Inside the strange world of strongman: 8,000 calories a day, skipping exercise and the embarrassing truth

First there is a guttural grunt. Then the sound of a barbell bouncing off the floor. Then, as sparks fly behind him and the crowd screams in amazement,a deafening roar of triumph.

Mexican Raul Flores just did something that no other person on earth has ever done. He broke the world record in deadlift, lifting a barbell weighing 511 kg. Or, to put it another way, he just raised the equivalent of a grand piano or a full-grown grizzly bear.

As Flores took off, showing off a quick leg that belied his bulk, another huge figure appeared at Birmingham’s Utility Arena, methodically walking across the floor as if he was stalking his prey. It was Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, known as Thor, the 6-foot-9, 32½-inch Icelandic giant who is the current Open Strength Champion and became world famous for his role as The Mountain in the HBO drama series Game of Thrones.

While Flores was still celebrating, Bjornsson… previous world record holder for deadlift (510 kg) – walked up to him and reached out to grab his rival, only to offer him a congratulatory hug with genuine warmth and love. It was strange to watch.

Welcome to the extraordinary world of strongman competition, where huge athletes achieve amazing physical results, but in an atmosphere of respect and camaraderie.

“Ultimately we are a niche sport,” explains Adam Bishop of England, a 37-year-old veteran of the strongman world. “It’s getting bigger and bigger and that’s fantastic, but we all appreciate what each of us has done to get where we are.

“We’re all fans of big lifts. I’ll root for the other guys even if it means they beat me in a competition because I want to see massive, massive lifts and see impossible things done. It’s always a very supportive space.”

The history of strongman competitions dates back thousands of years, with warriors attempting to intimidate their rivals and enemies by demonstrating their strength, endurance and determination, especially in Ancient Greece, Scandinavia and among the clans of Scotland.

“It was about who could lift the heaviest stone, and we still have that ideology,” Bishop says. Athletic two days before his appearance at Giants Live, the official Strongman World Tour. “It’s still about who can lift the heaviest objects and move them the fastest – we just don’t wear kilts yet!”

Tire lifts are another feature of strongman competitions (Giants Live).

Later, these feats migrated to circuses, but despite its glorious history, strongman only became an official sport in 1977, when the World’s Strongest Man tournament was first held.

Powerful athletes from all over the planet came to compete, and soon the show began to be broadcast around the world. It has made athletes like Bill Kazmaier of the US, Geoff Capes of the UK and Icelander Jon Pall Sigmarsson household names. pull trucks and lift huge rocks as fast as possible.

As a child, Bishop was a talented all-round sportsman, excelling at cricket and rugby, where he played professionally for London Saracens before becoming a strength and conditioning coach at Harlequins a few miles to the south-west. He also competed in skeleton bobsleigh in the same program as Olympic champion Lizzie Yarnold before taking up strongman, where he excelled:He was twice voted Britain’s Strongest Man and reached the final of the World’s Strongest Man competition three times.

Despite being considered one of the smallest athletes on the circuit, standing at just 6ft 3in and around 24in, Bishop is still considered one of the UK’s top strongmen with a deadlift record of 470kg.

But it doesn’t come easy. Bishop trains five times a week in sessions that can last anywhere from 90 minutes to two and a half hours, but finding a suitable location – especially for activities such as atlas stones (heavy spherical concrete or rubber balls that can weigh up to 200kg) and truck towing – can be challenging.

“It’s not something you can do in a regular gym,” he admits. “When I started, there were very few gyms with any kind of strength equipment. We now have dedicated strongman gyms, with some strongman kits like the yoke and some farmers in the corner.

“But these events are very specialized and you have to invest in yourself and build your collection of kits. I have a couple of satin stone kits. I have different tools that we’ve used over the years that I reproduce through a welder friend of mine who has them all custom made. It gets expensive.”

It helps when you have sponsors and Bishop is supported by truck manufacturers Iveco. “They let me come into the dealership and bring some trucks for training,” he adds.

To achieve such feats, Bishop follows a diet that consumes about 8,000 calories a day, divided into eight meals. When he’s not training or resting, he eats.

“I’ve been training for this competition and just passed the 25 stone mark this week,” he says. “Food is the hardest thing. This is a regular diet, just kind of oversized.

“I eat a lot of chicken, eggs, beef, tortillas, rice, potatoes – people think it would be easy to eat the same amount a day just by eating junk food, but it messes up digestion and causes inflammation. You must eat clean. This is the most expensive and most difficult part of the job.”

Diets may be clean, but are athletes?

For years there have been rumors that strong men use steroids to help their performances. Bjornsson admitted to using them in an interview with ESPN in 2019. “When you want to be the best, you do your best,” he said.

Mitchell Hooper, the reigning World’s Strongest Man champion, has also been open about his use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and competed at the inaugural Enhanced Games in Las Vegas earlier this year with Bjornsson in an attempt to break the deadlift world record. “The cost is that I’ll die younger than I would without it, because on a supraphysiological level I’m doing things that aren’t conducive to health,” he told the Men’s Health Strong Talk podcast in July. “The reality is I play with a little fire.”

This point was highlighted in 2014 when Mike Jenkins, a renowned strongman, died suddenly at the age of 32. His autopsy revealed that Jenkins had a significantly enlarged heart, and it was revealed that long-term use of anabolic steroids was a major factor in his death.

Hafpor Julius Bjornsson admitted to using steroids (Getty Images)

Although PEDs are officially banned at the World’s Strongest Man tournament, the competition has been criticized for its perceived lax testing regime. Bishop, for his part, appears relaxed as Athletic asks his opinion.

“Well, I say it’s a level playing field, but the fact is it’s an untested sport,” he replies. “So people can look at it any way they want.”

The packed crowd at Utility Arena also doesn’t seem to care whether what they witness passes drug tests.

They came from all over England and abroad to witness the Giants tour, which serves as a qualifying event for the World’s Strongest Man and begins with each athlete being introduced to the crowd as WWE wrestlers with their own entrance music.

Among the spectators was Lee Brockhouse, 48, who also competes in amateur strongman competitions with a personal best deadlift of 455kg. “They’re not just breaking records, they’re breaking the limits of what the human body can do,” he said.

Breaking the deadlift record proved this, although the feats did not end there. There was ‘Load and Push’, where athletes must run a relay race to lift various objects – a 120kg anvil from 10m, a 100kg tire from 15m and a 150kg bag from 20m – and place them in what is described as a wheelbarrow, but is actually a skip on wheels, and push it to the finish line, another 20m.

Participants push a “wheelbarrow” full of tires and other heavy objects (Giants Live).

Next was the Titan Toss, where competitors threw 10 sandbags, each weighing 30 pounds, over their heads and over a 12-foot bar from various distances, reaching 10th place at 12 meters.

“Ghanaian Gladiator” Evans Nana completed nine matches and celebrated by attempting to throw his jersey into the crowd, which failed unsuccessfully. Giants may challenge the limits of human strength, but seemingly defy the laws of physics.

Next up was a 95kg dumbbell press. Each participant had 60 seconds to perform as many one-arm presses as possible. Three athletes – Englishman Ben Glasscock, Nana and American Trey Mitchell – completed seven repetitions each.

The final event was Castle Stones. Participants had to lift them onto podiums at different heights as quickly as possible.

In the end, Bjornsson, who was nursing a knee injury, retained his title, although not everyone managed to survive unscathed. Both Canadian James Jeffers and Welsh crowd favorite Gavin Bilton appeared to suffer bicep injuries. In Jeffers’ case, his night ended in the second event.

It’s a tough business. Eddie Hall, probably Britain’s most famous strongman, won the title of World’s Strongest Man in 2017 and was the first to deadlift 500kg. This caused his nose, ears and tear ducts to bleed.

Bishop himself had to undergo surgery after tearing his biceps muscle from the bone twice. He also fractured his Achilles during a car ride where he carried a 950-pound (431 kg) car around a 20-meter track at the 2024 World’s Strongest Man tournament.

Despite a strong start, Bishop began to falter and was unable to lift one of the stones. After this, he announced his retirement. “The body has traveled too many miles,” he said. “He suffered quite a few injuries along the way.”

As he said his farewell to a standing ovation, his competitors emerged from behind the huge black curtain where they had rested, recovered and refueled between competitions to pay their respects as well.

This seemed to be the main theme of the evening and sports in general. Even though they are fierce rivals achieving incredible feats, at the heart of it all is a touching mutual respect.