Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 661 - Finding Gratitude At Rock Bottom ft. WSM Competitor Travis Ortmayer

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Travis Ortmayer is an American professional Strongman athlete from Cypress, Texas. He is nicknamed the Texas Stoneman due to his many world records in the Atlas Stone event. Today Travis shares his roller coaster like journey of finding strongman, losing his wife and his son, but remaining grateful and still pushes forward. Follow Travis on IG: https://www.instagram.com/travis_ortmayer/ Travis' website for coaching and more: https://www.texasstoneman.com/ Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Bubs Naturals: https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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Yeah, those littleHealth.com. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Yeah. Those little clicks that you feel like if you've ever like torn a carpet before or torn something like that before, it's that, but it's inside your body. It doesn't hurt all the time. Sometimes it might hurt, but like it's real slight, but you know you fucked yourself up. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great metaphor. I had a peg tear.

That was my first, I guess, real tear. It was like a piece of tape and a big rubber band snapping. Does that sound all right there? I think that's good, yeah. All right. Yeah, it just peeled off and then a snap. Like, oh, shit, that wasn't right. How did that happen?

Dumbbell incline bench. So I'm missing, you know, pretty much all of my upper pec. It tore off. So 30 degrees is the perfect spot. Not 45, not below, but 30. That was perfect because it ripped it right off. How heavy was it? 150-pound dumbbells.

I was going to do two sets of 10. Fuck! And this is the first thing. Just a little warm up. I was going to do two sets of 10 and it just didn't feel right. So I was like, ah, fuck it. You know, let's just do one set of 15, call it a day. Rep number 12.

Oh, if you would have stuck to your plan too, right? Yeah. So that was one of those hard lessons. You got hurt recently, you were just saying, after trying to come back after a long time, after a long break? Well, I've been hurt several times after coming back after a long break. But leading up to World's Strongest Man, last year I strained my hamstring. I was training in a way that had me teetering on the edge of

injury and being the best I've ever been and two weeks out I got a little hamstring pull at the competition at World's Strongest Man on the first event I tore it a little bit I picked the frame up a third time took a couple steps and I just felt on that last little step, snap. And on that same event, I tore a chunk of tendon in my ring finger on my left hand. Right when I picked the barrels up, I felt the snap. Where's that feel?

Is that in your wrist or in your forearm or in your actual finger you feel it? It's called a pulley tendon. So you feel it right there at the knuckle. And, you know, it's just a loud snap. And it's one of those aggravating injuries because it's not super painful, but it is, you know, it's a structural thing. It decreases your ability to hold on to something. So it's hard for you to, like, make a fist right now, yeah?

Now I'm okay. Okay. But, you know Now I'm okay. Okay. But, you know, that was the first event. So it's a barrel load and then we have to do a frame carry. Then I'm trying to carry the frame and my grip just keeps opening up. His fist, by the way, is like the size of a toaster. I know. So once I shook his hand, I was like, I don't want to look at that hand.

And then I saw it and I was like, fuck, it's huge. Don't hit anybody with that thing, okay? That's like one of the necessary things for Strongman. Everything's grip event. Yeah, you need some big old paws. How did this whole thing start for you? How did, because Strongman is, at all the different lifts and all the different things you can do, I think Strongman ends up being one of the least favorite

just because maybe people aren't exposed to it as much. How did you find strongman? You know, it's one of those things that kind of found me. But like you say, it's one of the sports that people are like, you know, I'm going to do almost anything else because it's a lot easier. It's too hard. It's fucking hard. But, you know,

I'll tell you how I got into Strongman. And I kind of want to give a little bit of background. You know, I got a fun story. It wasn't really fun for me in the moment, but I think a lot of people can benefit from it. So I'll just kind of go through it. You know, I started off as a kid getting picked on, basically. You know, I moved from, I lived in northern Nevada, southern California, moved to south Georgia when I was in sixth grade. So I was a fat kid from California. And the white kids hated me because I was from California. The black kids hated me because I was white. I'd never been exposed to any kind of racism that just did. That sucked. You know, it was, it was a shitty situation. Um, I got picked on all the time. I'd come home with gum in my hair, you know, crying to my mom and just hating it.

Maybe also not realizing that you're, I would imagine, you're already pretty much bigger than a lot of the kids. You know, I was always a slow and steady kind of growth. I never had a growth spurt where I was bigger than anybody else. I was never the strongest, even after years of lifting, middle school, high school, I was never the strongest. I just kept working, you know. So in sixth grade, I'd been bullied so bad that I could feel what I know now to be rage building up. And at the time, I didn't know what it was. I just knew that I

needed to do something. I had this pent up energy. So I decided I was going to get a weight bench. I wanted to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I wanted to be a superhero. So I saved up money, mowing lawns, and, you know, $10 here, $10 there. I saved up $55 and went to Walmart and bought a Vitamaster 1700, one of those little benches. But it was, you know, my pride and joy. I loved it. I guess my mom was proud of me. So

she bought the weights to go with it. Nice. But, uh, what neither of us knew was it didn't come with a barbell. So one afternoon I snuck in the kitchen, I took the broom out of the kitchen, sawed the end off and made that my barbell. And my mom came asking for it later on. Well, I don't know what you're talking about. What? That was met with a wooden spoon. But that was, you know, it was just how passionate I was about it, you know, that I was willing to go in and steal my mom's broom to make the whole thing happen. I started working out, didn't have any idea what I was doing. You know, I try to work out every day. And my dad gave me my first piece of lifting advice.

Says, well, son, you know, you got to let yourself heal between workouts. That was simple. You know, you don't think about that at 11 years old. But from there, you know, I collected pieces of equipment. I built up my little gym. It was in a little fish cleaning room on the side of the garage. It was a little screened-in porch. And I made that my gym.

What's a fish cleaning room? I don't think all households come with that. A fish and game room. The guy that my parents had bought the house from was an avid hunter. So it was just a screened-in porch with a big sink and a big counter. Got it. You know, not particularly clean. Right.

Had some remnants of whatever the hell they brought in there. But, you know, that was my sanctuary, man. I loved it. I was out there every day after school. And that continued. You know, well, the bullying continued as well but lifting continued through middle school high school I remember moving from South Georgia to north of Atlanta halfway through my eighth grade year and the first day there I'm at school this kid comes over he

pushes me against one of the trailers outside and says man you're looking at will's girl you better watch out i'm like who the hell is will who is this girl i just got here what the hell is this so yeah it's just more of the same and it was uh you know i was picked on at the last school i thought maybe it'd be different here no same shit and i was still you know, weaker. Not necessarily a weak kid, but definitely not the strongest. I remember kids talking about benching 205. That was a big deal.

And I'm sitting at like 130, 135, you know, so. Wow. Get through high school and then, you know, I'd go to school and then I'd just sit there and think about coming home, working out after school. That was it. Never broke a book open. Never did any of my projects, nothing for school. All I do, come home, hit my garage. I should thank my parents because they let me build a little weight room out of half of the garage.

You know, so that was really, really cool of them. And a funny, funny quick story about that. My dad sold the truck that he had to park in the driveway. That's why I got half of the garage. So he sold that. They bought a new car and decided they were going to move the weights out of the way, park both the cars in there. Well, this is so bad to admit, but I threw a tantrum. I went out, and I kicked the minivan, which was a Pontiac Transport.

Those things are indestructible. I remember the ad on TV. A kid hits it with a baseball bat, and it bounces off. So I kicked this thing, and it knocked me across the garage. It didn't even dent. It didn't even phase it. I went over to the Toyota Camry that they just bought and I kick it a little harder than I did the van. It just...

That'll leave a dent. Yeah, the whole side dents in. I was like, oh shit. Now I'm in trouble. Dude, I remember these vans oh yeah that's it that's it man you could roll that sucker it'd be fine it was it was tough man that's good so um i guess my parents decided they didn't want to deal with that they gave me my space back and they parked the van because it was kind of old at that point they They parked it in the garage. But that was the only victory I ever got growing up. It was

kind of a big deal to me. But I got my space. So I'd work out. I'd come home. I had my punching bag set up. I had my weights set out. Everything was perfectly placed, pristine. But that just carried on. I wanted to do bodybuilding at that point. Arnold Schwarzenegger was my hero. I wanted to look like the Punisher or Wolverine or one of those guys. That's what we grew up with. A lot of people have this problem with Barbie and the girls having that as their idol. Look at what the boys grew up with, He-Man and Punisher. So anyway, I wanted to be one of those guys. So I did bodybuilding, and I signed up for a couple bodybuilding shows in high school. Now, these were fundraisers for the football team.

I wasn't on the football team. What year was this, by the way, freshman year? Oh, so this was junior year, 1998. Okay. That's, yeah, 98. For those paying attention, that's a far back. We're going. I'm joking.

I'm ancient in the sport. You're absolutely right. But so 98, I did my first bodybuilding show. 99, I did my second. And I never podiumed at either of them. I was the only one on the stage that knew what a lat spread was. I was the only one who knew all the poses. I got first call-outs. I was the only one that had any idea what was going on, and I didn't place. I'm like, this is bullshit. So I realized the subjective nature of bodybuilding, and I thought,

I guess this isn't for me. You know, let's find something else. Well, halfway through my senior year, my parents had moved to Houston. You know, I stayed in Atlanta and finished my senior year with a friend and his family. The day I graduated, my mom packed me in the car. We started driving home. So no after school, no graduation party for me. But Houston provided some opportunity. I started going to, you know, gyms rather than working out in the garage. So I'd meet other people interested. And I ran into a guy named Marshall White. Now you might remember that name from, you know, the early 2000s. 2009,

Marshall White actually made it to World's Strongest Man. So we were both there. But we started working out in the gym together. It was me, him, and my father. And Marshall was all into powerlifting, talked me into doing a powerlifting show with him. Nice. It seemed like it would be an awesome idea, but we paid all this money to go stay in a hotel and sign up and bombed out on squats.

Oh, shit. I had no idea what we were doing, man. You know, we paid for all this equipment. We got a squat suit. We had one squat suit and one bench shirt that we were sharing. And I was the lighter group, so I got to at least wear them first. And why that's important is because we didn't realize that you couldn't wear boxers. So we had to go commando. Oh, underneath the, oh, wow. Underneath the squat suit, that'd be some serious chafing going on. Well, thankfully it was just a Z suit. It was

one of those pretty stretchy ones. But yeah, so anyway, powerlifting was kind of out. Bodybuilding was kind of out. And at this time I was working full-time at Papacito's restaurant, waiting tables. I was going to school full-time. And at this point, I was doing really well in school. I'd actually kind of hit my stride. College was better. I had academic awards and honors credits. Teachers liked me for some reason.

I don't know. So I remember thinking, you know, maybe I'll just put school or put weightlifting on the back burner, focus on school, make some money, get out of college. And I'll just, instead of building my entire schedule around weight training, because, you know, I wouldn't work on Saturdays because Saturday was squat day. That's just how it was. So I started thinking maybe I'll just fit my training in wherever I can. And it's like the universe came together and was like, okay, I'm going to throw something new at you. Now, this is 2002 when I was thinking this. And Marshall came to me one day.

He says, I'm going to try a strongman contest. This is Texas' strongest man. I remember looking at him, and I'm thinking, what? Like those guys on TV? What are you talking about? Are you crazy? We'll never be that strong. Nevertheless, he signed up, and I was his training partner,

so I was going to go with him and help him out. And I remember the whole way there, he kept saying, I just, you know, I don't want to finish last. I don't care what happens. I just don't want to finish last. I'm like, you got to get that out of your mind, man. You'll be all right. So we get to Denison, Texas, six hours straight north of Houston, more or less.

It's on the Oklahoma border. Now, it's August 2nd. It's hotter than hell. But the promoter, while Marshall's getting signed in, the promoter looks over at me and he says, hey man, you know, you're here. Why don't you sign up? And now looking back, I realize just wanted my 50 bucks, but I thought, you know, I'm here. Let's give it a shot. What the hell? And that's when Marshall looked up at me. He finished signing in. He looks over.

He goes, man, I'm glad you signed up because at least now I know I won't take last. That's fucked. I didn't know I had a competitive bone in my body until that moment. Like, you're going to die. So the next day we start competing, and it was the most fun I've ever had in my entire life. I mean, it changed me to my core. I remember every night for the next six months

dreaming about that first contest. I'd wake up, I'd feel the farmer's handles in my hands, or I'd feel the stones, or I could smell the tacky. I mean, it just, I knew once I did that contest, this is where I was going. I said, world's strongest man is mine. That's it. And instead of putting weightlifting on the back burner, all of a sudden I quit my job. School was starting to suffer.

My focus had changed. But that was, you know, 2002 is August. Two years later, I won America's Stronger, or Amateur America's Strongest Man, got my pro card and started competing, traveling around the world, went to World's Strongest Man. In 2005, it wasn't World's Strongest Man, it was IFSA and World's Strongest Man in 2005. It wasn't World's Strongest Man. It was IFSA and World's Strongest Man had split. So there was two world championships. I went with IFSA because that's where all the top athletes were at the time. So 05, 06, and 07, I competed there.

And then in 2009, Marshall made it to World's Strongest Man. So we competed again together. And, yeah, that's kind of the origin story of how i got into strongman damn that's incredible a lot of things uh transpired and like were you pretty naturally good at it you feel like right off the bat i mean it's not like you have a lifting background already at this point because you've been messing around with some bodybuilding and some power lifting. So that was probably really helpful. Yeah.

You feel like you kind of gravitated towards it like as soon as you, even before you did the competition, like just in training, did it start to feel right to you and click pretty good or were you getting your ass kicked by it? So the only training we did going into that first show was tire flip because Marshall had found one in a construction site. Yeah, nobody had shit back then. Nobody had anything, gyms especially. It seemed to work better for me because I had more of an athletic build.

I was 227 pounds in my first strongman contest, six foot three or four. Like I said, I grew slow and steady. I was like 23 when I stopped growing. So I think I was about six foot three at that point. Um, but yeah, I just, I had more athleticism, some strength, and it definitely suited me more than powerlifting. Um, it was always really good at deadlifts, but when it came to bench and squat, not so much.

but yeah you know it i think what i liked most was just the the brutal simplicity you're lifting a rock you know what i mean or you're flipping some heavy piece of equipment that you can almost imagine that five or ten thousand years ago two guys betting each other or daring each other i bet you i could lift that rock over there i bet you i could flip this tree over whatever you know so that just that appealed to me it helped build a lot of confidence to the point where you maybe found yourself standing up for yourself a little bit more in day-to-day life rather than being like bullied or um you know just just maybe not maybe just uh biting your tongue a lot? Did you find that you were able to voice your opinion more and stand up for yourself a little

bit more once you got good at something? I think I'd already learned that. You know, as high school progressed, I got bigger and stronger. And nobody, at least people weren't messing with me by my second, my junior and senior year. But I think waiting tables probably taught me to speak up for myself. Because if you don't speak up for yourself, you get run over. And, you know, the other guys take advantage of you.

And I think it was about a year in, I realized I hate this job. And I hate these people. And, you know, just shitty tables. You just got to speak up but you got to find a way to do it that's that it's within the confines of of work environment so i think that was probably what taught me the most yeah as far as that went and while you like after you got your pro card for strongman what were you doing like while you were working and competing in pro strongman events was strong were you making good money being an athlete or did you have to do something

else too? I competed enough and, uh, did well enough that it became my full time job. Nice. Yeah. Waiting tables was my last real job. Okay.

And that was 2000, 2002. Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, sure. After that I did do some window washing, but it was self-employed, you know, so I was just making side money.

And then it was just competing and then training, teaching other people to do what I do. Was it easier then to get sponsorship or harder? Oh, no. I'm terrible about approaching people for sponsorship. I can't sell myself, you know. Some people are great at selling themselves, and, I mean, it's pretty obvious nowadays Some people are great at selling themselves. And I mean, it's pretty obvious nowadays who's really good at selling themselves. That's something I've always struggled with. With the advent of social media, it makes it a lot easier for me.

Because being a pro strongman, you don't really get, you don't get paid much. You do get paid if you win and things like that, right? Yeah. But the sponsorship money is where you'd get most, right? Yeah. I mean, well, for me, I do coaching as well. Oh, there you go. So I make a living off coaching, some off sponsorships, and then some off prize money. But back in 2005, 2006, I was competing 16 to 18 times a year, and I was on the podium almost every time, 90% of the time. 18 times a year.

And I was on the podium almost every time, 90% of the time. And that stayed true until about 2011, I think. And I think at that point I was starting to get burned out, just competing, getting broken too many times. I don't know if you've seen the finals of World's Strongest Man 2010, just to play off the injury part of this, I broke my ankle halfway through the final and finished. I was in first place at the time.

We had three more events the next day and held on for fifth. But that was some of the most pain I'd ever been in to that point. You broke it on a press, right? Yeah, log press. And then you kept competing through that? Yeah. Yeah, that was the third event the first day. That was the last event the first day.

And just got my foot caught in a gap. When the log came back down, I couldn't get it under me correctly, and it just snapped. It actually tore the peroneus muscle off the side of my foot, and it took a chunk of the with it so it's like i think i call it an evulsion fracture yeah that one sucked the first event the next day was an 800 pound frame carry i still beat derrick poundstone on that event there you go a lot of the weights you guys use are just ridiculous how does somebody get big we talk a lot in this show about um um, you know, getting leaner and we'll seldom talk about like, you know, getting, well, you talk quite a bit about getting stronger. We talk a little bit about, you know, getting muscle and holding on to muscle, but how

does somebody get big? Like, I'm sure there's some people listening. Uh, I know we have some power lifting fans and some strong man fans. They want to like, like, cause you look really athletic. You look great. Like you don great like you don't you don't look like i mean sometimes i appreciate some people build themselves up to be like big and fat like i was like in the round and rounds like in the prime of my powerlifting career but how does somebody like build himself up to be big you said you were a kind of a chubby kid what are some of the things you've been doing over the years to kind of ensure that there's so many things um you know early on i wanted to get big so i'd eat peanut butter and bread sandwiches sit there

and watch world's strongest man reruns and just go through half a loaf you know the calories sounds like a party why not why no jelly i think it was just... Peanut butter with no jelly. It took too much time. I just wanted to hit the calories. Just peanut butter and bread and I think whole milk. Then it graduated to... In this picture, you're sitting there like it's all dry. You got to keep shoving down more and more milk.

Milk is good. The milk and the peanut butter. Yeah, it forces you to drink more milk. Jesus. Who's that handsome devil? So that picture was taken four years ago, I think. Shoulders are angry. It was a little leaner there than I am now.

I think it was just good lighting. But yeah, this is actually when I was working with John Anderson on a diet. And he's a mentor of mine, really good friend. I know he's been on this show a few times. But if you know anything about John, carbs are not on the menu. And so that's how that was. Lots of fats, lots of veggies, and of course lots of protein. But my favorite cheat meal is a frozen pizza, like a frichetta, with a steak cut up on top.

And then you finish that with a pint of Haagen-Dazs. You're fucking like 4,000 calories. If you want to get big, you got to eat big. That is part of it. That actually sounds really good. That's actually not too far off from like John Anderson's like protocol that he was doing forever where he had a pound of bacon i think every night and then a pint of ice cream yeah and he's like trying to like it was funny because he's telling me about it but he's trying to like sell it to me as if it's some sort of scientific

thing he's like all the fat from the bacon it slows down the sugar from the ice cream. He's like, works pretty good. I'm like, okay. And he's all like sweating, and veins are popping out of everywhere. I'm like, all right, John, looks like it's working great for you. He's a character, man. We spend a lot of time together on the road. He's the most ridiculous person I think I ever met in my life. You know, I remember listening to some of your shows, and you always have a poop story at the end.

Always. I've got one with John that I might as well just share while we're on the topic. All right. We were in, I believe it was like Tulsa, Oklahoma or something. And we're rooming together at this contest. And for whatever reason, John didn't want the maid coming in. So we were there for like three or four days. And, you know, the Ray-Bans, back when it was all Ray-Ban, the room just stunk.

It got ripe. Oh, yeah, because of neoprene sleeves. Neoprene sleeves and all that stuff, yeah. But after a couple days, we were running low on toilet paper, you know. And I remember coming back to the room and uh right as i walk in i'm about to go take a shower and john shouts from the bed he goes hey buddy don't use any of those towels out of the sink oh we're out of toilet paper Oh, no. That's fucking disgusting.

That's fucking disgusting. That's what you get with John, though. And some, I don't know how he does it, but he pulls it off. You're not mad at him. It's like he just has this way about him. It's like, that's fine. He's just so open all the time. It just doesn't matter.

I think that's what it is. He just owns his disgusting nature. What else do you do to get big? Peanut butter, milk. We know about like PEDs and stuff. We talk about that shit all the time. We don't need to get into that one. But just eating a lot of food and kind of making a commitment, right? Consistency.

Yeah. I mean, you've got a lot of guys who say, well, but I eat all the time. And then you go through what they're actually eating. And you're like, you're only 3,000 calories, man. I mean, you need to bump those rookie numbers. You need to bump those numbers up. Yeah. You know, 5,000, 6,000.

And then depending, if you're over 300, 350 pounds, you're going to need 7,000 or 8,000. It's a full-time job just to eat for a strongman. I have a question, though. Okay, so this is a question I have. As far as, like, strongmen like you are concerned that are on the main circuit right um yeah you got to eat to get big but there are some big people and then there are guys like you because you know you said that you it took you a while right but then shaking your hand there's something different about you there's something different about all shaw thor eddie yeah handshakes like

you you can you can tell that frame is different like mark you were big you are big in your hand but sizable but if you put your fist next to his can we just do that on camera real quick you see that there's not like this shit ain't normal right so i'm just curious on that circuit are all the guys like just like also just gargantuan individuals, everything-wise? Yeah, yeah. I mean, let's put it this way. World's Strongest Man this year, or last year, we had a group picture, front row and a back row. For the first time in my life, I was one of the short guys that had to sit down in front.

I'm 6'4". That's the size of these monsters. I was one of the little guys. That doesn't happen very often. But it's not a huge disadvantage because sometimes we see the guys that aren't as tall do

well, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, you have Alexey Novikov who won 2020's 300 pounds, 6'2", maybe. He's just an athlete, a hell of an athlete. And he's got really smart training, and he knows how to make or get the most out of his body. There's two main things that are super fascinating about this sport. I guess maybe three main things.

The amount of weight you guys use is just like, it's so extreme, it's ridiculous. It's kind of stupid sometimes. Sometimes like a yoke walk is like, what, 1,400 pounds, 1,600 pounds, right? Yeah. I can't even figure that one out because we have a yoke in the gym, and I put a plate on each side, and that felt pretty good. I felt well accomplished moving that thing around. So you guys doing those weights, it's really fascinating.

You got the extreme weights. You got the extreme like body types like he's mentioning. Like there's literal like giants in there. Yeah. And then the third thing is the work capacity of some of you guys. Like watching some of you dudes do like the stone loading stuff. And it's like 49 seconds that it took to load, you know, this stone, this stone. I forget all the different weights, but it's like 49 seconds that it took to load you know this stone this stone i forget all the different weights but it's it's like remarkable you're like what the how how could someone that

big move that fast like what the fuck or breathe and recover afterwards well the i think personally one of the worst events is a really really grueling truck pull. Or maybe even that Conan's wheel that they've got. Because you're doing a solid 60 to 75 seconds all out intensity. That's like my favorite scene. He did not care anymore. And he's like walking with the Conan wheel. Exactly. And I mean, you kind of have to adopt that mentality to be able to do it.

Remember that? You guys ever see that from Conan the Barbarian? It's been a long time. Oh, it's amazing. It's a shot of a young boy, and he's walking around with this Conan wheel, as they call it now, from the movie. And I think it's, what, for water or something? Like it's water well or something?

Yeah, or they're grinding something up. I'm not exactly sure. Yeah, and he keeps walking around in this circle, and eventually the boy turns into Arnold, and he's all big and jacked. The Conan wheel. I also want to know this then because you would think looking at strong men that obviously want to be as big and as strong as possible

but when you look at CrossFit and there seems to be a body type that wins all the CrossFit games, 5'8", 180 pounds, that's who's going to win. You're not going to see a 6'3 guy win CrossFit. But in strong man, you said last world's strongest man, 6'2, 300. That guy won? Yeah. How is it that that happens?

You bring up a good point because you had guys like Thor, 6'9, 440. Shaw, who's 6'8, similar weight. And then you've got the guys like me and Novikov who are low threes. And I think it just comes down to just neural capacity. How many muscle fibers can your brain turn on at one time? And then how long can you sustain that? I think a lot of it comes from brain power.

And, you know, the guys who are really athletic, who have either worked at it their whole lives or were born with it. You know, for me, I worked at it my whole life. So I had this ability to tap into resources that I think a lot of other guys didn't have the ability to do. Part of what makes that possible is the rage that I had. I'd just tap in, like, think about getting gum in my hair. Kill this son of a bitch. And whatever's in front of me became that son of a bitch, you know. So, I mean, when it came to a contest,

I'd probably get 20% more out of my body than I did in training. Used to always drive guys. Kevin Nee, he would get so mad at me. He's like, 70-pound deadlift PR in competition. He'd just sit there and kind of walk around like, who does that? You know, but that's how I worked. I think guys like Novikov and a lot of the other ones, they can do that same thing. They get a lot out of their body on game day.

That competition magic we used to call it. Yeah, gamers. There's like something to it. You know, that was something for me that I had to work on a lot. I had to do a lot of singles. I had to train a very specific way to like learn to be explosive like i was okay explosively otherwise but i really for me i felt like i had to really ingrain it i think you know we all like to think that we uh like work harder than the next guy and then our

circumstances are so different but just being like brutally honest like i don't think i had i definitely had a natural propensity to be pretty strong because I was strong. As soon as I lifted weights, I was stronger than my friends. So that was pretty clear. But what you're talking about, that kind of neural drive type of thing, like the thing that like Jeremy Avila or some of these guys have, they just like, they could, they could talk to us and say, yeah, man, I'm, I have, I'm way out of, I'm messed up. I tore my hamstring two weeks ago. And then three weeks later, they're pulling 700 again for a couple reps. I don't feel that I've ever, and maybe I'm just missing it or something,

not paying attention to what I've been able to do or something. I don't think I've ever had, like, whatever that thing is. I don't think I've ever been able to channel it in. Man, quite the way some of these guys can. It's really, really incredible. I think some of it comes back to evolution. You know, if you think about a group, a tribe, you had different members that were good at different things.

You had the workhorses who could just take the punishment, keep doing whatever it was. I would be able to handle that. I could do that. Yeah, yeah. And then you had the guys who, you know, in the critical moment of a hunt would come through because they somehow drew upon this magic power to be 20% better than they ever were. And it just, the whole group worked. So I think you got that whole, that's still going today. Right.

Society has evolved a lot in the last 10,000 years, but our bodies haven't. They're pretty much the same machinery, same hardware. I think it just falls back to that mostly. Was there anything in your training that you felt was unique or different or something you picked up along the way to help you channel some of that? Because we've seen a lot of guys, they are crushing weights i mean we call used to call them in football practice all americans the uh the players that like it's like look asshole we know that you know the plays are on the same fucking team so the linebacker lines

up right in the hole or the safety gets an interception like you know all of our plays we get it you don't need to do that and then the game then the game comes and they fucking suck and they get they get their ass kicked how was there anything in your training that you felt that kind of prepped you for that were you like running the events through your head when you were training or anything of that nature i you know i think it's a variety of factors and that's a great question to be honest um if you can harness the answer to that question, that's magic. But I think it's multifaceted in that, yes, there were things in my training that really helped. First and foremost, I was training with three other World's Strongest Man competitors and two who were alternates. We had a savage training group. And on top of that, we had my father who was just

this mouth that talks so much shit. And he was, you know, in his early to mid 60s and doing these incredible weights for that, his age and his size. And you got him into strongman, not the other way around, right? I did. Yeah. I'd always had a passion for lifting. And when I was about 18, I think I got him to go to the gym with me wow and then two years after that was when i got into strongman and i'm like yo pops we got to do this and he thought the same way i did he's like what are you crazy and then he goes on to win six national championships and one world title yeah which he loves to hold over my head all the time how many national championships you got it's still ain't

over for you though you're still in the hunt that's why i'm still going you gotta tell them hey asshole i'm still in this yeah so you know i had a great great training group um the conditions were pretty savage we were in houston we were outside next to a metal storage unit um it used to be next to a lot full of trees. And then a year after we started training there, they shred every damn tree over there and built a steakhouse, which I kind of thought was funny because here we are on the weekends training. And, you know, after an event, we kind of roll over to the ditch

and start throwing up. And you've got people over there trying to eat, watching this. Imagine the person at some of these big-time restaurants, they survey the area. They're like, let's put a steakhouse right there. I see all these huge people over there. Yeah, exactly. Thought it was a quality plan, but not with you guys throwing up all the time.

Explain to us the shed, because that is like, it seems like every strongman a couple years back they didn't have a home you know you guys were vagabonds like living wherever you could and having your shit set up wherever you could it was a it's like an ordeal to try to get strongman equipment out of a storage shed you could totally fuck yourself up and totally get hurt yeah it was uh it was like tetris every time we had a 10 by 20 foot storage shed you could totally fuck yourself up and totally get hurt yeah it was uh it was like tetris every time we had a 10 by 20 foot storage shed i had all my stones platforms you know conan's wheel tires everything in there and it took a minimum of two guys to get everything out and by the time you got everything out you were warmed up about an an hour? Yeah, a good 20 minutes. Okay. I mean, two guys, maybe a little bit more, depending on which equipment we wanted to

get to. If we wanted to do stones, we have to get everything out so that we could free up the area. But one of the good things about that, and probably one of the reasons I was really good at stones, is you had to put the stones away. You had to load them. Otherwise, we couldn't get all the equipment in. Yeah.

So no one was going home until that last stone was in. Like, literally. That's fucked. Everyone's all banged up after training. Exactly. And, you know, a 400-pound rock is always a 400-pound rock. You can't break it down. God damn.

Some untraditional ways of, like, having equipment, too. Can you talk about that a little bit like i know some people would like literally throw weights inside the stones so that your training would be weird like i've heard of people throwing 25 pound plates inside of this these cement stones that you got so that like one side's got 25 extra pounds on it and you're trying to pick it up and it's i don't know if you guys mess with that, but I know some people did. We had a stone. It was a 250-pound stone that Josh Thigpen made, and he had a 25 in there. I don't think it was intentional to make it off-balanced.

I think it's just how it's settled. It's so dangerous. You think you got it. You go to pick it up, and it just goes off and rolls all to one side. Oh, my God, my back. But, you know, back then, and this is like 2003 was when we got the storage unit. We trained there for 10 years. But to get that equipment, I had to drive all over the place.

Like my stones came from that contest, the first contest that I did. The guy, the promoter's grandfather is the one who made the stones. So I had to drive six hours one way and then drive back with 1,200 pounds of rock in the back of my truck. It was a tough trip, but you had to be committed. I was committed, so that wasn't a bad

trip. That's how we got our equipment. Then you try to find a place to put it. No gym wants you around. Most storage units were saying, hell no. Find someone that can weld shit, right? And then, yes, that's the next thing. You pray that one of the guys who says, hey, you know, I'd like to come train with you is a welder by trade.

Because then you're like, yeah, yeah, come on in. Please be friends. Stay. We need this and this and this made. No, it's really crazy like with powerlifting finding a good gym for powerlifting like let's say a gym that has a lot of powerlifters that's somewhat of a difficulty but you'll find something right there's going to be a gym that has platforms you know squat racks all that shit but strongman seems to be like you have to actually really like that

sport because it seems like it's going to be a headache to find people to train with and if you train you're probably not training by yourself you have to find a group that trains at the same time and a schedule it seems like work it's it's tough it's getting a lot easier nowadays yeah there are a lot of gyms that at least have a yoke and some farmers and maybe a log but uh you're still, if you're wanting to get the most out of it, it's best to train with a bunch of people because you can't really tell how fast you're going, you know, with farmers or a yoke or whatever. You can video, but it's really hard to tell,

and it's hard to get motivated to do that kind of work when you're by yourself. And Zydrunas, I got to hand it to him. Zydrunas Savitskis from Lithuania, he trains by himself, and he's done so pretty much his whole career. I don't know how he does it. Is he the greatest of all time? I think so, yes. I think so.

Most strong men, when you ask them that flat out, they'll say, yeah, no doubt. He's done like 300, 350 contests. He's won over 250 of them what yeah i don't think i knew that eight eight world titles right at the arnold right eight at the arnold four world strongest man two with ifsa and you know countless other victories just like 12 time lithuania strongest man so it was so big it was so big in his prime. Just massive. How big was he? How big was he?

Well, he was bigger than everybody else in his prime until Shaw and Halfthorpe and Eddie Hall came in. He wasn't a giant. He wasn't a giant like everybody else, but when the competitions came around,

he would just get so, he was like Eddie Hall in his prime big. He was fucking massive. Remember how to spell Z-A-D-R-U-N-A-S? Big Z. Big Z, you can try.

He would also, he also did something I thought was really interesting. His whole career, at least the latter part of his career, I remember, he would always lose weight after all his competitions, and I took a cue from that. That was important for me. I was like, man, there's no reason for me to walk around this unhealthy when I'm not competing. Yeah, look at that guy.

Yeah, you could tell when he was in shape you could see it in his face yeah his face was real his face was it would just have like muscles in his forehead that were pulsing you could see it i think this one's his world record of 501 or 502 log i don't know if anyone's still done like no one's still done that right or uh one guy beat it 230 kilos nice iron bb a couple of months ago but it took i think that was like 20 60 his stomach would get really really big but he was he used that to his advantage yeah it was like a lever right yeah just a shelf put a log on top make it clean easy uh but yeah he's just so consistent for so long and And this is true with Brian Shaw.

And I don't mean to say this in a way that seems negative, but it's like the more boring a guy's life is, the better he is for the longer. That makes sense, though. Yeah. I mean. Less distractions. I've told this before on this show, but when I met John Cena, he was getting ready for a bodybuilding show.

And I remember he ate one meal a day. I can't remember what it was like tuna or something or chicken breasts. And he had like two or three protein shakes every day. And I was just like, it, I mean, he and I were moving fitness equipment at the time. We had this, these like lowly jobs, you know? And, uh, I just remember thinking to myself, like that guy is going to be able to turn himself into whatever the fuck he wants. Cause did that for six weeks boring ass diet of protein shakes and chicken breast that's a fair point right yeah it takes that kind of discipline and you know to be that consistent over that long of a time because Zydrunas has been consistent since 2002. Mariusz Pudzianowski has won the most World's Strongest Man competitions, right?

For World's Strongest Man, yeah. He's got five. It's so interesting how just the different body types, because Pudzianowski, he doesn't have a power belly. He looks lean as shit. He looks like a bodybuilder. He was wild. Mariusz is just naturally pretty lean. I met his father.

His father has that same lean shape to him. He didn't have the musculature, but he's very lean. You could see his veins in his forearms. It's easy for Marius to stay lean, but he's also, I mean, that dude's a machine too. Disciplined. He was really, really disciplined. Who's the person that you trained with that's kind of the craziest, where they've done stuff where you're like, I ain't participating in that?

Or you like that kind of part. I am that kind of guy. You're like rolling your sleeves up. You're like, this is perfect. I love it. I know John's like that. John would do wild shit, like tons and tons of reps and tons of sets. He would do reps upon reps

upon reps. I trained with him a couple times and I remember just watching. I think it was a block clean and press. It was like 230, 240. He's going to do a set of like four. Three or four. He gets through three, gets through four, drops.

It says again. Does another one. Again. Does another one. Again. Does another one. Again. He does like 14 or 15 reps with it. Damn. Just gets into a groove and just keeps going. I mean, he's gasping for air. Lost himself somewhere in there.

Yeah. I mean, but that's that zone, you know. You find that zone. That's killer right there. That's where you want to be. So he'd just milk it for everything it was worth. You mentioned how, like uh getting ready for 2021 how you were training on like the edge of injury yeah before the contest because like you were at

you're actually stronger than you were in the past and you were you were towing that line do you think that that's necessary because like you obviously know training really really well you know how much you need in terms of recovery. You know where that edge is. But do you think that anything could have been done in a safer way? Do you think so? Absolutely. So 2021 was a 10-year gap for World's Strongest Man for me. I competed in 2011, and then I went through a whole slew of shit and worked my way back up to World's Strongest Mans for me. I competed in 2011, and then I went through a whole slew of shit

and worked my way back up to World's Strongest Man 2021. I tried to cram that 10 years into the two months that I had notice. Ten years into two months of training. Any warm-up competitions? I'd competed. Yeah, I'd been competing since 2017. The end of 2017, it was a five-year gap between competitions where I kind of fell into a black hole. And I competed several times. I went to the Champions League finals in 2018, won a few shows. won a few shows you know so i i had some practice getting back into it but you know when you get that call for world's strongest man it's just kind of an overwhelming experience you just 100

full speed ahead yeah and uh i'd hit up poundstone to help me with the training and poundstone had me doing what he did when he was in his prime. And I just couldn't quite recover from that. So those are the whiskey barrels. That's when I snapped my finger on and then had to do this frame. And right now, how's your hamstring? Is your hamstring already gone yet? No, no.

So I could feel that deep, deep in there was something still there from the strain. And I pick it up, I walk. After the second drop, I should have just left it. But you got your blood up. Everybody's screaming at you. So I pick it up one more time, take a step, and then feel that little squishy tear deep in the muscle. It was there. That's where the left hand kind of gave way. Yeah, a lot of this stuff is just crazy uh dangerous you said um you were telling me earlier and i think you just mentioned it now you you went to some really

tough times what what uh kind of happened where you were gone from the sport for a while yeah so fun story um so 2010 we mentioned earlier that i broke my ankle um halfway through the finals world's strongest man that injury kind of plagued me for like the next year year and a half because my next contest after that was the arnold it's about five and a half months later but i went back to training way too soon. I was fighting through, excuse me. I was fighting through that injury, just holding me back, you know, considerably, um, went ahead and pushed anyway, you know, and during that time, this is actually pre world's strongest man. I had gone to a doctor, I'd had an invitation from a friend of mine to go see a pain management

specialist. And I say specialist, it's more like a doc in a box, pain management clinic. pain management clinic. And I went because I was going to get some painkillers and really just use them for traveling. And I remember on my way there, this little voice in the back of my head says, bad idea. And it's just so little, so subtle, so quiet. I was like, huh, that was weird. First time I've ever heard my intuition scream at me like that.

Can I ask what kind of painkillers you're talking about? Like how strong are they? It started out 10 milligram Norco, hydrocodone, along with Soma, which increased the effectiveness. It was a muscle relaxer slash I think it was originally an antipsychotic. Have you ever taken anything like that before? I took a Norco after a surgery once and I was like, I'm not taking this shit again because it knocked me the fuck out. Yeah, it gives me nightmares and shit. I'm kind of fortunate that I've had some bad experiences with them.

So luckily for myself, I never got too caught up in it. That's very fortunate because right away I was like, oh, fuck, I feel better. I'm not so sore. I can train a little harder and then relax at night. And, you know, after two or three weeks, I think I started, I wanted to put them away. I didn't want to take them. And I noticed that I didn't feel very good. If I did, I didn't know what was going on.

I was clueless. It's wild. It doesn't take very long, three to five days. Yeah. It caught me by surprise. And I just kept going. And the next month I went and got more. And the next month I got more.

And at that point, your tolerance goes up. So you start taking more. Right before the contest at World's Strongest Man 2010, I was up to eight Norco and four or five Soma at a time. Not a day, but at a time. You're only supposed to take like three or four a day. Shit. So, yeah, I had gone a little overboard. And what was really shitty but funny is after I broke my ankle, I'd already taken most of what I brought with me to South Africa.

So I really didn't have many painkillers when I really needed them. And, you know, and there were so many injuries that year that the doctors had already given away most of the painkillers. So that was fun. But, you know, I kind of fell into using them a lot more as a crutch to get through training because my ankle was killing me and my body was pretty it was pretty beat up at that point at that you know I I'd competed as a professional from 2005 all the way up to that point and I was doing 15 to 18 shows a year um which is way more than any other American because it's a lot of travel because most of them were overseas.

It's crazy, but 15 to 18 shows, that's crazy because that's a full-on competition, right? That's more than a competition. You do sometimes two competitions, maybe three in certain months. I had several times where I'd do four in a row. I actually looked at my training journal just last night, and I found the stint where I did a contest at the beginning of April.

Three weeks later, I did five in a row, one in America, one overseas, one in America, one overseas, then back in Connecticut. Three weeks later, I did one in Norway. Three weeks after that was Fortissimus, which is the hardest contest of all time. So that was like a two and a half month stint of my competition schedule. So I was, I mean, I'm not saying it's smart. I just, I loved it. I love competing. I love traveling. So I just went for it, man. Full bore just, but it took its toll. just went for it, man. Full bore. But it took its toll. And I competed at the Arnold 2011. I still had a brace that I would put on my ankle. I took fourth, but I could tell it took its toll because I didn't want to go to the gym after that. I didn't want to train. I started to really

I didn't want to train. I started to really resent training. I competed and I still trained all of 2011, even part of 2012. But 2012 was kind of when it broke. I was on painkillers now for several years. I'd imagine like your sleep and your eating and like all that's getting thrown off too at that point. Yeah, I mean, well, you'd sleep because that's kind of what they make you do. But I didn't eat much.

So I got real lean. I lost a lot of body weight. But the real toll that came was I was married at the time, you know, and I had a little son and he was born in 2009. And what painkillers, they don't only numb your physical pain. They don't numb you physically. They also numb you emotionally. So that's going to cause a divide. That's going to cause a big rift in any relationship.

So my wife and I, we started to have some trouble. We started to have some trouble. Towards the end of 2012, she moved out, and we were going to work things out by moving to England, which is where she was from. I actually met her at the Arnold in 2006. So we had gotten married. She moved over to America. We had a kid. She moved over to America. We had a kid. She wanted to move back to England.

I can't blame her because, you know, things weren't great at home. So the plan was she was going to move over to England. I was going to sell the house to November 25th, 2012. My wife and my three-year-old son to the airport under the false pretense that I was going to sell the house and join them. That little voice that I was talking about earlier started screaming. It didn't just whisper. It was screaming. This is a mistake.

This is a mistake. Don't do it. This is a mistake. But, you know, my higher thinking was like, oh, whatever, you know, we're going to make this work and tried to rationalize it. Took them to the airport at 10 a.m. And the moment that got me was when I watched my son with his little baseball hat and his car's backpack, taking his tiny little suitcase, big smile on his face because he was going on an adventure, takes my wife's hand, and they walk through the doors at the airport. And I knew that was the last time that I was going to have any kind of relationship with them. And yeah, that opened up a scar on my heart.

It was so painful that I couldn't make it all the way home without having to pull over and gather myself. But at that point, this is when, I need to get out of this pain. I got to find something. And that's when I got a hold of an old friend and ended up getting some crystal meth to kind of check out for the week. I mean, I had— You ever done that before? I had come across it a couple times. It was a party drug.

You know, it was just—I could see it would probably be a problem if I were to take it on a regular basis because it's one of those things you know you just get into feeling good and get into a zone and I knew better I knew this was going to be a bad idea but I was looking for anything I gave myself a week I said Travis you can do whatever the hell you want just take the week clean yourself up we're gonna we're gonna try and get off the painkillers again because that was something I had tried several times over the years. And withdrawals from painkillers sucks. It really sucks, especially when your whole body really hurts from training. So I took that week, and that week turned into four years.

It just never stopped. It just never stopped. And I ended up, you know, I lost my wife and son because she went to England and had no intention of me coming. And taking the crystal meth all the time, it just, you lose sight of what's important in life. And so I stopped training. I couldn't stand training anymore. I'd already kind of resented it a little from the injury, but that just amplified the whole thing.

So there I was. I didn't have my family. I wasn't training. My friends started to disappear. So I'd lost my passion in life. I mean, training, I'd started in sixth grade. I was 11 years old. It was what I'd always loved.

And now I had this huge gaping hole. You know, so the easiest thing to fill that hole with is drugs. You know, that's something bad. And so, you know, just they flooded in. And that became my life. Shortly thereafter, you know, my parents and my sister, they kind of turned their backs on me. All the rest of my friends, family, everybody. So I'd lost my wife and son. I'd lost my passion. I'd lost my job as a personal trainer. I lost my family. And then I was losing my house because I got to the point where they were foreclosing on me and

and I remember having just a few months to kind of get my shit together and get my stuff out of there and uh that got me to one of the lowest points I think it was the lowest point, actually. It was, you know, everything had fallen apart. And I remember the day clearly because I tried to talk to my son at least five times a week on the phone. And now, like, a little kid, four and five years old, he doesn't want to talk on the phone. So I did my best to talk with him and make it interesting. And I understood when they didn't answer or when he didn't stay on the phone long. But this was another one of those times when they didn't answer. And it had been a couple of days in a row and it just, it got me, it shattered me. And so I'm sitting there in my bathroom and I'm just going through all the pain and the loss that

I've had in my life. I'm going through this checklist. I've lost my family, lost my friends, lost my house, lost this. And I realized, you know, that's kind of a regular thing. And it got the better of me. You know, I had a gun in my hand. I had the gun in my mouth for a minute. And what stopped me was thinking about the poor bastard who'd have to clean up my mess. And I remember thinking, who thinks of that at this moment? Who thinks of that?

So I laugh at myself a little, just this kind of sobbing laugh, like totally broken man. And I put the gun down, and I'm like, Travis, you get a hold of yourself, man. This is bullshit. You're going to have to find something good in your life. I noticed the tendency or the correlation between going through my checklist of all the bad things that had happened to me. And I noticed that every time I did that, the more I focused on it, the more it seemed that my life would kind of create more of that negativity. And so, you know, you take this spiral, you start spiraling downward in negativity. And I thought, while I'm sitting there on the side of my bathtub, I'm like,

maybe, maybe if we just find something good to focus on that could turn this around. Maybe, you know, I think it was that little intuition, just spark gave me the idea and I listened to it. So I started looking around and I'm looking at my house, like, let's find something good. Let's find something positive. And I caught myself that tendency of saying, well, here, no, I've lost this, lost that, lost this and went, shit, stop that trap. Find one fucking thing good. And it was so hard because everything, I mean, if you look at a tweaker's house, it's a shithole. I had crap everywhere.

And the bathtub that I was sitting on was missing the panel on the side because I had sold that to somebody. Oh, God, the shit that i did man but anyway um i finally kind of just put my head in my hands and i'm looking down i'm like i gotta find something and so i just look i see my feet on the ground it's always like nothing you know just there's my feet and then i move them around a little bit i went hey you know what i still got my own two know what? I still got my own two feet. And if I've got my own two feet, I don't have to be here. I could stand up and I can get the fuck out of here.

I can go do whatever the hell I want. And all of a sudden, I got this surge of joy from the pit of my stomach just kind of work its way up the back of my throat. And I felt good for the first time in years. Like, wow, I want that feeling again. So I kind of, you know, I sat with that as long as I could. I remember falling asleep and getting up the next day and saying, I want that feeling. So I looked for another good thing. And right away, I started spiraling down. I was like, well, I lost this. I lost that. I lost this. And I went, wait a second, stop. You got your feet. Let's find something else. So I found, I looked around and said, well, let's just go with this. I got my hands. I got my own two feet and I got my own two hands.

And with these feet and these hands, I can go anywhere and I can do anything because my hands are strong. They still got their strength. I can do whatever I need to do. And that feeling came back up. And I was like, that's the ticket right there. Something simple. Don't look for something big. Find something simple to be grateful for. So on the third day, I found a third thing. On the fourth day, I found a fourth thing.

On the fifth day, I didn't find a new thing. So I went through my previous four. And now my list is no longer I've lost, I've lost, I've lost. It's I have, I have, I have, and a new thing. So I went through my previous four. And now my list is no longer, I've lost, I've lost, I've lost. It's I have, I have, I have, and I'm grateful. So that spiral started to work its way upward. And I started to reverse that momentum. Now, that was a slow and difficult process. You got to be diligent with it. But every day, I would go through my gratitude list. And I would try and I would feel for that little surge of joy. I got to the point where I would keep something in my pocket, like a little rock or a coin or whatever, so that every time I reached in my pocket, you know, to get my phone or whatever, if I felt that rock, I'd pull it out, I'd look at it and I I'd go over my gratitude list real quick, and I'd put it back in my pocket. So several times a day, I'm going through being grateful. And when I realized that I was really doing something that was making waves was when one

of the other tweakers, the people around me, because, you know, misery loves company. So if you're elevating yourself, these people want to keep you down. And I remember her saying, what do you have to be so grateful for? And I was like, oh, there's another one for my list because I'm making waves. This is powerful because it's upsetting the balance around me. And that gave me so much more momentum right there. I was like, I'm on a roll. I'm going to keep going. And by the time I'd lost my house, that they'd actually come and kicked me out, I was already on my way out of the bottom. A lot of people say, when you got kicked out of your house, was that your rock bottom?

I was like, no, that was my ticket to freedom because I knew it was coming. So I went ahead and I said, this is my prison. I wasn't able to get myself out of there. I wasn't able to. So I knew that being kicked out was going to be my way of being forced to act and do something. So I just went ahead and said, this is where all my pain, this is where all the sadness, it's going to stay here. went ahead and said, this is where all my pain, this is where all the sadness, it's going to stay here. So they kicked me out. And I ended up living in that storage unit where we had trained for 10 years. I lived there for a few months. And I remember the first day I was there, you know, I'm trying to get whatever stuff I had in my truck into the storage unit. Most of the equipment had been taken out at that point. I let a friend

store it and use it. So I was just packing my stuff in there and rearranging. I was working late into the night. And so I slept in my truck. And the next morning, the guy, it's owned by Linda and Steve, All Save Storage. If anybody in Cypress, Texas sees All Safe Storage, they're good people. So Steve comes over. He says, now, Travis, you can't stay here. You know that, right? I was like, oh, yeah, sir. Of course, Steve. I'm sorry, man. I wouldn't dream of it. So I just worked late again the next night, and I worked late the next night and eventually they just looked the other way. And I made a little spot for myself in this storage unit. I can show you a picture if you want. But I carved out a little niche. I was sleeping on top of a little plyo box. It was about two and a half feet wide by three feet wide or long.

And then I put a yoga mat on top of it. Ultimate comfort. So that was it there. Oh, shit. I slept on top of that box and I put my feet up on the shelf behind it. And yeah. And then I've got another shot that day or shortly thereafter i don't know if they could see this at home or but that's what i looked like right before i got kicked out of my

house so i was wow at that point what year was that that was uh 2015 is there any way you can show that to the camera yeah you can just send it to me later. Email it the way you've been. I can do that. Yeah, and then I'll throw it up on screen. Okay. So I was 227 pounds in that photo. Man, you were different there.

Damn. I'd gotten up to 341. At some point during this whole ordeal, I remember just kind of one of those bad days going, when is this going to end? When is this nightmare going to end? And that little voice in the back of my head says, you're going to start over. And I knew right away what that meant. It said everything that I'd gained with Strongman was gone. I'm going to have to redo it.

So that first contest, I was 227 pounds. When I walked back into the gym January 15th, 2016, I was 227 pounds. To the pound. Started over. But after being in that storage unit for a few months, I'd gotten, you know, when they evict you, they take your stuff and they basically ransom it back to you or they auction it off. So I'd gotten my stuff and I was packing into the storage unit and saving up money so that I could move to Reno. My parents had moved there a couple of years before. I hadn't talked to them.

I had gotten a call from my aunt saying that my mom had gotten sick. This would have been July of 2015. And I said, you know, hey, I'm going through hell right now. I'm losing the house. Maybe you guys could send me some money and help me get out of here faster. And of course, that was a no. And, you know, can't blame them. Um, but I needed to get out there cause my mom had liver failure. And so I saved up money. That's part of the reason I stayed in the storage unit was to save money. I could have afforded a hotel room, but by this point I'd already slept there for several weeks. I had a little routine going. Yeah. Um, but, uh, saved up enough money and I had one last thing I had to do

before I could leave Houston. I was driving a 2003 Dodge Dakota. Had no paint on it. It sunburned the paint off of the roof and the hood and sometime in like 2014, I think I tried to strip it down

and repaint it and typical tweaker fashion, I got I tried to strip it down and repaint it, and typical tweaker fashion, I got it halfway through and did something else. So I drove around with this truck that was, the engine was great, and the bones were great, but the paint was just horrendous. It had two different colors of primer on it. But I had, just for pride's sake, I had to finish painting it. And I had a sprayer. I had the paint. I had everything I needed. And so I sprayed it. First coat was a high gloss finish. And this is a truck that I did strongman with. So it had some dents and dings.

When you put high gloss on something like that. You see every freaking scratch and mark. So I did it again with a more of a flat black and it came out pretty good. And I was proud enough that as soon as it dried on boxing day, the day after Christmas, 2015, I got on the road and I started driving to Reno. It took 10 days. I had burned all of my contacts, so I couldn't get any more meth. I had a small amount. I had to dole it out. I had to kind of wean myself off.

I drove when I wanted to drive. I slept when I wanted to sleep. I went where I wanted to go, and I couldn't stop. And that's one of the things when you try to quit meth, it is a depression unlike any other. You just feel like you can't do shit. And that's what gets people. That's, you know, it's the physical part. It doesn't hurt. You're just totally depressed. I didn't have a chance to be depressed. I had to keep going. So I didn't know it at the time, but that was probably the best way to kick that habit ever. And then I had a couple little magic moments on that trip.

I remember on New Year's Eve, I drive into the Grand Canyon, and it's snowing everywhere. And my truck is magically staying on the road because I've never driven through snow in my life. I had like 700 pounds of shit in the back, you know, that just my stuff. And I think that's what saved me. That's what kept me on the road because it's a rear wheel drive. I pull off the road and I park the next morning and this is pitch black. I couldn't see anything. The next morning I'm sitting there in front of my truck, taking a nap.

Sun starts coming up, and I see right in front of me, it's coming up over the rim of the Grand Canyon on New Year's Day 2016. I mean, you talk about like a rebirth, a new beginning. It was pretty incredible. It was pretty incredible. And then, you know, I just sat and I enjoyed that for a while and visited some other parks and took 10 full days to get to Reno. It's a two-day drive. But when I got there, I didn't have any more meth with me. I couldn't re-up because I didn't know anybody.

I certainly wasn't going to find anybody. I was just going to stay at my parents and make sure that that habit was behind me. And thankfully it was, you know, I just, uh, took a few days to settle in and got back in the gym. It just, once that was out of my system, it's like my body says, now it's time to go back to what we do. Now it's time to get back on. I went to the gym. My second workout, I wanted to deadlift. It's my favorite lift. I did 405 for three reps. I thought I'd broken my back. I was so sore.

I couldn't move. And all of a sudden, I knew that hill that I had to climb became a mountain. I'm looking. It's, you know, 10,000 feet higher. I'm sitting here. How the hell did I ever pull 900 pounds? I'm at like 45% capacity now, and it's killing me. But that was fun.

It gave me a chance to rebuild the foundation. What were your parents kind of thinking in those times and during those days? It must have been very hard for them. Did they distance themselves from you quite a bit? Yeah, they did. I think it only took about a year, less than that, but a year where they finally cut it off.

And they're like, no, no more. It might not even have been a year. It might only have been a few months where i was told not to come around again or because i think the biggest thing is you know i would i would come over and i thought i was just talking to my mom but i was expressing my sadness and anger for my wife taking my son and, you know, everything that was good, basically. And I didn't know how to deal with it. And my head wasn't clear enough to know that I was probably being loud and yelling.

And, you know, I wasn't yelling at my mom. I was yelling around my mom. And I'm thinking they were hurting enough already that they didn't want me dumping all of my shit on them. And being neural negative. Yeah. And I think it just wore them out and they just like, you know what, don't come around. And so that hurt, that sucked. That, that really sucked. Um, I think I talked to him two times during that four year period. So yeah So, yeah, it was pretty rough. Did you get any therapy or are you just, all the stuff you just said is how you worked through it?

You know what, I think, I'm grateful because I feel like I'm incredibly blessed when it comes to therapy. It's like, I don't know if it's my ancestors or just a different part of me or somebody speaks to me. That little voice was my therapy. It just hit me at the right times, just hit right moments with a lot of things. And if I just followed my heart and I just listened to that, it always worked out. You know, when the first time it ever really hit me was that first strong

man competition. And that's when I realized this is where I'm going with my life. You know, the first time it ever really hit me was that first strongman competition. And that's when I realized this is where I'm going with my life. You know, when I went with my heart, things were awesome. And when I tried to think about them too much, you know, when I tried to think my way out of taking my wife to the airport with my son, I didn't listen to my heart. And it screwed me pretty bad. So, but no, I just, no therapy. I didn't listen to my heart, and it screwed me pretty bad. But no, just no therapy, just letting myself be led and feeling what was right in the moment. Like I said, just stop thinking and just go. It worked out.

Are you able to speak to your son nowadays? So I was talking to him during most of that period, most of that time. And I noticed when he was about seven years old, they, I say they, but it was my ex-wife, trying to distance themselves. I went to England twice during that time. The first time, I got to see him every day because it was still pretty early on. I got to see him every day. We'd hang out. We'd have fun.

I was in a hotel. She was living with her parents at the time. A couple years later, I was there for his birthday. I was there for a whole week. I did everything that his mom wanted me to do. I went and stayed where she wanted me to stay. And then she complained that it was too far of a drive. It was like 50 minutes. This is where you told me to go. Out of that week, I got to see him for two one-hour occasions. And yeah, I couldn't afford to go over there anymore. That was like three grand or something. And I didn't have any money at that point. So I stayed on the trying to call him train as much as possible, you know, going from five times a week down to four times a week, down to every other day they'd answer, down to every few days they'd answer, then only on the weekends, and then they wouldn't answer. Down to every few days, they'd answer. Then only on the weekends,

and then they wouldn't answer. And I say they, it was my ex-wife wouldn't answer. You know, emails would be ignored. Voicemails would be ignored. You can only take so much of that. You know, when you hear that voicemail again, You can only take so much of that, you know, when you hear that voicemail again, that little lady saying, please leave a message. It just, it stabs at you every time, stabs at your heart. And, you know, I gave up after a while. And I took to writing in a little notebook the things I wish that I had taught my son. the things I wish that I had taught my son. And because, you know, I always, my whole life wanted a son. Ever since I was a little kid, I knew I was going to have a son. I took every lesson that I learned and I thought, how can I make this better? How can I teach this

better? Because I want to teach my son better, like riding a bike. I want to teach my son how to do that. I remember cleaning out my garage when I was selling a lot of my stuff off during that darkness. I found a box full of baseball mitts, one of which was right-handed, so for a lefty. I wasn't a lefty, but I remember finding that glove at a baseball field. And, you know, it was like middle of week, so I'd been sitting there for a few days. And I took it home, and I thought to myself, I might need this glove because my son might be left-handed. And then I thought about when I found that glove, I was nine years old. Like, what kind of nine-year-old thinks about that?

So I had that glove for, shit, 20 years years waiting to teach my son how to throw a baseball. And, you know, all of that was taken away from me. So, you know, I'm not saying that it was totally my fault that it was taken away. I'm not trying to pass the buck on any of that. You know, and that's another thing that I learned in this whole thing, this whole ordeal, ownership. Ownership. And I'm just going to segue right into it because this is important for people to realize that when you take ownership of your life, no matter what the hell has happened, that's when you take power over your life. That's when you take control. Doesn life. That's when you take control.

Doesn't matter if something bad happened to you. Take ownership of it. Accept the responsibility that it's your life. You're the one living it. You know, I could easily say, well, this happened to me and that happened to me and I'm a victim. Fuck that. If you want to change your life, you are not the victim. You are the leader of your life.

You're the driver. You're the one who's got to take charge. You've got to decide what it is you want to do. Get up off your ass and do it. You know, you can sit there. Life beats you down. And a lot of people will kick you while you're down there. But if you choose to stay down, that's your fault.

You're the one who's got to get up and start making something of your life. You can't wait for a miracle. And this is probably just as important as what I just said. If you're waiting for a miracle, you're just sitting there waiting. Best thing that you can realize is that you're born with the miracle. Now, if you're thinking God's going to grant the miracle, well, if you think about God and his strength, God can see all time, past, present, future at the same time. He knows what you're going to go through, whether it's God or the universe, whatever you believe in, knows what you're going to go through. You were born with that fucking miracle. You don't have to wait for it. You just have to realize it. When you realize it, then you stand up, start doing something. You live like you've gotten a miracle. That's what changes things. It's not a sudden wish granted. It's your actions. So if you

know that you've been granted the miracle and it's already in you, start living like it. That's how you change your life. And that's, I didn't realize it at the time, but that was what I was doing. Miracle had already been granted. i just started acting like it that's dope so well i want to know this then um so then you did your first competition back in 2017 coming back coming back to strong man like when you were like 227 october well i i'd put on a couple pounds okay when i started training inside of four months i gained 75 pounds holy shit yeah it wasn't all good but my body was like oh god calories thank god satellite cells know what the fuck's going on i'd only been eating once once a, once every other day. Wow. Yeah, so my body sucked down the food quick.

And then, you know, I got up to like 290 and dropped back down to about 250 after that. And then worked my way back up over the next almost two years. It was October 15th and 16th.

2017 was America's Strongest Man. It was my first show back. What did that feel like? Oh, a train running over me. It was heavy. We had an 1100 pound yoke. We had a press medley that was a 250 dumbbell, a 400 log and a 400 axle. I zeroed it. log and a 400 axle. I zeroed it. It was a two-day show. And I remember after the first day, I woke up the next morning and it took me like 15 minutes to get out of bed. And thank God I was at an Airbnb because I went up and knocked on the back door of the owners. And I'm like, hey, y'all got any Advil? Please give me some freaking anti-inflammatories. And I got in a hot bath, and I started working myself loose. And I was able to do pretty well the second day, but, I mean, it was a shock. How were you able to, like, stop the urge to go find pain meds again, like Norco and shit?

Because, I mean, if that pains back and you have an old habit, did you ever find yourself maybe trying that again a little bit? Or did you figure out some new tactics to deal with that? On both accounts, yes. The most important thing is to remember what you want your life to be like. It's like I know what taking pain meds leads to. I know what taking meth leads to. I don't want my life to be like that. So I've had three surgeries over the last few years and an infection recently that was with rhabdo at the same time.

This is the most physically painful experience I've ever been through. So I've had painkillers several times over the last few years, and it hadn't been an issue because I take them when I need them and pretty much only when I need them. You know, it's one of those things where if I start thinking, oh, I just kind of want to feel good right now, let me take some. I say, that's not the way I want to live. That's not – I think there's – some people would of as prior addiction as a weakness. You know, if you know that you have a tendency to be addicted to these things, yeah, you have a tendency to be addicted in the future, higher likelihood. But if you're honest with yourself and you think, okay, I have a tendency to want this too much.

Does that mean I can't ever have it? If you have no willpower, no self-control, then yes, don't freaking go there. But if you are honest and you say, okay, I can take these only to this point. And then if I start going past that point, and that's like a thought process, if I need it because I want to feel good, that's not okay. If I take it because this pain is screaming at me and I need to get out of bed and start doing something, then go for it. So if you're honest with yourself and you assess yourself and keep yourself in check like that, I feel like I'm stronger. I'm more capable of doing things correctly or safely than somebody, especially a newcomer who's never taken them before.

Because I know the things to look for. I know the signs to look for. And I also know what withdrawals feel like. And I have gotten to the point where I did have some withdrawals. After surgery a couple years ago, I think it was my hernia surgery, I took them a little bit too long. And then I started to notice the withdrawal effects. But I'd already been there and done that. What is that like, by the way? I don't know. It's like muscles throbbing and aching and you feel sick and you feel antsy but not really sure why and everything

hurts and you're kind of depressed and you're getting the shits and yeah it's not fun um but i've already been through that so i know what to expect so therefore it didn't it didn't phase me too much like okay here's, okay, here's what comes next. Here's what comes next. If I had known that years ago, I would have been able to get off of the painkillers because when I got off the painkillers and I started to have those withdrawals, I was like, God damn, what is this? Am I going to feel like this forever? And then you took more. And then you just drop back into it. Yeah, you fall right back in.

But now I know that it's a temporary thing. And, you know, it is what it is. You just make it through it a couple of days. It's really not that bad. You know, and the same thing with injuries. The more injuries you get, the less scared you are of them. Well, there went another chunk. It's going to take this to rehab. Got to keep going. Okay. There goes another three weeks or whatever. What's on tap next for you? Are you going to the Arnold? Are you going to compete in the World's Strongest Man again? Or what are you trying to do?

I would really love to compete in World's Strongest Man again. Last year, like I said, was a bit overwhelming. It was an incredible experience. It was a great time. But I tried to cram so much into preparation. I didn't realize that I was already strong enough. I was already good enough. If I had just maintained training and come in in shape, I would have done really, really well.

So I think with that kind of confidence, knowing that I am actually there, I don't need to make up for lost ground. I just need to come in hot then uh you know i'll do a lot better so hopefully i get another shot this year how has the sport changed in the last like 10 years with some of, the results, and that has not stopped. So five-year gap coming back. Didn't you say like what, seven guys deadlifted 1,000 pounds at like some event recently? Yeah. See, I remember when Benedict Magnuson pulled 1,015 with just a belt on.

That was right after Andy Bolton had done 1,003. So they were like the only two guys. Benedict Magnuson still has the highest powerlifting deadlift of all time. Yeah. People need to recognize. Without straps, just a regular deadlift. And no suit either. He's just raw yeah just raw so uh

you know i i coming from two guys who had ever done it to you know guys like eddie hall pulling 1100 and then a few months ago it wasn't just one freak deadlifter who pulled a huge amount it was seven deadlifters who pulled 1,000 pounds, one of which went to like 1,045 or 1,050. I mean, so you've got these numbers that have inched their way up, but you've also got this whole field of top athletes that are staying right there at the top. It's not just one-offs.

It's 10 or 12 guys that can do it. And then they're good at everything else too. What's your thoughts on these bars they got? Like I hear some of the strongman guys making a big thing about like the elephant bar. Some of these bars bend a little bit more. And is it a thing or are these guys just really fucking strong and people probably should not worry about it too much? I mean these guys are really freaking strong, but I've personally never pulled on an elephant bar.

I did the Hummer tires at the Arnold. And the elephant bar has like more whip to it, so it bends, right, and then it oscillates and it kind of might give you a slight advantage as you're pulling the weight or something, right? It depends on how you pull. If you're a real explosive deadlifter or if you have a tendency to use a little more back and you get forward over your toes a little bit it'll

whip back and forth and pull you back to the ground but if you're a steady puller i think it gives you a big advantage yeah you slowly pull the slack out not that i've pulled a thousand pounds but you can pull more slack out of that bar slowly, so it makes sense. Yeah, you pull the slack out, then you explode from there, and you don't get as much whip when you're at the knees. Damn. How was World's Strongest Man right here in Sacramento? It kind of blew my mind that it was here out of all the crazy locations that it normally is. It's like some random country in Africa and all kinds of stuff. I think it's here this year. Yeah, I think so. Is like some random country in Africa and all kinds of stuff. And then all of a sudden.

I think it's here. It's this year. Yeah, I think so. Is Africa a random country in Zemo? No. It's just like, you know. That's not a. That's a random ass place.

It's not like a place of like hatred. I said a random. Lots of people came from there and origins. I think like some folks came from there. Will you let me finish? I said a random ass country in Africa. I didn't say random no and then yeah it's i don't know it's fairly random you can't tell me that it's fucking organized like yep it's definitely gonna be there like no it's fucking out of nowhere in sacramento you mean yeah and now it's randomly in sacramento

yeah i think it's perfect i think it was fate it wasn't random it was fate because it's randomly in Sacramento. Yeah. I think it's perfect. I think it was fate. It wasn't random. It was fate because it's a two-hour drive. That's the only professional contest I haven't had to fly to in my whole career. That's sick. You know, I'm not facing a nine- or ten-hour time change. It's here again, right? Yeah. I believe so for the next two years.

That's why I really want to get in again this year. Let's go. Sacramento, California. We're on the map. I've got something fun I want to show you, Mark. Check this out, man. OGST? You gave me this in like 2007.

Yep. 2007. I've had this shirt all this time. It's actually one of my favorite shirts. Oh, there you go. I don't know why you couldn't switch it on the whole podcast. It's in his forearms. Yeah, dude. Yeah,'t know why you couldn't switch it on the whole podcast. Yeah, it's loose forearms. Yeah, dude.

Fuck. Yeah, put it wherever you like. But yeah, man, I appreciated that and you gave me one of those slingshots, one of the original way back in the day.

Long ass time ago. Yeah, it still works like a charm too. What kind of power lifting numbers do you have? Do you squat pretty well? Do you bench press pretty well? What does some of that look like?

My best bench was 506. And then you blew out your pec too. Yeah, that was pre-pec tear. That's got to make it pretty difficult. I've thought about throwing the shirt on just to see because it seemed to – I strained my pecs a lot during that time, and the shirt always seemed to help with that, kind of spared them. My best deadlift is 880, and my best – that deadlift is from the floor, and it was kind of an accident.

It was a misload. It was supposed to be 805. Oh. And they had plates with kilos. They had pounds. They had hundreds, and they totally messed up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, pounds and kilos together.

Yeah, strongman contest. So my cousin added it up, and it was 75-pound misload. Best squat. Did 715 for six in training for Worlds. Yeah, you guys get really strong on the squat. You do a lot of repetitions in training and stuff, right? Yeah, and I mean, to be fair, that's touching the boxes. Damn. Yeah, you guys get really strong on the squat. You do a lot of repetitions in training and stuff, right? Yeah, and I mean, to be fair, that's touching the boxes. Right.

Or whatever. That was suited. A suited squat, I feel really good. Regular, without a suit, I got such long legs that it's hard for me to stop. What's kind of your thoughts on wearing extra stuff, like knee wraps and stuff? It's pretty common in strongman for guys just to i guess basically just utilize whatever they need and a lot of times you're utilizing it not just for your top sets but for the even lighter sets right yeah i mean you want to get the most

weight possible you know or the most reps possible so a lot of those guys you use whatever you can you know, or the most reps possible. So a lot of those guys, you use whatever you can. There's limitations to what you can use, you know, as far as single-ply suits. You can't use any double-ply or anything like that. A lot of contests won't allow you to use any kind of supportive gear like that. But, you know, straps, I know a lot of – we get a lot of flack for deadlifting with straps. But we have like three other grip events in a contest.

So save your grip for farmers or a frame or whatever. And then, hell, you can just pull more weight with straps. But, yeah, I think I enjoy being able to use some of the equipment just because it makes it different. You know, training with a suit for World's Strongest Man was, that was the first time I had put that suit on in 10 years. And I forgot what the pressure felt like, you know, doing the reps. My eyes bulging out and my ears ringing for the next day and a half. Yeah, it makes a couple things easier, but it makes a bunch of other stuff a lot harder. Yeah, yeah.

It places some different stress on the body. What would it take to get the call again for World's Strongest Man this coming year? And also, I mean, I know you had a little injury in the last year's event, but do you feel that you'll be able to surpass your highest competition numbers and your highest level of strength in the past? Like what would that look like for you? I think I can be better than ever. Yeah.

I was pushing better than ever numbers last year pre-injury with the exception of log press overhead and axle. My overhead press suffered a little bit because I tore my rotator cuff and had to have that bolted back on. Got a nice little scar there. It took a while to recover from that, but, you know, my deadlift had been better than ever. My squat had been better than ever, like I just mentioned.

This year, I think I can absolutely surpass all my old numbers. To get there, to answer the first question, I did win a few Champions League competitions last year. Okay. So hopefully I get an outside invite. You know, if I'm showing that my training numbers are better than ever, that will help with that decision. They're not going to have any more Giants lives, I don't think,

beforehand this year, which is the qualifying, direct qualifying route of one through three in those competitions qualify for World's Strongest Man. They had a bunch of them after Worlds last year, like four or five of them. But like I said, I don't see any on the roster pre-World's Strongest Man this year. So those guys have qualified, which a lot of those spots were filled by the same person. So they have maybe 10 qualified athletes and then 25 total spots open. So there'll be a lot of special invites handed out. And hopefully, hopefully I get that shot again because I'd love to prove that I'm better than I was.

And I took fifth three times in a row back in the day. I would love more than anything to beat that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was fifth place starting out in the middle of the pack and hanging on. I was fifth place starting at the back of the pack and working my way up. And I was fifth place starting in first place and falling back.'s just fifth was the number I just want better than that who's gonna win this boxing match between Eddie Hall and Hafthor Bjornsson I if Eddie keeps giving him more time Hafthor is getting better and better man you know I would have said Eddie right out

but Hafthor's just steadily improving he He's looking amazing, too. Yeah. He's getting lean. It looks like he's getting ready for a bodybuilding show or something. Yeah. He's in shape. The thing that I'm most impressed with is he looks like he's starting to get light on his feet and able to move. And then if he can do that and he can stay moving, he's got the reach. If he can keep Eddie out, then I think Eddie will tire quickly.

So Eddie's going to have to throw that heat fast. It's hard to pick, you know, because they're both so resilient and they're both so talented. Any footage? I can probably find some. Yeah, there's a little bit of stuff with them hitting bags and hitting other people and stuff. I mean, Eddie Hall, like, looks pretty well-versed

in, like, the way that he throws his punches. It looks like he's been doing it for a while. And Hap Thor, it looked like it was a lot newer for him. But as you're saying, I agree with what you're saying. It looks like he's throwing crisper and crisper punches as he's moving along because it looks like he's really working on it. Yeah, Eddie's giving him more and more time. I think that bicep tear was a blessing for Thor

just because Thor was on his way up at that moment. Is this... Oh, yeah, Hathor and his first boxing match. Yeah. Our array of jabs coming from Hathor would be fucking terrifying. Yeah. Oh, my God. Are you getting tackled yet?

We have a power lifter here that... His name's Andrei Milanochev. Are you familiar with andre milanichev yeah all-time world record holder in the total and and he he watches he he loves watching this stuff and he's like i think i can beat hapthor he's got like these uh weaknesses he's been picking up on but uh i don't know you know this might be where where you know the guys that retire go into prize fighting. Right, right. This stuff is so hard. I did some boxing when I was young, and it is a whole other world to be in there.

Just even sparring with somebody else is wild. Yeah, yeah. If you're hitting a bag and hitting gloves and all that stuff, that's one thing. But once you're standing across the ring from your opponent and they are, you know, they're powerful as well and they know how to throw a punch and they know how to take a punch and they know how to move their head, it gets to be crazy.

Like things that you would never think that you would do. You would never think that you would throw your arms up and panic. The bag doesn't hit back. If someone pops you pretty good, you do start to lose sight of what it was you were trying to do. Was it Mike Tyson

said everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face? Or if you get tired. I'm sure you've had that happen in strongman competitions that is that is like demoralizing your legs aren't under you anymore you're like i'm not even halfway done with this event i'm gonna look like a real fool or when your grip goes like when your grip goes it's gone it's not coming back it's over yeah it's over that's that's something i have to work with with my clients i call it seeing through the

fog you know when you get gassed and everything, the world seems to close in around you, and lights go down, everything gets dim. You got that panic screaming in your brain to quit. You just got to buckle down and turn the fog lights on. You got to tell your body to keep moving forward anyway. It takes practice because it's scary to work through it, but the more you work through it, it's kind of going back to that being comfortable. You know, when you're used to feeling the withdrawals, you can get through the withdrawals

easier. If you're used to feeling working in the fog, you can start pushing through the fog. You drive through the fog easier. So you just buckle down, put the headlights on or the fog lights on, keep going because everybody can keep going for a minute. You know, you don't have to breathe for a minute. You can keep going. That's what I tell all my guys.

You can breathe when you're done. Breathe when you're done. Yeah. You'll take the punishment. It's going to suck. How are you feeling every day nowadays? You know, you mentioned those things where you practice some gratitude and you mentioned how you believe that you're going to be better and stronger than ever. How are you feeling on a day-to-day basis?

Okay, so mentally, the gratitude is a big thing for me. Every Monday, I do a Monday Gratitude on Instagram, just trying to share some of the lessons that I've learned. It literally saved my life. It's changed've learned. It literally saved my life. It's changed my life and it's saved my life. So I look back at, you know, all these really devastating, you know, really, really shitty experiences. And I mean, like I'm doing now, I still have a smile on my face because, I mean, one way that you can find gratitude in the worst experiences of your life is, you know, when you die, at least you didn't live a boring life.

You suck the juice out of life. You squeeze the juice out of life. We're born with all these emotions, you know, all the way from sad and despair to bliss and joy, everything in between. from sad and despair to bliss and joy, everything in between. If you spend all of your time in the positive, you got no contrast. You have no idea how good your life is. And that's why a lot of people nowadays have so, they have it so easy that they create struggle.

You know what I mean? They need real struggle. We don't even need to get into this. No, we do need to get into this. You fill your time in with anxiety. Exactly. You always feel the need to fill everything in all the time. And it's hard for you to be grateful for the fact that you're sitting in an air-conditioned room or climate-controlled room. You have Wi-Fi.

You have access to the Internet. Instead, we're looking at the negative comment that somebody made. And we're spending minutes the negative comment that somebody made and we're spending minutes and hours researching that person. We're clicking on their profile. We're checking it out. We're screen capturing it and then we'll share it with our buddies. We'll say, look at this

asshole. And they're like, oh my god, now they're mad. And now they're checking out that person. You know what I mean? It's just like we've got to create a lot of this stuff. That victim mentality. People want to have it harder than everybody else. And I am guilty.

Worse. And well, it's, it's hardwired into us to have struggle. And if there's not enough real struggle, we'll create it. We'll find a way to invent it. And you know,

that's, that's where my gratitude and realizing or looking back to where I've been makes it a little bit easier for me to remember that what I've got now is just icing. It's all icing on top of the cake. How grateful are you for your parents to take you back in after you straightened yourself out? Yeah, you know, that was probably a big, you know, reach for them. It was a big step for them to, you know, they, they called me, wanted me to come out, but to just welcome me back into the home. And it wasn't easy at first, a little bit rocky. Um, but, uh, you know, to be fair, one of the things that

happened, my mom ended up in the hospital, like three weeks after I got there, just one of many to come. And, you know, I was there. My dad had to work all the time, so I would cook food. I'd keep the house going. I'd go and visit my mom. And I remember him saying, you know, I'm really grateful that you're here. And I remember that. That meant a lot to me because that meant that, you know, I guess the tension between us had been lifted. And, you know, we were great friends my whole life. And, you know, he was my best friend. So, like, to have that time where I lost my best friend, my dad and my best friend, you know, and then to get him back like that was pretty awesome. Yeah. best friend you know and then to get him back like that was that was pretty awesome yeah but uh to go back to what you were saying a minute ago so emotionally and feeling

awesome physically uh pretty beat up sometimes well to be fair uh i did a contest in turkey um you know after world's strongest man i, I had a lot of contests. I had a lot of speaking engagements. I had a lot of contests that I would judge and do stuff at. So I was traveling a lot. I got COVID. Just beat up. Really run down.

And I think when I got to this Champions League Finals in Turkey, I was so worn out that I got to this Champions League finals in Turkey, I was so worn out that I got a little, one of the many scratches that you get at a contest, one of them must have gotten a little bacteria in it. And what would have otherwise been a nothing issue, my system was so run down that it took foothold. And I got an infection that nearly killed me. I got rhabdo from the contest, which is painful enough.

And I got this infection that, I mean, it started in my ankle and I started feeling it when I was flying home. I was halfway across the Atlantic. By the time I landed in San Francisco, I could hardly walk. So I thought it was a blood clot. I got to Reno, which is just a 45-minute flight. Once I landed there, I told my girlfriend, look, we got to go to the hospital because something's wrong. And I spent the next eight days in the hospital fighting for my life with sepsis and rhabdo. And I remember, you know, at some point during that delirium, a surgeon coming

in and talking about the possibility of cutting my leg off or cutting it open from, you know, top to bottom because cutting it off wouldn't have done any good. It already spread up to my groin and I was fully septic. And yeah, so thankfully he didn't cut. He was a pretty sharp guy. He said, you know what, we're just going to see what your body does. I remember telling him, like, look, I'm really good at healing, so just give it a chance. I've broken so many things. I'm a renegade.

So, yeah, thankfully the antibiotics kicked in and started to turn the tide. And, you know, the four days of delirium turned into just four more days of some of the worst pain I've ever been through. But then I had three weeks of a PICC line. I'd have to go in and get IV antibiotics every day and, you know, just slowly but surely beat the infection, lost 36 pounds of body weight, and just, I mean, that hormone crash, basically. Coming after a contest, right into a hospital where you're stuck laying down. I was weak as a kitten, felt like shit. And, you know, I started training again in those first few workouts, even still, you know, three weeks of two days a week training, really light. And last week I did three days and I could really tell it took me a few days to sleep right again.

So I think once everything kind of mellows out and it balances itself, I'll start making some real progress again. But, yeah, it's pretty tough at the moment. You've got to draw back on the experiences that you've gone through. It's tough right now. Everything hurts. Everything sucks. But you just keep pushing through. Tomorrow's another day.

Just get up, plan on kicking ass, and if you don't, you get up the next day, plan on kicking ass then. Always got another chance. All right. So outside of the pain meds that you took in the past to help like, you know, help you not feel pain, what helps with some recovery? Because I feel like you've probably done almost everything under the sun as far as recovery tactics. So what's actually been super beneficial for you? You know, I have. I've tried everything. And thank God I had those compression sleeves, the little blow-up compression sleeves,

because I got my girlfriend to bring those into the hospital on, like, day three to start pushing some of that swelling and the infected area, the blood out of my leg, and get healthy antibiotic, full blood. And I think that helped me get over the infection. I think that was one of the reasons they didn't have to cut me open. So that's one. Those are great, especially after, you know, heavy yolk or heavy farmers, stuff like that. Being on a diet, a consistent diet, you know, I've been, like I said earlier, I was working with John Anderson and I work with Nathan Payton, really sharp guys. If you stay on a consistent diet, you give your body everything it needs. Staying flexible. Staying flexible is important,

especially the older you get. It really plays in. Oh man, what else? Let's see. So massage, chiropractic. Do any cold or heat? I have just, I've always loved cryotherapy, but I've just started doing it again. And I do it in the morning, my shower first thing. And yeah, it keeps me pumped going through the day but as far as like full immersion uh i haven't done that i don't i live in an apartment so i don't have a whole lot of options to uh you know i don't fit in my bathtub so i can't really fill it and dunk myself um but i do like doing that i think that you know three minutes or less is plenty uh especially if you do it right after workout yeah you know because the whole inflammatory response and all that stuff um if you do it the next day you can go a little longer and uh if i think there's like a six hour window or something

they talk about but yeah if you go to sleep wake up the next day after your workout and you can go for five to ten minutes and i think that it's more spiritual more brain training yeah than anything yeah all right andrew want to take us on out of here buddy sure thing thank you everybody for checking out today's episode uh please like and comment something down below give uh you know give our guests a shout out that would be very uh appreciative and please make sure you guys follow the podcast at Mark Wells Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is

at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? I'm Seema Inying on Instagram and YouTube and I'm Seema YinYang on TikTok and Twitter. Travis, where can they find you and all your stuff? Travis Ortmeier on Instagram or Travis Ortmeier or TexasStoneMan, all one word,.com.

That's my website. If you're interested in coaching, that's where you want to hit up. Send me a message on Instagram. I check those all the time, too. Awesome having you here today. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. I appreciate you guys having me out, man. I hope somebody learned something from my story. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell.

Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.