World's Strongest Man

Everything's got more of a reason.

The priorities have started to change a lot because eight years ago or nine years ago, when I won World's Strongest Man, priorities was work, money, income.

And it's just slowly sort of this balance of work, money, incomes just sort of come down and sitting here and family time and being a dad and being present is just sort of like took over completely almost.

And it's, yeah, it's nice rather than going, you know, getting up in the day.

The Strongest Man.

How do you make that exciting? The World's Strongest Man.

To me, I watched it and it basically, it was full of Vikings lifting logs.

Would that be right?

Genuinely, if you said to me, you know, top five things that you ever saw that you just went, wow, which would sort of include Mandela and Pienaar in 95, you know, and Super Saturday and Murray winning Wimbledon.

I would say in the context of World's Strongest Man, seeing guys pull a 747 down the runway at Valletta Airport in Malta is quite close to the top because you just stand there and go, how is that humanly possible? They were big, big guys.

And it was and it's a kind of a cliche, but it was so true.

You know, you'd see them at breakfast in the hotel because we always stayed in the same place and the buffet would come out and you'd think, sorry, you know, it's the entire it's the entire population of the San Siro population.

What they can do is make a few quid, they... and, and entertain men, women, children.

When Tommy fought Eddie Hall, it was a misfits job, World's Strongest Man against a boxer who was, like, I don't know, 10 stone heavier than Tommy.

20,000 people, 8 o'clock at night.

That's, that's, that's what you call interest, isn't it?

They typically competed in a sport or a pageant of some sort, whether it was bodybuilding or powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting.

World's Strongest Man also came into play.

But people who went into weight rooms 60 or 70 years ago were training for something.

It was serious.

We're talking about respecting your own time and respecting other people's time.

If you're a coach that's actually trying to help people and not trying to get clicks and not trying to baby people.

Now, again, most of my clientele is never going to compete in a beauty pageant with muscles or in a powerlifting competition, at least not seriously, or in the world's strongest man or Olympic weightlifting.

But they all want to look better.

And, you know, I just kept getting stronger.

I got a surprise invite to World's Strongest Man.

I was a second reserve.

A couple of guys got hurt.

And at the World's Strongest Man 2022, I thought it'd be one show and, you know, I'm done and move on with my life.

I ended up making the finals, which is pretty uncommon for a... rookie strongman at world's strongest man and then I went on a tear for for about three years where I was on 25 podiums in a row and at this point I've won 10 of the last 13 world championship events that we have so yeah I've been really fortunate and I think it's it's to my benefit that I didn't chase this to become the world's strongest man it wasn't a childhood dream it's just the the experience of getting stronger and that's how I've always approached it and I think that's why I've had a long-term success because I love the process and that the end result is, is a great cherry on top.

I love that you mentioned about it being like a good, um, like structure for fitness with strength, because I was a competitive power lifter, but like, even like being out of like a competitive scene of like totals or barbell lifting or whatever, like I still think strength training is like the perfect structure for anyone in fitness.

And this is actually something we talked about with Jim on a previous podcast, like old school lifters were where power lifters in the off season and bodybuilders in the on season, like, like strength training was just a normal thing.