[August 08, 2011] STRONGER EVERYDAY Tweet Aug 08, 2011 (Albuquerque Journal - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Despite signs to the contrary, John Posen isn't stocking up for a raging party. The five kegs in his Northeast Heights garage are full, yes, but it's with sand and not Schlitz. A good strongman needs some extraheavy kegs to carry around. Some giant sandbags, too. With the blessing of his mother -- with whom the 21-year-old UNM student currently lives -- Posen has gradually filled half the two-car garage with the tools needed to train for strongman competitions. Kegs. Sandbags. Atlas stones. "She's given me my side of the garage and let me go for it," Posen said. "She was skeptical at first." But the 6-5, 330-pound Posen, who has always been big -- mom Joanne Posen remembers enrolling him in preschool, where another mother glared and said, "This is for 4- and 5-year-olds" -- has proven a good fit for the sport. The 2008 Eldorado graduate won the heavyweight division at the Arizona Strongman Competition in May. The victory qualified him for the sport's amateur nationals in November. He's aiming for an amateur world championships berth and eventually a pro card. "A lot of this has come real natural to me," said Posen, whose next competition is Aug. 20 in Colorado. Once more interested in pitching -- he played baseball and football for the Eagles -- Posen said he realized after high school that his true passion was strength training. Already a gym rat, Posen entered the strongman realm about a year ago, his interest piqued by TV coverage of the "World's Strongest Man" competition. That's the contest in which meaty professional athletes pull semi trucks and hoist heavy objects above their head, a sport dominated by Eastern Europeans with names like Zydrunas Savickas. "But America's really growing (in World's Strongest Man) too," Posen said. New Mexico, however, isn't exactly a hotbed of strongman activity. Posen said he has only one real training partner: 37-yearold Albuquerque resident Ty Roberts. The medical sales manager has made four appearances at amateur nationals, finishing as high as fourth as a lightweight (231 pounds and under). "I'm not strong enough to power lift and not pretty enough to body build. So strongman is a good fit," said Roberts, also a former baseball player. Roberts has been on the strongman scene for five years and said Posen is the first consistent training partner he's had. "I've had a lot of people cycle in and out of training," Roberts said, "but John's been the only one who's serious." Posen and Roberts say the strongman fraternity is friendly, with veterans often guiding newbies. The techniques he hasn't learned directly, Posen said he's tried to pick up by dissecting video of the pros. "I'll watch the same video 20 times," he said. Aside from knowing the best way to deadlift a car, what does it take to be a strongman? Food, for starters. Posen is constantly eating, consuming 7,000 calories per day, including five pounds of meat. He avoids empty calories in favor of eggs, oatmeal and sweet potatoes. "I believe you have to fuel the machine; you have to be eating clean," said Posen, who, it should be noted, works part-time at Keller's Farm Store. Next -- in a place like New Mexico where strongman competitors are few and far between -- strongmen need to wrangle their own training tools. Kegs, of course, are a cinch, and giant tractor tires (for flipping purposes) are surprisingly easy to procure. But you don't find Atlas stones on the shelf of the local sporting goods store. Posen had to buy a mold and dry concrete to make them himself. He now has a set of stones, ranging in weight from 195 to 405 pounds, that he practices lifting from the ground onto wooden platforms. When needed, he'll make additional stones with lead in the center. Posen also purchased his own "circus dumbbell," a bulbous, almost cartoonish, implement that weighs 130 pounds on its own and can be filled with sand to add weight. Money, Posen said, "flies out the window like nothing" when it comes to the sport. Added Roberts: "My wife calls it the strongman money pit." And, of course, a strongman also must log some serious training. Posen works out at Defined Fitness up to five days a week, using standard gym equipment to hone power and explosiveness. He can overhead press 300 pounds, squat around 500 and shrug between 800 and 900. But he also has more strongmanspecific "event" days in and around his garage, meeting up with Roberts whenever possible. On one such day, Posen and Roberts lined a series of heavy equipment on Posen's residential street: a 200-pound, sand-filled keg, next to a 200-pound sandbag, next to a 225-pound keg, next to a 250-pound sandbag. Then, as strongmen do, they picked them up, one by one, and ran them 15 yards up the street in a grunty, sweat-inducing feat of power and endurance. "Makes my back hurt just looking at it," a neighbor mused as he walked by. The sandbag/keg relay was just a small part of the total workout. It came after Atlas stone lifts but before the overturning of tires, including one weighing around 800 pounds. "It seems crazy," Posen said at the end of the training session, sweat pellets forming on his shaved head, "but it's so much fun." To see more of the Albuquerque Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.abqjournal.com. Copyright (c) 2011, Albuquerque Journal, N.M. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]