How Professional Strongman Rob Kearney Prepares for Competition

The amount of medical testing we have to go through before a contest is crazy. I would imagine. Um, like, the pack, the medical packet that we have to get filled out by our primary cares for World's Strongest Man is like 48 pages long. What? Yeah, it's wild, dude. So they bring you in for an exam. How long does that take? We have to get it done on our own. Oh. So they send, after the invites are done and after the, the lineup is set for World's Strongest Man, you get the email that it's like, here's the medical packet you need done by this date. Um, and you pretty much have to make it a point with your primary care and get it all done. So what does your doctor say when you come to him with that fucking 48 page packet? Well, luckily I've gone to her a few times with it so she knows to block off some time. She knows what's up. Yeah, you know what? It's um, but it's, it's smart because like we have to get an EKG, we have to do stress testing, we have to get a full blood panel done. Um, they have to look at everything because they don't want somebody dropping dead on TV. That makes them look pretty fucking bad. Yeah, they would have to make sure that you're not already over-trained too, right? Like your crease levels. Yeah. So they look at everything. I mean, it's a full blood panel. They, like I said, they do the EKG, they look at the heart, they do, um, and then it's, you know, obviously full medical history as well. Just everything from parents to past diseases to what runs in the family, everything. And now you guys aren't insured by these competitions, are you? No. You're not going to tear your fucking hamstring off. It's all on you. Fuck, man. Yep. God, that seems crazy. It's ballsy. Yeah. It's risky. Yeah, real, real risky. I mean, that seems kind of crazy that during the competition itself, you're not, you're not covered. It's all on us. Even those medical packets, like they say, like all, all, all fees associated with this are up to the athlete's expense. And they don't pay you that well. No. If you win, you make decent money. I mean, it's not a lot. You know, like to win world's strongest man, you make like 50 grand. Really? That's it? Yeah. For the strongest motherfucker. To be the strongest man in the world. That should be worth a million bucks. I think so. That's the number. I mean, but look at it. So like world's strongest man has been around since the 70s. I need to see six zeros. You're going to win the strongest man on the fucking world? That's what I'm talking about. Come on, man. We need you in the sport, Joe. This is bullshit. We got- Pony up the money. Seems like somebody should be able to pony up a million bucks. Like some big company. I would love, I will say, so like, you know, we talk about world's strongest man in Giants live and that whole series, but then we also have the Arnold circuit. So there's like two big pro circuits for strongmen to choose from. The Arnold circuit, they've definitely elevated the game, right? So the Arnold strongman classic in Ohio is like kind of seen as the most elite competition in the world because only 10 guys qualify for that contest. World's strongest man, you get 25. And then the prize money in Ohio is better than world's strongest man. It's almost double actually. Really? So at the Arnold, so each of the Arnold international shows, it's standard prize money. So the Arnold international shows, there was one here in Santa Monica this weekend. There's Australia, South America, South Africa, Europe, Canada. I think that's it. But we all know the prize money going into each show because it's the same at every one. So it's like 10 grand for first, eight, six, four, two, one. So they pay out top six, but they also pay all of our travel there. So it's not too bad. But then the big motivation is to get to Ohio, right? Where first place is 85 grand and they pay out all 10 athletes. But like third place at, I think it's second or third place at Ohio makes just as much as world's strongest man. So this is probably why you have to compete 40 times a year. I mean, it's kind of imperative. And the thing is like, to be honest, like I didn't really do that well this past weekend in Santa Monica, so I didn't make any money. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know. Which is a bummer. But like, I wasn't like this weekend, like the contest, like for me, it was more like a gauging. I was trying to gauge where I was at going into Columbus. The events were really similar. So do you do that? Like you have to be careful to not go too crazy in one of these events? Yes. Because you blow something out. I definitely like held back this weekend. You know, I think I could have hit another gear if I needed to. But already having my qualification to the big show, I like mentally, I don't think I'd have been able to like turn it on like I need to in Ohio. And when is Ohio? What date? First week of March. So the contest is the fifth and sixth, I think, or the sixth and seventh. So you have nothing between right now, which is January 20th and March. So how do you ramp up? Like what is your schedule like to prepare for something like that? So the biggest thing, so we look at the events, right? So, you know, I mentioned we have the max deadlift. So my goal is to set up the thousand pounds, which would be which would make me the first person under 300 pounds body weight to do that in history. Whoa. Yeah. How close are you? I pulled 970 in July. Jesus Christ. So, God damn, that's a lot of weight. So we're close. Right there. We're close. And you're only 28. Yeah. You're going to get stronger. Exactly. So if you don't get to 300 pounds, if you don't gain too much weight, you can nail. I don't want to. Like I was, I was almost 300. I was like 298 at World's Strongest Man in 2018. And I was a fat fuck. It was gross. Like I looked at my husband. I was like, why did you want it like lay next to me? Like I had neck rolls on my neck rolls. I'm like, I was gross. Isn't that thing like some dudes like bears? They're like big and hairy. Well, he does like and I totally am a bear, but like I was an ugly fucking bear dude. Like a bear just going into. Oh man. I look at pictures. My head looked like a fucking blueberry. I was like, well, it's like thinking. But like, honestly, like 285 is like kind of my sweet spot because I'm still getting stronger, getting a little bit leaner and getting better at the sport. So like, I don't see a reason to get any bigger. Right. But I honestly do think a thousand pounds is doable right now. Well, it seems like if you're 30 pounds away, if you're doing that much weight, 906, I mean, look, 30 pounds to a deadlift for a regular person, that's an extra 30 pounds. That's a lot. And not when you're already doing 970 fucking pounds. Yeah. And like to go back to like the prep and like to ramp up to this contest, you know, like before, like this weekend we had the deadlift was a 775 for reps in a minute and I pulled six, which is okay. But like, I probably could have pulled seven or eight if I needed to. The winning number was nine. And everybody that ironically, everybody that finished ahead of me in that event has already deadlifted over a thousand pounds. So that made me feel pretty good. But like leading up into these next few weeks, like I'm going to start working like my heaviest deadlift I did before this contest was 850 for one. I'm going to start working up into that low to mid nines in the next couple of weeks and probably have my last heavy, heavy deadlift probably three weeks before the contest, two and a half weeks before the contest. And then do you deadlifts at all before leading up to the contest? If I do, it'll be light. Very light. And I say like relative, you know, it's a relative term. 600 pounds. Yeah. So you're just trying to let your body recover. And that's something that a lot of people think, like people forget. Like when we're training this hard, like we're beat to shit. And like we're like, we get stronger when we, when we rest and recover. So I really don't exercise or lift like the week of a contest. Like I'll do my recovery workouts that I talked about before. We're like, I'm just kind of swimming, hot tubs on it, that stuff. But I won't lift any weights. And that's cause like my body, like my central nervous system, like everything just needs a break and you get stronger over that period. Oh, for sure. It's amazing. Does it make you feel like you maybe are over training in other ways? Cause not really that get that much stronger when you take a week off, it almost seems like you should do that more often. No, because I think you need to get to that point where you need to get beat down. You know, like there are some strength coaches out there that like, you know, we call it a D load, right? So it's like where you're ramping up, ramping up, going super heavy. Then you back off for a little bit. Right. And so that's what we call a D load. Some coaches that give that every fourth week of their program, regardless. And I don't agree with that because I don't think anybody can work that hard for three weeks to beat down their body enough where they need it every single fourth week. Normal people don't train hard enough to need regular D loads. The D loads, the guys who practice that way, are they winning or are they not really, no, most of it like I say that in like, most of that's like in like, I see a lot of like in the powerlifting community where it's just like squat bench deadlift. But like in all honesty, like I don't feel people like I feel like you have to earn your D load. And that's like what my coach does with me. Like I went almost six months without a D load leading into this contest. Jesus Christ. And that happened about a month and a half ago. And I knew I needed it because I was tired every day, regardless of how much sleep I got. I didn't want to go to the gym. Every time I'd get to the gym, I was fucking miserable. I just wanted to leave. I didn't want to look at anything. I didn't want to talk to anybody. And I texted my coach. I was like, I need a fucking break. And he was like, all right, cool. I was waiting for you to get to that point. But it's a good, but it, you know, it's like, it's like, I feel like it's something you have to earn because people like people think they work hard, but they don't really know what that means until they're like actually pushed to do something. And that's where I got to that point. And that's why like these next five weeks are going to be like super crucial in my training to this contest. Cause I'm going to have to, I'm going to beat my body to shit over these next five weeks. You know, and my husband will probably get pissed off of me cause I'll be a prick one or two times at least. But it's like, you know, this is the biggest competition in the world and I know what I need to sacrifice to get to that point. And that's going to mean long training sessions, really hard training sessions. And I'm, you know, just like I said, I'm just going to beat my body down just to reap those rewards at the end of it. Yeah. I'm going to be super exhausted. It hurts and cranky and just like,