The Rich Roll Podcast - Patrik Baboumian: The World Record Holding Vegan Strongman On Why Compassion Is His Greatest Strength

Episode Date: December 14, 2015

Strength isn't just about physical prowess. Strength is about character. By this definition, vegan strongman Patrik Baboumian is perhaps the strongest man on Earth. Born in 1979 to Armenian parents in Abadan, Iran, Patrik and his family fled the Iranian revolution when he was seven and emigrated to central Germany. By the age of nine, he fell in love with wrestling on TV and soon developed an interest in weight training. As a young teen, he got into power lifting and bodybuilding, rising quickly through the ranks to become Germany’s national junior bodybuilding champion. For ethical reasons, in 2005 Patrik went vegetarian, accepting that this would likely undermine his performance goals. Instead, his improvement steadily escalated. So in 2011, he went completely vegan. And that's when things really blew up for the guy they call the Armenian Viking. 100% Plantpowered, over the last 4 years Patrik has been awarded the title of Germany's Strongest Man, racked up multiple victories at the European Powerlifting Championships and set four Guinness World Records in various strength disciplines. We're talking about a guy who can Bench 463 lbs. Squat 794 lbs. And Deadlift 794 lbs. This is a long way of saying that Patrik Baboumian is stronger than you are. And believe it or not, he has accomplished all of these extraordinary, superhuman feats without the one thing long-held conventional wisdom dictates is absolutely necessary to optimally perform as an elite strength athlete: animal protein. I first met Patrik at the 2013 at the Toronto VegFest, where I stood on the WestJet Stage at Harbourfront Centre before a crowd 1,000 deep to cheer him towards a Guinness World Record setting yoke walk — a feat that entailed carrying 1,216 pounds (550kilos) a distance of 10 meters in less than 60 seconds (which he recently bettered to a current 560kg world record, completed in just 28 seconds). Spontaneously grabbing for my GoPro, I shot this little video documenting the astounding accomplishment: But Patrik's greatest strength is not his physical prowess. His greatest strength is his compassion. Breaking strongman world records is what Patrik does. But beyond the accomplishments and beneath the beast-like exterior lives a sensitive, gentle soul. An exemplary human of steadfast ethics whose conscience refuses to allow animals to suffer for the sake of his superhuman athletic goals. In stark contradiction to culturally entrenched notions of masculinity, Patrick performs his feats in the name of compassion — a threatening word too often misinterpreted as weakness that challenges predominant male gender role stereotypes and obliges us to rethink social priorities. My hope is that Patrik's example will open your mind. Compel you to question long-held, conventional notions concerning the relationship between nutrition and athletic performance. Reform stereotypical definitions of masculinity to embrace the responsibility mankind shoulders as protector of the voiceless. Reframe your interpretation of compassion not as weakness, but as our greatest strength. Stir you to think more deeply about your consumer choices. And ultimately inspire you to challenge your own personal limitations. Enjoy! Rich

Throughout my life, I've been quite compassionate with animals, and in a way that I perceived animals as made of the same stuff that we are made of. So when I saw animals suffering, it was for me the same thing as seeing children suffering or another human being suffering. That's strongman Patrick Baboumian, aka the Armenian Viking, or as I like to call him, the human Wolverine. And this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey guys, how you doing?

My name is Rich Roll. Welcome to my show. And this is the show, of course, where I do my best to have meaningful conversations about things that matter with the best and the brightest, the most forward-thinking minds across all categories of health, wellness, entrepreneurship, environmentalism, mindfulness, spirituality, and consciousness. environmentalism, mindfulness, spirituality, and consciousness. And in the case of today's guest, fitness, strength, and compassionate living. And the idea behind all of this is to challenge thought and cultural paradigms, to make you think, to facilitate personal growth, and of course, to help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves, and hopefully create a more

positive footprint for a better world. Anyway, thank you so much for tuning in today, for subscribing to the show on iTunes, and for taking a moment to leave us a review on iTunes. We appreciate that very much. And of course, because it is the holiday season, for always using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your holiday Amazon purchases. The banner ad's right there on the main podcast page and at the bottom of all the episode pages. Click through that. Go to Amazon. Buy whatever you're going to buy.

It doesn't cost you a cent extra, and it just supports our mission by shaking loose a little extra commission change from the Amazon coffers at Amazon HQ. So we appreciate everybody who has made a habit of that. It really does help us out a lot. All right, so to kind of set the stage for today's episode, it's worth mentioning that there's been a lot of news this past week about vegan bodybuilding. That's right, vegan bodybuilding. It kicked off with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made this announcement from

COP21 in Paris a couple days ago, that everyone should cut down on their meat consumption to save the planet, while also, and very interestingly, stating pretty unequivocally his opinion that you can be a successful bodybuilder on plant protein, which is a pretty bold statement from a guy who used to say things like, you hit like a vegetarian, right? It's kind of crazy. I posted it on my Facebook page. It went crazy viral. It got like almost 2000 shares. I think it's the most popular thing I've ever posted on my Facebook page. Definitely created a discussion. And that was followed up with another piece or a couple pieces, I guess I should say, about Barney Du Plessis, who is 2014's Mr. Universe. And he went vegan this past year. And he says he's never felt better. He's stronger, he's recovering faster, and has this newfound enthusiasm and excitement to defend his Mr. Universe title this year.

I know what you're thinking. Is this guy on steroids? He's probably on steroids. Are steroids vegan? Look, I don't know much about bodybuilding. I don't know anything really about Barney or his world or his training or kind of what he's involved in. And I don't even really want to touch that one.

What I do know is that it's simply very interesting that suddenly this week there was so much news about the rise of veganism in bodybuilding coming from two of the most influential people in the sport. These articles were from the BBC, the Daily Mail, a site called Artifact, all of which, again, I posted on my Facebook and will, will of course share in the show notes for this episode and I just think that that represents a cultural paradigm shift that's worth exploring that's worth discussing outside of the steroid discussion. Simply the fact that bodybuilders

are even raising this as a possibility and advocating for it I think is fascinating. So in the wake of that it only makes sense that in the vein of this week's news moment, that this week's episode should be my conversation with my friend, the vegan Armenian strongman, Patrick Baboumian. But hey, before we get into Patrick's world, remember when I had Gennar Lovelace on the podcast a while back? He's the CEO of thrivemarket.com. Well, that was a really great conversation. Gennar Lovelace on the podcast a while back? He's the CEO of ThriveMarket.com. Well, that was a really great conversation.

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Do it up. Okay, so who is this guy, Patrick Baboumian? Well, he was born in 1979 in Abadan, Iran to Armenian parents. And then Patrick and his family fled the Iranian revolution when he was seven and ultimately emigrated to central Germany. By the time he was nine, he had fallen in love with wrestling on TV and soon developed an interest in weight training. As a young teen, he signed up for a gym, promptly put on 50 pounds, and got into powerlifting and bodybuilding, going on to become Germany's junior champion. In 2005, he went vegetarian for ethical reasons, but ironically, he continued to get stronger, ultimately entering the world of strongman competitions and racking up titles very quickly. In 2011, he went completely

vegan, no animal products in his diet. Nonetheless, he continued to improve, winning Germany's strongest man competition. This is this crazy world of competition where contestants do all this insane stuff like drag airplanes and carry around giant concrete spheres and put tree trunks on their shoulders, you name it. It's all crazy. But from there, Patrick has gone on to rack up four Guinness World Records in various strength pursuits. And I first met Patrick at the 2013 Toronto VegFest, where I had the honor of standing on the harborfront stage in front of this gigantic crowd to help cheer him towards a world record in something that's called the Yoke Walk. This is where he carried 1,216 pounds, 550 kilos, almost the weight of a smart car essentially, on this yoke-like weight scaffold that was anchored on his shoulders.

And he carried it for a distance of 10 meters. It was amazing. And I made this little video of that incredible feat, which is on my YouTube channel and also embedded on the episode page for this podcast. Patrick has since topped that record twice, first with a 550-kilogram carry, and then just this past September, four years after going vegan, a 560-kilogram carry, which he completed in a much quicker time of just 28 seconds. Patrick is a beautiful, gentle soul. This is a guy who literally cannot hurt a fly,

a guy whose conscience simply would no longer allow animals to suffer for the sake of his personal athletic goals, and that quite interestingly went on to perform inhuman feats as a vegan that pushed the boundaries of human possibility and really, I think, powerfully challenged long-held paradigms about the relationship between animal products and human athletic performance. He's a stellar ambassador of the vegan movement and just an all-around exceptional, extraordinary human being that I'm proud to call a friend. And I've been wanting to share his story on the podcast for a very, very long time. So

one of the highlights of my recent trip to Germany this past fall was grabbing the opportunity to sit down with him and have this long overdue conversation that I can now share with you guys. And it's a truly epic, epic conversation. And it's my hope that it will open and perhaps bend your mind, compel you to question long-held conventional notions about food, athletic performance, nutrition, and animal agriculture. And perhaps it will challenge your concept of masculinity, what it means to be a man, and the relationship of this role to compassion, and ultimately inspire you to think more deeply about our consumer choices

and challenge your own personal limitations. So without further ado, let's step into the dojo of the human Wolverine, the Armenian Viking, the original vegan badass himself, Patrick Baboumian. All right, man, let's do this. It's only taken us two years to sit down in the same room together, right? That's right. The last time we saw each other was Toronto VegFest, September of 2012. I think it was 2013.

13, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was great because that was also the time that you broke the world record by – why don't you explain exactly what went down? Yeah. It was actually a world record in the yoke walk. world record in the yoke walk and uh so the what i had to do was i had to carry 555 kilos uh for a distance of 10 meters and i had i was allowed to drop it once and that's what we did there um and i was quite nervous because i did it uh a week before that in uh in berlin everything went fine but then i had totally different equipment in Toronto, so I was quite

nervous before and quite happy after it went well. I mean, you probably remember how happy I was. Yeah, well, it was a really cool experience because I'm an athlete, and I've been around a lot of different kinds of athletes, but I'd never been even a spectator to anything, you know, like what you were doing. So it was very interesting to be kind of participating behind the scenes because everything was being filmed for this documentary. And so I was kind of hanging around it. And what happened was to kind of set the stage is you were attempting this world record. And, and you know, for those that are listening that are in the United States,

550 kilograms is about 1200 pounds, right around there. Right. And in order to kind of qualify this, everything had to be weighed. So there was all these, there was on a stage at the West jet stage in Toronto, which is right on the Harbor on the waterfront there.

And there were all kinds of people weighing all the weights. And you had this sort of scaffold, this giant yoke on which all these plates were being added until it weighed exactly 550 kilograms. And then the idea was you were going to walk from one end of the stage to the other. You had to go 10 meters. You're allowed to set it down once briefly. Is there a time limit on how long you can let it rest for? One minute.

One minute? No, it was one minute for the whole thing. So if I rest too long, it would have been impossible to do it in one minute. So you have to traverse the 10 meters in under a minute. Yeah. I got you. And who sets those rules?

How does that work that was um actually um we talked to to guinness because it was a official guinness world record and we told them how it normally works at a competition and then they try to come up with with an idea how to set it up so it works for them so it was pretty much them right and they they have to send out representatives. There's a whole rigmarole process to that, right? And they charge you a bunch of money. And it's like a whole thing.

I'm quite happy I didn't. I was not the person to pay the money. That's always good. You get somebody else to do that. Yeah, someone else. Hey, I'm the talent, man. I got enough on my plate. Hey, I'm the talent, man.

I got enough on my plate. We had some sponsors and some of the guys that organized the whole thing. So they took care of everything. So all I had to do was just carrying the stupid thing. Well, that's all you should have to do. You know what I mean? And it was really exciting. A ton of people showed up. There had, I don't know, 1 thousand people there to witness it happening. And I almost spontaneously,

I was like, oh, I have a GoPro. I should just film this. It was an afterthought. I didn't even think, oh, I'm going to make a video out of this. And I just pulled it out of my pocket and filmed the whole thing and just didn't even edit it. I just put it up on my YouTube channel basically like that. And that video has probably more views than anything else I put it up on my YouTube channel, basically like that. And that video has probably more views than anything else I've ever posted on my YouTube channel, which is awesome. You know, and I use clips from that now when I go out and give talks quite frequently, frequently when I'm, you know, sort of addressing the question of, you know, athletic performance and being plant-based. So thank you for that. You gave me that, but it was really, it was a privilege and it was a cool thing to see. And it was very exciting. I mean, you were

definitely, you were, the thing is though, when you were backstage, you were joking around with people. I didn't know you were nervous. You were actually, I was, I was like, shouldn't he be like away from people? Like you seemed pretty chill about the whole thing. No, I was totally nervous, but probably I used the talking and everything just to distract myself a little bit from my nervousness so um but but i was really uh nervous just try to um yeah try to somehow uh distract myself from from the nervousness that i had right i mean how do you mentally prepare uh like do you have a routine or like a process or a mantra or like, how does that look for you? In a perfect situation, I would

try to get some, some, some calm place where I can concentrate. And then I would just visualize what I, what I'm going to do. So, and it's not so much a formal routine, but it's more that, I mean, most of it happens in the head, right? So it doesn't depend too much on the outer circumstances. It's just enough if I can get some quietness and just some place where I can just, I mean, be quiet enough to go through everything that I'm planning to do. That you have to do, right. Yeah, it's interesting to me because although we're both athletes, we're on different ends of the spectrum. You're, you know, at the very far extreme of like strength and power. And, you know, I'm the long distance endurance guy.

And, you know, but I would imagine sort of the mental preparation would be similar. But as you're explaining this, I'm thinking, you know, when I'm out there doing my thing, it's sort of a progressive process of getting more and more fatigued and still going forward. But with you, it's a very precise moment where failure just happens. Like, you know, it's either you're going to push through this moment and get through the next two seconds and succeed, or it's all going to end. Everything is very compressed comparatively. Yeah, absolutely. The experience of running for a very long distance, not compared to anything that you do, but I still have a feeling for what it's like

because I have been dieting for bodybuilding competitions and in that time I had to do cardio work. So it's like a little glimpse of what you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's really completely something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's really completely something else. But, I mean, still, though it's so different,

still there are similarities. Still you have to manage to, in some way, tame this beast inside your head that says, stop, I don't want to go on and so on. But it's just in a different way. The beast is much louder, but for a very short time. You have to punch it very hard for a short time. And when you're running for a long distance, of course, then it takes much more time.

It's a low grade. He's like instead of the beast punching you in the face very hard, he's just lightly slapping you constantly like some kind of water torture. It's different. It's interesting. But the principle is the same really, which is to quiet the chatter of the mind and get as present as possible. Like the more anchored in the moment you are, then the more able you're going to be to be able to show up for the task at hand, right? that I meet in competitions and that I compete with is that a lot of the guys will try to use aggressiveness

to psych up and get to the point where they can really unchain that inner energy to succeed. And for me, it works differently i think uh actually my my procedure is probably um probably more um um nearer to to to what you might do or or um some endurance guys would do than to what is typically a typical procedure for someone in my sport. Because I really try to, I don't try to use aggressiveness and anger as a source of energy. Because I have the feeling that it, I mean, it unchains energy, but at the same time, it really makes it hard to concentrate on form and so on. So for me, it works best to really get calm.

And then the funny thing is, as soon as I succeed and as soon as I really do what I'm planning to do, right after the last second, I'm exploding. I saw that. Because I really have to. It's like really having to put all this pressure inside the bottle, and then it pops like a bottle of champagne or something right in the last second, and I explode.

Yeah, but not in anger. There's a joy and a jubilation and a sort of aggressive celebration of it, but it's not coming from a dark place. And I think that's an interesting point that you made, you know, that sort of, you know, pound your chest and huff and puff kind of aggressive, you know, anger approach.

You see a lot of that, but it always struck me as sort of, first of all, it takes a lot of energy to do that. So you're wasting a bunch of energy kind of peacocking around like that. And I feel like it's unsustainable in the sense that you have to, like, if you have to summon that up every time in order to perform, that's a tall order, right? As opposed to like, you know, when you were talking, I'm like, well, it's more of a, it's more of a Zen approach, like, you know when you're when you're talking i'm like well it's more of a it's more of a zen approach like you know sort of internally focusing and like just getting all that energy ready to channel it in like one very laser you know focused direction yeah interesting all right well let's

let's track it back you know like you have such an interesting story we're here in frankfurt germany and you live you know a couple hours away north in ber, but you're Armenian, you're Iranian, you speak amazing English. Like, what is going on here? You're like this melting pot of all sorts of different cultures packed into this very compact, strong structure. That's probably the coolest description of my person I've heard so far. Are you the Armenian Viking or are you the human Wolverine?

Which one is it? You know what I mean? You're definitely the human Wolverine. Yeah, probably. The sideburns are growing fast. How long have you been growing those? They're insane. I think almost half a year now.

Really? It's pretty funny. So I'll post a picture on the website in the show notes, and I'll also embed the video that we were talking about there so everybody can check that out. But yeah, man, where does it all begin? Yeah, so it began in Iran at the Persian Gulf. That's where I'm born.

I'm of Armenian origin, which means that some of my ancestors have, I don't know, I don't even know if any of my ancestors really came from Armenia, but it's like Armenians are scattered all around the place in the Orient. So as much as I can track it back, it seems that my ancestors have been in Iran for more than 300 years. Both mom and dad. Yeah, for 300 years. So like grand, grand, grand, anything.

Right, right, right. So yeah, and that's from both sides. But I could track it back from my dad's side for like almost 300 years. So still of Armenian origin. So that means that I grew up speaking Armenian and Persian, two languages. And then when I was seven years old, we left Iran as refugees of war. Because the year I'm born is 1979. And that's also the year the Iran-Iraq war started.

So, yeah, when I was seven years old, we left Iran, and I grew up – from that point, I grew up in Germany. So that was the third language. Why Germany? I mean, what did your dad do? Are your parents still around? No. My dad died when I was four years old, and I then left the country with my mom. I see.

And the plan was actually – that's funny. Did your dad die in the conflict? No. He just died in a car accident. I see. Oh. Yeah. And the actual plan was to leave the country and get to the States, actually.

And we used Germany just as a transit country where we would stay as long as the paperwork would take to get accepted as – to get asylum for the States and then come as refugees to the States. to get asylum for the States and then come as refugees to the States. But my mom would change the plan and, I don't know, she just liked Germany. So she decided that we would stay there together with my uncle, her brother. So we were all together. Was he already here? No, we came together. Wow. So they didn't know anybody though.

Yeah. Right. And do you didn't know anybody, though. Yeah. Right. And do you have brothers and sisters? No. I had a sister, but she died in a car accident, too. Oh, wow. Oh, man, I'm sorry to hear that. Wow.

Yeah. So it was just me, my mom, and my grandma, and then also my uncle and his family. Uh-huh. Wow. And to the Frankfurt area? Or where in Germany? At the beginning, it was... and his family. Wow. And to the Frankfurt area or where in Germany? At the beginning it was – so we arrived here in Frankfurt.

And then the place where I lived for the next years was an hour from here. So that's pretty much where I was based through my childhood and so on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. And so is there like an Armenian community that you guys became a part of or were you just like this outsider kid growing up as a young person? Yeah, that was pretty much the situation. So there wasn't a lot of Armenians here. And I also, because it's probably because I grew up with two languages,

it was quite easy for me to learn German. So I needed like six months or so. And then I was fluent but not correct in a correct way but still fluent. So it went quite fast and it was quite easy for me to integrate myself into the community and everything. Right. And is that how you picked up English so well too? You just have an affinity for languages, you think? I think that's a part of it.

And then the other part is that I always had a lot of friends from the States and then English-speaking people. And also when I studied psychology, all of the literature I had to read, it's all in English. It was English, right, when you were in college or university, right. All right, so what kind of kid were you? I mean, were you always a big, strong kid? Were you playing a lot of sports as a young person? Or where does athletics kind of enter the picture?

Not really. It was, I think, pretty much the opposite even. as a young person or where does athletics kind of enter the picture um not really it was i think pretty much the opposite even um and not that i was uh particularly weak but but i was uh particularly quite unsporty i wasn't very athletic uh so and that's pretty much uh how it is uh how it still is so if i would have to to run I don't know, for a few miles or so, it would just kill me because I just carry too much weight. So in school I was not the athletic type of kid. What kind of kids did you hang out with?

I think I was one of those. I was the leader of the outsiders i would say i was the coolest guy within the really uncool guys right right right i got you but you seem like a guy who could kind of navigate in between groups like you have social skills like you could be able to like kind of pick which you know whatever group you know could kind of like you could be with yeah accurate or no i mean at least you can say that it was uh um um that i i was with the outsiders uh in purpose so it was not like um um i hit i didn't have the chance to uh to get to the mainstream uh guys yeah but i really really always liked to be a rebel. So that was... Well, I mean, you wouldn't be growing a beard

the way that you grow a beard. I don't see you over at the investment bank without a beard, you're right? That's it. Cool, I got you. So where did the interest in... I mean, the first kind of thing that you started to explore was bodybuilding, right?

I mean, the sort of powerlifting and strongman stuff came later. That's right. So it all began when I was 14 years old. And me and a friend of mine who went to the same school, we were both very, very much into professional wrestling. So we watched all the... Yeah, who are your guys? Yeah. Who are like your favorite guys?

I had a few guys that I really liked and probably The Undertaker being one of my favorites. And then my friend was a really big fan of The Hitman, Bret the Hitman Hart. Yeah. So we watched all those stuff. And then we would also try to do all the things by ourselves. Right.

And on several occasions, we almost killed ourselves, breaking our necks and doing a lot of stupid stuff. So at a certain point, we just realized if you really wanted to go for a wrestling career, we would have to build muscle. Because as a 14-year-old, and he was even one and a half years younger than me, so we really didn't resemble the stature of...

These guys, right. we really didn't resemble the stature of these guys. Right. So really the seed here, the spark that lit all of this was wanting to be in the WWF. Absolutely. Yeah, all right. Absolutely. So that was the first step. And then we began lifting weights at home and just doing some exercises, some bodyweight exercises. We got some dumbbells and did some stuff.

And then we went to the outdoors and did some outdoor stuff, also a lot of running and everything just to get our overall fitness. And then at a certain point, we decided that we really wanted to go and be members in the gym so that we could take our training to the next level. Yeah, right. And that was a really hard challenge because most of the gyms wouldn't accept us because we were so young.

So they were like, okay, you have to be at least 16 or you have to be at least 18 and so on. And finally, we found a gym that accepted us and we trained there for i think one and a half years until they kicked us out because because at that point i think i broke three of uh of of um their um um implements that they had why how'd you do that what do you mean like i was too strong you really so you're just naturally like all right i'm trying to get the picture here because i in the picture i was painting in my mind is you're you know basically an average looking kid who's like you know committed

to this dream and is slowly building up but obviously right out of the gate you you were i mean you're built for this just your natural stature but no were you just naturally strong? No, what you have in your mind is absolutely correct, but it didn't take me a long time because we both, my friend and me, we were both so dedicated and so motivated for the whole thing. We were pretty much living for that thing. I got you. So like when we woke up in in the morning we would have our shake and when when all these other kids would go to parties we would just do our routine right and

that's why uh after a year or so we just exploded both of us we just exploded and that's uh where where it really came to right when uh like the hormones kick in of of like puberty and everything like that you're spending all this time in the gym, and you've got posters of all these guys on your bedroom wall probably at home and the whole thing. I like how you did it with a friend, though, right? So what happened to him? Yeah, the funny thing is we're still both in the business, but he's doing – so I'm still an athlete. Right. And he's running a website called body extreme.com

and he does a lot of um competition coverage in in bodybuilding and uh in in strength sports and so on so he covers all the pro bodybuilding events in the states and did he become a body builder himself as well for for a time yeah so both you guys like built a life out of this little dream that you had when you were 14 and joined your first gym that's pretty cool absolutely yeah nice so when does the competition aspect of it come in like what so you're getting big right you're breaking weights you're getting kicked out of gyms like then what uh yeah then we found another gym uh that was a little bit more hardcore and the equipment was more stable. So we moved to the other gym and went on training.

And then I had this time of probably 10 months or so or eight months or so where I barely trained at all. months or so where I barely trained at all. It was a time where I pretty much did everything that I had missed in the years before. So I partied like a jackass. I did everything that I hadn't done. Were you just burned out or like what motivated that, you think? No, it was just – Being a teenager.

Yeah, I really didn't think no it was just uh yeah i really didn't didn't think about it it was just that in that moment it felt like the thing to do and uh training was at at an in a certain moment training wasn't that important anymore so i had this 10 months or so. But then after the 10 months, it just came back. I just felt the urge to get back into training and everything. And at that time, I lost some weight. So before the 10 months, I was already 102 kilos or so. Which is what? That's what, like 210 or something?

That's 220. 220, okay. 220, okay. 220, yeah. Yeah, 220 something. So quite heavy for 17 years old. If you were in the United States, you'd be playing football for sure. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Probably. So then I got back into training, and at that time my friend did his first bodybuilding competition, and I just prepared him. So I was just his, what do you call that? It's not really a coach, someone who comes with you to the competition and just helps you with everything. Right. So I did that, and when I watched the competition and just helps you with everything. So I did that.

And when I watched the competition, somehow I thought it would be fun to do the same thing. But then at the same moment, bodybuilding was not really what I was. I didn't feel that I was a bodybuilder in the sense because it's an aesthetic sport. It's about looks. And I was all about lifting heavy stuff right so it felt like where's what happened to wrestling um yeah that's that's a good that's a good question actually so speaking of aesthetics yeah yeah uh wrestling really went away um within the first 12 months uh when we realized that lifting weights was such a such a

lot of fun so it really got replaced by by lifting weights i mean i still uh um i still think the the wrestling thing is really cool but it wasn't the uh it wasn't the center of our motivation anymore so um yeah so he he did his first uh competition and uh then he tried to convince me to do one and um i it didn't really feel naturally to me uh so but but i still uh would let him convince me um so i did my first bodybuilding competition six years after getting back to training um and the problem with it was that i was quite quite uh successful actually so i won in my county and then at the german juniors championship i would be placed fourth right and so you're what like 17 now or something like that

at that point i was 19 so i thought I thought, okay. It's weird. Like you're succeeding, but you're like, I don't even know if this is my thing. Absolutely. Right. And then I thought, okay, now I have done this, and it went much better than I thought. So probably I should go for another try because it was my second last year in the junior division. So I thought, okay, I have one more shot at the junior division, and probably if I'm now fourth, probably next year it will be possible to win.

So that's what I tried. So I came back the year after, won the county again, and then went for for the germans for the german nationals um and my plan was to get into the middleweight category so in the junior division they have three categories three weight categories um up to seven kilos then up to 80 kilos 70 70 70 and then up to 80 and then uh everything above 80 is is the third and the open category right and my plan was to get in the middle weight so up to 80 up to 80 kilos and something went wrong with um with making weight so um incidentally, I got into the heavyweights. And I thought I'm completely,

I don't have any chance to do any good at the heavyweights because, I mean, most of the guys were like much taller than I was. You didn't cut weight properly, like you screwed up somewhere along the line in terms of like the whole weight cutting thing? Actually, it was not my fault uh actually um if if we get into the detail it was um that we weighed uh we um measured our weight on a scale um at the gym uh for which i was uh i was competing and their their scale was not accurate. It wasn't calibrated properly.

I got you. Yeah. So everyone, when we got to the competition, everyone was one kilo heavier than they thought. And the problem at that point was that I was the one who really cut weight absolutely accurately and perfect. So you could be right at the edge of the weight classification absolutely i i didn't want to uh leave anything to chance so i was really at the edge i was absolutely um

um so i used all i could get to uh really um make the thing happen because that was the last time that I would get a shot at the junior so and that was the problem so I had one kilo that I had too much and I had to get rid of that within two hours or so and the problem at that point was for a bodybuilding competition you cut a lot of weight by trying to get rid of your body fat um obviously and then also you dehydration you dehydrate your body so i was already completely dehydrated there wasn't anything there's no more water to go no yeah amputation would be the only thing so so i lost 600 grams or so within those two hours by running, spitting. And I mean, I couldn't even go to the bathroom or anything

because there wasn't any water in me to get rid of. I even tried to throw up. Didn't work. There wasn't anything in my stomach. Bizarre thing. All right. So what happens in the competition? Yeah.

So I had to go to the Opens. Yeah, so I had to go to the Opens, and then I was expecting to be anywhere between fifth place or anything like that because there were such a lot of huge guys there. And what actually happened was I won the overall thing. So I won the category and then won the overall title too. And that was the reason it motivated me a lot, and that was the reason motivated me a lot and that was the reason that i came back in the year after that um at the um what is it called in english at the mince category like um i don't know what that means now it's uh after juniors you're just

just like seniors yeah like just regular like yeah the real men category that sounds cool real mad category yeah so i would come back uh um as a quite uh young guy and and i think i placed ninth or so and that was the last time that i competed at bodybuilding for for 10 years after in 2009 i did it one once more but for 10 years that In 2009, I did it once more. But for 10 years, that was it. And in the years after that, I just, I think four or five years, I just trained for fun until 2006. And 2006 was then when I did my first strongman competition.

All right, we're going to get into that and unpack all of that. But while we're on the whole bodybuilding thing, I mean, it's such a weird and very specific subculture, right? Yeah. It's a sport, but it's also this weird beauty contest of aesthetics and posing and posturing. There's nothing else like it, really, in sport. It's its own strange universe

with its own rule book, I suppose. Absolutely. And the thing is that the actual sport and the actual work that you do happens in the gym. So normally when you have a competition, the actual performance that you do happens at the competition. But as a bodybuilder, you really have to perform in the preparation before the competition. And at the competition, you're just showing the result of what you have done for months and years. There was a period of time where I was living in the Venice area of Los Angeles. And I belonged to the Gold's Gym in Venice, like the home of bodybuilding.

That's where Arnold Schwarzenegger got his start, et cetera. And during this period of time, you would go and you'd see a lot of the professional bodybuilders. And even the former ones, like Lou Ferrigno was there every day, and these female bodybuilders. And they just clock in at 8 or 9 in the morning, they're there until 5 or 6 at night like every single day. This is like their job. They go and I was like, okay, I get it.

But just observing it was just – I'm like I'm trying to relate to like what's going on. And I'm like it's so weird but they and i and i feel like um it can be and i'm not saying this is for everyone of course but it can be this kind of uh receivership or or kind of uh safe haven for people that have like body dysmorphia issues or or you know weird kind of like psychological issues about their their how they look etc because it's so kind of self-oriented in that regard. And also, I think that there's a sense of, you know, once they become so gigantic, they almost become, they're marginalizing themselves in public, you know, because they look so different than everyone else.

So this is the place where they can come and be with their like-minded community and feel supported. And I would observe, you could see that social dynamic in action. It's very interesting. Yeah. Everything you said was right. Yes. Right.

Okay. I can agree to that. And what about steroid use? I mean, how does that work in the world that you inhabited at that time? Yeah. That's a real big issue. I had some funny experiences with that because, as I told you, we were thrown out the first gym where we were.

And the reason was pretty much that we were really getting stronger and much faster than anyone would expect that. So some of the gym members would really get angry and most cases it was you have those guys that are in the gym and you see what you described, that they get in the gym quite early in the morning and then you see them until the evening. And you have those guys that really do that, but you don't see them train actually.

Yeah, they're just kind of walking around, talking to each other. And like sort of flexing in the mirror and observing themselves. And then most of the time you see them even at the, what is it called, in the bar, having a shake or anything or even smoking cigarettes or anything else. So what they do has pretty much nothing to do with sport or with a healthy lifestyle or anything. And those guys would get really angry on us because we were really doing well. Like after one and a half years, I think I was one of the strongest guys in the whole gym. And I was 16 years old. And so some of them would like scream to our face that we're using steroids and I don't think.

And the funny part of it was at that point, I wouldn't even know what they were talking about. And I told my friend, what the hell are they talking about? What is that even? So up to the point until we left the gym, I didn't even know what it was. And then, of course, in the years later, I learned a lot about it because I met a lot of people who tried. I mean, some of them tried to sell you something.

Some of them tried to- Yeah, I'm sure. If you're in that world, it's going to be in your face, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And one big issue that I have the feeling of is when I see what government is doing to get the problem handled is that they really concentrate on professional athletes and trying to find ways to make them work

in a natural way and don't use any performance-enhancing drugs and so on. And I always have this feeling that they really oversee the problem that is really much worse, and it's not the professional athletes because in most cases, if they don't use anything, they get their stuff by a doctor or by anyone, and they know what they do but it's really in in all those gyms all these kids that really get uh influenced and and get get in touch with uh with people who try to tell uh sell them all kinds of uh shit so uh that was really a big challenge to not get into this really self-destructive culture where, I mean, you can really compare it with other types of drug use. using drugs um the problem is that you're like in a vicious circle where you um destroy um

first your health and then also your um your psychological um yeah your second yeah your psychological health so you're really destroying your persona uh and it gets worse and worse. And if you're lucky, you get out of the circle. And if not, you really go down to hell. And it's the same thing if you take a look on hard drugs or on alcohol or on steroids. It's always the same thing, and I'm really happy that we were able to stay away from that and uh yeah get get through the whole process uh without being being pulled down in this uh in this thing i mean do you think that that perhaps that might have been you know a factor in in you

kind of stepping outside of that that that sport i mean you know do you think that you can be competitive internationally without using that kind of performance enhancing? I mean, do you think that you can be competitive internationally without using that kind of performance-enhancing drug? I mean, the guys at the top of the game, they're just so freakishly big. You just look at them and you're like, that's not humanly possible without assistance, pharmacological assistance. But I really don't think that way because one thing that you forget um when you think like that is um

you forget uh the role of genetics if you look at a basketball player for instance um who is like eight feet tall or seven feet tall um there there is nothing to uh to to get that big, no drug or anything that you can use to get that big. And you would never think in the terms of how can you be that tall, because you know, okay, he has the genetics to grow that tall. And it's the same thing with being muscular or being strong. Some people just have completely different genetics.

So I think it's a little bit misleading if you think in terms of if someone is doing well at a certain sport, it must be because of the performance-enhancing drugs. Because what I learned from everything that I experienced in that world is the the part the performance enhancing drugs play is probably let's say i mean it's not more than 20 percent of the whole performance so you you you would never get someone who is not uh already on a very high

level to win a competition with drugs right but at the very highest level 20 is a lot when you're differentiating at the one percent level absolutely you know the best and the second best absolutely it can it can be uh what what depends or it can be what is going to decide if you're going to be 10th place or if you're going to be the first place. But it's never possible if you don't do anything else in the correct way and don't have all the other ingredients, it will give you nothing. Right. But at the highest level of bodybuilding i mean it's not it's it's not a clean sport i mean even by these guys own admission you know this is like yeah they're all doing that right i mean i mean if you take a look on the professional bodybuilders um yeah it's pretty

much no no no one uh i think there's no pro bodybuilder who would really uh um say they do it naturally no and also you have the natural competitions for that reason because it's agreed upon everybody knows the ones that are not in the not natural competition are you know using something most likely but but the really bad thing about that is i know some natural bodybuilders and a lot of them use stuff too so and but still you see a difference between between the natural bodybuilders and uh what what can i call them unnatural or supernatural but supernatural is a good one semi-natural and admittedly completely unnatural you already see this big difference um and and still there are some guys who would find a way

to trick the tests or anything yeah so you you will always have that problem um because as as soon as you have a new test we're human beings so yeah that's that's what they find they find a way to uh to to trick it so um yes so so bodybuilding might be a little bit special on that because it's such a – I always call it a cosmetics sport because I think it's a lot about the look. A look that you can only maintain for like an hour. Yeah, that's the funny part of it. Especially for me, it was exactly how it worked.

So I would diet for half a year or so, almost kill myself. Because naturally, I'm always overweight. I'm not in a very good shape. So that's how I look naturally. So if I really want to get in that shape that you need on the on the stage i would really have to almost kill myself i would do for that like paper thin skin where all the veins are popping through and all that kind of yeah i wouldn't even get to that point but i tried to get as close as i could so so what i would have to do

is for instance six uh six hours of cardio a day. So three hours after getting… You'd be training for Ultraman. Yeah, that's why I said I can. I have some experience where I can relate to know what you do. But then, of course, these six hours were on a very low performance. Intensity level. Yeah, intensity level,

while you are going for probably six hours on a very high one. No, a lot of the endurance training is. It's at a pretty low, you're in that aerobic kind of fat-burning zone. Yeah, so I would really have to do a lot of uh a lot of cardio training and also a lot of dieting like uh being on almost zero carbs for several weeks uh to to get to the point and then right after the competition i would start just stuffing everything i i could find into my face your body's like literally changing in front of your very eyes. Yeah, so I would like gain 10 kilos in a day or so.

Well, yeah, I mean clearly there is a genetic element to it because some people are just naturally ectomorphic and you can see the veins under their skin normally or whatever and you're a super strong guy, but you're not genetically sort of kind of cut out for out for that no i'm not uh built for bodybuilding actually if you really look on uh um my uh physique it's it's pretty much built for powerlifting yeah that's that's actually the sport that i'm built you are perfectly built for that so let's talk about that right so so uh so you have this you know sort of bodybuilding career and uh and you decide to change directions yeah um yes so what uh first happened is that i went away from competing

for quite a long time um and i just trained for fun so being a normal dude yeah yeah so in in that time uh i also um went to evening school to uh to get uh what is it called uh to a master's degree like a yeah what you need to get to the university oh i got you in order to go to university yeah so i did that in that time um and then in 2006 uh i went uh i started uh my my uh psychology study and um also i in 2005 so one year before that uh i became vegetarian and then in 2006 uh in the first year of studying psychology, I also started with strongman competitions. And the reason for that was, and this is quite related to the self-destructing thing that we just spoke about. So the reason that I started with strongman was the following. I was already studying psychology and it was some winter evening

and I was just surfing through some sites and then it came to my... I was actually just checking some stuff on Wikipedia and then it came to my mind to check out Wikipedia for some of those wrestling guys. And I started checking some of those guys.

So you like what happened to those guys? Yeah. You know what they were doing now? Yeah. And a lot of them were just dead. Like the British Bulldog, Owen Hart. A lot of those guys really weren't alive anymore. And I was shocked because it was like literally one decade after i watched

all those guys uh as a kid and and i was a fan of all the the whole thing and now they were like 50 percent of those guys were dead yeah rowdy rowdy piper just died too right how old is he the the ultimate warrior just died a lot a lot of a lot of the guys aren't alive anymore. So I checked it, and obviously being in the whole sport and knowing what happens there, I knew what would be the cause of such a lot of people dying at such a young age. And with the wrestlers,

it's not even only the performance-enhancing drugs, but the problem is also that sometimes they just have to use stimulating drugs because they're always on the road and always touring around, and they always have to perform. So it's also a lot about some drugs to just stay, be able to perform. And then also pain is a factor, I think.

So they also use a lot of painkillers and stuff like that. So it's a really unhealthy lifestyle they have. Right, right, right. A lot of them have. It's a really unhealthy lifestyle they have. Right, right, right. A lot of them have. So I checked those because I was trying to orient myself and trying to find a new challenge, a new thing to go for.

And I thought, okay, wrestling is not cool. I don't want to die. So I just – Plus it wasn't really like cool period anymore anyway. Like that period had kind of come and gone, right? Like wrestling had its moment, but that was kind of in the 80s. That's right.

But for me, it wasn't. You were still very much alive. Because, I mean, the funny thing was I wasn't even following it. That was the reason why I was so shocked that a lot of them died because I wasn't following it it. That was the reason why I was so shocked that a lot of them died because I wasn't following it for such a long time. But remembering the old times,

I was just as enthusiastic. So I thought, okay, probably it would be cool to get back to that. Yeah, you're stuck in 1989. In a certain way. You're stuck in 1989. In a certain way. So, yeah, so after realizing that it was so bad with all those guys,

I thought, okay, wrestling isn't a thing, so let's go for strongman. Because I was also, when I was a kid, I was also a big fan of strongman. And I would never have, when I started lifting weights, I would never have the feeling that I could end up myself as a strongman because normally those guys are huge. They're giants. They're like… Yeah, they're physically tall. So how tall are you?

I think in feet, I don't know actually it's about five one seven four five five something like that maybe yeah something around that yeah it's one 170 uh centimeters all right so um well but let's let's hold on one second here so let's put a pin in strongman and i want to define that and really flesh that out but you breezed by one very kind of salient point which is you made this decision to go vegetarian and you kind of brushed it off and went on to the next thing so so you know what what was the motivation behind that um it was uh in the in the last weeks uh before i uh got uh got into university um and the whole thing started with with a thinking process with an internal

thinking process where I just realized that throughout my life I had been quite compassionate with animals and in a way that I perceived animals as pretty much the same made of the same stuff that we are made of so when when i saw animal suffering it was for me the same thing as seeing a children suffering or or another human being suffering just built into your dna it is naturally your whole life you've been that like have a extra sensitivity i mean when i was really a small child i hadn't uh i would kill some ants and stuff like that so so it it came up right right but i mean just just by anecdotal you know a little anecdotal story we just we just took the train today from the frankfurt book fair about you know almost maybe a little over an hour to

where we're staying and we got off the train platform and it was julia and myself and one other and you were with us and suddenly we turned around and said where's patrick we couldn't find you and then you you showed up and you said oh i saw you know i saw a bird on the platform i wanted to make sure i wanted to see if he was dead or or whether he was suffering still yeah yeah yeah that's like that's not something that like the average person would do like i I didn't even notice the bird. Yeah, I think that's something probably where I'm a little bit special. Like for, I mean, if I see a little worm

or something on the floor in the train, like once I saw a really very, very, very small caterpillar. You couldn't even, it was so so small you couldn't almost even see it it was really like uh probably like an ant or so right and a little uh green thing uh and it was on the floor and what it was obvious if i don't put it up it would just be killed by someone yeah and it was a full bus so what i did was i got on the floor and everyone was looking at me what is that idiot doing there so i tried to get it in in a way on my hand without killing it and that's that's really touching it you can smush it right

yeah absolutely so so it was already a big it was was already a heavy task to get it from the floor without killing it. I used a piece of paper. Then I got out of the bus in the middle of nowhere where I really didn't want to go to. Got to a place where there was a little bit grass and so on. And I tried to save it. But that's how i see the world so um for me i just think that small little thing wants to live too so um it's like or sometimes i just think um um if you perceive us humans from from a much higher perspective we're like little ants too on this big planet so um if i don't have

any pity with this small little thing why should some higher being like i mean some people believe in i'm a atheist so um i don't believe in any deity or anything but some some people believe and then i think okay why are they um they expecting some higher being to have pity with us if you don't have pity with this little world? Right, and pity might not even be the right word. It's more like compassion, right? Because pity kind of implies you feel sorry for them. Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. And that, I mean, where do you, like, where does that come from? You know, I mean, one thing I didn't know about you was your father and your sister passing away. And was it in the same car accident? Yeah. It was. Okay. So do you remember that?

I mean, I can't help but think perhaps, you know, the pain of that experience might have informed this, you know, sort of compassion or perspective. I don't really know um i think in a way i'm just a little bit different uh and i think it it uh there's a lot of ingredients that that caused this being different and but as a psych somebody who studied psychology yeah right if you had to diagnose yourself yeah that that's why i said it's a lot of ingredients and one of those might be that i lost my dad so um so early um and also what what happened is um i was a single child after that so um and also my mom uh had to work so i would be alone for for quite quite uh long uh long time every day um my grandma being being the one who was with me at home so um um

so when i was like uh nine years old or years old, I would think about stuff that normally children my age wouldn't think of. Like I would think a lot about the universe and why we are here. And if there is something like this concept of evil, good and evil, I would think a lot about that. So when I was nine years old or so, I would ask my mom, if what decides who we are, if that's genetics and experience,

how can someone be evil? Because none of those, you don't choose your genetics. You don't choose the experiences that you do. So how can someone be evil? Stuff like that. So I was a little bit strange. Don't ask me questions. Yeah.

Yeah. That's how it was. It's like asking these like super intense, you know, questions of the universe. Yeah. So I was a little bit strange as a child already um and um i mean one reason was that i was alone because i lost my uh dad and i lost uh my my sister uh so early and also i had to cope with the situation of of losing them and not really on i was four years old so i wasn't't really able to understand what really happened.

So it pretty much kick-started this whole thinking a lot thing that I had in me. And then another ingredient would be that I grew up in this country where war was happening and I was only, so the only people around me were my mom and my grandma. So there was no other men that I could relate to when things were getting out of hand. For example, when we would be bombarded and everyone was afraid and then screaming and everything. And I had all these situations where I had to find a way to handle and cope with my little psyche. Well, there's a lack of control, right? Yeah, absolutely. little uh psyche that well there's a lack of control right there's always all this chaos

happening around you and and tragedy and you have no ability to you know sort of control that situation and so it's it's interesting then comparing that to to you know strength training in the gym or bodybuilding that's something that you can control completely you know you put this weight on you lift it this is the result that you get, you eat this much food. It's very much almost like it could be an obsessive-compulsive exercise in trying to control your small little universe. Yeah, and that's exactly where it came from.

The origin was this lack of control in my childhood. And then the feeling that you get as soon as you realize that you can control your body and you can control it fully by deciding what you want to do with it and then just make it work as you want it. So that was the origin of that. Also, having all these situations where I saw other people in distress and in panic when something happened, I also had this urge of being able to help in a way. I really wanted to help. And then at the same point, I was just a little child, so I couldn't do anything. So I would have these daydreams of… The rescuer.

Yeah. so I couldn't do anything. So I would have these daydreams of... The rescuer. Yeah. I would dream of situations where something bad happens and then I'm able to help everyone. You get to be the superhero. Yeah.

Interesting. So that's probably something that relates to this compassion thing for animals. But I think at the end of the day, But I think at the end of the day, I think this perceiving other living beings as equal to us, that's really something that comes naturally. I don't think that there's any experiences or anything in my childhood that really relates to that uh special thing right i think that's just uh because i mean i never found a reason to not think that they're the same so i think that's that's that's probably the most important part and were you as a younger person before you decided to go vegetarian that must have caused you some consternation to be eating these the you know the meat and you must have just you rationalize that by saying well i have to because that's what i need to do to be eating these, you know, the meat. And you must have just, you rationalize that by saying, well, I have to, because that's what I need to do to be alive and healthy.

That's the shocking part of it. The shocking part of it was that up to 2005, I didn't even realize that there was something going wrong. And the problem is when you're eating something, you don't see the animal. I mean and and that was exactly what happened before i decided to go vegetarian so what i realized is that there was this complete um um contradiction uh in in my behavior and in the way that i perceived the world so when i would see an animal suffering i would instantly have the urge to help um and it would uh so i would like um have some some birds uh with broken legs or anything you're just always bringing animals home to the house as a kid

at that time i uh i had um i wasn't at home anymore so i was living with my ex-girlfriend at their uh at their house and um so we would both bring a lot of animals home i would then take care of them and then uh set them free uh when when after helping them um and what i just realized was it doesn't make any sense to put uh time and energy in helping one animal and then at the same time eating another animal right and that's so straightforward and it was so shocking that it took me like 26 years to get to the point to to see the contradiction um but once i started thinking about it there was actually no other way than to say okay i have to stop this so that was the point and and the the most important question for me was would i eat it

if i would have to kill it and the answer was no and then i thought it's what i do is just dishonest because right because ethically you're just abdicating that decision to somebody else as a rationalization and saying well i'm not killing it, but by proxy, you really are. I would say 90% of people would actually have the same problem I had at that point. But as soon as you go to the grocery store and you get all those animal products, you don't see the actual being behind the product. Of course not. You just see this packaged piece of whatever. It's specifically designed to prevent you from seeing that

or being in any way connected to the process of what delivered that meat to the grocery store in that nicely cellophane-wrapped package. Yeah. Because most people – you're extraordinarily sensitive, but most people – everybody, I think, is inherently compassionate and has sensitivity, right? So anybody who would actually kind of walk you know with the animal through that whole process from beginning to end would be horrified and that's why there are ag-gag laws and all these sort of sort of structures built up to prevent the consumer from seeing or in any way being connected to that process because the more connected we are the more we will realize like you know what are we doing this This is insanity. Yeah, absolutely.

And the thing is, this whole culture of eating animals comes from a point in time where it was part of surviving. And the thing is, we don't need it anymore to survive. And that's really the problem that occurs as soon as you start thinking about it. There's a cultural attachment to this misconception that we are obligate omnivores, that at a very fundamental level that we need animal products in order to thrive, right? And your experience and my experience has been quite the opposite actually and when you have that moment and you realize like wait a minute like not only do i not need it like i'm actually feeling better and performing better without it

it's like taking the blue pill in the matrix and suddenly this whole sort of world opens up to you where you start to really see things with a little bit more objectivity and clarity and you begin to question like well what's really going on here absolutely and uh what you um what you then see is that we're doing a lot of things in in everyday life without thinking about it without questioning it yeah yeah it's not just this issue yeah yeah it's it's a lot of things and a lot of things where you really uh before you get out of the matrix, you think it's just natural. It's just what I do because I want to do it. And then you find out, no, I'm just programmed to do all these things by culture. And as soon as you step one step back and then have a look on the whole thing from a little bit higher perspective, you just see all those things. Right. So what would another example, an example of that be for you?

A lot of things that people do to each other. Like, for instance, how you manage the relationship like this um um for instance we we are used to um have um a relationship to uh to another human being um same or or uh different sex and uh we we have this feeling of that that can always be a relationship of two people it's actually completely cultural it could be 20 people loving each other or or anything um and um it's a it's a lot of things that that we do um like and the the funniest part of it is that it's really fundamental things it's not just things that uh like i don't know like smoking or or anything that that is not really watching too much tv or something yeah it's not things like that but uh when it comes to the relationship to

other human beings and when it comes to eating that's things that have to do with surviving and that are really the most fundamental things in life. And we still have no clue why we do it the way we do it. That's so true. And it's really a big eye-opener when you get to the point where you really see that you're doing all this stuff just because you're programmed to. Right. And it's so great because then all these new ways open up.

Like you find yourself in a big room where before that you had to just roll on this one rail and it was only one direction. And then you find all these new directions or all these new possibilities right gestalt is a german word right it's the gestalt of just the sort of you know cultural imperative of you know as a this is what you do and then when you're this age you do this and then you go to high school and then you go to college and then you work and you rent an apartment and you lease a car. Wait a minute. What is going on? You know what I mean?

What's really insane here? That's so interesting and funny. All right. So do you have this epiphany in like one lightning bolt or is this a gradual progression of realizing, you know what, like there's too much dissonance between my value system and how I'm behaving. I need to align these a little bit better. No, it was really a clear cut at that moment. But it had no external factor. Like some people watch a film,

like I know a lot of people who watch Earthlings, for example, and then they go vegan or anything. But for me, there was no external factor. It was really just this one moment where I just became aware of the problem. And that was it, just boom. Yeah, that was it. So I made the decision. It didn't really work out well on the first run.

So what happens was after two days of no meat, we would go out. And then after going out and after not eating for quite a long time, we would get to a place with our friends where they had pretty much nothing that was without meat. Right. Only sausages. Stuff nothing that was without meat. Right. Only sausages. Stuff like that. Or Germany. And then they had salami pizza. Uh-huh.

And then I thought, okay, what am I going to do now? I'm dying. I'm starving here. Yeah. So at the end, I ordered a salami pizza. And then I took the salami off the pizza and I ate the pizza. And then I was, what am I doing here? It's already happened.

So I thought, okay, this is helping no one. So the first try ended after those two days with eating the salami pizza. And then the day after i would get back to it and then it went on for six years yeah and so and and this is the same time where you're looking for a physical challenge also and you start to get interested in the strong man stuff this is probably six months uh or or a few months before that, before I was looking for the physical challenge. So like several months before starting to think about Strongman, I made this decision and I went vegetarian.

Right. And did you think at that time, I mean, were you perceiving yourself as an athlete? Did you contemplate the impact that that might have on your ability to perform in the gym? No. contemplate the impact that that might have on your ability to perform in the gym no and that was that was actually the lucky chance that I had because I was totally expecting my performance levels to go down because through the 12 years before that i had always trained with with and i with a lot of animal products especially a lot of meat so i thought okay this is going to drinking like raw eggs like rocky and doing all that kind of stuff not so much i was more into

dairy products i would like drink 10 liters of milk and stuff like that um so so i thought okay um this is going to uh be a problem for my performance but i don't care so much because at that point i was just training for fun so i thought okay it's it's no problem that's okay like that's a bargain i'm comfortable with yeah and what then happened was the exact opposite like in the six months after that um i was doing so well i gained five kilos of muscle mass or of body weight um i was getting stronger than i was before that's the interesting thing because in the gym you can you can calibrate it exactly you know exactly what your numbers are right so those numbers went up i mean did you vary the kind of training that you were doing? So was the only variable the change in the diet?

Yeah, that's the cool thing because- Did you lose weight and then put it back on? Like we were talking on the train, like I had David Carter on the podcast, a 300 pound vegan NFL football player, and he lost a bunch of weight and then had to put it on. But then ultimately he ended up much stronger in the gym and faster, more agile, like across the the board like all his numbers were better but but

he had like a little dip first and then had to kind of you know sort of build the foundation again yeah no i hadn't uh hadn't anything like that because um four years before that point, I was just training for fun. So it was pretty much all those four years were a plateau. And the only thing that changed was the diet. The only thing that changed was that I got rid of the meat. And what really happened is, I mean, you won't gain any weight just by giving up meat. What really happened is because I was not eating meat, my appetite was much more because I had this feeling of I have to get – what I was eating wouldn't fill me up.

So I was like, I have to eat more. And that's something that's really crucial um because meat is really giving your your stomach a lot of work and when you get rid of that you just you're just more hungry so you you will eat a lot of more stuff um and then i just made sure that that uh i ate good stuff and so i gained weight and and the performance levels went up. So the reason for the performance gains was not so much giving up meat by itself, but it was because giving up meat, I had much more appetite and I had much more room, so to say, for all the good stuff that I then consumed. Interesting.

So was there a moment in the gym where you were like, wait a minute, what's going on? Like I just pushed X number of kilograms or pounds. Like that's never happened before. Like how did that look for you? Was there a specific day in the gym where it hit you like, wow, this is actually making me better? No, it was more gradual because it was uh coming gradually uh over this six month period uh it was

not so much uh this um this experience of of uh having that one point where we realize what what is going on uh but it was much more um just looking back those six months that I saw, okay, something went really, really good in the last six months. And then I obviously realized, okay, that's since I stopped eating meat. Right. And so was the kind of gains that you were experiencing, was that related to this renewed desire to find a challenge like did that give you like a spark of like enthusiasm you know after sort of being on a plateau for a while no um because um i i gave up meat in 2005 and then six months later was was the point where i started thinking about uh looking for for a new challenge and i think it was pretty much vice versa it was i realized that i was doing so well so i thought i have to use this for something yeah because i

was feeling like okay this is probably this will go on um and uh this will open up some perspectives on on being competitive at something so i was looking for new challenges and i wasn't uh motivated to do any bodybuilding anymore so i was just checking if i what i could use this for um and that's where we get to the point where i was looking for the wrestlers and then right came up with strongman all right so explain what the world of strongman competitions is. Yeah. So strongman is a very young sport, and it's been established in 1977. And it all started with this TV show called The World's Strongest Man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just going to say, it harkens back to the 70s. I remember as a kid watching these shows, even like Battle of the Network Stars, they would have them do these crazy, you know, like chopping trees down and carrying logs and things like that. Yeah.

Pulling cars. Yes. And the reason that they had all these new events was quite straightforward because they wanted to find out who is really the strongest man in the world. And for finding that out, they had to take athletes from different sports who consider themselves to be strong, put them together, and then have some kind of competition where they could compete against each other. And to not make it unfair and not giving any of these athletes an advantage over the others, they invented new types of strength tests. And that's pretty much the reason why you have all these crazy things. So you would have weightlifters, powerlifters, bodybuilders, wrestlers, all kinds of strong guys.

And so no one would have an advantage. They would have events like lifting cars or pulling trucks or carrying. It's like gymnastics, right? You have a series of different events and then it's like a point system, right? And you have the overall winner who can kind of, or like the decathlon, right? Where there's all these different contests and the overall winner is the person

who kind of scores the best across them all. Exactly. That's the way it's measured while in other sports where like running or or anything you have this one discipline and then you can just measure uh the the speed or or whatever or how uh how how long they jump or anything or the distance and then you have a winner. With Strongman it is always different

events and they are very different from each other so one is for speed and I mean they are all for strength but in one you might want to be very quick also and then the other event is probably just throwing something. So to make all these things comparable

and to have a system where it all fits together, you just get points by the way that you place in the event. So that's the reason why the sport is... The perfect way to be competitive at Strongman is if you are quite good in all events. You don't have to be crazy strong on one event because it doesn't give you any extra points if you like uh throw the thing away uh um double the distance like everyone else you just have to win it or you just have to be right so you just want to basically what you want

to do because you're you're doing so many events is is be the best but conserve as much energy as possible for the next event. So you want to just win by the narrowest of margins, just like the way that you were trying to cut weight perfectly. Yeah, and sometimes you don't even have to win. Sometimes you can win a competition without winning any of the events, but just by being in the top three in all the events. Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, that's the way like the Tour de France works,

like a stage race in cycling. Like the GC, the overall winner, he may not win a single stage of the whole thing but is sort of placing the highest day in and day out. And are there like style points too, like how good you look lifting the car? No, there aren't. And I think it's a pity.

There should be, right? Yeah, it should. There should be a beard category because you would definitely win that one. That would be a good one. No, there isn't anything like that, but it would totally make sense because – Probably a lot of those guys have beards too, right? That would be stiff competition in the beard category. But I think you would take it.

Yeah, probably I would have the most special beer yeah so so the thing is um um you now you have this competition which actually started as a tv show so you have this unique mixture of of of a sport of a real sport where you really have to perform and a show that is really meant to entertain people. And you have all these- Which brings it back to wrestling. Yeah. It's kind of like that, right? You have to be a showman.

Yeah, there is some part of it is still- So there's a style aspect to it. Maybe not scored in points, but certainly present in the sort of ethos of it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, the one thing is you want to win a competition, but then the other thing is you also want to be popular.

You want to be loved by the people. So, of course, if you put out a big show and you entertain people, they're going to like that. So you have a lot of personalities there who do that in a great way and who are very charismatic. And that's part of the game, but you don't get any points for that. Right, right. of the game but you don't get any points for that right right um yeah so so the whole thing began in 1977 and then it um went on for for several years and with the years um the whole thing grew so it

was then not only um the the world's strongest men uh annually but it was also uh qualifying uh series to to get to to get there and then it started to uh to have babies all around the world uh and and uh so all countries will would have their national championships and so on to get uh qualified to get to the series and so on. So it grew a lot until 2006, where I started to scan the internet for the whole thing. You're like, this looks good. I could do this. This could be my thing. The main aspect was that I found out that they had begun,

one year before, they had begun to establish a lightweight category. And this lightweight category was up to 105 kilos. And that was my body weight. And I thought, okay, the reason why I haven't tried that is because I didn't want to compete against guys who are like double my weight. Yeah, like 300 pounds.

So I thought, okay, I wouldn't have any chance to beat those guys. But if I have a category who is my body weight and so none of the other athletes is going to be bigger than me, probably I would have a chance to be competitive. And I'm always quite – so if I do something, I really want to be good at it. If I don't see a chance to be good at it, I won't do it. So I thought, okay, this might be a chance for me to make use of my gains in the last six months.

Yeah, so I would contact the president of the German Federation, German Strongman Federation. the president of the German Federation, German Strongman Federation. And as it is not such a big sport, you actually have the chance to get through to those people. Right. Whoa, somebody called. Yeah.

So I just asked him, I just sent him a message and told him my numbers and everything and just asked him if he would think that it's realistic to try to come to one of the newcomer competitions. And then I also met him in the gym and we talked together and he even said he thinks that I could be very competitive actually in the lightweight categories because there wasn't such a lot of athletes who would be much stronger than me so so I thought okay I give it a try and

in 2006 I had my first competition I did several newcomer competition and I also tried to get to the nationals in the lightweight category. All right, so hold on a second. So tell me about the first competition. Did you just go in there and nail it? Like what happened? No. No? I don't know if I even – did I even win my bodyweight category?

Did I even win my bodyweight category? I mean, one thing that I found out was there were certain events where I could really destroy anyone. And that's pretty much something that stayed until today. So there are certain events where I'm really, really good and I can compete with anyone in the world. And that's mostly events that we call overhead events, where you have to lift something over your head. Shocking that it's called an overhead event.

It's like a keg lift or the log lift. Right. But some of the other ones, though, I would imagine involve certain new skills that would take some time to learn. Yeah, absolutely. And some of them, you just need a certain type of anatomy that I didn't have. Like when you have the so-called atlas stones, that's round concrete balls that you have to grab and and put on a platform and if you don't have long arms right you're not happening you're in trouble i mean it happens but

it's really much much more uh work uh than for someone who is just tall and just grabs them and gets his arms around the whole thing and you really have to try to do it just having your arms on the sides yeah i got so so um being being uh as as short as i am it's uh in in some some part of the uh of the things that we have to do is uh it's an advantage and in others it's right exactly well that's why there's so many different events right in the balance who's going to come out on top after all said and done because no one's going to be the best at every single one of them yeah that that's the thing and that's what separates it from for example weightlifting because uh some people say okay

weightlifter is is a strong guy but actually a weightlifter is a specialist for what they have to do right they are really good at doing what they do yeah and the guy in the decathlon the guy who who who is the best at the shot put or the hammer throw isn't going to win the mile yeah that's it um and and the the purpose uh at strongman is to have a perfect overall test of all types of strength. So at the end of the day, you get a winner who is really overall a really, really strong guy. That's what we try to establish. Yeah, so at least in the first year, what I was able to do was

I broke the German record in my weight category at the log lift. So I already… That's got to be competitive. There's got to be a lot of strong German guys that like to lift logs. Yeah. Right?

I mean, overall, in strongman, you have… it's funny because it's almost like you have certain eras where certain parts of the world are quite dominant at Strongman. It begins in the first years with the Americans because the whole show begins… Because it started there. Yeah, it started in America. But quickly, I would imagine Eastern Europe starts to… There's something between. Eastern Europe comes in the 90s. But between that and the 80s, the northern countries like Norway and also Finland and all the Scandinavian countries, especially Iceland.

the Scandinavian countries, they would, and especially Iceland. So up to date, Iceland had the most winners overall at worst from this map. Wow, why do you think that is? If you look at the statistics, you see that the Icelandic

people are the tallest and the heaviest people on Earth. And I think that helps. A little bit, right? That's it. Okay. And also... Explanation solved, right?

I mean... They're really strong and big there. Yeah, and also... And there's nothing to do when it's dark out all the time. Oh, actually, they're really cultivated people. I'd love to go to Reykjavik. I've never been. I'm really fascinated by Iceland. Never been there, but I really want to go to Reykjavik. I've never been. I'm really fascinated by Iceland.

Never been there, but I really want to go there someday. Me too. So Iceland is really cool. And one thing that also plays a role, I think, is this Viking culture. So it's this,

I mean, if you have a culture where it is cool to be strong, and as a Viking, I think it is cool to be a strong guy, that helps, of course. And in Germany, you don't have that. In Germany, Germans perceive themselves more as intellectuals, and that's sometimes really a problem

because as a strength athlete, sometimes you're just just a freak so and if you experience that that it really doesn't help you in society to be strong it probably prevents a lot of people to trying to go for competitions yeah that makes sense i mean i yeah i get that yeah interesting um and also what what plays a role is uh that that you have some sports that uh build the basis for what what you then uh build upon to to get to the point uh to be competitive as a strongman like in in america you have that with with football so most of the football players have a quite good base uh that they can build upon to to get into strongman um and in the eastern european countries you would have all those weightlifters and and wrestlers they have the perfect base to

to build upon um the the icelandic and the northern people they're like like i said they're just big and strong that's it but then like i said in the 90s, you get to the Eastern European guys. They were quite dominant in the 90s and also up to date, they are still quite dominant. But in the last, I would say, 10 years, England and the United States are back in the game. So you have guys like Brian Shaw who won the title the world's, I think, three times now, and Derek Poundstone, who was more type of guy comparable to me, not so tall, but

really built very steady and a great overhead guy too. So, yeah, so it seems to have certain eras where the dominant guys come from certain parts of the world. So you're introduced to this. You do a couple of these newcomer competitions and you kind of work your way up as you kind of develop this skill set. And where does it click in like, hey, you're going to be kind of like a top guy? In the second year.

In the second year, I won my weight category for the first time. In Germany? In Germany. So it was 2007. And then in 2009, I won it again. In 2008, I had a bad year. And now the important part of it is that when you are competing on national level in Germany, it means that you are competing at the same competition with the big guys.

that you're competing at the same competition with the big guys. So it's not that there's no nationals for the lightweight guys and the special nationals for the big guys. So the weight classification doesn't come in until you go to the international competitions. Yeah, that's one thing. And another thing is you get a title for your division, but you still have to do the same thing that the heavyweight guys do and then after the competition you have like two different uh

ranking systems so you get ranked in your body weight category and you also get ranked in the overall category i see so you have like two uh chances of winning the title i see if if you are a freak of nature you could win both titles i see so so are you saying that in that that when you it was a 2009 you win the german national championships but you're actually beating guys that are much bigger than you yeah that's that's what ordinarily would not be in your weight class that's what i would try to get to so what what happened was in both years that I won my category, I was fifth in the overall. So it meant that only four of the big guys were able to beat me.

And in 2010 or in 2009, it made me think of if I wouldn't have to stick to the body weight I thought probably I would be able to beat those four guys too if I could put on another 10 kilos or so of body weight and try to be stronger than I was at that point because at that point I was already on a on a point where I really have to force my body weight to not get any heavier. So I thought, okay, if I unleash these extra kilos, probably it will help to beat those guys too. Which I didn't consider myself as being able to win German nationals in the heavyweight category before that.

But then I thought, okay, I will give it a try next year. Right. So screw the weight classification. I'm just going to go for it. It doesn't matter how big these guys are. I'm going to beat them at their own game. Yeah. I will just try.

So how did it go? I wasn't so self-confident, but thought okay i'll try it let's this is 2010 yeah this 2010 all right um and you're still are you still vegetarian at this point yeah um i i hadn't gone vegan yet no i haven't gone gone vegan but i'm a vegetarian for five years at that point and uh what um so what what happens next is um i will go back for for bodybuilding in 2000 after 2009 and in in that uh time time span that that i prepared for another bodybuilding competition that the whole thing was about uh i just wanted to find out if i would be able uh after being a strong man and being quite out of shape for a bodybuilder i was just uh curious if i would be able to get back into shape um so i i thought okay um i compete in summer for uh for strongman and i could uh compete in winter for bodybuilding and then after the winter i could just get back to strongman

yeah so that was the plan um and um at that time i i had a problem with concentrating. And for quite a long time, I had some health issues too. And one of them being that I had a constant low blood level of iron. And I couldn't figure out what the problem was. So I would get supplements, iron supplements, and it wouldn't help anything. After I went vegan, I found out that it was all the dairy products because dairy products, they block your iron intake. And that was also the reason that the supplements didn't help because it doesn't matter so much

how much iron you take as long as you have substances that block the iron intake. because it doesn't matter so much how much iron you take as long as you have substances that block the iron intake. That you can't absorb it. They're not bioavailable to you. Yeah. What is it about the dairy that blocks the iron absorption? I don't know what it exactly is, but there's several types of foods that do that,

one of them being dairy. Another is black tea. Yeah, the tannins in coffee and tea can do that as well. And what it is exactly in dairy products, I don't know, but it's one of the foods that does that. But I didn't know at that point, and the problem was that I had all these issues, and I tried a lot of supplements and everything and it didn't know at that point. And the problem was that I had all these issues. And I tried a lot of supplements and everything and didn't help anything.

And you can't be a strong man if you're anemic. That's a problem. You must have had doctors saying you got to start eating meat again. That wasn't so much the problem because my performances were quite good. And then also, I wasn't really anemic, but I was always on the bottom level of okay. So it was not that I really felt bad or anything. I was still able to compete and everything. But what worried me the most was this problem of concentrating. And I didn't know if there was any connection between the whole thing. So at that point, I came to a point where my mom actually convinced me that not eating meat was the problem. And at that point, I thought, okay, I've tried all different things.

None of them seems to help so i'm going to try to uh get back to eating meat for for a certain um um time period and see what happens it was like 10 months or so where where i started to to meat again. It really felt totally awkward because for five years, if you were away from that, it really felt unnatural to me. And that's why I gave it up after 10 months. Also, the iron deficiency, it didn't help anything with the iron deficiency, uh, didn't, uh, didn't, it didn't help anything with the iron deficiency.

So you started eating meat again, but it didn't solve the low iron problem. No, it didn't solve anything actually. So after 10, 10 months, I gave it up. Um, and, um, and that was pretty much the time, uh, period where I also, um, uh, prepared I also prepared for the bodybuilding show. So after the bodybuilding show, I gave up bodybuilding for the rest of my life. Because also my now wife, she told me if I would do that any time again, she would just leave me. Why? Because it's such an insane lifestyle or yeah the thing

is we we came together when i was already in the preparation so uh but i was in the beginning of the preparation so so what what she when we um when we got together she she just met this guy who is in quite good shape and is quite charming and quite a nice guy. And then within the next months, I turned into this hungry, starving monster who is in a ridiculous shape and who has to do six hours of cardio every day. And then after the last hours of cardio every day. And then after the last hours of cardio, I would come home and I would be so exhausted and so done that I would just get rid of all these soaking wet clothes.

And then completely naked, I would just fall into my bed, and I would just instantly fall into sleep because I was completely out of energy. And for her, it was just shocking seeing how I was destroying my body on that level. So she told me, okay, if you do that again, I'm gone. Yeah, and I stick to that. So I'd never done any bodybuilding after that. And also after the bodybuilding competition,

I also was at the point that I said, okay, this meeting eat doesn't make, it doesn't feel like that's not me. So I gave that up too. And I got back to the vegetarian diet. And that was in 2009. And then 2010 was the first year where I got into the heavyweights. And at that point, going back to the vegetarian eating, it also helped gaining weight again. So I gained at about, I mean, I was competing on 105 in 2009. Kilograms.

Yeah, kilograms. But my actual body weight would be probably 110 or so. So I would have to cut five kilos. Right, but not like giant cuts. No. But then in 2010, I gained at about five kilos. So my actual body weight was 115. So actually, I was 10 kilos heavier than in the last competition.

And it worked out quite well. So in the first year in the heavyweights, I became runner-up champion at the nationals. For all of Germany. Yeah, for Germany. And 2011 was my second try. And then I won. In 2011, I won the heavyweights.

And what then happened had a lot to do with that I decided after the competition to go vegan. And it all began by a blog post that I made in my web blog where I just wrote that I had won this title and it's the most

prestigious title in in strength sports uh on a national level so i just um yeah just bragged with uh being able to to get to that point um and uh just enjoyed the um the experience. And then the last sentence that I wrote had a tremendous impact on my life. And the sentence was, so I have finally proved that it makes you a better athlete being vegetarian. And I think thousands of vegetarian people all around the world, they quoted that so you had the quote all over the place uh in the web uh in in within like one or two weeks it pretty much went viral and then the media got uh got me on the radar so um suddenly i had like big newspapers calling me in Germany, big TV shows.

And I was guest in all those shows and talks and everything. And at that point, I became aware of the fact that I was through the media able to reach a lot of people and really make a change like I had feedback from from people telling me you have changed my life because after seeing you on tv I thought about all all these things and what I was basically saying in all those shows was that after going vegetarian and after giving up meat my experience was that i even got stronger and it even helped me with performing so um all these people that were afraid of uh that that felt like okay i'm feeling um uh compassionate with animals but i think i'm going to lose my manliness or or anything they they they had this um um i was able to um to take away that that worry from them right of of losing anything when when they uh get rid of meat so um so i was

getting all this uh feedback and at that point, I already knew that being vegetarian for ethical reasons and out of compassion, it really isn't enough. Because if you take a look on the dairy industry and if you take a look on how eggs are produced and everything, it's such a lot of disgusting stuff that happens there that you really if you come from a compassionate point of view you really want to uh not support any of these things too so the actual answer would be to go vegan but um my problem was that it was not so much about the eggs because i already was not consuming i didn't consume a lot of eggs at that point. But I was consuming massive amounts of dairy. And in my worldview, at that point, the dairy products were my secret. So I thought, okay, that's the reason I'm so strong. And I thought,

okay, if I get rid of the dairy, this is not going to work in any way. I'm not going to be able to maintain what I do now. Yeah, so that's a moment of consternation. Like you're suddenly at a sort of fork in the road, right? Because you found yourself to be almost, in certain respects, kind of an overnight celebrity where suddenly you have this platform and people are looking to you as kind of an ambassador of of you know this this movement and what it means to be you know an ethical vegetarian and yet here you are you know thinking i've got to drink all this you know like realizing you know the sort of truth

behind the dairy industry and and reconciling that against this idea that that's what's fueling your athletic prowess yeah so so it was really a problem and um what i thought was okay i would love to be um to be a to represent veganism uh and for doing that i would have to go vegan and then at the same time i thought okay but but what is going to happen and if i go vegan now and I'm now on a very high level of where you can get competing, and if I fail after going vegan, it's not going to help anything. Right. That's not going to help the movement. Yeah.

It could potentially hurt the movement, right? Absolutely. It raises the stakes for that choice that you're going to make. Absolutely. It raises the stakes for everything for that choice that you're going to make. Yeah. So I was really worried about different things. And I thought, okay,

if I want to do that, I will first have to do a lot of research and find out how to do it right. At that point I didn't even know where to get any protein from plants. I didn't know anything because all the years before, protein wasn't a big matter. I was just drinking all this milk and having like six pounds of curd cheese a day. Like whey protein powder powder a lot of that

yeah a lot of all those things and this is still we're talking about this is 2010 yeah okay so um i mean at that point we're 2011 because i have won the title i just won the title so um so i'm thinking uh what what will i do next um and i'm starting researching uh what a vegan diet looks like and if it's doable and if i can get to do this and then at a certain point i just make the decision to do it because i think um okay um i know that there is a way and I know that I have done all those, like I've been able to take all these challenges in the last years and in all my life. So I'm going to find a way to do it. So I make the decision and the first person that I tell that the decision I made is my mom. Before your wife?

Before my wife, my now wife. At that point, i made is my mom before your wife before my wife my now wife at that point she's just my girlfriend so so i um tell my mom and she goes completely nuts she she completely gets out of her mind and uh she's like okay i i was i was okay with all this stupid uh Like, okay, I was okay with all this stupid vegetarian thing. But now you're getting completely out of control. Because it just sounded so extreme to her to not drink any milk, to not having any animal product. And I thought, okay, I'm going to try this with uh with my girlfriend it might work better work out better than this so so i told uh katie what i was planning to do

and um yeah so uh the same thing happened she she goes completely nuts and the same thing as when you when she didn't want you to be a bodybuilder no the same thing that happened with my mom with your mom i got you okay so which is sort of like the other thing yeah okay so so what happened was uh she she actually um um she actually said uh she she would even break the relationship because she said, okay, most of the time I'm cooking, so I don't actually want to cook these strange plant stuff that you want to eat. So that was one thing. And then she was like, this is so extreme.

What is going to be the next step? So she was afraid of me going into a development where I would become an extremist. And she literally said, what is the next step? Are you going to blow up a butcher? Wow, that's a leap, right? That's an interesting mental bridge to build when you're coming from a place of compassion. And she's equating that with a violent extremism.

And the reason is that she's an omnivore at that moment. And she's only with me for a year or so. And also when she got to knew me, it was right in this 10 months where I was eating meat. So we got together when she perceived me as a normal person. And then I tell her, okay, I've been vegetarian for a long time before

and I'm going to go back to that. And she's okay. You have done that so so she's a whole different thing yeah but vegan is not not good but yeah i mean it's interesting that that's perceived as being so extreme because you know and sort of where i live it's sort of like it's kind of like the thing to do now you know what i mean like uh is that but that's not necessarily a german thing that's more like a mom thing yeah yeah i think uh it it has a lot to do with um um also with with the time it takes place because a lot has changed since then i mean one part of it is i have been in such a lot of tv

shows that i'm like one part of this process that happens in Germany at the moment where veganism is growing like mad. And my mom or Katie, if the same thing would happen now, so if I wouldn't have made the decision four years ago and I wouldn't make it today, the thing would be completely different. And also, both of them are vegan for more than two years now. Oh, your mom is too? Yeah, yeah, they're both vegan now. Wow.

And so, but even if all of that would take place now, I think the whole thing would be very different because such a lot of things that have happened uh in in the last four years um and and in germany a lot of development uh went on all right so so so you so you're vegan and you're like you know whatever happens in the weight room and the strength stuff is going to happen but this is what i'm doing so then what then what's what's the next thing yeah uh it's it's it's about that I said, okay, I'm going to make this work.

I'm going to find a way to make this work. And what then happens is that I get completely shocked by the results. Because, and what I find out is that I've completely lost these six years of being vegetarian. Because all these problems that I had like the iron deficiency the heartburn that I had throughout my life I find out that all these problems come

from the dairy from the massive amounts of dairy that I um would uh that I would consume and one of my concerns was also that um I mean there would be two ways to fail. The one way would be to do it, to go vegan, and then fail at the competition. And the second way would be to try to do it and then fail because I was so addicted to dairy products. So there was these two different ways to fail. Maybe you would lapse and go back to eating dairy.

Yeah, yeah. And what then happens is after three weeks or so, I just realized I don't have any craving for dairy anymore. And there was another two months or so. But what was that first two weeks like? Like did you have like… Not so bad too. It was really strange.

It was tough for me. Yeah, it was strange and awkward and and i even had the feeling of of uh getting weaker but the good part of it was something that you said uh earlier um because i was uh training i was able to to monitor my my numbers and they were okay still i in my head i felt like i'm getting weaker because it was so awkward and it was so strange to to eat in a very different way so i really thought that i was getting weaker but i wasn't and my numbers were great they just stayed stable and what are you replacing that dairy those dairy products with yeah that's the best part of it.

So in the last weeks before I made the cut, I would have massive amounts of whey protein. And this whey protein was, I got it as a present from my friend. And that's the same guy that I started training with back. Oh, the kid when you were 14. Yeah, back when we were kids. So he had made big amounts of whey protein that he was selling. And he stopped selling the product at a certain point. And he just gave everything that was left, he just gave it to me.

So you had like crates full of whey protein. Yeah. And that was left he just gave it to me um so you had like crates full of whey protein yeah and that was a problem so i was like okay if i throw unlimited supply you're just doing shake after shake after shit no it was not that much but but it was a lot so i also gave away a lot of it but um it wasn't uh it wasn't i wasn't able to to sell it or anything because it was already over the, what is it called? Oh, the shelf life or whatever, the expiration date. Yeah. So I just consumed it by myself. And I thought, okay, I'm going to consume that until it's finished. And that's the point.

until it's finished and that's that's the point so in uh in in the months before uh the cut i was pretty much 90 of my protein came from this uh whey protein and then after the cut i would just replace the whole whey protein one by one by soy protein which is actually not a very smart thing to do. But in a way, it was cool because I could compare those two sources one-on-one together and all the effects that I had, I can now really count on this comparison between soy protein and whey protein. And how did that balance out? Like what were the differences?

And that's the cool part of it because you would normally think, okay, whey protein is as an animal protein. You have the sulfur-containing amino acids. You have all these things that over-acidize your body. And with soy protein, you would probably think, okay, it's still not a very good source of protein so um and and that that's the good part of it because um my experience my experiences were so positive that and and having a not perfect plant source even makes it better because if i would have had the perfect plant-based um right if you

had a blend of of like sprouted pea protein and hemp protein and brown rice protein instead of soy it would have been even that much better but your experience was that just replacing soy for whey actually was better in what way like in you know what aspect of it was it better in what way? Like in what aspect of it was it better? So what happened was I had, for instance, heartburn throughout my life. And I always considered dairy and milk as the remedy for that. So when I had heartburn… It was supposed to be the cause. Yeah, but I didn't know that. And the problem was that I have been addicted uh to to dairy

products for throughout my life even as a child so i haven't had any single day in my life where i didn't drink any milk and where my body had a chance to find out what is it what is it like to uh not have any input any dairy input um and also thought, okay, if I'm going to go vegan, I'm going to die from heartburn because I'm using all this milk and dairy products to getting rid of that. And I don't want to take any pills for that. So let's see what happens then.

And what happened was after one or two days it just went away and i was really shocked by that and i didn't know what happened until i found out about the sulfur containing amino acids and i just realized that the dairy products were actually the problem so it was like trying to put a fire out by taking massive amounts of wood and putting it into the fire so in the first second i mean if you drink a glass of milk of dairy milk you you really feel better and that's because i think one part is because of the calcium it helps neutralizing uh the um the acid in your stomach and another another thing is you just throw in protein. So the acid has something to do and it helps neutralizing it.

But what actually happens is you really throw wood into the fire. So it goes on. And that's what I have been done throughout my life. And at that point, I realized, great, the fire just went away. And the remedy was actually the cause. Right. Yeah, that's so interesting. So from there, I would imagine you begin to, that must have sort of encouraged you and given you

a certain level of enthusiasm to say all right well let me look into this more deeply and really try to get it right like how can i dial this up now that it seems the early indications are that this is going in a good direction for me yeah absolutely so um what happens next is – so I have all these different concerns that I had. One was dying of heartburn. All right, so we checked that box. That's no longer a worry. That was okay. So the next one was failing because of the addiction.

What happens is three weeks after going vegan, the addiction went away. The cravings are gone because the microbiome changes. Yeah. And no, what I find out is I find this radio show on the web where a nutritionist just explains the biochemical basis for the addiction. And the reason I use the word addiction is it is really an addiction oh no question about it yeah because um it's when when you digest um uh dairy products you have uh the dairy protein which is made of whey protein and casein and when you digest casein you get this

thing called casomorphines and the casomorphines are you already hear it uh in the sound um are something like endorphine but but they're called exorphines because they do the same thing but they come from the outside uh and what in nature the the role of the whole thing is to make the baby cow um the calf, to feel better when it goes and drinks from its mom's breast. And it makes totally sense because if it gets a little bit addicted to performing that behavior, it is going to get fed well. Right, sort of activating the pleasure center in the baby calf's brain

and in the same respect doing that to us as humans. Yeah. I never heard that explanation before. That's interesting. Yeah, me too. Right after going vegan for two months or so, I learned that. And that was the basis of the whole thing. And the good thing is it is really an addiction.

That's why I'm using the word. And the good thing about addictions is once you get away from the drug for a certain period, you're done. The craving goes away at a certain point. And the only thing you have to make sure is not to get back. Reactivate it. Yeah, not to reactivate it. And then you're good.

So after three weeks i was cured so this one check that box yeah check that box the third one was am i going to be able to stick to to the performance level and i'm going to be able to uh to really perform well it was um now we have to get back to this heartburn thing. So what actually happens is I'm not only getting rid of the heartburn, but I'm getting rid of the over-acidizing of my body. And you know what happens

if you're not over-acidized anymore. Right. So all these dairy products are by their very nature very acidic, right? And your body has to work very hard to maintain essentially a neutral, slightly alkaline pH in your blood system. And when you sort of bombard your system with either alkaline or acid, you have to buffer that. Your system has to buffer it. So all that dairy products, your system has to buffer it by leaching alkalines out of your bones, which means taking calcium out of your bones, ironically, which is why, you know, sort of

excessive dairy ingestion can lead to osteoporosis against what most people believe. But in turn, this leads to this state of like chronic acidosis, which causes inflammation, which leads to all these, you know, chronic illnesses that so many people suffer from. Yeah. And one thing you mentioned is inflammation. And that's something that is quite crucial when you're doing a sport like the sport I do, because doing all these movements with heavy weights puts a lot of stress on your

bones and joints and it causes inflammatory processes. What you have is then a situation where you are in constant pain being in competitions and in training. I realized that this level of pain went much, much better after several weeks of being on a vegan diet. So that made me think about and then I tried to find out what was the biological basis for that. And I found out, okay, if you're over-acidizing your body, inflammation gets worse. So it's just when you get rid of the acid, it also helps with that. And that brought me to an idea because now we're six months after my mom went nuts,

after I told her what I want to do. went nuts after i told her what i want to do um and my mom is suffering from um um rheumatoid uh atritis and that's all about inflammation right and i thought this might be a good thing for her um to to help her with the inflammation um and she's she's in a state where she has to constantly take painkillers. It's debilitating. It can be really bad. Yeah. And also she has to take something against arthritis itself. And then I come with this idea and I tell her and I'm just like,

okay, you might think that's crazy, but what if you just try it for several weeks and see what happens? And she's like, okay, why not? If it's able to help, why not? And then she also has seen me doing it for several months now. So she knows, okay, he didn't die yet. He's not freaking out as much.

Yeah, he didn't die yet and he looks good. So he seems to he seems to be do pretty uh pretty good so uh she said okay she's going to try it um and that's it she tries it for several weeks she gets rid of all the painkillers her um her situation gets much much better she reduces all the things that she had to take against arthritis to a minimal level. And she is enlightened by the whole thing. That's amazing. And she's vegan since then.

That's crazy. Yeah, from the freak out to being like an evangelist. That's extraordinary. Yeah. So it worked quite well with her. Yeah, so it worked quite well with her. And also Katie got on the train just by realizing what I was doing. And also, I mean, I think one crucial part was that I didn't try to push anything on both of them.

I really didn't push them to anything. I just gave them time to find it out for themselves. I was just teasing from time to time with some jokes or anything, but nothing more. And I think with Katie it helped a lot that she was always with me when I would give all these interviews for TV shows or stuff like that. She just wore down. She kept hearing the same thing over and over again until it starts to plant the seed.

Yeah, that's the thing. It really helped that I used all these arguments but not directed towards, not to her direction, but in another direction. She was like just a beholder. And she just listened to it. And something happened in her head. Interesting. Cool.

So we still have this one box yet that I'm not sure that we've checked, which is your ability to perform athletically. Like everything sort of seems like it's coming together in the gym and suddenly you're experiencing much less inflammation, which, you know, what that translates into is improved recovery time. Like if you don't have as much inflammation, you're able to train harder and bounce back more quickly, which is going to allow you to really kind of hit it harder and faster and more frequently. And I would imagine, you know, at least my experience was that that translates into, you know, pretty significant performance gains in a shorter period of time. That's it. That's exactly what happens. So one part of it is that I get rid of inflammation, so I'm able to train harder.

I'm able to recover faster and train more. That's the one thing. more that's the one thing and then the other thing is um the body have has all these um regulatory um processes where uh if you give too much of anything it blocks it or it doesn't take it in anymore and when right like if you start taking uh exogenous testosterone you know your body's going to shut down its own endogenous production of testosterone. Yeah, and you're going to get rid of your testicles. Yes.

That's what happens. So the body has a way of balancing everything out if it gets too much of anything. And what happens if you give the body protein that over-acidizes the body is the body just stops taking in protein. It's not absorbing that protein.

Yeah, and that's something that a lot of bodybuilders do without knowing it. That's something that I realized after going vegan. What happened was I just realized I didn't even have to have the same amount of protein to get the same results. And so it's really funny because a lot of people think if you go vegan, you have to eat more. What actually happened was I'm eating less now. And I'm even taking less protein.

And I'm 10 kilos heavier than I was before. So I'm 130 kilos now. And your explanation would be that your body is able to absorb these nutrients and perhaps maybe the nutritional density of the foods that you're eating is greater? No, the nutritional density is quite the same. greater or no the nutritional density is quite the same but what what really happens is that my my metabolism is much more efficient than it was before right and that's because it's not over acidized if you're over acidized your metabolism is completely inefficient so you have to just just have much more input for the same result than I have now.

Right. That's super interesting. Wow. All right. So when's the next competition where you kind of put this to the test? Yeah. So the next competition is the European Championships in powerlifting where I compete. Suddenly you're in an all-new sport yeah but but power lifting

not really uh what i have left out when i when we were uh talking about the first years was that i i done a lot of power lifting competitions too so that's something that i had done uh in the years before and that's actually the thing that i'm really built for so i'm doing strongman because because it's much more fun and power lifting is only these three movements and right you're you're like killing it in the in the sort of power lifting uh aspects of the strongman but it's the power lifting where you really can shine yeah because i'm short and uh especially for for the bench press and for the squat, it really helps when you have short limbs.

So that's something that I'm actually built for. What about when the knife blades come out of your knuckles? What do you use that for? Yeah, that's really a problem when deadlifting. Because sometimes there's some holes in the ground. Right. Touch yourself too. Anyway, go ahead.

No, so that's actually the first competition that I do as a vegan. It's, I think, let me think. I think it's four or five months after going vegan. And it's in Finland, and I win my category, and I win the overall championships. Wow, even with all those big, strong Finnish guys. Yeah. So that's the first competition where I can put it to the test.

And in terms of like your number, I mean, were you, you know, in terms of like the actual amount of weight, like were you hitting your PRs or where were you, you know? regard the powerlifting thing is not very useful because before going to the powerlifting competition I didn't train for that so I started training for that like six or eight weeks before going to the competition so it's there's no way to to compare anything i see but where we uh can compare is um if you like take a look at i mean i i think the the the log or the yoke is probably the best uh way to look for for having a a comparison because i have done uh um heavy yoke walks throughout the the whole time um like even one and a half years before uh before i went vegan so um i already started to to do heavy yoke walks and i was able to handle or this 10 meter thing i was able to do with 460 kilos and then after going vegan and uh being vegan for for two years um i did the world record with 550 yeah that's the one where i

was there yeah 550 and you just recently set another world record yeah yeah it was it is the same thing but five kilos more ah okay um and i was also you did that here in germany uh yeah at uh at the last competition uh-huh and so how fast did you do that one uh it was 28 seconds and i think seconds faster or 28 seconds total 28 seconds total uh-huh and did you have to did you set it down like you did? Yeah, I set it down once. But this time it was almost

the 10 meters were almost done and I had to set it up once. But just because I tried to be a little bit faster and then it didn't work out. In the interim, in between when I saw you in Toronto and this most recent world record, has anybody tried to challenge it? Like have other people attempted to do the yoke with more weight and failed?

Or are you out there like, you know, in the fringe, like doing this on your own? They have tried or they have challenged it. But the problem is that they went for a completely different distance so they um this uh there's been one competition where uh they the arnold classic actually where they went for three meters um and obviously if you go for three meters compared to 10 meters there's something completely different. So how much did that do? Yoke for three meters. They went for 680 kilos or so. That was the heaviest they went.

They did that for two consecutive years. And I really thought it was a pity that they went for did that for for uh two consecutive years and i really thought it was a pity that they uh went for for only three meters because it would really have been cool to uh have a direct comparison right because three meters is we're talking about like three or four steps versus what like 15 12 i mean how many steps do you take when you're doing the 10 meters? I mean, my distance was 30 feet compared to 10 feet. Right. So it's really something different. And also, I mean, one of the problems is that you…

You're the endurance athlete of yokelifting. Of the yoke walk, yeah. I'm the yoke walk Iron Man. I know. Ultra yoke walk. yeah. I'm the yoke walk Iron Man. I know. Ultra yoke walk. That's right, right? Not really, because 10 meters is also quite a short distance. But three meters is ridiculous.

But it's like an eternity when you have that much weight on you, right? So it is the ultra endurance distance of yoke walking. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right. So, you know, the idea behind this is it almost seems like, and tell me if this is fair, like this is a way to sort of advance your kind of advocacy. You're in this position, right, where you have a microphone all of a sudden and you have all these people paying attention and listening to you and you could continue to do you know sort of power lifting of you know competitions and strong man etc but by saying i'm going to try for this world record and just sort of self-style this

adventure and create attention around that is a way to kind of um put a microscope on uh not only your athletic prowess but also uh you know also the issues that you care about. Yeah, absolutely. So the main reason that I went vegan was that I was trying to be a good example. And being someone who influences a lot of people, I thought I really have to try to be the best example that i can be and that was the main motivation to to really do it um and that's really what i do in the last four years that i really try to find ways um of um of really getting the message out to people um

why why am i doing the whole thing uh thing and also get people's attention and to get people's attention I really from time to time have to do something crazy to get the media to get to the media radar it's a funny thing because you have to do something really kind of

outrageous in order to get that kind of attention and then people say yeah but that's unhealthy and outrageous you know what I mean so it's a weird to get that kind of attention. And then people say, yeah, but that's unhealthy and outrageous. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's right. So it's a weird thing like that. But I want to ask you about, let's see how long we've been going here.

I don't want to take a, whoa, we've been going for a while. We've been going almost two and a half hours, dude. All right, we got to go eat soon. But I can't let, there's a couple of things that I really want to talk to you about before I can let you go. And the first thing is, is, you know, sort of given where you are now, and that the kind of, you know, responsibility that you yoke,

just like you yoke the weights, you know, how do you, how do you kind of think about how you advocate? You know what I mean? Because I think that, especially with veganism and issues around food, it can become very emotional. There's a lot of passion, you know, and there's different ways of carrying the message. And you see like, there's a lot of sort of finger pointing and judgment and anger, you know, that comes with people that are passionate and see the world in a particular way. And you strike me as somebody who, you know, is carrying a message of compassion with a great deal of compassion and non-judgment. Yeah. And that's really what I try to do. What I try to do is um um i when i talk to people i always um take my own perspective before i went vegan

and i try to talk from that perspective um and i try to um just make them understand certain things by letting them um by letting them um experience my own thought processes so so I will tell them what what my concerns were like like we did in the last two hours I just told you what my concerns were and then I tell them what my experiences were when I really did it and a good part of that is that I don't have to judge people in in any way because what I'm actually doing is I'm just telling them my story and what happened. And then they have all this information without having the feeling that I try to push something on them.

And I think that's a really crucial part of the whole thing because as soon as people feel pushed in a certain direction, in most cases you will have this natural... You're going to push back. Yeah, it's like a reflex. They will find or try to find ways to judge you. Because as soon as your self-image is threatened, you find ways to get rid of that threat.

And one way is to just not listen. And that's what I don't want. So I really want them to listen to me so I can get the information into their brains. And to make them listen, I really try to be as unjudgmental as I can be because I know that that's poison. If you have the feeling that somebody is judging you, that's just poisoning the whole communication. Right.

Yeah, it kind of brings up something we were talking about on the train earlier when you talk about like sense of identity and trying to preserve that sense of identity or or whatever your worldview might be right and we were talking about how uh you know when you're doing something that's sort of unusual like that doesn't really compute uh like oh how can you how can you carry so much weight and and not eat animal products like that that's bizarre doesn't make sense to me. Oh, well, it must be either like Patrick's lying. There's one, oh, he's full of it. When no one's looking, he's eating meat. Or you're a freak of nature and you're an outlier. So that doesn't apply to me, which allows you to preserve your worldview because you're kind of threatening a sort of a cultural paradigm. And it's interesting how the human being reacts to that to try to uh you know sort of uh make sure that that the you know the the way that they see the world is not threatened by as a result of of your actions right and that's

a very natural thing we we always have to remember that that's an absolutely natural thing because the one thing that gives you um that gives you some some sense of um of certainty and some some say some sense of um being safe in this world is the feeling that you know how the world works and as soon as someone tells you something that is totally contra uh dicting something that you really believe in deeply that shakes your whole world and it's frightening yeah and it's absolutely normal and and very natural that people try to find ways to save that um that building that they have built in inside their mind from from the earthquake that that comes because um going back to what we said before, these things that we are doing without knowing why we are doing them, they are fundamental things, things like relationship.

If you tell someone that they're in love with this one person, that they think that everything comes totally naturally and this two-people relationship is completely natural and it comes from themselves, and you tell them, no, that's just culture. If culture tells you something else, you'll be married to five people or so. That shakes their whole world. And of course, everyone is going to say,

no, it's me and it's like I believe in. And that's the problem. That's the reason why you really have to be very careful in the way you communicate because you always have to remember the impact of the message that you are carrying. It's a huge impact. And so it's like carrying a big explosive weapon with you and not knowing what you're actually doing.

And just detonating it all over the place irresponsibly. And that's what happens when you look at discussions in the internet, when people get mad at each other, meat eaters and vegans, and they're almost in a virtual way, they almost kill each other. That's what happens. The vegans really forget how explosive this message is that they are carrying. And that's something that we really have to remember every day. Yeah, and I think it brings up issues of masculinity as well.

And we're both athletes. We're very different athletes. It's one thing for me, some skinny long-distance runner guy, to talk about this lifestyle. It's another thing altogether for a guy of sort of, you know, your strength and stature to be advocating it. And I think it's impossible to have this conversation without talking about, you know, what that means in terms of identity, you know, and so much of our cultural paradigm or our worldview as men, you know, is premised on this idea of the hunter-gatherer or the sort of,

you know, alpha who brings home the bacon, literally. And to say that, no, you know, to decouple your identity from that, you know, sort of activity is also a very, is very threatening to the worldview. And so how do you sort of speak to that? Because you're really kind of like, you know, you're the torchbearer, I think, when it comes to that. One thing that I do is I try to make people understand where this whole idea of this connection of manliness and meat eating,

where it really comes from. And you had it with the perfect words. It comes really from this archaic historic times where men would compare against each other to find out who is the best hunter so if you're the best hunter you're going to bring the most meat home so there's already this connection between meat and being being a real man and that's something that uh went it's not it didn't translate into all cultures uh one one to one but it's subliminally it's it's uh

within uh within pretty much all cultures except uh some some cultures in in india where you have vegetarians um it's it's pretty much there uh everywhere um and um just by trying to make people aware where it comes from, I think that helps already a lot to breaking this association that people have in their minds. That's something that I try to do. And then another thing is, of course, something that is not, I mean, it's not possible to put it into words, but I just try to help with that issue by doing what I do. So, I mean, if you have this guy

who is overweight, who has a long beard, who has pretty much every aspect of what you would consider to be manly and is able to just walk through a closed door if he wants and he's carrying a horse on his shoulders and so on. So you have this strange guy and he's able like a horse on his shoulders and so on. So you have this strange guy, and he's able to do all this, and he's able to be himself without having to eat meat or without having to consume animal products.

There's actually no questions left. Yeah, I mean, your actions and what you do as an athlete are going to speak more loudly than anything that comes out of your mouth and and i think you know that must inform your decision to return to competition because i think when i'd seen you last you were like yeah i'm not going to compete anymore like i just i don't feel like i want to compete against other other other people but you're like yeah i'm kind of getting back into it i mean is that what's part of that absolutely so so there's two reasons the one reason is uh after retiring for two years um i just um so one thing that i've seen is no one is doing my job so i was i was uh expecting of someone uh

getting into uh into the game and and just doing what I do now. And that didn't happen for two years. A human Wolverine Jr. to step in your place. So that's the one thing. And then another thing is that I just have the feeling that, I mean, one of the reasons to go away from competitions was that I thought I'm going to find more effective ways to communicate the whole thing without having to go on with sports. Because after all, I'm getting older and at a certain point, I'm not going to be able to improve. And that's the point where I don't know if I'm going to be any help for the movement also. Because if I don't improve, people are going to say,

ah, look, now after going vegan, it's done. Right, which is the other thing we were talking about earlier, which is this other argument that could be thrown at you. Like, oh, well, you got strong before you went vegan, so it doesn't really count yeah and and that's something that that is not uh not accurate because um i'm actually on on on certain uh um events i can show that i'm stronger and i'm also heavier and then much much more muscle than i was before but uh i vegan. So it's not that I maintain what I had before, but I build upon that and I'm even better now. I mean, the perfect way to see that is really just by looking at the yolk. And if you see that four years after going vegan, I'm still able to beat

my own record. And it even doesn't matter so much if it wouldn't be a world record anymore because the the really important thing is i'm beating myself from from time right from time to time so i can really show that i'm getting stronger and i think that's the really important part of it uh the world record thing is just important to get the media attention and to get people to talk about it um so so um um so so one thing was that i thought okay i think um being able to travel the world and and having all these talks and and the information to people through media and everything, and also writing books. So that's what I actually did after the world record in 2013.

I wrote a book, wrote my first book. So I thought, okay, this is going to be a more effective way of getting the information out to people. And in my intellectual worldview, that was how the world works. But unfortunately, that's not really how the world works. So people really want to have these crazy things. And that's something that I found out. And then I thought, okay, I'm now 36 and I I probably have two, three, or four more good years in me. So I really should use these years that I have in me and try to do as much as I can to really get this thing going.

And that's why I'm back in the competition. Yeah, so what's the next big challenge next thing would be uh for for next year to uh i mean one thing is i'm going to go go on with the yoke and i'm also going to go for the shorter distance because um one thing that that i had when i set the world record first was it was also called the heaviest weight a human being has ever carried. And I want to have that back. So I'm going to go for the shorter distance. You got to go the three meter

and put on 685 or something, right? Yeah, 700. 700. Let's see what's going to work. I already went to 640 in training. So we'll see. Right so that that's one thing then another thing is i'm going to get back to nationals um and uh one thing that i would really like to do is powerlifting or strong strong man so one thing that i really want to do is i want to regain the title because i never uh it as a vegan. So it would be a

really big argument if I could show that I'm able to regain the title as a vegan. And of course, next year will be my fifth year as a vegan. And what month is that? That's throughout the year. It's a series

of competitions. Oh, I see. So isn't it like one weekend where you show up and do it all. It's like points accumulated over the course of a period of time. I got you. Cool. All right. Well, we got to lock it down here. But the last thing I want to know about before we do that is walk me through a day in the life of Patrick in food and training.

Because there's no way we can close this podcast down without me at least asking you what you eat and how you train. We left it to the very end, but still, tell me a little bit about that. A lot of the calories that I take in are in liquid form. It starts in the morning when I get up. That's something that I have done before going vegan. Why is that? That's something that I have done before going vegan. Why is that? The thing is when I get up, I don't have any appetite. But I still want to take in calories because that's – one thing is after sleeping for eight hours,

I really want to give my body some nutrients as fast as possible. Another thing is I need energy for the day. So I need to get some calories in. But usually in the morning, in the first two hours, I don't have any appetite. So what I will do is I will have a big shake or a big smoothie. A shake would probably be a baboonian shake. Of course. Which is my own.

I saw the recipe in your book. Yeah, you saw it. So it's a lot of oatmeal. And then it's chocolate soy milk. And it's also some chocolate-flavored vegan protein powder. This is like the weight gainer morning shake. Yeah, that's it. Not even one leaf of kale in there?

Not necessarily. Okay, all right. So that's the first thing that I would have in the morning. That's pretty much my breakfast. Then two hours later, I would just have normal lunch like like anyone else and that could be probably uh a rice dish with tofu like uh tofu sweet sour with sweet sour sauce and rice and and some some uh veggies that that's it some thai veggies or anything um then after that uh an hour later or so i would have for instance a big smoothie and then two hours later i'm already uh within the range of of my workout so i will have my pre-workout shake which is just a shake on water basis with some

vegan protein powder so the first training session of your day isn't until the afternoon you don't you don't do any training in the morning yeah that's that's it um usually i'm even training uh um even later but uh it depends on what what the rest of the day will look like but we are not now pretending that it's going to be in the afternoon so i will have my uh pre-workout shake then there's training and after training i will have a big smoothie so you you already see there's only one uh real um meal until that, and everything else is liquid. Right, right, right. Then after the big smoothie,

there's going to be another meal. It's going to be probably the same thing that I had for lunch for a second time. Then after that, I will have probably some snacks I wanted to say some snakes what are the snacks? sometimes

peanuts, a lot of times it's just peanuts or some tortilla chips or anything but often it's just peanuts or just some just some walnuts or anything. And then in the evening, right before I get to bed,

I will have another protein shake. The reason for the last protein shake is just to get some protein in before I get to sleep. So I have something for these eight hours of sleep that stays in my body and still not wanting to having my stomach full before I go to bed. So how many grams of protein a day are you taking in, you think? I try to get 300 grams, but in most cases, it's 250 or something. So it's between 250 and 300 grams.

And what does the training look like? Like what's a typical day in training? Training can be very, very different depending on what I'm preparing for. The latest book is really about functional strength training, right? Yeah. Which is being out in nature and actually sort of, you know. Yeah, but it's not so much. So what I try to cover in the book is not so much my own training.

What I try to cover in the book is not so much my own training, but I try to put together a program that makes sense and covers all the knowledge that I acquired in the last two decades, but it's for someone normal. So it's nothing like what I do every day because I wouldn't consider it any good idea for someone who is working in an office or someone who just wants to get a little bit stronger

or anything to do what I do. Because my training is very specialized and is always very focused on the next competition and the next challenge that is in front of me. So if you're looking at the next yoke challenge, you're looking at crossing 10 meters

with 560 plus kilograms on your back. So maybe just give me what one workout would look like. So training will really replicate what i want to do in in the competition so what i do at home is i i pretty much simulate the the whole thing um um and i i train with the same implements and i have this like like a Pyramide style series of sets where I start with quite a light weight and then I work my way up until I get to the end. Right, and reduce the number of reps as you increase the weight

and build up and build back down? As I'm not doing sets with the yoke, I mean, on the first runs, I will probably do a longer distance. I see, right. But as you're not doing any reps, it just stays how it is and it just gets heavier. And so you give the body the chance to accumulate to the progressive. And do you have like a periodized training schedule

where you sort of ramp up the intensity and then have rest days or rest weeks and then build back up again? And sort of piggybacking on that, do you work with a coach or do you have mentors that give you feedback on your training and where you're at? I'm a trained coach myself. So I know all the principles of things that you have to do to prepare for something is such a big variety that you don't actually need periodization

because you're actually... Because you're mixing it up so much. Yeah, because you normally would do that to avoid plateaus. And there are no plateaus for me because as soon as I get to a plateau with one thing, I just start training another thing. And so I don't really need that. It would probably still make sense

because you're also avoiding to just overwhelm your body. But the problem with that is I have this strange mindset. I'm not able to perform on 80% when I go into training. So I'm just not able to do it. Sometimes I'm tired and I think, okay, today I'm going to have a light day and I'm just going to go for 70% or so. But as soon as I'm in training, I just can't stop. I don't know.

Do you have the same thing? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's not always so good. No, no, of course not. You can get into trouble. That's how you get injured and that's how you overtrain. Yeah, absolutely. I still really try to be smart and uh when i and i have a quite a good feeling uh to to where i know

at at which degree i can push my body and where where the right point is to to stop so um i'm quite lucky with injuries um not being injured a lot in all those years that I train. But as I said, I'm just not really able to stop myself when it comes to performing. Do you train seven days a week? Do you have a rest day? No, I have a lot of rest days. Because the problem with what I do is it puts such a lot of stress to the bones and all those structures that need a lot of time to recover the tendons and so on. And the problem with that is your performance is going to go up quite fast.

But if you make use of that and you stick to training, you get overtrained very, very fast. And the problem is that's exactly where the injuries come because your muscle is getting stronger before your tendons can accumulate to that. And so I have to take a lot of days off. So usually I will train one day and then I will have two days off at least. So in a week, I will have at about three training days normally. I'm in the wrong sport. But most of the time when I'm taking days off, I'm in pain.

So I don't know how it is for you. All right, man. Well, clearly, we could wrap it out all day long, but we got to close it down, man. We got to go eat. Everyone's waiting for us. So that was amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks.

I think we did it, right? Did we do it? I think so. You feel good? It was a great conversation. We made it through without you having to take a break to have a protein smoothie either. Yeah, I probably lost two pounds or so. All right, man.

We'll go out there and break another world record so you can come back and tell me all about it, will you? Will do. All right, man. You're an inspiration. Thanks so much. I appreciate it, man. I love you, brother. And I can't wait to see what you do next.

Thanks, Rich. So you just have the brand new book out. I don't know what it's called in German, so tell everybody what the exact title is. Yeah, it's in... Kraft Training. I translated it into English. It's Functional Strength Training for Heroes.

Is it in English language or only German language? At the moment, it's in German, but today we were at the book fair and we talked to a to an english publisher so probably in the next few months we'll get it out in the states too oh that's cool all right but if you speak german and you're listening uh you should definitely check it out you can get it at amazon.de right yeah that's right there it's probably on amazon.com i'm sure so that's, man. Congrats on the new book. Are you working on another book?

I just published this one. I already have the idea for three other books in my head. Well, when you're only training three days a week, you got no excuses. You can crank books out. I'm actually going to start writing on the next one, but it's going to be something completely different. All right, good.

Well, I look forward to it, man. And what's the best place for people to go online who want to learn more about you and connect with you? You can find me on Facebook and on YouTube. On Facebook, just Patrick Baboumian. And then on YouTube I'm the world's strongest vegan rightly so man

and my homepage is veganbadass.com can people buy those cool t-shirts that you make? yeah at veganbadass.com thanks so much let's go eat peace plants gosh, let's go eat. Yeah, let's go. Thank you. Peace. Plants.

How cool was that? Right? Pretty cool. I think Patrick is an amazing guy. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Please do not forget to check out this week's comprehensive show notes at richroll.com. Tons of stuff there to take your learning experience beyond the earbuds. And while you're at it, make a point to subscribe to my newsletter. If you want access to the entire RRP catalog beyond the most recent 50 episodes, I've got a free app for that. Just search Rich Roll in the App Store. It pops right up. Download it. All the episodes, all 201 in the palm of your hand.

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