking things up off the just explain to my
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: listeners where do they put it then, Like, they don't
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: just pick it up and drop it back on the ground.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: They've got to put it up on I guess for
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: one of a better term, like a platform.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So what happens the technique you typically would use.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: So there's two main ways you would lift an Atlas stone.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: There's one motion in where you would scoop it from
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: the ground, So reach down between your legs, you sort
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: of straddle the stone if you like, reach down between
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: your legs around the hemisphere, and then you would lift
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: it as you come up past your hips. It's against
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: your chest and you would sort of extend through almost
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: like an Olympic if you do, like a triple extension.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: And then you would load it, say onto a barrel
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: or a platform or over a bar. Those are your
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: sort of your main load in points. There's also then
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: variations where you might have to take it to the
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: shoulder and things like that. But in this instance, for
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: an average Atlas stone load, that would be your single motion.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: You wouldn't stop on the way out. You would literally
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: just pick it up off the ground, continue up and
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: load with your two motion, which is probably the more
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: common one, the type you would see with super heavy stones,
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: because there is a limit to what people can one motion.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: What happens is you would come up between the legs
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: same again, but as you as you pass the knees
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: and you sort of squat down. What you do is
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: you'll shift one of your legs in typically so that
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: your legs come together a little bit and you've got
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: a bit of a shelf there then, so then you
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: can stop at the legs in a squat front squat
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: position if you like, and then you've got an opportunity
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: then to readjust and you'll put your hands sort of
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: over the top of the stone and then continuing that
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: on to stand up with that, pull it in against
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: your chest, extend your hips through and its kind of
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: use the shape of the stone to roll it up
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: yourself fully and then load onto whatever you load into.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: So there's can you put those arms back down? Police?
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: You just scare the shit out of me. Hell yeah,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: it's okay. He that is well, you know, I've looked
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: at and some of the stuff you do, and just
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: in general because I watched it for years, but I
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you know, of course there's strength is power, but there's
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: also there's so much technique and biomechanics and leverage. And
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: you know, when I look at people in the gym,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: obviously within reasons, pushing movements like bench press, like my
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: training partner has actually has kind of middle of the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: road range. But like with guys girls that have shorter levers,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: they tend to do pressing movements easier the longer the
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: limbs generally speaking, not always, but in the gym, pulling
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: movements better, which is why we don't see many rowers
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: with short, stocky arms. Most rowers have long limbs, long legs,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: long arms, long torso. So you've got obviously at six
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: seven long limbs. Is that a bio mechanical advantage for
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: some things but not for others?
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good quest because I've often pondered
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: this over the years as I've sort of gone against
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: different athletes and then had limitations myself and things like that,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: And I've often pondered and been asked, what's the ideal
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: body sort of shape and length for say strong man.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: The problem with strong man is it's such an all
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: round of sport. You can't be just great at stonelifting
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: and shit at press, and you can't be great at
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: truck palls and crab a deadlifting. You have to be
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: Typically if you can come second in every event, you'll
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: probably win overall, as long as the other person didn't
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: win every every event. It's the most rounded athlete, and
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: you might have as many as eight to ten events.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: You've got to be So if you, you know, come
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: last in one event, that may be the whole competition
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: gone because you bombed and you had a weakness. So
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: you need to then identify that and work on that. Typically,
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: someone my sort of dimensions long, I've got long arms
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: and long legs and probably a long to also really
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: as well. I guess it's been a dreadful body shape
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: really for deadlifting over the years, but it's been really
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: good for stone lifting because I can get around the
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: stones really well. You find the shorter athletes struggling to
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: get around the stones and stand wide enough to actually
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: pull a large stone through. Whereas long, someone with the
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: shorter legs but long arms is typically really good for deadlifting.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: You know, the shorter legs of things like that might
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: be better for squad in shorter arms good for pressing typically,
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: but I've always been quite a good overhead presser anyway,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: despite the length of my arms. You can overcome those
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: biomechanical I guess disadvantages if you like. But yeah, typically
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't say there's an ideal body shape for and
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: it does change from lift to lift.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that I mean you have
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to have, which people wouldn't think about much unless they're
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: really kind of observing and studying and thinking about the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: science and the mechanics of the sport is like really
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: fucking strong hands and strong grip because some of the
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: bars you use, like in a gym, so listeners in
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a gym, most of the bar bells are somewhere between
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: nine and mel and twenty five meals so three quarters
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: of an inch and an inch, which are pretty easy
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: to grip. A lot of the bars that you lift
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: are either the one big fucking fat ridiculous look and
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: tubes that look like I don't know, like about I
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: don't know, not nine a mel like fifty mil or sixty.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Mil usually fifty mili.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: The axles that we typically would use in armlifting or
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: strong man, but you do have even big ones again.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I mean that's so that's the limiting
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: factor there, all those things that I've seen you deadlifting,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: I think with like a square bar.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's very armlifting specific.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Now, so that's that you wouldn't find that, maybe very
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: rarely in a strong in comp but in the sport
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: of arm lifting itself, which is concerned with pretty much
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: the weirdest objects you can deadlift and the most difficult
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: things you can deadlift that will make grip strength really
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: really a factor.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: They're called a saxon bar.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: So the ones you'll typically see maya three inches by
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: four inches, so seventy five by one hundred, and we
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: lift across the short side, and yeah, it's an overhand.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Anything like that is always an overhand.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: So when we do axles for grip, double overhand axles,
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: the thing that makes it difficult is you've got eight
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: fingers against two thumbs now trying to grab that. The
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: bar is obviously spinning quite aggressively. What you'll do with
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: powerlifting typically is you'll either hook grip and Olympic lifting
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: your hook grip, which is where you chuck the thumb
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: inside the fingers. There and it locks the bar and
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: it stops it spinning out. But we're not allowed to
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: do that. We have to come straight over, So that
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: makes the grip an enormous factor. Or power lifts, I
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: use an alternate grip where you've got one hand over,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: one hand under, and then that locks the bar and.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Stops it spinning.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Or as strong man, if it's a regular deadlift, we're
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: often allowed to use straps anyway, which sort of takes
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: it out because it's not a test for group. In
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: that case, our deadlift is purely tested now back and
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: hip strength. But when it comes to the grip stuff, yeah,
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: it's always overhand and yeah we'll do horrible things like
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: big square bars, big rectangle bars, big thick axles.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like some massachist has gone, how can we
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: make this shit super hard, super uncomfortable and almost fucking
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: impossible to train for.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Let's do that, yep, one hundred percent.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: And they'd looked back through history and gone, what were
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: some of the most awful things that people had to do,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: either living on the land or historically or whatever. Let's
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: turn it into an event and make it a race,
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: or make it see who can be the means of that.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, I'm interested in.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Like, obviously, when people think of strong man, they don't
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: really think you know, some people do, but the average person,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure doesn't really think about aerobic capacity, cardiovascular and
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: you know, just fucking walking around at one hundred and
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: fifty kilos in a six foot seven body in your
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: in your new slim state. I mean, that's just carrying
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: that shit around would be exhausting. I mean literally, I'm
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: eighty five, you know, so you've got sixty five on me.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I mean if I if I could, but even if
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: we imagine everyone, if I got loaded up with sixty
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: five kilos and I was the same weight in inverted
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: commas as Luke, yep, and I had to walk a
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: hundred meters, i'd In fact, Luke, I've got a I've
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: got the heaviest weight vest that well, I don't know
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: if it is now, but it actually carries seventy kilos,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: so one hundred and fifty four pounds.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Nice. That's a wicked verse. Yeah.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's from the States, and I've loaded that
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: up a few times with seventy k's and my block
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: is eight hundred meters, it nearly kills me to walk,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: so I'm walking with seventy k's so that takes my
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: weight up to one fifty five. And I mean you,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: which is essentially your weight. You could go more for
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: ten k's if you had to. So anyway, my long
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: winded point is how important is cardio? Do you train
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: cardio or is it just the by product of the
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: strength training.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: It's more important than people give it credit for. In
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: strength boards it's actually been a just for general health.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: And when we're not talking, you don't need to have
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty hundred and seventy kilo. And I'm
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: even down through the weight classes because strong man has
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: weight classes, especially these days. So in the meat you've
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: got eighty ninety under one oh five, and then you've
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: got opens. There is a new division sort of starting
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: to pop up under one twenties. I think there is
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: a demand for it because you've got those guys middle
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: of the road, and then in the ladies you've got
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: under sixty four hundred and seventy three under eighty two
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: and then open. So there's weight divisions in the ladies
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: as well. So not every strong man these days is
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: a giant. Generally, everyone in it is obviously very strong,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: but you've got these weight divisions because not everybody can
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: take part in the sport and compete against six foot seven,
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty kilo people because you know, anyway,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: So yeah, typically, I think the attitude in strength sports
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: over the years has been, oh, you know, the whole joke,
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: our five repses cardioh blah blah blah.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: That's all.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: That's all great, that's a great joke and all that.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: But I don't know where along the way we got
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: lost in the point where being fitter and healthier overall would.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Make you a worse athlete.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: So it's sort of it's sort of got lost along
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: the way, But I think it's in to turn around
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: a little bit more these days, and because of the
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: sports have become a lot more professional, I think the
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: approaches to them have become a lot more professional. You've
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: got better coaches and better mentors involved in the sports.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: People are actually starting to wake up and realize that
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: at least heart health and some lung capacity goes a
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: long way when it comes to well longevity in the sport,
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: but also your overall ability. So you're seeing big one
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: hundred and six seven, six eighty six nine athletes walking around,
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: you know, one hundred and seventy hundred and eighty, but
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: they're walking around with almost visible abs these days. They
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: are a lot leaner than some of the ones, some
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: of your athletes back in yesteryear that were at those
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: kinds of body weights. Me personally, I like to do
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: a lot of rucking. I'll take the dog out hiking
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: in the bush trails. I live in the Blue Mountains,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: so I've access to a lot of trails. But I
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: check the dog out there, he goes for a trot,
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: and I'll put on a weight vest myself. I might
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: chuck twenty kilos on and I'll go do a few miles.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: I'm walking a lot with the dog anyway, So none
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: of this is overly specific sort of canitioning work. But
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: then when it comes to actual strongman stuff, I'll do
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of sled work because the capacity required for
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: strong men is typically sixty seconds to ninety seconds, so
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: you need to sort of have your anaerobic capacity quite
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: high in those.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Sort of ranges.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: But yeah, anybody watching this is in strong man and
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: isn't doing some sort of general conditioning like some GPP
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: some walking, some hiking, things like that. You need to
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: get your head red, because it's silly to think that
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: that general health benefits wouldn't make you a better athlete.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I remember not too long ago watching I don't know
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: if this is a strong man event specifically, or it
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: was just an event where these dudes would deadlift. I
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: think you'll correct me, but it seems like they started
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: at one fifty, then when one seven or eighty, then
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: two hundred, and then to twenty two forty, and they
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: basically they obviously deadlift weight, then jog fucking three steps
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: to the next way.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: And deadlift ladder almost yeah, yeah, yeah, correct, absolutely, And
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: it was like a couple of the lads by the
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: time they got to the heaviest weight.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I think it was more they were just aerobically fucked
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: than strength, you know. I mean, I'm sure it was both.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: But their heart rate, I mean I was looking at
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: one dude. If his heart rate wasn't two hundred, I
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: don't know anything.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and I mean it depends on their strength
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: level as well, because they participating in a say a
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: five bar deadlift ladder, and you get into the final
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: one and you're talking your fifth rep and it's you know,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: maybe your absolute max and you've been asked to do
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: that as your fifth rep. Your blood pressure and your
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: heart rate's going to be skyrocketed anyway because you've been
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: working in such high percentages back to back to back
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: within say a sixty to ninety second time limit.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: The other part of being well.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Conditioned for strength sports is that we're not like say
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: a thrower or something, where you do six throwers and
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: the days over in half an hour.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: A strong man event.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: Like competition may be over multiple days or at maybe
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: eight to ten events in one day, so everybody's a
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: world champion in event.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: One and two.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: So you know, it doesn't matter how well you are
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: a those it's who's still conditioned enough to perform well
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day when you've done six, seven,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: eight events and a lot of that being able to
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: come up and down between events, you know, across an
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: eight hour day is a huge thing, and conditioning plays
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: a huge part in that.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: So it's so interesting because it's it's like when I
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about that, but doing multiple events,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost like the strong man to cathlon
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: or heptathlon's.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Read there was a decathlon of strength before strong Man,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: and I think it's a pretty good way to put it.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: One hundred and I would imagine, like when I think
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: from science point of view, I think about the training,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the specificity of the base, training, nutrition, recovery, rehab, sleep supplements,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: fucking even managing your mind. Like I would think, if
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: you get everything physiologically right, sleep, training, recovery, food, but
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: you can't perform under pressure mentally and emotionally, you lose
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: your shit.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are so many variables that impact performance
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: in every sport, but I would think that that is
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: definitely a sport where if you get one thing significantly wrong,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: you might be fucked.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, big time.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: And like I said before, pretty much everyone's strong, Like
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: everyone's turning up strong and you see it on social
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: media a lot. People are turning out records and prs
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: and all kinds of things in the gym all the time.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: But it matters who can actually bring it to the day.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: And it's hard for everybody traveling and competing internationally. But
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: once you're on an international level, like traveling across ten
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: time zones, and this gase for anybody in any sport
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: really traveling across say ten time zones, and then us
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: into different food, different times, different everything, and then having
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: to perform against hometown athletes. Yeah, it's very hard. So
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: that becomes comes down to how well you sort of
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: prepare and can manage that. But it also is a
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: big part of how you can cope with that mentally,
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: especially if things do start to go wrong. But yeah,
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: I've seen people crumble often in long events, over long
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: days because they mentally just don't have it, and it's
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: probably something that everybody needs to work on.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Do you think that. I mean, you're not a psychologist,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: but you're an elite athlete and you do a lot
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: of hard, hard shit voluntarily, so we are questioning your
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: mental state right now. But anyway, I think everybody would
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: choosing to do that shit. What's wrong with him? Everyone?
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: But do you think like it's like I've worked with
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I've worked in and around the elite sport. I'm the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: least a lad athlete on the planet, but I've worked
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: in and around a lot of elite athletes and trained
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: olympians and work with you know, and blah blah blahlah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and I see you know, lots of athletically gifted, physiologically
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: genetically gifted people obviously because they're doing what they're doing.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: But it's like sometimes for many people it is that
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: thing where they You know, when you think about an
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: AFL player who's fucking fifteen meters in front of goal
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: and he misses the whole fucking goals which are six
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: meters wide. Well and he's straight in front, you go, well,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: that's not about biology or genetics or fucking training.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: Or the kick he's done ten million times before.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: So how much do you reckon resilience and that ability
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: to be calm in the chaos? How much do you
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: think that is about genetics? How much do you think
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: is about just time under tension, so to speak, just
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: fucking repetition and showing up and doing it. And how
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: much of it like so one genetics too, just doing
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: it a lot or three? You know, perhaps fuck, I
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: don't know. Mental training.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, that's that's a great question. Actually, look genetically,
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I think environmentally probably probably is more important.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: I think exposure to hardship creates toughness over time, the
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: capacity to draw back on experiences where like, fuck, I've
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: been in this ship before. I've been in harder situations
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: than this, or equally as hard situations, and I survived it,
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: I performed in it. I can draw down on that
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: and do it over again. But yeah, look, I've seen
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: some pretty incredible stuff in strong men's sports where people
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: have the capacity to put themselves through ridiculous pain, break themselves,
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: have horrendous injuries like you know, maybe an achilles rupture
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: and still pull a truck and things like that. So
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: resilience is everything, and I think the biggest thing is
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: choosing to do hard things and choosing to do them
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: often just creates a different kind of mindset and understanding
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: that it's what you're going to need. And if you
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: can draw down on that during the heat of competition
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: in front of people, in front of CREATI in front
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: of television, when everybody's watching, I think you'll be successful
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: over even people who may be way more genetically gifted,
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: or you know, their training may have even been going better.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's I mean, this is not a
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: new kind of insight, but I think there's something to
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: be said that it's it's a of course, it's about
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you know, the competition and the result, but it's almost
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: like who you become on the journey, right. It's like,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: in the middle of all that adversity and pain and
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: bullshit and fucking you know whatever, that chaos and mayhem,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: it's kind of who you're becoming. I reckon. That's the gift.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: I reckon. It's great to get the accolades and the outcome,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: of course, but when you do as you said, when
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: you consistently do hard shit, yep, when hardship shows up,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you're okay, you know, And.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: That extrapolates out nicely to your life as well, because
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: we all do go through shit our lives and things
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: like that. And I think sport is a really good
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: thing and very important for adults, but also equally important
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: for children to develop that resilience to then cope with
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: shit when it happens in your life and be able
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: to deal with your emotions.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: I lose my control of my emotions a lot as well,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: just like every adult does. But I think the capacity
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: to understand that no matter what falls in your way,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: you can actually survive it because you've been through some
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: you know, some rugged shit, whether it's psychologically or physically,
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: you can do it with pain. Yeah, I think it's
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: something that goes to transcends sport. Absolutely.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I just said, I want to be around you when
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: you lose control of your emotions. Could you just just
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: fucking do that somewhere else? Tell me about how's your
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: body these days? So you're thirty nine, you're kind of
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: sliding towards the finish line, I guess of your professional
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: strong man's stuff. I could be wrong there, but like
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: you're on the home straight, how's your body?
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Look?
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: I've been at it a long time, Like typically you
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: wouldn't see somebody like I guess. I started younger than
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: quite a few people. People tend to come over to
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: this sport in their mid twenties, late twenties.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Sometimes.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: I sort of entered in my early twenties, which was
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: young at the time. I was sort of one of
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: the youngest around it then. So but I've been at
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: it for seventeen nearly eighteen years now, so I've had
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: probably every injury under the sun that you can name.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: And I played rugby league for ten years beforehand, and
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: then I also rode dirt bikes when I was young,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: and I also did a little bit of MMA and
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: a bit of stuff like that. So I certainly had
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: the line's share of injuries over my life, like you know,
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: broken ankles, nosejaw, wrists, bone grafts, blown acls, minisculta stairs
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: three or four times, hamstring tears, run of the mill,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: blown peck but detached both biceps like I could just go.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: On and on and on.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: And look, I guess when it comes back to the
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: resilience thing, most people would have walked away. And I've
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: seen more talented athletes than me over the years come
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: and go the second they hit a catastrophic injury, they
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: did walk away, which in a sport that is as
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: hard as what we do, that doesn't necessarily have the
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: financial return that you would like for such effort. I
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: guess people have walked away and made decisions, probably maybe
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: better life decisions than me around that.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: But look at the moment.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: Having brought my body weight down over about the last
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: four years, and a lot of that's been to do
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: with the acting side of things. I needed to look
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: a certain way versus necessarily be able to perform a
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: certain way. The grip stuff. Again, I don't need to
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: be as heavy, but bringing the body weight down, I
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: feel better these days, regardless of the conditioning I ever did.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: As far as injuries.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: They look, I get the odd tweak and things like that,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: but I'm not trying to achieve the same numbers I
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: used to either, So what isn't look. I went to
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: the Short Classic a couple.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Of weeks ago.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: I was there for the arm lifting again, but I
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: watched the Strongest Man on Earth competition. I was you know,
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: I was there with all the guys that I used
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: to compete against in the pro strong and scene, and
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: it kind of got me hungry. So if you look
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: on my feet, I've started long lifting again and doing
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: a few strong man movements again with a I don't know,
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: a bit of an idea reaching in the back of
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: my head that I might come back into a bit
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: of strong man.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: But yeah, look at the moment, my body feels good.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I guess I've been at it for so
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: long I don't even know what normal is anymore.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Well, everyone who was just thinking about potentially getting involved,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: they just jumped right the fuck off. So that was
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the worst advertisement ever for strong Man. No, I'm I'm
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: fucking with you.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: That was that was run away. There's other options, go
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: somewhere else.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, but think about the glory everyone that's right.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: So who's the who's the goat? Like who's the goat
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: in strong Man? Who's the greatest of all time?
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: I think is that on?
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: That is that art for the debate.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Look, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: who'd argue that it's that it's Drena Civicus. It's definitely
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: big Z from Lithuania.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Now, ninety eight per cent my audience don't know. I
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: have never heard that name. Tell us about him.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Look Zadrena Civicus from Lithuania. He's in his mid forties now.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: I had the honor of competing against him in my
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: first ever pro show at the Arnold in twenty sixteen
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: in Australia, which was probably one of his last pro shows.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: It was always a big point of mind that I
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: want to do at least stand in a lineup against
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: that man before he retired, because he is the greatest
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: of my era but also the greatest of all time.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: He's held you probably fifty world records. He's a four
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: times World Strongest Man winner, eight times Arnold Strongman winner,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: countless millionaire competitions.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: He basically helped drag.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: The sport into the modernier Him and Murray's Pudzanovski and
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: a bunch of the other Europeans during the two thousands
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: dragged it into the modern era. Other guys in that
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: conversation Murrays Pujanowski five times world strongest Man, Brian Shaw,
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: you know the namesake of the shore classic that I mentioned,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: Brian Shaws the four times the World's strongest Man, win
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: three times Arnold strong man.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: See the dude from the UK? Is he the UK dude?
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Or no, No, he's American Eddie. Eddie Hall's probably who
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, as I'm concerned.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: They did. They have a fucking punch on? Was it
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: them two that got in the room?
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: That was That was Thor Bejonsen from Iceland. So the mountain,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: the mountain out in the mountain from Game of Thrones, Look, Thor.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Thor is definitely there and thereabouts he's probably Look it's
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: a funny way to put it, but twenty eighteen Thor
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: was sublime. He won everything. He was breaking world records left,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: front and center. And this is just before he then
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: stepped away and took a break from strong men. Did
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: the fight thing I'd argue that twenty eighteen Thought is
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: actually the strongest strong man ever, but Davicus is the
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: greatest strong man ever. However, Thor is still competing. He's
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: made his comeback sort of late last year early this year.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: He's he's looking really good at the moment. If he
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: continues in his form, he could go down as definitely
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: one of the goats. He's probably in the top five
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: conversation anyway, Eddie Hall, as far as I'm concerned, you know,
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: and strongly and purist, he's not in the conversation at all. However,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: he was the first to break that five hundred kilo
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: deadlift barrier. He did with the strongest man, so he's
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: definitely up there as a great and he was insanely strong,
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: but he's not in the in the goat conversation as
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: far as I'm concerned.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's it's hands down to Durna Civicus.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: For the career longevity, what he did for the sport
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: and continues to do for the sports. Excuse me, and
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: just just the records he established, yeah, just just insane.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Tell me about we're jumping all around a little bit,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: but tell me mate about long term health, like I'm
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: not talking about gear or anything like that. I'm just
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: talking about the stress that you put on your body.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about walking around like some of these guys
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: at fucking one hundred and seventy or eighty kilos, even
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: if you're super tall, that's a lot of weight to
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: carry for a long time. I would imagine a lot
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: of them have blood pressure issues or some would you know,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: just a lot of wear and tear. And that's like,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: will you get to a point where, I mean, you're
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: you're not out of shape anyway, Like you're one fifty
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: and in good shape, but like when you're done and dusted,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: will you go, fuck it, I'm going to get down
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: to one twenty or thirty and be, you know, not
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: worry to just walk around at a light relative for you,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: a light weight, and just focus on health.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I haven't thought about retiring yet from from
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: full blown strong man, but yeah, it's I'm happier these
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: days to be fair walking around at around one fifty
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: that I wasn't one seventy five ish one seventy three
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: is like I felt horremndous. I was insanely strong, and
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: I loved competing at the top level and that.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I certainly was uncomfortable a lot of the time.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: You know, guys like your Brian Shaws and your Thor Bjornson's,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: they're walking around, they're six foot eight, six foot nine,
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: you know, six foot ten. We're walking around at two
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: hundred plus kilos in competition form. Like we're talking some
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: of the largest humans ever to walk the planet. And
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: like I said, walking around with blurry abs like that's
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: that is so much mass to carry on a frame
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: that isn't just shit mass either.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: Look, I think the moves I will make once I'm
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: sort of eventually, I guess done with full blown strong man.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: I'd be happy to drift down under one forty one
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: point thirty, be you know, lean, and probably pushed back
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: towards the throw inside a bit more with the Highland Games.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: I don't have to be as big to do that
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: and stick with the grip stuff the arm lifting. I
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: don't need to be super huge for that. I like
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: being you know, strong at that, but I don't have
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: to be one hundred and seventy kilos for it. So yeah, yeah,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: long term, absolutely, guys like Sadrena Civicis we're a good
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: example to others out there.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Strongmen who are watching this.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: What he'd do in an off season, if he ever
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: got an off season, was because he used to walk
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: around Sodurnas is only about sixty two sixty three, but
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: he'd walk around in competition shape a one hundred and
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: eighty five kilos, a very large man. But in the
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: off season he'd be down around one forty one thirty five.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: He'd let his body wait, come down, you know, come
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: off everything, and lean up and working his health for
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: a bit, and then blowback up when he needed to.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: It's and that's you know, we're talking a guy that
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: was at the top level for the nearly thirty years.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: Longevity like that comes from treating your body intelligently and
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: chasing it. So, yeah, I'd like to be leaner and
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: sort of smaller, I guess long term, because yeah.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid mate and I
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: just like I've been training with Waites for a few years,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: and I went into a big boy gym like I
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: was Ada, and I had no idea what I was doing.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: But there was these two bullfas in there. To me,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: they were they were like you. They weren't like you,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: but to me, they were right, Yeah, our powerlifters, and
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: there was this one guy squatting and it put his
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: It put his put his traps and shoulders and neck
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: under the bar, and before he'd lift off the rack,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the other guy would hit him so fucking hard on
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: the shoulders like it would and he like it must
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: have bruised him. I mean, he hit him so hard, right,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and he was smashing the fuck out of him to
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: get for the other guy to get whatever adrenaline get
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: him in state. And you know, I've been to not many,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: but a few. I've been to a million bodybuilding shows
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: and quite a few powerlifting e meats. But but I
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: would imagine there must be some kind of pre event
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: ritual or protocol or some like. You can't just fucking
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: go from lying on your back listening to en you're
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: in your headphones to just lifting two hundred pound rocks,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: like yeah, do you have or do the athletes have
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: a process of getting themselves in that kind of states.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: That's a great question again, Craig. It depends on the
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: person and the personality. So me, when you see me compete,
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: I'm actually in between events. I'm actually quite jovial and
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: quite relaxed, and then I guess it's an experiencing. Myself
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: and Jordan Stefan's who I mentioned earlier, we were both
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: always like this. It's probably an experience thing, but we
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: were very chilled. We'd be mucking around between events, having
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: a bit of a joke, taking what we were doing seriously,
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: but then we would be able to flip this switch.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: About thirty seconds before the event came on, we were
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: already switched on. We knew what we were doing, we
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: were aware, we had all our equipment there, our warm
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: ups were good, but then about thirty seconds before we left,
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: you go bang straight into game mode and then you
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: do the event, apply the correct level of arousal to it,
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: I guess, and then once the event's done, calm back down,
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: switch it off, and then eat or rest because it
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: maybe an hour before your next event, you know, or more.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: The problem is I see with a lot of people
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: coming into the sport is they might be very aggressive competitors,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: which is great if that's how you lift, and I
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: fire up when I need to. But the problem is
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: I see a lot of new people come in the
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: head button squad racks and head button the wall and
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: going crazy and ape shit before they've even done anything,
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: and the amount of anxious energy they burn by staying
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: up in this insanely heightened arousal level, smelling salts and
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: pre workouts and caffeine enough to kill a fucking rhino
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: and all this shit. And then they get to the
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: event itself and they're exhausted from all this extracurricular shit
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: they've done before they even lift a thing, and they
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: either perform poorly and then they get more frustrated, so
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: they try to get more angry, or they perform okay
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: in the first couple of events, but then again they
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: don't come back down. Which is what a good game
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: day coach is good for in a strength sport is
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: they have the capacity to bring their athlete up when
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: they need to and then let them come back down
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: between events, keep them mildly around. But you've got to have,
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: you know, come down to the point where you can
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: can come back up, but where you're not just wasting
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: energy between events. So yeah, there are there are a
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: lot of rituals that people will go through a lot
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: a lot of people obviously like the zone out, chuck
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: the music in the years and things like that. I'm
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: usually fairly sort of. I don't really do the music thing.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: I just chill, I observe what's going on. I pay attention,
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: but I'm usually pretty calm as a competitor, and then
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: and then switch it.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: On when I need to.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: I think that's an important skill set, is the capacity
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: to turn it up when you need it, but turn
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: it off when you don't.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: So yeahah, do you know the story about my training
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: partner not going. So my training partner's name is Mark Lampard.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Shout out to him, who I lovingly refer to as
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the Crab because when he was multiple mister Australia IFBB
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: pro fucking unit right yep, kind of looks and walks
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: like a crab. Ergo the name. So was it four
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: or five years ago? I think it's coming up to
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: five years So we were training. It was Friday night
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: and he'd been down he's got a property. He'd been
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: down to his property. I think it was November. It
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: was hot, he'd worked out day outside all day. He
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: was dehydrated, I'm sure, and he had about five fucking
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: caffeine drinks, which is awesome when you're in your fifties, right, Yeah, No,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful and also dehydrated and so not stressful on
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: the cardiovascular system or the old fucking heart.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Nah, brilliant, and then comes to the him, does a
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: set of chins, does twenty chins and holds his breath. Right,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: so does twenty chins, hold his breath, His head turns purple,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: and then he falls on the floor. Then he gets
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: on the floor on his hands and knees. I thought
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: he was having a seizure. He had a complete cardiac arrest,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: so flat lined seventeen minutes.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Fuck dead on the floor, actually dead, Ye're dead, dude.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Dead five five to five twenty two, seventeen minutes. So, yeah,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I when I see guys lifting and doing shit, that's
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: right on the edge. I've been around that a few times.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that was when it's the work. Oh dude, Well,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I literally it's interesting. It ain't about me, but it's
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: interesting when that happens you the So I looked at
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: him and he was dead, and that's funny because the
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: stage was about one oh five or one ten. But
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: he's small, like he's short, but I flipped him over
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: like he was fucking forty kilos It's funny when in
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: the middle in a crisis, right and turning over a big, strong,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: like a heavy.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Bloke when his body's all it is not easy.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: It's fucking hard, right. Anyway, it was effortless and I
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: started working on him straight away. But what is and this,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: you know, what is interesting is the way that people
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: respond in the middle of that. There was probably twenty
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: people in the gym, and not one person, not one
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: person said can I help? Can I what do you
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: want me to do? So I was doing everything right,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: I was working on him, I was doing CPR on him,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: and yeah, it's like you just if you're going to
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: have that happen, you want to make sure that it's
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: near somebody who will fucking step in, because look, maybe
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: somebody would have stepped in if I wasn't there. But
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: on that particular day, I literally I ended up screaming
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: at one bloke and to come and give me a hand. Yeah,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: you said, I don't know what to do. I said,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: I know what to do, Just fucking get over here, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: So but yeah.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: It's funny those situations, and even the most highly trained
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: people can sometimes falter in those situations when the when
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: the shit it's a fan and the pressure's on, it's
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: I guess none of us know how we'll actually react
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: until we're placed into those situations. And like I said,
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: even the most highly trained will freeze up sometimes like that. Yeah,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: it's I don't know if it's a modern symptom of
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: people do sometimes as well. They just don't want to
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: become embroiled in anything because they're trying to avoid drama
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: or whatever. They don't want to do the wrong thing.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: But I think I think if somebody's collapsing on the ground,
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: you do what you can to bloody will help you,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: just even if you don't know what the fuck you're doing.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Just while we're talking about it. And again this remember everyone,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not a dietitian, neither Luke. This is just two
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: blokes talking about something. So I don't see it as
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: a prescription or a recommendation. What are your thoughts on?
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Like I owned gyms for years, I don't own a
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: gym anymore. I just trained a gym. And one of
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: my observations is a fucking shitload of sixteen year olds,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: fifteen year olds using pre workout, which is essentially well,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: it's not Essentially, it's a stimulant, right, what's your observation
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: or maybe you're not in that environment much like in
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: a normal gym, But I tell you what, they give
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: that stuff a big nudge. Mate, there's fucking I would
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: say eighty percent of the boys, maybe ninety percent of
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: the boys, the young teenagers in the gym I go to,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: they just pump this shit in their body. It's a
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: sympathetic nervous system stimulant elevates heart rate, blood pressure, adrenaline, cortisol.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: It's like and they drink it like water. Fucking is me?
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think it's well overdone. I personally done
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: them in news pre workout, so I used them over
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: the years occasionally and then sort of realized I didn't
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: really need it.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: I guess. For me, training is almost second nature.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: I've been doing it for nearly thirty years, you know,
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: in some form or more, you know when it comes
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: to sports and things like that. So for me, it's
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: more about having your structure in place, having your discipline
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: in place, and understanding how to get in that.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: State of arousal. Now.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: I love a coffee and that sort of thing as
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: much as the next person, and probably consume too much
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: of it sometimes, but as far as I'm concerned, something
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: to eat and a coffee is probably sufficient for you know,
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: a vast ninety ob percent of gym attendees as a
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: pre workout. Now having been around strength sports, and I
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: don't want to go too deeply into it. I've seen
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: some wild shit over the years that people will consume
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: pre training and pre contest. I haven't necessarily seen them
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: do any better than athletes.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Who don't do that over the years.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: As far as kids and sixteen year olds and all
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: this sort of shit, Like I've been lifted in gym
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: since I was twelve, but you know, kids down around
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: that age, or anybody really if they're especially if they're
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: in the beginner phase of what they're doing, I don't
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: see that, you know, overdoing stimulants is necessarily important.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: More what would be important.
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: Is getting some structure around your training, some consistency around
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: your training, and just continue to.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Turn up, seek some advice and things like that.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: And I sound like an old man and you know,
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: like this sort of thing, but really that's what everybody's lacking.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: There's some bloody direction, some focus, and some consistency in
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: the training. That would be way more advantageous than looking
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: for a magic pill or a bloody pre workout to
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: kick out the ass for a workout one hundred percent.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: All right, So I want to know, if not necessarily
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the day that you performed best in competition, maybe it's
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: that day, but I want to know your favorite day,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: the day that you look back on and go, fuck,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: I love that day, or I was awesome more that
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: was amazing to tell us about, if not that day,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: a day in sporting terms, yeah, in terms of your
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: strong man stuff or anything you know, in the space
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: of athletic performance.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: That's a hard one because I've done so much over
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: so many years. I think for me, standing in pro
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: lineups against guys who I'd looked up to my whole career,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: like Sadurna Civicis and liked Thorbiance and things like that
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: being counted amongst them, even if I took the hiding
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: of a lifetime in some of those competitions, I'm finally
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: arriving at that pro level was a big deal for
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: me because something I'd wanted for a long time, and
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: I've been in the sport for a good eight years
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: before I really started to reach that level. So each
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: and every time I took the field against those elite
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: level guys, and the same with you know, the sports
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: I'm in now, it's always a privilege to me and
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: I always thoroughly enjoy those. For me, the win that
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: mattered the most to me and still does matter the
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: most to me, was when I won. Now, there's a
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: competition down south at a Scottish gathering called Bandon Brigadoon
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: so bund Is in the southern Highlands of New South Wales.
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: Those guys that I talked about earlier, David Huxley from
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: the Wide World of Sports. He was one of Australia's
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: greatest of a strong man back through the nineties and
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: a very good hammer thrower.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: He set up a competition down.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: There in the early eighties doing stone lifting demonstrations and
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: things like that.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: It ended up turning into the Bundon and Stones of.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: Manhood competition and they would have the top Swedes and
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: the top world strongest man guys from around the world
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: come out and contest those events. Now, by the time
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: I entered the sport, it had been going for about
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: twenty five years that event down there, And forgive me
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: if some of my timings were a bit out with
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: the chronology, but it was a title that I coveted heavily.
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: I was against all my heroes, some of the biggest
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: names in the sport had won that title. It was
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: something that I just wanted and it was one of
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: my first earliest opportunities, I guess. So each year in
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: April I'd head down the Southern Highlands against the best
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: stone lifters in the country and we battled out and
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: for eight years straight, I couldn't do any better than second.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Sometimes I finished fourth, fifth, well down the lineups. Each
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: year I said that's the last time. Each year I
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: would be invited back because I was still one of
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: the best stone lifters in the country, and I would
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: go back there and on my ninth attempt against Jordan
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: again I mentioned him often because we battled often, even
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: though we're good mates. He'd won it three times consecutively,
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: and on his goal at his fourth one, I came
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: out and won my first first bundernoon title, and that
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: was a huge one because we have crowds of fifteen
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: to twenty thousand people. It's like a big, big sort
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: of colosseum down there. If you like it's mister Montminson.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: That one for me was a really big deal because
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: for nine years, nine years, I'd attempted to win this
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: one title. Yes, I've done all this other stuff as
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: strong man, it was the title I just could not crack.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: It was the one I wanted the most, and it
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: was all down to a single stone run five stones
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: on barrels. Just be fastest, be the strongest, to be
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: the fastest, and for nine years I couldn't do it.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: And then I won three in a row.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so that that first bunder Noon, I think
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: is the one that means the most to me.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Out of all my career things.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: I've done much higher profile things, I think that's still
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: the biggest one. I think because for nearly a decade
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: I just kept bashing myself up against the best and
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: I eventually cracked it.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: And did you did you did? I read that you
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: competed in the Highland Games and like, is it called
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: kaber tossing?
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: I share, and yeah, I competed at the Australian Highlander
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago. Actually that was I kind
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: of jumped in last minute off the plane from America,
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: so I didn't perform the.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Best, but no, it was. Yeah. I've done a lot
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: of hiding games over the years as well.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, where the fuck do you sit on a plane?
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Surely sit wherever I can. I wish you could lay
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: in the aisle sometimes so I could stretch out.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: You can't. Don't tell me you sit in economy.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I said, this is not a rich sport.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: So can you just yeah, I didn't mean that.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: Leaders that's all right.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: I've become very good at somehow landing, you know, an
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: empty seat next to me, So I try to aim
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: for that each time.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: If I can get a couple of seats i can.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: I'm okay.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe if I'm ever flying somewhere economy and I see
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: you fucking making you awards me, I'm going to start
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: having a fucking convulsion or something.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: I just to enjoy.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: Get on the plane with a couple of the boys,
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: a couple of us, you know, six six sixty seven,
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: one hundred and seventy hundred and eighty k and we're
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: walking down the plane together and everybody's like going off,
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: don't sit next to me, and Web He's like staring
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: at people, trying to freak him out a bit like, yeah,
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: we'll come for your seat and then walk past them
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: and watch them breathe a sigh of relief. Believe me,
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: anybody who ends up sitting next to me, the flight
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: is worse for me than it is for you. And
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: I'm actually a very conscientious flyer. I try to make
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: it as as less an impact on those around me
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: as I can, so extend the courtesy back.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Are kids scared of you or intrigued by you? Or
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: a bit of both? Like i'd imagine little kids would
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: be like, oh my god.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: I guess it depends how you carry yourself, but I
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: think generally kids are sort of more fascinated. We got
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: to have, you know, a lot of the events we do,
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: we try to the kids are our fans sort of things,
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: so they generally love what we're doing more than the parents,
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: you know, almost in a super sense, I guess. So
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: it's always cool. The kids are always a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah,
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: they usually. I don't think they're scared, they're more fascinated.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: What's your actual job, mate, What are you at the moment?
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: What do you do when you're not lifting heavy shit?
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: I'm operations manager for a timber company, right, yeah, timber wholesaler.
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: Funny enough. So that's the thing with a lot of
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: these strength sports. Even the guys at the very top
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: often have regular jobs. There's very few as full time pros.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and Ebody for your Life.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, come on, come on, there's a lot of territory
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: on his body. There's a tuck. I'll tell you what.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: If he's wearing a T shirt with your brand on it,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: it's going to be seen from bar. And what was
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: I going to say? What about I mean, this is
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: a big conversation, I guess, but just quickly, can we
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: just quickly talk about food? Just ballpark? What is a
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: I know it varies day to day, but like I
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: eat fuck all. I eat two meals a day because
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I spend I train every day. But I also spend
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of time doing what I'm doing now, which
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: is either studying, researching, interviewing people. So spent a lot
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: of time on my ass. I'd imagine you'd be Do
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: you actually track calories or do you eat in stinctively?
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Is it strategic or is it just fucking how you
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: feel on the day.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: To be honest, nutrition has probably been my worst thing
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: over the years. Which is silly in hindsight, but hindsight's
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty. Yeah, it's probably more instinctive eating. I guess
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: my coach used to hammer me for it, and she
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: always tried to take control of it a lot more.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's something I've struggled with. I guess, even
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: at my biggest I've never had a great appetite. So
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: eating you know, five, six, seven thousand calories a day
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: at those sort of sizes is it became a real
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: chore and I kind of had to force it. And
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: even guys like Brian Shaw, who were probably eating closer
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: to ten thousand calories a day, you often hear him
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: speak about it, saying he got to the point where
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: he actually hated food because it became such a chore.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: Literally just hadn't force it into himself to maintain you know,
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: say two hundred dolos body weight. When it comes to me, yeah,
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: I changed my mind often. So eating the same thing
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: repetitively is something that frustrates me. So I got to,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: I guess, lean into discipline a little bit there. These days,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: I lean quite heavily into your musclemeel type things that
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: are already prepared and ready to rock and roll and
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: very convenience, so I can shot that in the microwave,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: have a quick glance at the macros and make sure
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: I'm sort of getting.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: A rough, rough sort of what I would like to consume.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: I can keep an eye on what my body weight's
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: doing and that sort of thing, but as far as
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: tracking goes, I'm pretty shit at that, to be fair,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: be completely honest.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Well it's kind of gone. Okay, all right before we
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: wind up, mate, Firstly, thank you chatting on fucking This
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: is the easiest chat I've had in a long.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: Time at all.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: So there's a show on NBC called Young Rock, which
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: is correct me if I'm wrong, but it's about the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: rock Dwayne Johnson's kind of youth and early years and
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: you play and you're in that, and you play a
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: WWE wrestler called Hillbilly Jim. Where's tell us about that?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: That must have been well maybe it wasn't, but it
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: seems like it would be fun.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that was Actually that was awesome. I love
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: that gig.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: End of twenty twenty, I started doing some acting, picked
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: up an agent manager which I still work with.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: He's really good.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: So I'm on You're tell you a fair bit these days,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: and a lot of TVCs and that sort of thing.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: Done a few shows. I've got another show this month.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: I'm sort of filming and whatever. But yeah, Young Rock
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: was really really cool. It was sort of during the
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: middle of COVID. It was late twenty twenty one. I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: actually had to fly toquains and then lockdown for a
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: couple of weeks up there to a hotel before I
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: was allowed near the set and all that jazz. But yeah,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: I cast for a couple of rolls, but I cast
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: for Hillbilly Jim, so I sent her back then and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: it's sort of continued post COVID. The way you audition
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: these days is called a self test audition, where you
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: film yourself basically just on your phone or with the camera,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: and they'll send you the scenes and you sort of
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: act it out and then fire it off, and then
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: after that you might get a call back in that
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: week's second audition, and then you might get the gig.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: So the cool thing was because it was Dwayne's baby.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: He was the one actually vetting my my audition and
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: was the one who sort of rubber stamped me getting
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: the gig. So it was really cool to have you know,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: the Rock. I never ever, I never actually made him
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: because he couldn't come out here because of COVID unfortunately,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I got the thumbs up to play you know,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: w w F w w w F Hall of Famer Hillbilly, Jim,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: Jim Morris and I had a lot of fun with it.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: It was it was really cool. I'm in season two
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: in quite a few episodes, and yeah, we did some
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: really good scenes in the in the ring against you know,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: obviously actors, but you know guys like Rick Flair and
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: Bolkov and the Iron Chic and.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: It was quite a fun show.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: There were there were three seasons. I was in season
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: two only, which we filmed on the Gold Coast. They
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: filmed the first two seasons here and then season three,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: once COVID lifted, they shot it in the States and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: then it was unfortunately canceled.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: But now I had a ball with that. We worked.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: We worked closely the stunt coordinator and fight scene coordinator
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: with Chavo Guerrero of the Fine Guerrero Wwin Family and
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: awesome Guy and yeah, no, I had a ton of
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: fun with that man. That was That was one of
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: the probably the best gig I've done so far.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: Good for you, brother, that's amazing. Well, hopefully if you
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: get more, get more acting work, we can get you
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: out of economy into business somebody.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: It doesn't unless you're Chrissworth. It doesn't necessarily pay you
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: well either. So anyway, it's all good. It's all good.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard of him. He does. Okay, Hey mate,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: where can people find you? Follow you, connect with you?
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: If you want to be connected with what's or if
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: you want to plug anything, hit us up what's going on?
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, the easiest way is just just give me
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: a follow. On Instagram is sort of where I do
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: most of my contact with people. Luke, Blue Mountains, Reynolds,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: Luke's so it's Luke Underscore, Blue Mountain Underscore, Reynolds. Yeah,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: and that's where my biggest presence is. I guess On there,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: I just want to give a shout out. I got
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: physically fortified. That's the jail House Strong tea on there.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: That's anybody who follows anyone's strength related. That's Tom Haveln's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: stuff and Jeff Bryant's stuff. There are awesome guys. I
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: train out of last round training facility in North Richmond,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: and that's that's probably about it for now.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's give him all the ship that Tom Havelyn
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: is a fucking unit, isn't he And awesome guy. I
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: follow him as well.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: He's if people are following him, they're insane. He's the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: coolest guy on the on the fucking Internet, and he's
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: a lovely dude.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: He's a really good guy.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's an enigma. Ye, hey mate, we'll say goodbye affair,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: but yep, Yeah, it's been awesome. It's been really nice
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: to meet you, Luke, and I appreciate your time and
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: i'd love to actually get you back because there's so
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: many more things we could chat about, and there aren't
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: too many Luke Reynold that have been on the show.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: I'll give you the tip where nearly seventeen hundred episodes
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: in and you're a unicorn. So thanks, mister unicorn. I
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: appreciate you.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: Appreciate it, mate, thanks for having me on