So if you have ever worked out, told anyone you worked out, look like you work out, have any reasonable set of muscles, ever spoken about weightlifting or strength training in any capacity, you inevitably get this question:
“How much do you bench press?”
That to me has become one of the most annoying questions in the world, because the bench press is simply not the best gauge, or even remotely close to being a good gauge of true whole-body strength. It is simply the default motion that everybody understands and knows. We are attracted to upper-body strength as human beings. We’ve come to see the bench press because its gained massive popularity, as the badge of strength. There’s nothing wrong with the bench press. Not everybody can do it for a lifetime, but it’s not a bad exercise like some of the strength writers say. On the flip side its not the end all be all of strength, not even close. It’s a great upper body exercise. Is it the greatest one? I don’t believe so. But it is the inevitable question of every ridiculous thing that the average uninformed person has as far as strength or fitness.
I have a friend who is a female bodybuilder. Extremely muscular woman. She got that question so many times over the course of her life that she began to answer it in ways to amuse herself telling people amazing things and they believed every word of it. For instance she was about 140lbs – a very thick and muscular woman, but not any massively huge individual and while she did legitimately bench near 300lbs during her powerlifting career, but she would tell them 400 or 500lbs or whatever she decided to make up, because she was so annoyed by the question and it was amusing to listen to her tell people these extreme answers.
So how do you stop the question? First of all you can’t stop it – it’s pervasive in our culture. It’s like trying to stop people from talking about pop stars or Facebook. However I think you can answer it in some creative ways. I have been asked that hundreds of times and at least several times in every strongman show. My answer is always the same: “I don’t bench press.”
Now I do occasionally bench press, however I don’t use the exercise as a massive part of my normal training repertoire. Here’s what I tell people – “It doesn’t help what I do therefore I don’t do it regularly.” If you want to really answer the question bend them a spike, a nail, a bolt – “I don’t bench press, but here’s what I do.”
There’s an old story in wrestling that talks of two men coming to a meet, they were having a pre-tournament press conference and one man was renowned as a bench presser/weightlifter and the reporters asked the other man, “What do you bench press?”
He answered, “Not much,” and then walks over to his bag, opens it up, grabs a pair of pliers, sticks a bolt in the jaws of the pliers, squeezes and snaps the pliers in half simply by his grip. The idea being that there’s a whole other world of strength and another way to expose people to that. Building hand strength, building bending strength, building that kind of ability, which you should be building anyway for real world ability and the best total strength you can possibly have. This defeats the bench press question.
“I don’t bench press, but I can do this.” That generally stops the question and it stops people in their tracks. Answer the question with what you can do, because that makes people understand the concept of strength much better.
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The Freedom of Strongman
People ask me what I do professionally I have answered, “I am a powerlifter,” or a fighter or a highland games athlete or a football player or a grappler or a strongman. I can even say a professional and old time strongman when I’m answering the question about what I do and why am I big and strong, but what I’ve come to tell people and the word I like best in defining myself is “strongman,” because I believe that term implies freedom.
I think if you train strongman and especially if you train it in the way and the style that I like to do which is a combination of all the things that I’ve talked about. This includes lifting, throwing, odd object movements, grappling movements, conditioning, power, show feats and competitive feats and any type of real world strength you can think of. You build real strength that you can use in every situation so when you say you’re strong, you’re not joking, you’re not kidding and you’re not pseudo-strong.
You have the freedom to any type of strength that you want to train any way that you want. If you look at the strongman that are out there you see amazing different types of strength. Some of them are phenomenal at pressing yet they’re still pretty good at everything. Others are good at bending but again still pretty good at everything. Other strength athletes are good at stone pressing, but again good at everything. Some of my friends are even great bodyweight guys, yet are still pretty good at everything else inclusive of bending steel, doing strongman feats, stone lifting – you name it. In terming yourself as “strongman,” you need to have the overall strength to really carry the title. Seriously – don’t say you’re strong if you’re not strong.
With that being said you can still call yourself a strongman even if you can’t deadlift 1,000 pounds. Here’s why: There are different types of strength and many, many differnet styles. Build real strength to earn the term, but realize there’s freedom in it that’s not possible in almost any other way. You’re not locked into any other vein. In fact I’ve pulled from every other vein of strength to make myself better, to make myself stronger and carry that title. And take the “man” part seriously even if you’re a woman. In one of my favorite John Wayne movies he says, “To be a gentleman you have to be a man first, then you can be gentle.”
I think in being a man – having integrity, having personal power, personal magnetism, a purpose, a real direction in life, that physical and then mental and spiritual strength that you build form the training to be a strongman flows into it. It builds you both freedom to do what you want in life as well as the power to carry through and be a real person as well as a real man. Take that freedom and run. Pull from every vein of strength, be as strong as anyone in anyway you can, find your specialty and be incredibly strong. Do what you want but take your freedom seriously and get truly strong in all aspects.
Pick up your copy of “I Will Be Iron,” and begin applying training principals to gain your greatest strength.