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I just got back from the last qualifying event for the 08 America’s Strongest Man held down in Florida. Wow, what a hot, humid environment for a strongman contest. I think most of us that competed got dehydrated to some extent. Luckily we had an RV set up with air conditioning for the athletes, which helped a lot.

The 1st event to start the show off was a 315 lb, 2  3/8 inch axle clean and press.  This was a little bit thicker than the axle I’ve been training with, so it was a little harder to grip. I was able to bust out 7 reps, all straight cleaned. Most of the other athletes used a continental clean, which is where you pull it up to your upper abs and then pull it in tight and use your legs and body to pop it up to shoulder level.  One other athlete, Brad Dunn, tied me for 1st in this event.

The 2nd event was a max deadlift. They gave us 3 attempts. The starting weight was 650. I opened with 705, which was no problem. My 2nd attempt was 755, again, no problem. My 3rd choice was a tough one. I had to choose from either 765, or 795. I’ve never pulled 795 off the floor, so I decided to play it safe and go with 765 which was no problem. I was told that my form was the best on this lift, which was nice to hear. Usually when I pull, I keep my butt and hips too high. This event I ended up with 4th, 2 other athletes pulled 815.( Marshall White, Jason Bergman). Both of these guys are former World Strongest Man competitors.

The 3rd event was the 930 yoke carry. My yoke carries are usually pretty good, but for some reason this day it was not good. I think I tried to go too fast with it and lost control. I dropped it twice! My kneewraps came undone about 3 steps out too, which didn’t help. I was somewhere in the middle on this event, with a 19.4 run. Not the worst, but for me it was a horrible run.

The 4th event was 3 blocks( 275, 300, 315) that had to be carried 50 ft, and then a 750 lb chain drag 75 ft.. Only 3 athletes out of 24 finished this event. Luckily, I was one of them. I had a time of 48 seconds, Marshall White had a 58 sec run, and Matt Parks from Canada had a run just under 75 seconds. I needed this win, it brought me back up to second place. I was 1/2 pt away from 1st(Jason Bergmann).

The last event was going to decide the winner, It was a 380 stone for reps over a 56 in bar.  Up to this point the winning number to beat was 6 reps by a few guys( marshall White, and I forgot who else got 6). Myself and Jason Bergmann were the last 2 to go. Jason had to beat me to keep his 1st place spot, and also had to beat a couple of the other guys that had 6 reps. I smoked the stone! I got 8 reps! The 1st lift kind of surprised me with how slippery it was. We use tacky( kind of like a glue to help grip the stones), and because of the heat, the stones were slick from all of the other athletes’ tacky that they had used. I had to squeeze the stone a little harder to maintain control of it. Jason Bergmann got 4 reps, which dropped his points down a little.

Overall points for the top 3 were, Myself with 58 points, Brad Dunn with 49 points, and Jason Bergmann with 46 points I think. I was pretty excited to win this event. I was just hoping to get top 6 to qualify for America’s Strongest Man. Winning is even better!

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