| Bud Jeffries is one of
the top natural strongmen in the world today. He has authored
several books on a variety of training topics and regularly
performs innovative feats of strength and endurance. You cannot
afford to miss his website at www.strongerman.com. |
|
Click here to jump ahead to Part 2 of the
interview.
PA: How did you get started in training?
BJ: Okay, I was about 14 years old. Actually, the first time
I lifted a weight, I was 13. And I had been given a weight set
and I kind of played around with it. I don't even know who made
it, but it came with a little booklet by Bruce Randall, I remember
that. I did some of that stuff and then I had some friends that
had a little gym at an old church down the street. The older guys
kind of took me under and I worked out with them. But they really
didn't know a lot about what they were doing. Good training and
they were intense about it, but form questions and they were really
upper body kind of guys. You know? Just normal trainer kind of
guys.
After that summer, 13, I started playing football at a local private
school. One of the coaches happened to be a powerlifter and that
kind of pointed me in the direction to a little local gym near
my house that had been there for a while and we just happened
to go in there. I was taken under the wing of a couple of guys
that were powerlifters and I got started from there. They watched
me for a day or too and said, "hmm, let's see what this kid's
about. Why don't you come work out with us?" So I did, and
they taught me about form and how to do the exercises right. What
was right and wrong…actually, this was great. Looking back,
knowing what I know there, there were a few things that I wish
they had taught me different, but as far as a beginning education
in lifting I really couldn't have asked for anything better because
they taught me about intensity and form. We did real exercises,
you know? Real powerlifting squats and deadlifts, bench presses…dumbbell
presses and stuff like that.
PA: Yeah, most people today, they totally
start the wrong way. You know, on machines.
BJ: Yeah, and I had seen that kind of stuff, but I was never
really exposed to the whole bodybuilding magazine style, which
is really the way most people come in now. They get exposed to
the idea of it, then they look around at it and they end up with
the worst possible information to start with. And then they don't
have any hands-on coaching with anybody who knows what in the
world they might be doing. And I was really lucky to come in with
people who really, not superexperts, but they were already competitive
and relatively successful lifters. It was more of a blessing than
I can really recount. The first day or two in the gym, they were
teaching me how to squat right and how to deadlift right, and
that's a real big thing.
PA: So, were you training for improved
sports performance, or were you training just for the sake of
training?
BJ: At the beginning, I was training to improve my sports performance.
That was the real reason I started. The guys I started with were
competitive lifters and I didn't really see any conflict of interests
between training for football and training for powerlifting. Football
season ended in November and I was back in the gym in December.
We started training and I competed for the first time in May.
During that whole time, I was working out for football and trying
to get better at that. I played for five years. Four in high school
and then one year in college. Post that, I got into training for
the sake of training. Weightlifting and powerlifting all seemed
very natural to me. I've always been a very strength-oriented
person. My family has a lot of really respected strength stuff.
In the area I'm from, people are really big on that. A lot of
family stories and different things about strength. I had always
kind of been, not that I didn't spend a lot of time developing
strength, but I was never small. As far as strength goes, I have
some definite genetic advantages. Although I busted my butt to
make any real progress.
PA: Yeah, there are a lot of people out
there who chalk up everything to genetics and they just don't
know how much hard work is involved.
BJ: Yeah, and genetics only takes you so far. There are some
things that I have pretty good genetics for. But it annoys the
fool out of me when they see someone that is real strong and they
say, "Well…he's strong, but if he really tried, if he
really pushed his genetics to the limit, he would be the strongest
person who ever lived." Well, you know what? The rubber don't
really meet the road right there. It's part genetics and part
whether you have the mentality to make yourself into what you
want to be. If you don't have that, then I don't care how physically
gifted you might be. If you don't make it happen, then so what?
There's more work. And even the genetically gifted people have
to work. Every tremendously powerful man I know or who is a champion
at weightlifting, yeah, they have good genetics to start with,
but they work harder than everyone else with good genetics.
PA: What keeps you motivates them to work
harder?
BJ: You know, that's an odd question. Everybody has their own
thing. I think maybe that's in some way mental genetics or whatever.
The interest is strong enough in what you do that you want it
badly and you have an innate desire to do it. But it's hard to
say. I some ways it really is an innate thing. When I first started
with the weights, for some reason, all of a sudden, it just clicked.
The idea of being the strongest man around has always had such
an appeal to me, even as a little kid. When I dressed up for Halloween,
half the time I was the Incredible Hulk. [Laughs]. It's kind of
a goofball thing, but it's all strength-oriented. Everybody has
different motivating factors. A lot of people play different sports
and train for sports performance. It was for me in the beginning,
but I found I had just a natural desire and affinity for strength.
That's always been the motivation for me.
PA: When you are working on a strength
feat, do you usually work on that one thing? Or do you have multiple
goals?
BJ: That really depends on the particular thing. Generally I
am training for multiple goals all the time, but I may take short
periods and push other things to the back burner and focus more
solely on a specific feat. A lot of it has to do with the specific
feat itself and how much energy it takes, how much focus and how
much it affects my recovery. For instance, when I am training
for a single heavy lift, most of the time I am training for other
stuff. For a short period of time, towards the end of trying to
make a particular lift, I might adjust down to where I am not
doing as much endurance training. But I am generally training
other lifts heavy and doing some conditioning. But if it's a more
endurance oriented feat or complicated feat than a regular single,
heavy lift, then that may…I guess it has to be situational.
One of the things I did was take a 535 pound yoke and walk half
a mile with it.
PA: WOW!
BJ: Obviously I didn't do the whole thing without putting it
down and not having to drop it all. But you see what I'm saying?
That has a very high mix of strength and cardio endurance, so
that would require you more to train strength and just more more
training altogether, including cardio work.
PA: So, what are you working on these days?
BJ: Oh wow… I have branched out into different things. For
a long time I decided that I did not want to compete anymore.
A lot of the different competitions lost their appeal to me. I
have kind of decided in the last year or so that I am going to
get back out and compete again. And actually I have competed twice
already this year. A kettlebell competition and a strongman competition.
And was blessed and I actually won both. So, I am pushing for
a lot of different things. I want to have some definite powerlifting
goals that I would like to set. So I will probably have several
competitions in May including a powerlifting competition and the
kettlebell nationals. I will probably do, a week before that,
a pro-am strongman competition, which I will probably do, depending
on whether I can get in before the entry deadline or not.
PA: So do you think there is a synergy
between all of the powerlifting, strongman, endurance training,
kettlebells and everything you do?
BJ: Yeah, yeah I do. I tend to view strength and endurance as
opposite sides of the same coin. They are very related. The stronger
you get, the greater your potential for endurance. And vice-versa.
The greater endurance you get, especially when it has a muscular
component to it, the greater your base is from which you can build
strength. Now, if you were using a pure endurance idea, that might
not be quite as applicable. For instance, if you are a marathon
runner and you intend to develop a thousand pound squat or whatever.
They're so disparate in their goals that they don't have anything
to do with one another. But if you are developing high-level endurance
with some muscular component to it, for example bodyweight exercises
or kettlebell lifting, Indian club lifting, I think you are broadening
a base. I have sort of stopped looking at squats as there being
different types of squats. I now just look at like I am always
doing squats, just with different types of resistance. Sometimes
it's weights for certain numbers of reps, sometimes it's partials
very heavy, or bodyweight for high reps. But it's all the same
exercise. It's a natural movement of the human body.
PA: Yeah, that's a cool way to look at
it. So you do a lot of different bodyweight-style exercises?
BJ: Right.
PA: And you're a pretty big guy.
BJ: Right.
PA: So you have a lot of resistance to
work with?
BJ: More than… yeah [Laughs]. I'm around 345 right now,
which is relatively light for me. So some of the other bodyweight
exercises are significantly harder for me and there may be more
advantage in muscular strength building for a bigger guy doing
bodyweight exercises, but you're not going to be quite as proficient
with them if you tend to judge how many repetitions you can do
in bodyweight exercises. The lighter guy wins. It's the same thing
as we were talking about earlier with gymnastics, some of the
bodyweight feats are almost not the providence of the bigger man!
But you have more resistance. One thing I am trying to do, since
I began training, is to evolve my theories of what the applications
of strength are and what strength is. As far as bodyweight goes,
I am at a disadvantage in terms of efficiency, but I am still
trying to in some ways develop an efficiency in lifting my own
bodyweight and other things. Obviously, I'm never going to be
as efficient as a 140 pound guy. But I don't feel like I do too
bad. I can do handstand pushups, crank out reps of bodyweight
squats, one-legged squats.
Part 2
PA: I have heard that you have pretty good
mobility too. You know, flexibility and you move well. So, what
kind of training do you do to maintain a high level of mobility?
BJ: Well, I generally try to stretch. I do a lot of movement
oriented training, like martial arts and in the past, football.
That type of thing. And a lot of the strongman training has a
lot of movement in it already. Another thing there is to consider
is that strength and flexibility are in many ways related. People
tend to think of it in the opposite. Like the stronger your muscles
get and the bigger you are, the more tight you will get. But if
you develop flexibility and continue to maintain it, strength
will make flexibility easier. Barring some minimal problems. The
only things that are difficult for me are things like barbell
cleans, because of my wrists and my arms kind of get in the way.
So my arms don't quite bend back. It's not something that I can't
do, I just choose not to develop. Occasionally I do sprints or
running drills. I think doing bag work and different martial arts
I have done in the past have built me a base of mobility that
is pretty easy to maintain.
I am a big guy, but I have a big bone frame, so I can carry my
weight pretty well. If you had a smaller bone frame and tried
to carry the same weight I am carrying, it would be very difficult
for most people to maintain flexibility or agility or whatever.
Again, I think it's all interrelated. For instance, the stronger
you are, the greater your lateral mobility is. Maybe not your
pure sprinting speed, since that has a lot to do with you nervous
system and technical ability, but my general mobility is increased
by my strength, especially as I have learned over a period of
time different ways to relax, keep my body loose and that kind
of thing.
I hope that answers your question.
PA: Yeah, definitely. Because most people
have an idea of weigtlifters as being muscle-bound, inflexible
and not great athletes. They think of bodybuilders.
BJ: Yeah, well mobility is like anything else. It can be progressively
trained. One thing that probably helped my flexibility on a lifelong
basis is that I had a car accident at 5 years old. I really changed
my metabolism, slowed it way down, and changed the way my body
looks. I was put in a full body cast. I fractured my hip, fractured
my skull. I was in a body cast for three months. And I should
have died, except for the grace of the lord and his blessings
there. Once I got over that, my Mom started me in martial arts.
As a rehabilitative thing! Because after I got out of that cast,
I had to learn how to walk again. She put me in Tae Kwon Do, which
is not the greatest combat oriented martial art. But it is very
athletic. A lot of jumping, lots of kicking and they had a very
aggressive, progressive stretching program. And that built me
a lifelong base of flexibility and I've tried to maintain it.
And another thing. People are afraid of flexibility.
PA: You mean a lot of strong guys are afraid
of being flexible?
BJ: Yeah, I think so. The idea that you lose some strength with
it and I think that they associate stretching with pain. And they
can't get past it. They can't get past the pain involved in the
initial phases of flexibility training, so they never push it.
The truth is that if you want to be flexible, you can be. Just
like if you want to be big, you can be, or if you want to be strong,
you can be. Everything is progressive, whether you are talking
about strength, flexibility or whatever. It's all how much you
concentrate on it and how much you work on it.
PA: So, do you still do a lot of stretching,
or do the exercises you do pretty much take care of it?
BJ: Most of the time, I do a lot of bodyweight exercises. I still
do stretching occasionally, but I think a lot of the different
bodyweight exercises tend to maintain my mobility and flexibility
pretty well without having to do a tremendous amount of stretching.
And I do a lot of relatively full range lifting motions. So I
am training mobility with weight and without it. So, I don't have
to do a bunch of stretching. But it depends on what kind of workout
I'm doing and what I have to be working on at the time. If I am
in a period where I am working really heavy in martial arts, I
will stretch more. Especially if I am doing things which require
more flexibility. If I was going to do a lot of high kicks on
a regular basis, I would stretch more. And the order is different
too. I do stretching AFTER heavy resistance training. But, tend
to warm up with more bodyweight exercises and do the stretching
after. But if I'm going to do a martial arts type workouts, then
I am going to warm-up with bodyweight exercises and martial arts
drills. I will stretch more before the actual workout itself,
because that workout requires more flexibility in its execution.
PA: What is your martial arts background?
You started out in Tae Kwon Do?
BJ: Started out in Tae Kwon Do and did it pretty regularly for
a number of years. I dropped it as a teenager because I really
didn't have enough time anymore. Later on, I got into some jiu-jitsu
and then focused pretty heavily on shoot fighting and then grappling.
The thing I've trained in most recently is shoot fighting, which
is a combination of kickboxing and grappling.
PA: So, more for the real world…
BJ: Yeah, no-holds-barred type fighting and a little more real
world. I'm personally working more on pure self-defense stuff.
When I'm working by myself, I work more pure self-defense stuff.
Your average fight probably has excellent basic self-defense if
he hast trained on the original vein of the martial arts, but
there are some obvious differences. Like some things you can and
can't do in the rings. Every fight has pre-set themselves with
stance, etc, because that's the way they train. But that doesn't
happen in real world self-defense. So when I train, I train for
more self-defense type stuff and grappling. I enjoy submission
grappling quite a bit. In fact, if all goes well this year, I
am planning on competing in the ISKA US Open submission grappling
championships. They're in Florida this year, so I'm thinking about
going.
PA: You're also a minister, right? [Joking
a bit]
BJ: Yeah, I have worked as a minister a bit, but I'm not really…
Yes and no. [Laughs] I've worked in that vein, but I hate to set
myself up as anybody's example. I am a Christian and I have definite
beliefs in God, but I'm not going to tell you that I'm the greatest
guy that ever lived or anything like that. I believe that God
protects us and that Jesus Christ and his birth, death and resurrection
is the greatest thing that ever happened in the universe.
PA: I just like the idea of a minister
that lifts heavy weights and can bust some heads!
BJ: [Laughs] That's kind of an odd contradiction of things. And
some people believe there's no way to be that. Fighters have the
ability to do those kinds of things, but they don't go into it
with the idea that I want to kill people. And that's one of the
reasons I got out of competitive fighting. I trained for a long
time to do NHB fighting and I did fight twice. Won 1, lost 1.
The one I lost was on pure bad game plan and conditioning. I got
in great shape for the next one and lasted the full 15 minutes
and I really pretty much dominated the guy.
Yeah, it's kind of an interesting paradox of things.
PA: Yeah, sure. But you just gotta do what
you like.
BJ: Yeah, and I kind of have a weird, I don't know what it is,
like I was born with a chip on my shoulder about being challenged
with things. But I think it's why I've stuck with lifting weights
as long as I have. When I first got into it, I got really red
about things and I looked at what other guys could lift and thought,
"I can make this lift too." If I figure someone else
can do something, then I pretty much have to throw my hat into
the ring. Which is what I did with fighting. I didn't really have
any particular…I like and enjoy martial arts, but I just
got challenged by those types of martial arts and I had to enter
the ring. The same thing happened with football. When I got to
the University of Florida, I just walked on there. I had scholarships
elsewhere, but I needed to prove to myself that I could play at
that level. And I made the team and was at that level. I ended
up with a broken shoulder and that pretty much ended football.
Anything that has to do with testosterone or lifting, I will probably
get around to eventually. That's why I got into Highland Games
and that was a lot of fun. That was very technical. A lot more
technical than I wish to pursue. It's kind of like track and field.
It's all about throwing. But it was one of the most fun competition
that I've done. Powerlifting and strongman competition and kettlebells
this year, which I'm looking forward to. I'm really enjoying that.
And martial arts competitions. I'm also planning this year to
do US All-Around Weightlifting. I don't know if you know what
that is?
PA: Yeah, I do. A strength competition
with a variety of odd lifts.
BJ: So, I plan to go there. And I may even plan to do a Clubbell
competition. I may even do some power breaking and some of the
martial arts stuff.
PA: Well, that should make for a pretty
busy year!
BJ: Yeah. That's going to be one of the major challenges. Just
trying to put it all together. But that's been one of the major
themes of my life. I'm training in the last several years and
especially when I got into the martial arts. I've been strength
training for a long time, but that kind of pushed me in the direction
of needing endurance. I started training that. It really shaped
my ideas of what health and strength should be. You should be
able to display your strength, but you shouldn't get winded walking
across the street. You should have endurance in strength in a
lot of different directions. Grip, pressing, squatting, pulling,
repetition strength, etc. I guess I believe and think that you
should and can be an all-around lifter. You don't have to be the
narrow specialist that things have become.
Specificity has its place and I don't mean to say it's wrong.
But why not be all you can be?
PA: So you seem to be a man of many contrasts.
But I think it works well for you.
BJ: Well, I'm trying to be. And I want not to just try everything,
but be good at everything. I'm hoping to, if I can, I hope to
post the heaviest ever raw squat in competition. And hopefully
the highest total, if not ever, at least in the last ten years.
And drug-free as well, which is a big thing with me. And all of
the other things too. I'd like to turn pro as a strongman as well.
Just do a little bit of everything.
PA: Well… good luck!
BJ: But hey, that's the plan. It's not that I can't sit still.
I'm not ADD. I just need a challenge. That's why I work on the
books and videos and try to progress in that direction and do
that.
PA: Do you have any more books or projects
coming up?
BJ: Yeah, we have an update to one of my original products, How
to Squat 900lbs, without drugs, suits or knee wraps. That's a
book and video. And I am almost finished with a second edition,
an update. We decided to change it to an ongoing course. Next
will be How Squat 1000lbs. What we've decided to do is package
it in with the original course and as I progress, we will put
in new materials. Eventually instead of saying how to Squat 1000lbs,
it will say 1100lbs or 1200lbs. And with each progression will
be new routines and different training tips and techniques. We've
worked up a lot of material for that kind of thing, but hopefully
as I learn, then hopefully I can help other people learn in that
direction.
One of the books that has been the biggest for us so far has been
Twisted Conditioning. Which is how to combine barbell, strongman
and bodyweight into effective training routines to produce not
only high-level strength, but endurance as well. I'm almost finished
with a second edition to that book. And from there, we will turn
Twisted Conditioning into an entire series. We will go into using
barbells, bodyweight and strongman exercises. But I am kind of
modifying my definition of bodyweight exercises to include what
I call alternative conditioning. Which is anything that gives
high-level muscular endurance and conditioning in one. Like kettlebells
and clubbells ™, cables, sledge hammers and any kind of conditioning
in that area. We will have Twisted Conditioning 1, then obviously
2 and next in the series will be both strength and conditioning
for the martial arts. The next will be a routine book that will
have a couple hundred routines in it. And it will be all kinds
of different routines for training anything you can think of.
And all different ways of combining the important training modalities
together in effective routines.
And, what I think is one of the most interesting things we are
working on is an ultimate strength and conditioning challenge.
Kind of like an IronMan of strength and conditioning together.
And this is something that nobody I know of has ever done. So
the plan is to put together a series of heavy lifts and a lot
of different types of challenges. Some strongman stuff, some repetition
lifting, as well as a high-level performance in bodyweight exercises
and other endurance exercises such as running, biking, swimming,
rowing. All together in the same day.
PA: So it sounds it sounds like any bodytype
would be able to compete. So will there be weight classes?
BJ: Well, no. I haven't even thought of it as a competitive thing.
It would be great, but a logistical nightmare, because it's going
to involve 15 or 20 different things. It's not just a couple different
events. It's more going to be a challenge to put out to the rest
of the world. And just as something to push myself to do. And
to prove to people that you don't have to be a narrow specialist
and that you can do whatever your mind sets for you to do. And
whatever you build the mental strength and intelligent training
to achieve. And you can have strength and endurance in a lot of
different veins together.
PA: Definitely man, it sounds like a great
personal challenge for you.
BJ: Yeah, it should be…if it doesn't kill me. It is really
similar…I don't know if you saw the guy that came into the
Guiness Book as the world's fittest man? He put together a 24
hour challenge.
PA: Okay, yeah. I've seen that.
BJ: It will be similar to that. But it will be with a combination
of endurance and strength.
PA: His was more extreme endurance, right?
BJ: Yeah, his was all endurance. He did some weightlifting, but
none of it was heavy. And what they did for his weight lifting
was total the poundage he lifted in two hours. But they said he
lifted 4 or 500 thousand pounds. But he was like 20 rep sets of
different machines exercises.
Okay, so what I want to do is- and this is kind of a rough sketch-
1000 squat, 400 pound press, 8 or 900 pound deadlift, a heavy
backlift of 3 or 4000 thousand pounds, 500 pushups, 500 squats,
500 situps, a couple hundred kettlebell lifts, a couple hundred
kettlebell lifts, carry a heavy rock, do a heavy yoke walk and
then do a moderate level run, bike, swim and row. All together
in the same day, in some type of mix. I'm not exactly sure yet
what I'm going to do.
PA: It should be pretty exciting to see
what you come up with.
BJ: Hopefully it will be something that gets people's interest.
And anything that gets people interested in training is a good
thing. Maybe I can do a couple of ring stunts if you teach me.
PA: Yeah, sure man! Thanks a lot for the
interview.
