Cheerleading Led Rob Kearney to Being a Strongman | Joe Rogan

Not stereotyping male cheerleaders whatsoever, but... I have a buddy who's a male cheerleader who's awesome. He's...Chappelle's 99.9% sure he's straight. Chappelle Lacy. But he's built like a brick shed house too. I mean collegiate cheerleaders are insane. Yeah, but you have to be able to flip through the air. People don't understand what cheerleading is, right? They think of it as like, yeah, go team. No, it's crazy acrobatics. Even in high school, like I was throwing girls up in the air by myself and catching them overhead. Yeah. You know, like doing shit like that. Yeah, that's what's weird. Yeah, Chappelle does this stuff where he grabs them by the feet and flips them in the air. Yeah. Catches them on one hand. It's stupid. It's bananas. Like the amount of physical power you have to have to be able to do that. Timing coordination. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, you have to be a fucking savage to throw someone in the air and catch them with one hand. It takes a lot of balls. A lot of fucking power too. Yeah. The explosive power. For sure. Most men shitting on cheerleaders could never pull that off. No. No. It's fucking hard. Can you do all the flips and shit too? God no. Backhand sprints? God no. No? Could you do it back then? No. No? No, that's actually one of the reasons why I like so I, when I was doing it in high school, like I actually looked to do it in college at the collegiate level. But tumbling was like a minimum requirement. And I was like, yeah, I'm a little too chunky and I had to do that shit. So. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you get into powerlifting and strong man type shit? So that like, honestly, totally by chance. I was working out in my high school weight room one day after school. And a substitute teacher happened to walk by who owned a CrossFit gym. And he was like, hey, you know, I'm at this CrossFit gym. Like you seem like you like this stuff and you're pretty strong. Like feel free to come by. So I would start. I actually started training with him at like five o'clock in the morning before school. And I found out really quickly I sucked at CrossFit. But I like to lifting heavy shit. And this was back in 2009. And walked into the gym one morning and they were like, hey, there's a local strong man contest this Saturday. We signed you up for it. So when you say you sucked at CrossFit, CrossFit is just a bunch of Olympic lifts and different explosive exercise. Yeah, it just wasn't in shape. Oh, right. So the ability to do massive reputations. To do well in the workouts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So they signed me up for my first contest. I was 17 years old. Had never touched an implement. I had just seen it on TV like everybody else and World's Strongest Man. Got my ass kicked. Took last place. But you were 17. And how much lifting had you done previous to that? Maybe four or five months. Really? But at that point, like I had hit the 500 pound deadlift. And you'd only been lifting for a couple months? Yeah. Oh, so you just freak genetically. In a few lifts. In a few lifts I was good at. That's a lot of weight to like for a few months of lifting. Yeah. So the contest went horrible for me. But I absolutely fell in love with the sport. Ended up at Springfield College in Massachusetts. And joined their powerlifting team. And that's when I kind of got more of a background in lifting, proper technique, and all that stuff. And then did another local strongman contest where I met this guy Matt Mills who owns a gym lightning fitness in Connecticut where I train now. And he was like, yeah, you know, like I'm just starting to get all the strongman equipment. You should come down. It's only about 30 minutes from your school. So I actually would go there every Saturday morning when I was in college to train strongman. And that's when I kind of started competing in the amateur circuit. You know, and that's kind of led me on my trajectory to here. So you're one of those rare people that actually lives in Connecticut. I live in Massachusetts. Oh, good for you. Right over the border. Good move. Yeah. Escape. Go over there. Work out real quick. And then leave. Yeah, Connecticut is strange. It's something. It's a strange place. It's a lost state. Yeah. So you get into powerlifting. And then what was your exposure to like truck pulling and all that other crazy shit? So really not much. You know, the cool thing about strongman is every contest is different that we do. We know we never do the same. You know, I've done the sport for over 10 years now. And I've never done a contest where the events have been the same in that span of time. Do you know what it's going to be before you sign up? Typically. So you know, we get about a series of lifts. Eight to 12 weeks notice, depending on the contest. So the gym that I was going to in Connecticut, they were just starting to acquire strongman equipment. So it was pretty bare bones. So like we had a steel log for the log clean and press. They had some Atlas stones. Some farmers handles a yoke. And that's pretty much it. And then over the years, he would get more and more and more. And now it's turned into this massive 15,000 square foot facility. And the gym owner, we call him an equipment whore because he buys some every time something new comes out, he buys it. So yeah, like my my exposure to the equipment in the beginning was pretty minimal. But what I did to compensate for that is I just competed more. So I would pretty much from Springfield, Massachusetts, I drew a five hour radius from where I was. And any contest there was in that radius, I would do. So in my first like three years, I competed probably like almost 40 times. Whoa, how often are these things being held at the amateur level? Pretty often there's usually you could find, you know, I would say one or two per month in New England alone. Really? And then they're all over the country. So, you know, I think the cool thing is, you know, like I was really I said, I took last in my first contest and that went on for a while. I took dead last in like my first eight shows that I did. So like I wasn't good at this thing when I started. Now, when did you start being successful? 20, so I went to amateur nationals actually in the 200 pound weight class. So I weighed in under 200 pounds in 2011. That was my first time at the amateur national. So I'd been doing it for about two years. Surprised myself and ended up taking second place in that weight class. Went back to the amateur nationals as a 231 and 212 and took second place there and then won the amateur national championship in 2013 and that's where I won my pro card and kind of got to that next level. But it's such a difficult thing to do that I would imagine doing it 40 times a year. Like you're going to get injured. Luckily I didn't. Really? Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm fortunate where I'm so by trade and what I went to school for is I'm an athletic trainer. So sports medicine has kind of been my thing. So, you know, I've been lucky enough to learn when I was training of when I need to back off, when I can push a little bit harder, what needs to be taken care of and just try to be smart. You know, I mean, you know, knock on wood. You know, I've had one serious injury in the 10 years that I've been doing this. What was that? It was a summer of 2018. I dropped 275 pound Atlas stone on my chest. Oh, so fuck. Tore my QL in my low back, broke three ribs. Oh, Jesus. Put me out of commission for a little while and you know, Did you drop it? Where was it? It was at a contest. I was in second place by one point. So it was the final event of the contest and I went to push the stone onto the. So the thing is with me being only five 10 with the Atlas stones, like the first box you have to put the stone on is high. You know, so this was 75 inches tall. Mm. You know, and I'm only five 10. So that was literally like eyebrow height. So I had to like press it up onto the box and I thought it was up there. It wasn't secured. It ended up rolling off, fell onto my chest. Oh, yeah. Fuck. And, you know, naturally that was the first contest my mom had come seen in person in like four years. Oh, she was in the stand watching that happen. Killed by a boulder. Yep. Perfect timing. Yeah. So how long did it take you to recover from that? Let's see. That was that was in June or June or July of 2018. And I didn't do my next contest until March of 2019. Oh, wow. Yeah. Took me off for a while. Yeah. I could have only a 275 pound fucking stone ball. And that was the lightest one we had in the series. Wow. Jesus Christ. So just your background in understanding athletic science or exercise science allows you to know when you're being silly and when you, you know, you're not going to be a pussy, but you're not going to be dumb. Exactly. And I think that's where it's that's why I've been lucky, you know, and, you know, kind of state injury free because even like to this day, like, you know, so my coach is, you know, pretty well-renowned strongman, Derek poundstone, who, you know, took second place at World's Strongest Man. And he programmed some crazy shit for me. But there are some days where I'm just like, yo, dude, this is not going to fly today. When you have a light, like what's a light day? You know, so like I train four days a week and I get like one, like I call him like my bro day. It's like my bench back in arms day. Um, you know, even though power men do that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's more just like, cause like bench press is going to like build up your triceps is going to build up the anterior delt. It's going to help like you bench press actually helps your overhead lifts. And, um, so I do that and that that's what I consider like my light day, but like I'll still bench like in the mid fours. Hmm. So, so four days a week. Yeah. And so how do you, how do you structure it? Do you do every other day? Do you do? Um, it all depends on the week really. So typically I try to go Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday. That's usually my, my average week. Um, so Tuesday is like my big overhead day where I'll do a strong man movement overhead. So like log press or dumbbell. Um, and then a bunch of shoulder overhead accessory work Thursday, my day two is my biggest day. So I squat and deadlift in the same day. Um, and that's a workout that sometimes takes four to five hours. Really? Yeah. So you do big spaces in between each workout. So you lift and then do you, do you have a large amount, 10, 15 minutes between sets sometimes like, you know, like we're building up to the Arnold strongman classic in Columbus, Ohio this coming March. And, um, you know, we have a max deadlift coming up and, you know, I'm potentially going to be on for a 1000 pound deadlift. Christ. You know, so like to get through a deadlift workout where I'm deadlifting. Oh yeah. There's me. There's you look at the bar bending. That's what's most fucked up about it is looking at that. So that was, that was 850 pounds on the, on the deadlift right there. What is that? That dumbbell right there. That dumbbell was 250, 250 one arm overhead press. Yeah. Fucking a, the, the deadlift though is so what is that fucking thing? That's called a who's a felt stone. So coughing. Yep. Pretty much. That was 450. Wow. You weren't like a backstrap, like a belt. So we're a belt. Yeah. So I wear like a, yeah. What does it do? So it helps like build intra-abdominal pressure. Um, it also gives just like some tactile feedback to like, know where you need to brace. Um, so usually way lifters like, we'll put it where like we feel weakest in our core, um, and that's going to help us activate those muscles to be a little bit stronger and you know, more effectively brace to prevent injury. Cause I never, I never understood how it protect you from a lift. Like if you're lifting heavy weights and you got that strap on your back. Yeah. It's not really tech. It's, I guess it's not really meant to like protect per se. Um, more just to like help add extra support. That's the biggest thing. So it does, you don't do heavy lifts without it. No, no, no, I keep it on. Yeah. Whenever I'm going heavy. That's pretty much standard for power lifters. Oh yeah. Powerlifting strong man. You yeah. We're, we're all wearing like pretty heavy duty belts.