ChasingKaz

Interview with Elliot Hulse

Elliott Hulse Interview With ChasingKaz.com from Elliott Hulse on Vimeo.

Elliott Hulse is a Professional Strongman and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. He is also the owner of Strength Camp, a sports performance gym in St. Petersburg Florida. He trains athletes to get stronger and faster in his "warehouse gym" with about $1000 worth of equipment. Learn more about Elliott and his no BS attitude towards Strength and Conditioning.

Texas Strongman

Ryan had graciously offered the LA bunch a place to stay for this weekend, and my wife and I rolled into casa Bracewell around 8:30 on Friday night. We met Mark Cummings and his wife Kim, along with my brother and Mark Cristina, another member of the LA strongman crew, who were also staying with Ryan. After putting down burgers at Fuddrucker's, we headed off to Ryan's new gym, The Asylum, for a quick training session to get the blood flowing and work out the travel stiffness. We kept things light and fast, working snatches, power cleans, and jerks. Ryan has some great equipment and a great atmosphere to train in, and I'm definitely looking forward to training there whenever possible.

We headed to the venue early to help set up bleachers and equipment, which worked out as a pretty good warm up. We also got to preview the awesome new equipment Roger had made for the show, including the most massive and stable yokes I've ever laid hands on. Four of the top five competitors from the Dallas competition were competing, and this had all the ingredients to be real battle amongst us heavyweights. Brandon Ford won the log press for reps in Dallas and is a big strong guy, Ryan was coming off a 4th place finish in a tough HW division at NAS Nationals and looked to be in great shape for this event, and my brother Matt had been putting up great numbers in training, but had aggravated an old knee injury while training. I've been struggling a bit with minor injuries to my hands and back, so I really didn't know what to expect coming into this competition. I knew I needed to win the axle and stones if I was going to have any shot at walking away with a win.

I felt good during my warm ups for the first event, which was a clean each rep axle clean & press with 265 lbs. Overheads are one of my strengths, but I was concerned about my grip failing on the cleans because I hadn't been able to do any sort of grip training due to my hands. Ryan put up a solid 7 reps which Matt tied, despite obviously favoring his knee. I missed a couple of cleans, which is very unlike me, but the presses were all easy. At one point a bolt shot out of one of the plates securing the tires that were being used on the axle, which threw off my rhythm, but I still managed 9 reps and first on the event.

Next up for us was the car deadlift. We would be lifting the back of an extended cab Dodge Dakota on a side handle apparatus. I had the opportunity to train on this setup a couple of weeks prior at The Unit, so I knew what I was in for. Deadlifts are the bane of my strongman existence, so as always, my approach was to give it hell, don't be last, don't get hurt. The general consensus amongst the competitors was that 10 reps would probably win, but that went out the window when Brandon Ford knocked out 12 reps. Matt surprised everyone, including himself by logging 14, and Ryan blasted 15. I knew I had my work cut out for me if I wanted to stay in the running and not get embarrassed, and managed to grind out 13 reps, taking third to Ryan and Matt. I collapsed in the competitor's area, where Kim was nice enough do draw a chalk outline of my body.

Equipment issues sent us to the dirt for the Hussafel stone carry. The fat guys got to tote the 340lb "Mega Ort" tombstone around a 60' course. This was an exercise in max distance and pain, as there was no time limit. Brandon and Matt would go before me, since cumulative points were determining order, and Ryan would follow me. Matt has always been good at this in training, so I expected his distance would give me a good mark to shoot for. Brandon had posted 189' and change and was leading when Matt's turn came. Matt took off down the course, then stumbled and fell in his first turn, dropping the stone for a mark of 60'. I assumed that his knee had given out on him in the turn, but after running over there he told me that he had passed out. He said later that he knew he was in trouble as soon as he picked the stone up, but thought it would pass. He held on as long as he could, then the lights went out. I had always carried the stone with one hand high and one low, but made a game time decision to switch to the more popular two handed style. "5 turns", I thought to myself as I took my grip on the stone. I was able to hold on for 6 turns and a distance of just over 307'. I slogged over and collapsed again in the shade, trying to slow my heart rate. While lying there, I heard Ryan's distance announced and that it was good enough to keep his overall lead. This was a pretty big blow to me, as I'd given everything I had and really thought I had a chance at winning the event and moving back into the overall lead. I had no idea what my distance was at the time, and it turns out that it was announced wrong and that I had in fact won the event, with Ryan and Brandon finishing second and third, respectively.

The yokes were now ready, and we moved on to the 750lb yoke and 270lb farmer's walk medley. I had taken on this weight in Dallas, so I felt good about my chances here. However, I knew that I would have to be firing on all cylinders, since Ryan is very fast on both the yoke and the farmers. Adding to the excitement, Ryan and I were the last pair on this event, something that both of us were looking forward to. Ryan got a great start and jumped out to a slight lead. I fought hard and managed to keep it close, and we seemed to be dead even switching implements. As I was making my pick on the farmers, Travis Ortmayer, who was judging my lane, yelled that my yoke hadn't crossed the line and that I had to go back. Cursing, I walked the yoke the last couple of inches over the line, and picked up the farmers in disgust as Ryan finished. Ryan won easily with a great time of 29.5 seconds, and I finished second in 38.56. I was furious with myself after the event, but I had only myself to be angry at. Travis made the right call and I learned a hard lesson.

I trailed Ryan by half a point going into our last event, the Atlas stones. This was simple, win the event, win the competition ... the exact same scenario as I'd been in at the Beast of the East in South Carolina. I vowed to myself that I would not lose another competition in the last event, and readied myself for the stones. Our stones were 250lbs, 260lbs, 300lbs, 330lbs, and 400lbs loaded to 60", 54", 54", 48", and 48", respectively. I've loaded stones well over 400lbs before, but this would be the heaviest stone I'd ever loaded in a series. I felt fast through the first three, one motioning them onto their platforms easily. I had a bit of a problem with the 330, and it never felt right, but went up anyway. The Unit stones are a special bunch, and by special, I mean absolutely filthy. We all know what dirty stones do to tacky, and I knew that if I was going to have any chance at the last stone it was going to have to go up on my first try. I got it into my lap without much difficulty, but knew my tacky was all but gone when I re-gripped for the load. I squeezed it into my chest with everything I had and managed to get it onto the platform, slapping it with my hand in triumph. Ryan blazed through the first four stones but ran into the same problems with tacky on the 400 pounder, and was unable to complete the load.

This was an amazing competition. The weather was awesome, the equipment was first rate, and many of the events were head to head. After the first event, I don't think first and second place was separated by more than half a point, and I believe that Ryan and I exchanged the lead 4 times. The awards were amazing, with probably $100 worth of gear and supplements given away as part of the prize packages. To top it all off, a Mexican restaurant near the venue threw in free fajitas for all the competitors, and we finished the night with much food and drink. A big thank you goes out to Travis and Roger Ortmayer, Ashley Wirt, Brian Vicors, Mark Cummings, and everyone else who made this show a success. After some recovery time, it'll be back to the grindstone to prepare for my first shot at a pro card, in the Orlando Strongman Show of Champions.

Winter Challenge

After last competing in July of last year, I took a break from strongman training to concentrate on what was supposed to be my last rugby season. Three months, eight matches, and one broken bone later, I was no closer to retiring from rugby than I was in July. With no strongman contests on the horizon until the following spring, I planned to try and maintain a high level of conditioning while gradually getting my strength back. Then, in November, Dave Ostlund told me that he was promoting a contest in January with some pretty crazy events. I was excited to have a competition in the middle of winter to shake off the cobwebs, but I also realized that I didn't have much time to regain the strength I'd lost and had beaten out of me during the demanding rugby season.

The morning of the contest, my girlfriend and I got to the abandoned warehouse where the contest was being held about an hour before the scheduled start time. For an empty warehouse, it was a lot warmer and a lot brighter than I expected it to be. I did some light sprint warmups and foot speed ladder drills to get loose and played around with a few of the implements while devising my strategy for the first event. After an ample warmup and a rules meeting, we were ready to kick off.

The first event of the contest was the loading medley, which consisted of carrying three implements 10 meters and loading them onto a 4 1/2' platform. The first two implements were a standard keg and a sandbag, both of which I had a lot of experience carrying. The third piece, a 264 lb lead-filled pony keg, was not so familiar or inviting to any of the competitors. Luckily, I'd sent my entry in soon enough that I got to go second to last in the first event. That gave me a chance to see which methods of loading the pony keg were more successful than the others.

After 14 men had gone before me, I stepped up to the line and took my grip on the 225 lb keg. On the whistle, I quickly pulled the keg to waist height and sprinted down the course. While attempting to load the keg, I got the bottom of it stuck on the lip of the platform. With my hand still on the top of the keg to prevent it from falling onto my head, I kept trying to nudge it enough to tilt it onto the platform. No matter how hard I nudged, though, it just wouldn't teeter the other way. After balancing it on the edge of the platform for what seemed like 5 minutes, the keg finally tipped leeward and rested upright on the wooden box. Holding it there for as long as I did took a lot of energy and kind of threw me off my game plan. I jogged back to the starting line and took a second to catch my breath before hoisting the 236 lb sandbag to my shoulder and hauling it to the other end without issue.

Upon picking up the pony keg, I quickly realized why very few of the competitors before me were able to load it. Not only was it deceivingly heavy, it also had a 6 inch long bolt sticking out the top of it. I lugged it down the course as fast as I could, trying to keep it from battering my knees along the way. Once at the platform, I pulled it into my lap and tried to jostle it into a position where the 6 inch piece of hard plastic wouldn't slice into my forearm while loading it. After blankly staring at it like a dog in algebra class, I decided to just hug it and stand up, lacerations be damned!

I completed the medley in 60.87 seconds, which was good enough for 5th out of the 16 competitors in the open class. This wasn't a bad start, especially considering that with no weight classes, I had beaten a good number of the heavyweights in the event.

The second event of the day was the timber frame deadlift for maximum weight, and to be honest, I wasn't looking forward to this event at all. I'd trained on this exact apparatus for years and it has become my nemesis. Every time I look at this hulking pile of old railroad ties and steel rods, it glares at me and snorts it's evil laugh. It is my kryptonite. It delights in the fact that I despise it so.

It was a "Last Man Standing" style event, meaning every competitor had to successfully lift each each weight to pass on to the next round. I took my attempt at the opening weight of 505 lbs, confident that I'd have no trouble with it. It felt good, but I was uncertain of how the next lift at 555 was going to feel. I lifted it with minimal effort and got back in line for my attempt at the next weight of 605. It took everything I had, but I hoisted it to lockout to set the PR. Unfortunately, the other competitors were breezing through the opening weights like it was nothing and my PR was only good enough for a 15th place tie.

After bombing the last event, I was in a pretty rough position. My chances of making up the ground I lost in the deadlift were slim and none. If I was going to advance to the finals, I was going to have to make up a lot of ground on some tough competitors in the two remaining preliminary events. Luckily, there were enough competitors where it was possible to make up a lot of points with a great showing-or lose a lot of points with a poor one.

I was really confident about my performance in the overhead sandbag press. We'd all discussed how deceptively difficult sandbag presses were and since I volunteered my time and surplus sand to fill the sandbags for the contest, I felt I had a bit of an advantage in being able to train with them in the days leading up to the contest.

In this event, there were three sandbags weighing 185, 205, and 236. You were allowed to choose one of the sandbags to clean and press, but one rep with a heavier weight scored higher than any amount of reps with a lighter one. Therefore, 1 rep with the 205 lb sandbag would beat one million reps with the 185, as would one rep with the 236 score higher than any amount of the reps with either of the two lighter bags. Knowing my abilities and how each bag felt, I chose the 205 lb sandbag. Based on my training, I was confident that I'd get at least 3 reps with this bag and score highly on this event. One of three things happened; The other competitors had been diligently training with the sandbags, I gave the event too much respect for it's difficulty, or I just plain sucked. Ultimately, I was only able to eek out one rep, putting me in a three-way tie for 8th in the event with no significant improvement in my overall standing after bombing the deadlift.

The fourth event of the day was one in which I was extremely confident. Not only did the farmers walk play into my capabilities as a well-rounded athlete, they also happened to be my very own farmers walk implements! (It's good to be friends with the promoter.) At over 5' in length, these former acetylene cylinders are longer than the typical farmers walk implement, making them more difficult to control in the turns. In addition to the length, they were filled with water, making the 250 lbs in each hand exceptionally unstable and difficult. At the end of the event, only 4 of the other 16 competitors were able to surpass my distance of 30.2 meters.

After completing the farmers walk, I knew that it would take nothing short of a miracle to put me into the finals. My performance would have to be good enough to overtake five people in the overall point standings to make it into the final three events. It required a lot of luck and a bad performance from all of the right competitors ahead of me in the standings. In all honesty, I had my hand poised on the twist-top of my Grain Belt Premium was looking forward to enjoying it and a few of it's brethren while I watched the finals from the sidelines. When they called my name as the final name of the top half of the field to make it into the finals, I slumped in my chair. Not only was I facing an insurmountable lead when it came to winning, I wasn't even realistically within striking distance of 4th place. I reluctantly loosened the grip on my beer and prepared for the final three events.

Going into the final three events, I was already mathematically out of reach of fourth place. The best I could hope for was 5th out of the final 9 so I was just "playing for pride" as they say. The first event was a 500 lb front carry with a yoke that's considered pure evil by everyone unlucky enough to step beneath it. Brian Shaw called it the most wicked yoke he's ever carried. Normally a yoke is only unstable as it swings front to back. This yoke, however, is made so that it's not only more unstable than the typical yoke from front to back, it's also made to swing side to side. If that's not bad enough, each upright swings front to back and side to side independently from the other. To top it all off, I had to carry the yoke in front of me between crossed arms, making a whole new animal.

Without question, the yoke (carried on my back) is my best event. When I carry it on my back, I usually start with my left foot forward and my right foot back so I can take off like a sprinter once I pick the yoke off the ground. I figured that if I can run almost 800 lbs with this nasty yoke on my back, sprinting with 500 pounds resting on my folded arms across my chest should have been fairly easy. I couldn't have been more wrong. Because I had to carry it on my chest, the bar was much lower that I was used to. Instead of using my split stance, I had to almost slither under the bar to get it off the ground. For me and the leverages my body creates, it seemed like an epic task. After fighting to even get it off the ground, I picked the yoke up and only took a few steps before feeling my entire core, spine and abdominals together in concert, reject the load on my chest and bring it crashing to the floor. I paused a few seconds and tried to go again, but I didn't make it very far. We were only allowed one drop with the yoke before our turn was over. Once we dropped it for the second time, the judges came out and measured our distance. When I dropped the wildly swinging yoke the second time, the judge only had to pull 5 meters of tape out to confirm that I'd bombed the event. After watching the other competitors pause to stabilize the yoke before proceeding down the course, I realized that my sprinter-style start was the wrong approach. Had I taken the phrase "haste makes waste" to heart, I have no doubt I'd have finished better than the second to last place finish that I earned.

The arm-over-arm has always been one of my weaker events. I've never been sure if it's a result of my lack of technique or my refusal to to actively train my biceps, but I've never placed very high at it. Regardless of the reason, I've never found my groove on the arm-over-arm. With no shot of winning and a fair shot at finishing in last place, I realized that an experimental tweak in my pulling form couldn't hurt. First, I'd have to get the truck moving, which proved to be an impossible task. Literally.

After bringing up the rear heading into the finals and bombing the first event, there was no doubt that I was going to be the first man to try the sixth event of the day. After seeing the novice class pull the truck down the course without issue, the promoter decided to to back the truck into the well of the loading dock to make it more difficult for the seasoned vets. After nearly 30 seconds of futile pulling, the promoters realized that the uphill ramp was going to be too much for any mortal man to pull. Unfortunately, I was the guinea pig that got to burn a lot of his energy to determine the starting point. For my wasted effort, I got to rest until the rest of the field had pulled the truck to take my official turn.

One of the benefits of having nothing to lose is the freedom to try new techniques. When I've done arm over arm pulls in the past, I've always used my legs to initiate the drive on every stroke while only using my arms to reel in the slack. I've always pulled the vehicle over the finishing line, but I've never finished in the top half of the grid. The new technique I wanted to try was quite different. Instead of using my entire body for every pull, I decided that I'd get one big pull with my full body and continue the momentum with lean-backs and arm pulls. By doing so, I tried to increase the momentum of the vehicle by always maintaining the tension on the rope and vehicle instead of waiting for it to slow down before continuing to pull with my entire body. My strategy worked. I pulled the Chevy Suburban filled with people 100 feet in under a minute, which would turn out to be good enough to slate me in fourth place for the event.

The last event of the day was the stone over bar for maximum reps. There were three different stone weights, and just like the sandbag press earlier in the day, one rep with a heavier stone beats any amount of reps with a lighter stone. As it turned out, none of the nine remaining competitors felt that the 275 lb stone would be enough to gain any points and no one was brave enough to attempt the monstrous 390 lb stone after completing 6 previous events. Instead, everyone decided to duke it out with the 330 lb stone.

If you'd asked me before the contest how many reps I'd get on the stone, I'd have told you I'd get at least five with the 330 stone to secure the win. After competing in 6 very taxing events, however, I wasn't feeling up to that task. Still in last place, I decided to choose the 330 stone. I knew I'd get at least one rep and if anyone chose the lighter stone after me or got zero reps on the 330, I'd at least gain a little ground. My strategy worked, and by the time they started tallying the final scores, I pushed the stone over the 4 foot bar to score a third place tie in the event.

Looking back on the contest, I have mixed feelings. I'm primarily dissapointed that I hadn't improved my deadlift over the winter like I'd set out to do. If not for my colossal failure in the frame deadlift and dreadful performance on the front carry, I'd have had a fair chance at bringing home some hardware. On the other hand, I'm really kind of happy how I fared in an open weight class with minimal training. After all, I was 1 of only 3 lightweight competitors in the finals, and while the other two took 1st and 3rd, I still took 7th, beating two natural heavyweights. If that's what I can do against the big boys with minimal training, I'm sure to see some positive results once the regular strongman season rolls around.

Building Better Athletes

For years, strongmen have been touting our training style as an integral part of unleashing your full athletic potential. Josh Hewett at Synergy Athletics has a great write-up as to why our style of training isn't only superior, but necessary to today's athletes to excel in an ever improving field of athletes.

Strongman Training Builds Better Athletes

Upcoming Contests: January 2009

Minnesota Winter Challenge II
When: Sunday, January 11 at 11:00 am
Where: Old brick warehouse in Minneapolis, MN
Events:

Preliminary Events:
1. Keg and sandbag loading medley
2. Last man standing deadlift with timber frame
3. Sandbag clean and press
4. Farmers walk
Top 8 competitors move on to the finals

Finals Events:
5. Conans wheel
6. Arm over arm truck pull
7. Stones over bar for reps

January Challenge 2009
When: Saturday, January 17 at 1:00 pm
Where: 147 W. Beaver Street, St. Anne, IL
Events:
1. Push press
2. Deadlift
3. Farmers hold
4. Keg carry
5. Stones over bar for reps

Setting the Record Straight
This contest will establish New Hampshire state records. The winner of each event will become the current state record holder in each of the 5 disciplines.
When: Saturday, January 17
Where: Harbor Homes, Nashua, NH
Events:
1. Max log press
2. 15" Deadlift
3. Stones over bar for reps

North American Strongman Jamboree
When: Saturday and Sunday, January 24 and 25 from 1:00 to 5:00 pm
Where: Florence Civic Center, Florence, SC
Events:
Day 1:
1. Log
2. Yoke / Chain drag and load
3. Farmers Walk
4. Atlas Stones

Day 2:
1. Axle press for reps
2. Block load and sled drag
3. Stone for height

Battle at the Barn
When: JANUARY 24, 2009 at 10:00 am
Where: The Barn, West Coxsackie, NY
Events:
1. Max axle press
2. Pipe carry
3. Tire flip
4. Load and drag medley
5. Atlas stones