Going into Maryland’s Strongest Man this year, I really didn’t know what to expect. Ethan Farkas, who beat me last year to win it, is now a HW pro so he is no longer allowed to compete in HW amateur competitions except for fun or as an exhibition. So while that theoretically improved my chances of doing well, I have had much more stress and much less time to train due to physical therapy school, which was definitely a detriment to my contest prep. And while the events were not particularly suited to my strengths as an athlete, my training for this competition did seem to demonstrate that I was making slow and steady progress in sucking less at the events, so another tally to both the good and bad columns. I had a great home cooked meal of smoked brisket, baked beans, and coleslaw the night before thanks to my girlfriend’s parents, with whom we stayed, but I was so stressed from the combo of school and impending competition that I got very little sleep that night, so I headed to the competition feeling like total dingleberry pudding. This is not usually a positive omen for competition success, but for me it seems like the worse I feel the morning of a competition, the better I do, which was pointed out to me by my friend Barry Perkins who came up to cheer on his athletes who were competing and all the guys and girls he knows (which is probably most of them).
So with what would have been a relatively bleak outlook on the day if I had allowed myself to consider such things, I went into this competition with the goals of performing to the best of my current abilities based on my present training numbers and minimizing stupid mistakes that would cost me crucial points in the field of 14 athletes in the combined heavyweight division. The events this year were max 18” deadlift, overhead press medley, yoke walk, car squat for reps, and atlas stone over bar for reps.
Max 18” Deadlift
When I tested this a few months back, it was total garbage so I prioritized it as my primary lift on deadlift day as well as some extra training on event days. Sadly, when I was trying to determine if I would be able to compete in America’s Strongest Man (which I was not), Maryland’s Strongest Man, both, or neither with my class schedule this semester I mixed up the rules in my head regarding the use of deadlift suits and I thought I was not allowed to use my suit for this event. It wasn’t until I was 3 weeks and my training partner Gregg Inocencio was over training some 18” rack pulls in my garage that he told me suits were allowed. Feeling like the world’s largest and dumbest ass, I went from a planned relaxing mobility and coaching day on a Sunday morning after training events the day before, to running inside to grab my suit and joining him in the training session. I trained in my suit only one other time the following week and between the two sessions, the heaviest I went was 725. I knew I would be good for 765, but beyond that was uncharted territory since I hadn’t used my suit to train for an 18” deadlift in 2 years and I am much better at it now than I was back then. I was going back and forth in my head between opening at 725 or 765. I knew 725 would go easily, but I had not technically done 765 before and after getting little sleep the night before I did not want to try and open with a PR and either miss (which would end the event for me) or hurt myself.
I played it safe and opened with 725, wearing my Metal Jack deadlift suit and using my elitefts orange stripe 2” wrist straps, which I got back in 2011 and despite trying a bunch of other different types of straps, I still think are the best ones I’ve ever used. Needless to say, 725 flew up. We were taking 40 and 50 lb jumps since the weight increased by half and whole plates, alternately, so next up was 765, which felt equally easy. The last of my 3 attempts was 815, which also went up without much trouble, and though I did get a little bit of the red and black tunnel vision on this one, I didn’t pass out. As I was successful on all three attempts, the athlete side of me believes that I opened too light and that it cost me points. The logical side of me though knows that even if I had opened lighter, I might have needed the 725 pull as a proper warm up for the subsequent 2 pulls, which could have led to injury, passing out, or just plain missing, all of which would have been more costly than the mistake I did make. My 815 deadlift on my third attempt was only good for 5th place out of 14 on this event. Thankfully I was deliberately not paying any attention to the scores because knowing I got 5th would have probably pissed me off since I believe I had at least 855 in me, if not 905. Both Brandon Fughett and Josh Colon actually did pull 905, Stephen Sessa was 3rd with 855, and Howard Battle pulled 815 as well, but on his second attempt whereas I did it on my third.
Overhead Press Medley
This event consisted of 1 clean and press with a 300 lb log, 1 clean and press with a 195 lb circus DB, and then as many reps as possible in the remaining time of Viking press with 3 plates per side (over 300 lbs in hand including the weight of the implement). I wasn’t worried about the log since 300 is a weight I can do comfortably on any day of the week. The circus DB was a potential sticky wicket though as 200 lbs is my all-time PR and doing a weight that is only 5 lbs less than that as the second press in a medley was not something I was ever really able to wrap my brain around as being logical and possible. To address this, I declined to consider failure as a likely option and instead focused on improving my circus DB with frequent training both alone and in conjunction with log and occasionally Viking press. The heaviest weight I hit on the DB in training for this comp was 185 and it was solo, not after a 300 lb log. Nonetheless, it flew up easily so I knew I was good for 195 alone, which led me to conclude I was also good for it after the log because really, why not? The Viking press was just a total black hole of nonsense that I really didn’t even worry about too much. I added in some push presses following circus DB, rigged up a Viking press simulator one day, and trained on the Viking press at The Colosseum one day, but honestly I my goal for this event was to get the first 2 implements and then to go “full potato” in the words of my training partner, Mike Inman, and see what happened when the dust settled. Unfortunately, there was no dust, as I forgot to mention that it had started to rain during warmups for the first event and the rain continued into the second event, making the handles of all the implements and the footing for overhead pressing slippery in a way that was definitely not conducive to overhead pressing. The workers at the comp kept towels over the handles of all 3 implements, which actually did help a lot to minimize actual accumulation of water on the crucial areas of the implements, but as we, the athletes, were soaking wet and chalk doesn’t work too well in wet conditions, it made everything that much more difficult, but everyone was operating under the same conditions.
I cleaned and pressed the log without issue, moved on to the circus DB and cleaned it into a very sub-par rack position on my shoulder so I had to bounce it around a little bit to get into what I sincerely hoped was a stable position from which to press most of my body weight up overhead with one arm. I dipped and drove and got the good call from the judge so I moved on to the Viking press. I don’t remember much of this, but from the video it looked surprisingly easy for the first couple reps. I am pretty sure I have never done this weight before on this Viking press, but my pressing has been improving a lot lately and I had programmed in some strict pressing to hopefully help me with this, which I guess it did as I ended up with 8 reps on it. This was good for 3rd place as both Howard Battle and Shawn Oliver each outdistanced me with thirteen reps apiece.
Yoke Walk
Still raining. This was the same yoke and the same weight and the same distance, 840 lb for 50 feet, that we have done for the last 3 years at Maryland’s Strongest Man. I did it in 11.34 sec in 2013 and 13.11 sec in 2014 and this year I wouldn’t have been surprised to be upwards of 15 sec since my training for yoke had been hit and miss. But everything had seemed to come together toward the end of training and yoke had been feeling a lot better, although with much lighter weights. I may or may not have told some people that if I finished it in 9 seconds I would crap in my hand and eat it, so there was that to consider as well. My turn came up and I picked it and headed down the course. I was a little slow on my pick, but this was in keeping with my plan of trying not to screw anything up and using a faster starting method had been yielding mixed results for me. I got a little squirrelly for a few steps in the middle, but got it back under control and accelerated through the finish line in a time of 11.93 sec, which I was pretty happy about, but which was again only good for 3rd place behind James Smith and Adam Somers.
Car Squat
This was the third time I have done a car squat event and as always, I was very thankful for Metal powerlifting gear from elitefts. This time I used my Jack briefs and Jack squat suit, which when all the way on, render me unable to walk except in the waddling manner of a penguin. As seen in the video, my girlfriend finds this phenomenon to be extremely amusing. I had trained for this at first with straight weight to get used to the suit again, then as the competition got closer on the car deadlift simulator, which I can now say feels very similar to three different car squat rigs I have used in competition. I wasn’t sure how this would go since I had not actually tried the contest weight on the rig before. My warmup consisted of 3 very difficult and shaky reps with the smart car we were using plus 450 lbs of plates. This was not a confidence booster since we had to do 90 more lbs for the actual event. But I know that sometimes the horrible feeling warmups are what I need to get ready to do something awesome and that was thankfully the case today with car squat. I ended up with 11 reps of the smart car plus 540 lbs of plate weight and while the last one may look easy in the video, all I remember is a haze of pain and max effort yelling that got worse and worse with each successive rep. My 11 reps here put me in a tie for 3rd place on the event with Adam Somers. We were both beat by Stephen Sessa who got 12 reps and Howard Battle who got 17 reps (and who also rocked the Metal Jack briefs).
If I had known my placings on these events, I would not have thought I was in a good position to make a podium finish (top 3) for the day. I was in 5th after the first event, 2nd after the second event, 2rd after the third event, and 2nd after the 4th event, so really I was doing very well overall through my consistency on each event, but I didn’t know this at the time. Even if I had, it would not have changed anything that I did because unless I am in first by a wide point margin I am going to give 100% on every single event and even then I’m still most likely going to have to put forth a significant effort to maintain that place. One thing that did help me though was that only 6 of the 14 athletes in the HW class went 5/5 on events without bombing anything. It always sucks horribly to bomb in competition, whether because of using different equipment than you are used to, a stupid mistake, or just really heavy weights, it almost always ruins your score (unless everyone does it, which does happen sometimes) and it is very difficult mentally to come back from and continue to perform to the maximum extent of your abilities. I know this from multiple experiences, all of which have sucked and every single one of which I could describe right now in detail. But back to the last event.
Atlas Stones
I was in second to Howard going into this event. Three was the number to beat when I was up in the rotation, and I felt like I should be good for it, but I hadn’t trained stones much in the last couple months because of medial epicondylitis and I hadn’t trained heavier stones at all. We had to load a 350 lb atlas stone over a 52 inch bar for as many reps as possible. The rain had finally stopped, but the ground was still wet and the footing was not dry. The judge started me and I went into action, one at a time. I got the first 3 without any trouble, but they were definitely slower and a little more difficult than I was used to from lack of training. I had told myself out loud before starting to take my time and do it right because missing a rep at the top is a lot of wasted time and energy. Despite this, I felt myself rushing on the 4th rep and right at the last possible moment when I thought it was going over the bar, it fell back down on my side for no rep. Dammit. Time was running out and I knew (or at least thought) I needed to get ahead of people if I was going to have any chance of placing. I corrected my errors from the previous try and successfully finished my 4th rep with only seconds to spare. Four reps here put me in 2nd place for the event with only Adam Somers beating me with 5 reps.
I was overall happy with my performance for the day. I had room for improvement on 4 of the 5 events (I don’t think I could have done any more on car squat), but only 2 of them were realistic instances where I would have earned more points. Despite this, I was thinking to myself that if those points I missed cost me placings, I would be mentally kicking myself for all of the time until my next competition. So when my name was not called for 3rd place, I was not really surprised, but I also figured that was the highest place I had the chance of finishing (remember, I didn’t know any of my placings or scores for the day). Adam Somers was third this year and Howard Battle was second. Both have improved significantly and I know they will continue to get better in the future. So when they did finally call my name as the winner of the heavyweight class and THE overall Maryland’s Strongest Man, I was shocked. This makes the 4th time I have won the competition, twice in the 231 lb class and twice in the combined heavyweight class. To make a great day even better, all three of my training partners had outstanding days as well. Gregg Inocencio placed 2nd in the 231 lb class, up a place from last year. Mike Collela placed 3rd in the novice division, smoking the 50 foot yoke course in blistering 6 seconds and only being beaten by two behemoths. And while Mike Inman did not place top 3 in the stacked 231 lb class, he hit three all-time PRs on yoke, car squat, and atlas stones in his first competition in the open division.
Maryland State Chairman, Jon Ward, did an absolutely amazing job of running the competition this year, just like he does every year. This year had the biggest turnout to date with 95 athletes competing in 5 events and even with a little bit of a late start, we were finished in under 6 hours including awards ceremony, which is outstanding. He and all the guys and girls he had helping him with judging, scoring, loading, spotting, setup, cleanup, and everything else were on point all day and made sure the athletes had a positive experience. He is seriously an amazing promoter and I will continue to support his competitions through competing or helping to judge, setup, load, etc. whenever I can because he is a positive influence on the sport and a hell of a nice guy on top of it. Thanks to elitefts.com for sponsoring me and for being the best damn company on earth when it comes to strength sports, strength and conditioning equipment, and strength and conditioning knowledge. There is no company out there doing it better. Thanks to the Colosseum Gym in Columbia, MD for hosting us for the third year in a row. It’s an awesome place to train and compete for strongman and all things strength sport related. Thank you to my amazing girlfriend, Michelle, and her family for letting us stay with them. Thanks to all my training partners for being crazy and dumb enough to train with me week after week and all my friends who came out to see me or the contest in general. Finally, thanks to that hundred plus athletes who showed up and gave it their all through some crappy weather conditions in an effort to be the strongest man or woman in Maryland. Without the athletes, the sport won’t grow so all of you deserve recognition for all your hard work.