Strongman Robert Oberst Says You Shouldn't Do Deadlifts | Joe Rogan

But I think what's interesting is that kind of stuff is so much less satisfying to bring it back to what you do than something that you have to really work for and it's really difficult and it's a very visceral, real feeling. The feeling of accomplishment you get when you do something virtual will never be able to compare with the feeling that you do when you do a physical, visceral thing when you feel it in your fucking bones. Yeah, you feel it. When I was doing World's Strongest Man in Botswana, Africa, I tore my bicep and I just was getting beat up over and over again. I was just so wrecked my body wasn't accepting because I went from football to strongman and in football we'd never done deadlifts. It was all hang cleans and power cleans, which by the way, just a quick little tip, deadlifts. If you're deadlifting to be a better deadlifter, fine. If you're not doing that for deadlift's sake, then don't fucking do it. The risk to reward ratio is a joke. For deadlifts? For deadlifts. Really? A lot of people aren't going to like that I'm saying that. But if you go into any NFL gym, in any Division I college football gym, in any athletics where people are actually getting paid and it matters what they're doing, they're not deadlifting. They're hang cleaning and power cleaning. Why is that? The risk to reward ratio. It's so hard to be a great deadlifter and to not risk your low back and to be using your upper back properly. There's so many little chances for you to get hurt. Hamstrings, deadlifts. That was me, my first world strongest man. I was the only rookie in the finals. Bro. China. How much weight is that? That was 880 pounds, 400 kilos. Me and my pink chucks. I weigh less than that now. I'm less of a bowling ball though. Really? Yeah. Wow. Well they made those weights ridiculous looking too. Right. That right there is something we overhead press too. So they'll take some of the weights out of it and it's so flimsy when you clean it. It's like basically holding that earthquake bar that you have out there. Oh really? It's just like that and it's fucking brutal. So they take weight out of that round thing? What is in that round thing? Well there's several different attachments to it so maybe some of them way different. I've never been a part of that but either that or it unscrews at the end and they take weights out of it. I'm not positive. So you leave the NFL or you leave playing football and were you in the NFL? No. I had a brief shot at it. Never actually got to do it. No. So what kind of transition, like what is the transition to getting into strong man? Went from that to I was a security guard. In Santa Cruz there's a place called the Catalyst which is where I worked for like six years. It's a really cool bar slash concert venue so I was like spoiled. I got to hang out with Rob Zombie and Willie Van Sandin shit. Really? Yeah it was cool man. I was spoiled. Rob Zombie I geeked out really hard for it. That's dope. It was fun. Yeah we're working on getting him here. Dude he'd be awesome. Yeah I'm sure he would be. He was really cool. I'm sure he is. He's really into horror movies man. Dude and he does the best ones. I love his horror movies man. They're wild. Huge fan. Huge fan. He's like the Quentin Tarantino of horror. Yeah. It's awesome. But it's such a weird transition you know. Yeah. The guy going from being a rock star to a horror film director. He's just crazy in the head. And his brother is actually the lead singer of Power Man 5000. Really? Yeah. Oh wow. In the family. So I went to security and I was working there and a buddy of mine who I had played junior college ball with was just obsessed with strong man. And I'd never heard of it. I never watched it. Like when I was growing up we were poor. Like there was 10 of us in a three bedroom house. And from high school on we didn't have electricity. So like we didn't watch TV. We would play outside. We had a trampoline. You didn't have electricity in high school? On the weekends my dad worked for Caterpillar, Cashman Equipment. So on the weekends he'd bring home a little generator and he'd plug that in and we'd have like three things we could use. But that was it. Like the hot water heater would work for the weekend. And then like maybe the TV on Saturday night or something like TGIF or something. But I mean it wasn't. I mean as a kid it's not that big of a deal. You know like you just go play with your brothers outside. Right. So but like I never knew what strong man was because of that. I mean I had no idea. So he was obsessed with it and he kept trying to get me to do it. And then went home and Googled it, checked it out. Actually I don't know if it was Google. I'm out of YouTube. Back then who knows what we had. But you know I was excited and went and tried it out. First day the amateur world record at Log Press was like 320 pounds at the time. And I had no idea. But the first day I hit 330 pounds and just put it down and I looked over my buddy and I was like you know how'd that look. And he's like get the fuck out of here. Like he's been trying his whole life to do this. Just came in and took it. And then eight months later I mean six months later I was competing in England and I had my pro card. Two months after that I was in China at that photo right there of World Strongest Man. I was the only rookie in the finals. So is it the Log thing? Is it the awkwardness of holding onto a log and getting it under your hands? And it's actually a lot healthier for your shoulders. Instead of being, how would you call that with your hands right there? Instead of supinated? Pronated or supinated? Yeah. I don't know if we got which one is which. We're the worst. I like it when trainers use that though. Like oh you know what you're talking about. This guy's got his shit together. It's fat dude eating french fries. So yeah I mean. So it's better for you to do that. It's much better for your wrists and your shoulders. Makes sense. And also like that's what my hair goes. Jamie's showing us. Pronated grip, supinated grip. So yeah. Neutral grip is much better for your wrists and shoulders. Oh okay so handles like this. They say that with bench press as well. Like those benches. They have new bars that have handles. The football bars from Rogue. Yeah those are dope. Awesome. Rogue makes good equipment. Yeah I use all their shit. My house in here. I know. They don't pay me. It's not free. I buy all of it. Same here. I don't work with them either but they're the best. Yeah it's the best shit. So we went to Worlds and then oh yeah I totally lost the whole getting everything. So you won first of all you beat the fucking world record log press the first time out. Amateur world record. Amateur world record. The fuck ever. Yeah. Yeah. You're first attempt. That's hilarious. Yeah so it was good. What's the pro record? Now the American record's been mine for four years and that was 211 kilos and that's. What is that? Fucking 468. Fucking like that. Is this you here? This is me. Yeah this is in Australia. In front of Arnold. Jesus Christ. Oh wait. Arnold was there? Yeah that's his shirt. That's his competition. This is my competition. So this is a log press right here? Yep that's a skinny log too. This was a hard log to use. But this was a buddy of mine had that record and he passed away and I wanted to be the one to take it from him after he had died and that was this moment. Jesus Christ that looks heavy. You show me show off a little bit too. I like to do this after I get it up. Wow so that's the world record. The American record. Who's the world record? The world record. I like to hold it up there and talk shit. Every time you see a record broken the guy gets it to here and then he just throws it down. Yeah they'll count. It doesn't count. So the world record is 219 kilos I believe. Something like that. Something right around there. It might have been 220. How close are you to that? I can break it right now. In January. Break that shit Robert. I'm going to London. I'm going to give London a little introduction to Texas. What do you call it Texas pride. Texas power lifting. For sure. Wow. I'm excited. You break the American amateur record right away. First attempt out. Is that when you felt like fuck I could do this shit. I went home and I told my fiance at the time we were living in a studio and we were just broke. I was volunteer coaching and I was for high school which is my passion high school football and then I was working at that club at night. So I didn't have a lot of time but I was like I can make this happen. With my personality and this is a platform I can do this. Everybody kept telling me there's no money in strongman. There isn't any. There really wasn't. There wasn't like there was no money in strongman until I made money in strongman. Really? Brought it into. There were several other people but what we did was we cultivated a whole new era of strongman. Whereas before even like Pujanowski was a guy who got a lot of attention because he looked just shredded. You know. Jacked. He's got like a cribs episode that they did in Poland and he's got this tiny little house with like little knickknacks and stuff he's so proud of. It's really weird. It's crazy. But like even then he's five time World Strongest Man winner. There's really no money in that. I would have thought he would have been bowling out of control. You would think so. Because I know who he is. I feel like if I know who you are and you do something on TV you must be rich. Yeah exactly. That's the rapper's display. Yeah exactly. I'm flying in first class and then you catch Lil Bow Wow in the back. Well I remember one of the weird things that I read about Pujanowski is how much candy he eats. Huh. Yeah and that he really likes candy in between workouts because he's blowing out so much sugar that he would eat chocolate bars. That makes sense. Yeah. We do a lot of like I do peanut butter and honey. Stuff like that. During competition peanut butter and honey are Snickers bars. Really? Yeah. And now when you eat peanut butter and honey you eat it with a spoon? Like what do you how do you? I usually make the sandwiches. I see guys just pouring honey in their mouth. Like the Russian guys. There's a Russian guy who was Russian secret service for a while. Oh yeah. Like you look in his eyes you're like this motherfucker has done some bad things. But he's the nicest dude in the world. He's like the sweetest guy. He comes like he always comes over and talks to me and my family and he's he doesn't speak good English but he's really nice about trying to get his point across and everything. But yeah that guy's done probably scary shit. Yeah. Yeah I'm sure. There's a lot of that because we compete with people from all around the world. And you know we we tend to forget that everywhere else there's a lot of it's normal almost to be like that in some places. Right to survive. And if you're a giant dude it's probably the best way to make a living. Exactly. Yeah. And so they just squirt honey in their mouth? Yeah they'll just pour like like a whole little canister of honey and just take that. You see guys do that right before they go lift and stuff. I the way I grew up and the way I did things like I was always taught and it kind of worked with being broke but like a warrior goes to war hungry. That's like in football I would never eat before a game ever. And then got in a strong man and I did that for a long time and I got up to 440 pounds and I would I would do an entire show like five six hours without eating. But then during it I would snack a little bit but I would never eat a meal. Right. But then the resources it eats up your resources right. Right. Yeah. See for me it felt like anything in my stomach just made me feel like slow. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's the same with comedy too. I learned that from Kat Williams watching an interview with him. Don't eat before you go on stage. I'm like that makes sense. Yeah. You're better off being hungry. Right. Exactly. Hunters do that too. The best hunters they hunt hungry. Yeah. See and then but what happened to me was I lost 80 pounds. That was 440. I lost 80 pounds. And when I got hurt in Botswana I lost all that weight. And just because of the bicep tear. No I did I chose to do that. I graduated high school I was 370 pounds so I've always been a big dude. But I got up to 440 and just walking around was laborious you know. I felt like fucking horrible. How big were you when you did that log press? That log press that was like like 425 ish 430 when I run that. So like I gained a little bit more after that. I just everyone tells you in the sport the bigger you are the stronger you are. And that kind of holds true to static lifting like kind of it's not necessary all the time but it kind of holds true. But we got to move man. Like we're talking about pulling a truck and doing load events and all that stuff. When you're 440 and your body's not agreeing with that 440 it just it holds you back. You don't want to imagine the load on your joints too. Yeah. Particularly lower back. Yeah. My low back was bad. Yeah. I got hurt and I felt like I was done because my low back I'd have to take me like 45 minutes to get out of bed in the morning. Really? Oh yeah. I was messed up man. Really bad. Did you get an MRI? I never got an MRI and didn't I'm scared to. Suck it up. Exactly. How did you fix it? When I lost weight it got better and it's core strength for me now. Core strength and stretching and also I smoke weed. Like a lot of athletes are against it and a lot of people think that there's some like negative connotation with being someone who smokes weed but I mean I'm watching guys take Viking in like Skittles. I've seen guys throw away their lives, their families, their career over a bunch of pills because they didn't want to smoke and it's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy.