Ep 185 – From Injury To Advocacy: Interview With Bradie Crandall

Giacomo:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins, Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Giacomo and this is episode 187. We’ve been trying to do some more interviews with incredible people that we know to get to know them better and also to get to introduce you to the vegan Strong Plant Built team. I have the pleasure of having with us today and I honestly, we’ve, we compete alongside one another.

We’ve done a lot of stuff together, but I don’t know a whole lot about you. I know I was talking to Dani earlier today. I’m like, he’s a man of few words and he just absolutely crutches it. And I’m super curious to see how, how what we’re gonna get to find out about you outside of the fact that you have done already done so many incredible things at such a young age.

So, welcome to the podcast and thank you everyone for tuning in and listening. If you have any questions for us after the fact, I’ll let you know where to find Bradie. So what, aside from whatever like getting into, how you get started with all this and what we’re up to this year. How’s your week been? What have you been up to?

Bradie:

Yeah. So me and my girlfriend just relocated to DC. I’ve helped launch a start up to develop new sustainable proteins. So that’s something I’ve been very busy with. of course, training, this has been very time consuming as I gear up for nationals and then Mr America Comp in August or October that is OK.

Giacomo:

So I heard move and developing proteins outside of the, the stuff that we’re already.

Bradie:

Yeah. Yeah.

Giacomo:

OK. How was the move?

Bradie:

It was, it was very hectic. So I just got my phd like a month ago. So literally, I think I, I defended my

thesis on like a Wednesday and then we started moving that Friday to DC. So it was all very hectic and then of course, I’m very occupied all the way leading up to my phd defense. So it’s been busy times but now things are just starting to settle out.

Giacomo:

What did you get your phd in?

Bradie:

I got my phd in chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Giacomo:

OK. Gotcha.

Bradie:, Giacomo:

And what’s life been like after submitting your thesis and getting on the other side of all that, so much better, the quality of life improvement.

Bradie:

Just it skyrockets after you finish your phd.

Giacomo:

Do you plan on doing any other schooling, academia work like that outside of being in the workforce and whatnot.

Bradie:

I hope not. I’ve, I’ve been in school for, you know, I’ve been in college for 10 years now so I, I, I’d like to not go back. I really feel the need to.

Giacomo:

Gotcha and why they move to DC.

Bradie:

a couple of reasons. my girlfriend got a job here. She’s a dietician. it’s also sort of strategically locating me in DC as I work with the start up company that’s actually based out of Wilmington, Delaware. I can help sort of meet with people in DC to help them fundraise and gain access to, to new sources of funding for us.

Giacomo:

Ok. Right on. Cool. Let’s see. It was miserable today. It was disgustingly hot and super rainy and super humid. But otherwise, I don’t know, I feel like it’s been a pretty nice summer over here. I keep watching the clock tick and realizing that it’s almost right around the corner right at the time that we were recording this, we still have around 11 weeks.

But by the time this episode comes out, it’ll be like 234 weeks, something like that out from Mr America. And I am just beyond excited about the team that we’re bringing this year. I was looking at all of our results from all the previous years of competing and I think 2017 was when we were at our absolute best. We meddled the hardest. We had the largest team we competed in most sports. I believe we meddled. I think we may have meddled harder last year, but I have a feeling this, this team

is just gonna absolutely set the bar as far as how competitive we’re gonna be able to be. And with you stepping up as a team captain, you brought so much fresh new talent and literally stacked the books in every single weight class. I, I believe the words I remember you saying was something like you want them to feel the pressure in every single weight class category that there is a vegan that is that competitive, that is likely to win.

Bradie:

That’s exactly right.

Bradie:, Giacomo:

I, I want them to be scared when they see the vegan strong playability walking in and when I think of some of the athletes and the passion that they bring, not just the numbers they put up and how they perform.

Giacomo:

I would be surprised if the competition was a little bit scary competition aside.

Bradie:

Yeah, I feel like we should do a quick rundown like highlighting some of the athletes because there, there’s so much talent here and I feel like it’s my duty as captain to highlight them. So of course, there’s myself who won the national championship powerlifting last year, the USB a drug test and nationals. then I won Mr America last year as a middleweight, and fully transitioned to strong in sense.

Another really talented athlete we’re bringing back is Angeline Berba who of course is the three time France’s strongest woman and then she’s also the world champ at Static Monsters, which is a big strong man comp, which is a, a max deadlift and a max log lift. Then we’re also bringing the Sierra for the first time, Tom, but who just won world’s strongest natural man.

under 90 kg, Andrew Keys, England’s strongest natural man, under 80 kg. We have Rick Carroll who just won the Northeast regional championship and he has multiple Arnold invites. Now, we’re bringing back Rena Ceri, who’s a, a hybrid powerlifter, strongman to compete again as a novice. bringing Melissa Busta and I have Phoebe pro turned strong woman. Gigi Balsamico who’s a really strong big potential down the road.

She just won a Delaware State Championship as well as home Farrier who had some massive lists recently. So we, we have a very strong team this year. And last year our strong men team, we brought seven athletes. we did unfortunately have one injury. So really out of the six athletes that finished the competition, we have five podium finishes and three of them were first place.

Giacomo:

Nice. What do you expect this year from your team specifically in comparison to last year?

Bradie:

So we, so the first place finishers at the strong man competition, they get a trident and I think you can see one back behind you over your, over your shoulder there. So what I want this year we got three tr last year. I wanna beat that this year. I want at least four, at least. So that’s my goal as captain.

Giacomo:

Ok. So we get to walk around the casino hopefully with two times the amount of trident with the potential to do twice as much damage as we did last year. Exactly. That’s exciting. I cannot wait to cheer you all on and to root for you and to see you do your thing in October. So walk me back to how this all got started to you. Did you start playing sports at a young age? What was your interest back then?

Bradie:

So I, my first love in sports was really football. and actually started playing football in middle school is

because I wanted to get girls and then I slowly developed the, the love for the sport, but initially I just wanted to get girls attachment. But then, I graduate high school and I went on to, to play football at a smaller college at Cleveland.

and I get put in, get some reps in my very first game of the season. And it’s like within the first couple of plays, I fractured my spine, which completely ended my football career, right out the gate of college. So I, I, you know, I lost scholarship and I had to transfer universities, ended up at the University of South Carolina where my family had moved.

And there I, I had really started to develop more of an interest in science and resolving climate change. you know, all the while this was going on, you know, I’m still dealing with severe back pain, my back, it, it really hadn’t fully healed. So when I fractured it, I, I snapped two of the transverse processes off which are the, the tips of the vertebrae.

So those are just gone. Now, they, they dissolve it, they’re completely removed from my spine. So my, my back is having some major, major issues still. Like I’m having trouble just doing day to day activities, a lot of physical therapy. So meanwhile, you know, I’m still trying to lift and get my back right. I also start doing research. And in my research, I’m trying to take the carbon emissions, driving climate change and convert them into chemicals to mitigate climate change.

And meanwhile, while I’m doing this, I realize, you know, looking where the carbon emissions driving climate change are coming from. you know, a major portion of them are coming from in agriculture. So it didn’t feel right for me to be working in the lab, doing all this work to reduce emissions and then going home and eating a burger. So at this point, I, I started to get more interested in, you know, I, I didn’t, like, committed, like, oh, yeah, I’m gonna go vegan at the time.

I was like, ok, I’m just gonna, like, take out red meat of my diet and see how things go. Of course I was fine. And then I’m like, ok, maybe I’ll push this a step further and then I remove all meat from my diet or besides fish. I do a pescatarian stuff. I’m like, ok, things are going well and the strongest and leanest and, you know, the, the best performing I’ve ever been my back’s getting better.

Then I transitioned to vegetarian and of course, slowly and slowly get a vegan. So that’s a story of how I, I arrived at veganism. And when I arrived at veganism, of course, you know, I’m getting a lot of criticism from people like, oh, you’re never gonna be, you know, get stronger as a vegan this and that. So I’m like, ok, I need to prove people wrong now.

So I start competing in powerlifting. So it actually never power lifted prior to being vegan. which I think is, is, is a cool way to sort of prove to people you can build muscle as a vegan and you can get stronger. And you can see over the five years I competed in powerlifting, it was getting better and better each year. To where last year I won the US Powerlifting Association Drug tested nationals.

I was really proud of, but by that point I actually started to get a little bit sick of powerlifting. And for those of you who don’t know, powerlifting is, is a squat bench deadlift. Every single competition, you get three attempts and you total your best lists. and it got, it got kind of old just training those three lifts for me. And I sort of missed, a lot of the athleticism that I had developed during football that I felt like I wasn’t really able to use as a powerlifter.

so sort of on the side, I would dabble in strongman competitions, just like small fundraiser, comps

and things like that. But after I won nationals, I felt, you know, I really wanted to make this transition into strong man. And the first major competition I did after that transition of the strongman was at, Mr America, which was literally August 3 months after I’d won powerlifting national. So within three months of transition to strong man, I was able to win Mr America.

And actually, thus far, you know, not to jinx anything. And I’m still early in my strong man career, I’m undefeated so far. But, and now I’ve, I’ve just qualified for nationals and strong man, which will be in September. And then right after September, you know, it works out really nicely. Actually, I’ll be peaked for nationals and then a month later, I’ll compete at Mr America as a heavyweight.

Giacomo:

Nice. What got you into science? And then taking as far as you did to the point where you wind up getting your phd and then learning about caring for and working in environmental sciences, right? I don’t know if I’m saying that right? And then of course, going vegan, you adopted a plant based diet for environmental reasons. At what point did it come? Did it come full circle for you? Were there other reasons that eventually clicked? And what was that like?

Bradie:

Yeah, I think my, my love for science had always been there ever since a very young age, you know, I had a lot of interest in, in chemistry. and of course chemical engineering, which I have a phd in now is really just applied chemistry, taking that fundamental knowledge and using it to solve real world problems. And that real world problem I, I had the most interested in was climate change.

I think it’s, it’s so critical for me just ethically, I’ve always had a very strong sense of empathy and ethics. And I, I wanna be able to hand off a habitable planet to my future kids and grandkids. That’s, that’s so important to me. that even while I’m gone that, you know, they’ll have something left for them. So that’s, that’s really where this passion had had developed from and that really goes hand in hand with my veganism as well because that sort of environmental sense and

research is what, was allowed me to, to build that bridge over to veganism. and once that bridge was built, I, I could begin to see a lot of the health benefits and the animal rights benefits and some of the other aspects of veganism that I wasn’t, I didn’t have a good of a lens into without that bridge through sustainability.

Giacomo:

But you kept up with sports the entire time and found out that you couldn’t play football competitively. You decided to get into powerlifting and obviously you changed the way that you ate. What was the deal with your back and the rehab and how that was working. How did that affect your ability to power lift?

Bradie:

Yeah. So it’s actually kind of funny. I think it’s kind of counterintuitive. Most people would think you fracture your spine, you should avoid exercises like deadlifts and things like that. I kind of took the opposite approach where I said, I’m just gonna build up as much muscle mass as possible to support my spine. Now. And by doing that, I was able to, I’ve completely mitigated all my, my spinal issues.

I, I never had issues ever since I’ve done that. So, and I, I continue to deadlift heavy. And that’s something I think that most people probably would have taken the opposite approach and eased off and they never probably would have solved their back issues. Completely.

Giacomo:

Interesting. That’s really interesting. So, because I think of strong man, I think of the fact that to me it seems like it’s riskier because you go from what little I know about your sport you go and you do all kinds of different things that you don’t normally train for. And it’s not quite as ca, I mean, I suppose para lifting, you’re doing the same thing and that repetition could eventually

lead to strain and injury. But strong man just seems like it’s a whole different beast where, I mean, give me some examples of different events in a strongman competition.

Bradie:

Yeah. So like your main events will be, you know, the big ones are like mom lifting, stone lifting truck pools. you know, there, there’s no like the, the fun part about strongman is there’s no set criteria for what an event has to be. You can literally make up whatever you want as long as everybody has to compete the same thing. It, it doesn’t matter.

So every competition is completely different and you never know what to expect for these events. whereas powerlifting is very rigid and standardized so much to the point, like they have to be using certain bars and certain plates. Strongman, you, you don’t know what you get to show they up sometimes.

Giacomo:

Do you see competing in strong men for like the next 5 to 10 plus years?

Bradie:

Yeah, that’s my plan. I think, I think it does take a good amount of time to develop. And when you even like going from power lifting, the strong man that is a pretty big jump. Like there’s a lot of technique and things I’m still developing on certain lifts. just because there’s so many lifts now in strongman. So I take that sort of powerlifting mindset of like perfecting my technique on each lift and now applying it

to the strongman lifts.

and really, I, I’m kind of starting from scratch every competition. All right, let’s let’s work, learn the technique, this lift and this left. so it’s, it keeps things interesting. It, it’s both mentally and physically stimulating for me, which is why I think I enjoy it so much.

Giacomo:

Here’s an interesting question, say someone doesn’t have access to a strongman specific gym and they have not actively lifted in a long time or maybe they’re just brand new to lifting and they want to get into strongman. What do they do?

Bradie:

I say your best two options are either find a crossfit gym. So a lot of crossfit, they’ve started to adopt a lot of the Strongman lists. So a lot of times crossfit gyms now will have yokes and they’ll have farmer handles and logs. your other option is if you have access to, you know, I, I assume everyone can probably drive to the woods or parked somewhere just go find some heavy rocks and some heavy logs. I’ve literally seen professional strong man go to the woods and train that way.

Giacomo:

That’s wild. You literally just grab whatever you can find in nature and just start training. What about programming? Do you just start messing around and lifting heavy, awkward things? Do you get a little more detailed with how you’re doing it at some point after you get interested in seeing what you can lift?

Bradie:

So when I power lifted, I did all my own programming on my co chain. because I was able able to take, you know, my programming from one comp and then reapply it to the next and just make slight tweaks and strongman. I, I honestly, I just don’t have the bandwidth or the time to like to complete programming from scratch for every competition I do and I’ll compete maybe four or five times a year. So I, I’ve hired a coach now to handle that for me.

Giacomo:

Gotcha. Ok. Yeah, I’m trying to think back to when I was a kid because I know I definitely had that period of time where I did things to have for girls to be interested in me, but I don’t think. Well, no, I wanted to look a certain way, not necessarily because I play tennis, but I wanted to look a certain way and I think that’s what led to me doing bodybuilding eventually.

That idea of looking a certain way so girls would notice me, but then eventually you fall in love with the sport that you’re doing more than whatever it brings you externally because you just enjoy it. And to me it’s just super interesting how you pivoted from three different sports and it’s just like quite the transition. Really.

Bradie:

I’ll say that’s actually not in strongman. That’s not all that uncommon. Strongman is such a, a versatile sport. But the people that do the best are generally very athletic. They have, you know, a background in multiple sports before they get this strong. like Mitchell Hooper, for example, probably the, the top strong man out there right now.

in terms of consistency, he ran marathons, he power lifted. I think he also played football and some other sports before he actually got to strongman and being the top strongman today.

Giacomo:

So being more competitive, the results speak for themselves, right? It’s a conversation opener and people start to ask you questions about how you eat and why you do what you do. But what are your hopes when those conversations come your way? And people are like, wow, you’re undefeated. Why are you doing this? And how are you so competitive? What do you hope to achieve by being a vegan activist?

Bradie:

I think that the main thing I hope to achieve is that the pe I think there’s a lot of people that are considering plant based diets, but they will immediate, immediately push it aside saying, ok, I can never be, you know, strong and athletic on a diet like this. And then they see me and then that this is a complete paradigm shift from what they’ve been taught for so long or what they’ve seen from, you know, social media and things like that.

So I really just want to challenge people’s beliefs and really prevent them from having the excuse of, you know, I, I can’t be strong or athletic. I, I’m an athlete, I can’t go vegan. that, that simply isn’t true. So I don’t want that to be a reason to prevent anyone from adopting a perfect diet.

Giacomo:

What are some common questions that other athletes wind up asking you?

Bradie:

I mean, yeah, I, I wouldn’t say the, the questions are all that different from public questions you could

ask. Of course, you know, the common one is where you get your protein, things like that. I get that one very commonly. But I will say it’s, it’s kind of interesting, I get more questions and more kind of confusion and push back from the general public than I would from like top level athletes, the higher level athletes, I’m around, they kind of just get it and maybe they

appreciate my performance more and, you know, understands how macronutrients work a little bit better. where they, they don’t question it quite as much as the general public would, which is interesting.

Giacomo:

Gotcha. Gotcha. So, one thing that I find particularly interesting about Strongman is that there doesn’t seem to be any tested divisions out there or am I wrong?

Bradie:

So, there is one that’s launched fairly recently and Tom Bucks has been pretty involved with them. So there’s the world’s strongest Natural man federation, maybe I’m saying that wrong. But they, they’ve, they’ve launched fairly recently and, and they’re still kind of growing. but generally, you know, the vast majority of the main, top strongman federations are not protested.

Giacomo:

How do you feel about that? And why do you think that is,

Bradie:

a lot of it has to do with the history of strongman. So strongman is a sport that literally developed from a TV show. So the world’s strongest man was the show that launched the, the sport of strongman. So prior to that show, there, there was no sport, they literally just wanted to take, you know, all the top strong men from different sports, football and wrestling and Olympic lifting and just see who the strongest was.

And then they kept doing that each year and suddenly it started to become a sport that people had actually trained for and specialized just in competing in that. And when they started that, you know, they made the decision not to have it drug tested. probably just due to cost, to be honest, they probably just didn’t want to deal with the extra cost of drug testing athletes.

But all those athletes that competed in the original world’s strongest man were drug tested in their own individual sport. so, yeah, it’s kind of interesting and, and nowadays, you know, I’d say people, it’s a lot of times it’s for the viewers, like, the viewers just wanna see these, like, massive bulky monsters competing at World’s strongest man.

so they don’t wanna impose drug testing on them. but I’ll say if, if strongman was drug tested it, it would be nice. It would be a very good sport for the Olympics because it is done very much on an international basis. like, it’s not just a US dominant sport, like, it’s very big in Europe.

Giacomo:

Gotcha. Do you see that being a possibility? Do you see the tested side of it growing?

Bradie:

I think it’ll grow. but I, I think the untested will always be bigger unless they decide to drug test across the board, which I don’t, I don’t see happening anytime soon but that, that could change.

Giacomo:

Yeah, it’s interesting how it’s such a gray area and it seems certain sports, you just wind up getting to the top and then eventually testing becomes acquired but it’s almost like you wind up getting to the top and you probably do a couple of things to get there, depending on the sport, I suppose.

But, yeah, it’s really interesting what I, what I love about our team is that we are, in fact all natural athletes and pe D free, which is really cool. I just wonder what that is, like when you’re competing against athletes who are not?

Bradie:

Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. I don’t know, it’s definitely possible for, you know, drug free athletes to, to go head to head with athletes that aren’t PE DS. you know, PE D is sort of, I, I guess the best way to describe it is I’d say they probably unlock more potential for you as an athlete, but they don’t necessarily guarantee you’re going to be a better athlete if that makes sense.

like you still have to put in that same amount of work and if a drug free athlete is still putting in that work and staying ahead of you, you, you might not necessarily just beat them by b, like, I know people who have gone on P EBS and just, like, not really worked out just assuming it would make them stronger and that’s, that’s not really how it works. from what I understand.

Giacomo:

Gotcha. Yeah.

Bradie:, Giacomo:

So I, I find that particularly interesting because it almost seems like we have our work cut out for us as a team because we are natural athletes but not to say that everyone out there is on P DS, but there’s bound to be some athletes that you compete against that are not drug free and yet, oh, Yeah, I’d say once you get to the, like, one of that nationals competing, the majority of the, the men will be, will be on Pe Ds without a doubt.

Giacomo:

And you’re winning.

Bradie:

Yeah, generally so far so good.

Giacomo:

It’s like, it’s hard for me to do the math on that. It just doesn’t make sense. But here you are.

Bradie:

Yeah. Yeah. I think it also helps, I compete usually as a middleweight. and the middle weights really can lean more into being, more athletic and getting advantages that way. Whereas once you get into the weight classes that just don’t have a top end on the weight with the super heavyweights, you can just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

whereas I have a top end for my weight, I, I can’t, I can’t weigh more than I do now. So I just have to get more athletic, develop better technique and, and find, you know, edges where I can there.

Giacomo:

Gotcha. All right. So, what’s a typical day for you? How do you usually like to eat, to eat well for your sport and just to enjoy?

Bradie:

What’s, so, I’ve like, I’ve kind of done an overhaul of my diet for nationals this year. A little bit. So I’ve really tried to lean more into improving my food quality. You know, I wouldn’t say I’m completely like a whole food plant based vegan, but a lot closer to that than I was before. so 11 thing I do with a lot of my food is I tend to eat a lot of my calories in liquid form.

And that’s something I learned both from Patrick Lumia and Rick Carroll who’s on our team. he eats a

lot of his meals completely liquid form and he’ll just blend things together. I’m not quite as crazy with him, like blending up vegetables and rice and tofu and things like that. I I can’t drink, drink that, but in the morning, I will just take like oats black seed chia seed hemp seed, add some maple syrup, cinnamon and a banana and blend that up.

And then eat some like avocado toast on the side. And basically by by blending things up and putting the performance, just kind of pre digesting that food a little bit. because once you start to need to consume, you know, 4000 plus calories a day, It gets really hard to do that on a whole food plant based diet. It starts to be challenging to digest the the sheer volume of that food.

But if you just blend some of that up, it it takes out some of the digestive work. So that’s what I’ll do for my breakfast. I don’t usually have a protein shake sometime after that. for lunch, my lunch will vary week to week quite a bit. But lately I’ve been big into doing like falafel and pita with some hummus kale rice. and eating that altogether. Then usually throwing in some fruit on the side. then in the afternoon, all the snack is usually some nuts and dark chocolate.

and then I’ll throw in some berries typically. And then once I get to dinner, this is usually largest meal, I’ll make a, a giant stir fry rice and tofu mushrooms and essentially whatever vegetables I feel like having that week. And then I also make a, a giant smoothie, probably about half a gallon smoothie of mixed berries and beets, orange juice and protein powder. And that is, that’s sort of what I eat in the day.

Giacomo:

OK. So you’re blending up the fruit after dinner and then you’re starting in the morning with blending up different kinds of food, I think.

Bradie:

Yeah. So I would take oats and seeds, soy milk and blend that up. So basically place where places where it’s still palatable for me to consume my, my meals in liquid form. I’ll, I’ll do it in liquid form. But I, I don’t do anything like too gross.

Giacomo:

Some people will literally liquefy all their meals without Yeah.

Bradie:

Yeah. Like if you get the chance to talk to Rick, you’ll ask him about his, like his meals that he just has in jars.

Bradie:, Giacomo:

It’s just, you know, whatever he has laying around that he just blends up, vegetables, lentils, whatever he’s eating more than you do.

Bradie:

He must, we probably eat about the same, I mean, we’re, we, we can be the same weight class. we’re about the same size.

Giacomo:

So he just like, he just does it like that. That’s just his thing.

Bradie:

Well, that’s, I think that’s just his work style. I, I believe he worked, I don’t want to speak but I believe he works for like a moving company. So he’s like on the go a lot needs to be able to like slam his meals down quickly in the car and that’s just what, that’s what works for him.

Giacomo:

Got. You got you. So you have a little more access to be able to prepare your food in a little more of an enjoyable way. You have a little bit of time on your hands. But if you didn’t, that might be a different way to get it done. So blending up at least 30% of your food, especially when you’re eating whole food, mostly whole food plant based because you can more easily digest everything and you can fit it in without having a super full stomach.

Bradie:

Yeah, if you have to eat a lot of calories, that’s, that’s the easiest way to do it for sure. Now, if you’re like trying to cut and like minimize your pork intake, definitely don’t take that approach.

Giacomo:

But gotcha. How much protein do you aim for?

Bradie:

I I’d say, like, I, I don’t track very closely. I, so I’ll track but only every once in a while just to kind of

gauge where I’m at. but, my protein intake is probably 200 to 2 50 g a day. But it, it varies quite a bit.

Giacomo:

Ok. Gotcha. So, probably, maybe a little more than a gram of protein. A pound of body weight.

Bradie:

Yeah. On a, on a high day.

Giacomo:

Yeah, on a high day.

Bradie:

But I can pet at 231 pounds.

Giacomo:

Gotcha. Do you wind up gaining, losing weight for competitions?

Bradie:

Yeah. So I, I’m starting to, like, walk around close to the 250. so like, I have a pretty big cut to get down to 231. Eventually I’m working with my coach and I am gonna push to go into heavyweight completely. So, essentially what I’ll do is for big competitions like nationals.

I’ll cut the middleweight. but it’d be too much to do that cut again for Mister America. So I’m competing that as a heavyweight at Mister America. so I, I can be both, I could be both middleweight and heavyweight depending on how it makes sense for what I can wake up for.

Giacomo:

All right, I wanna try to have a little fun here. What? Tell me a crazy story that revolves around you competing. Something weird that you didn’t expect to happen on competition day and what it was like do you have a story like that?

Bradie:

Oh, let me think so. So, one funny thing that happened, I don’t know if it’s funny. It was kind of scary in my qualifier for nationals. it’s, it’s generally considered like, you know, you can. So we were, when we do the stone with, right. We, we wear it like tacky. It’s like trap on our arms. but I guess I, I had actually put too much on which I didn’t think was possible.

So I went to put the stone up on the shelf and I literally got stuck to it. I couldn’t get my arms off of it. So as I pulled off, I finally got off of it, the stone about rolled back on top of me, I had to like push it back, which killed my, my stone run time. But luckily, II I still ended up placing first. So that was, that was kind of a, a weird moment that I didn’t expect.

Giacomo:

So, like, what was going on in your mind when you were basically stuck to this stone? And you were trying to put it down aside from the fact that you might not win if it didn’t work.

Bradie:

Yeah, it was kind of panicking because that never happened to me before and I knew it was, this was a timed event. So it was kind of hurting my time and then I moved to the next stone. I just hear the crowd, like, scared because they can see the stone rolling back on top of me.

Giacomo:

so there is some calculated and also not calculated risk, some things can actually go down.

Bradie:

Yeah. And because every, so the thing is the Atlas Stones I’ve been training with, I needed a lot of extra tacky on them because they were kind of like briny and dirty. These ones were very clean stone. So I stuck to it a lot, a lot more. And that’s one thing I didn’t consider. So like, one of the first things I do when I get too strong in competition now is all of go and like, evaluate all the equipment we’re about to use and like, feel it out and look at it very closely.

Giacomo:

Yeah, that’s the thing I think about when it comes to sports where agility comes into play. I feel like the gear, obviously you can control that variable, but things can, in fact happen if you move the wrong way or something. I don’t know, it just seems a bit unpredictable in that regard. Have you ever seen anything like crazy happen? It didn’t go someone’s way.

Bradie:

I mean, yeah, I’ve seen some like, nastier injuries. so we, I did a fundraiser competition recently where we were carrying like a 600 pound frame, which is basically farmers, but it’s, it’s all attached. It’s sort of like a trap bar deadlift, carrying it uphill.

and there was like a younger kid doing it and he, he tripped and dropped it on his toe, and completely fractured it, like bone popping out of his toe, like screaming. it was, yeah, it was pretty bad. That’s probably the nastiest injury I’ve seen.

Giacomo:

Luckily the thing that I am most impressed about when it comes to athletes who are super competitive is that it doesn’t matter if they get hurt, it doesn’t affect them emotionally. Like they’re looking to see how they can get to the next competition and recover from it because that’s the mindset of a competitive athlete right? Shoulder replacement or whether their foot is broken, whether their clavicle clavicular bone got broken, whether they’re synthetic spinal disc

replacement got taken out and they got to put another one in whatever it is, there’s all kinds of crazy, potentially even career ending injuries. But one way or another that athlete finds a way to keep that mindset. I was thinking about what comes to mind for me right now is just how even when you can’t do it, like you don’t lose that heart, you don’t lose that ambition.

There was some dude, a veteran, he must have been like seven or eight. He had a whole team cheering him on and he could barely move a muscle but whatever he could do to finish the five K that we were at B to B that he was doing and you could just tell it was like, you know, you just have the heart and the mind of an athlete. But ideally you keep going and, and you don’t get a career ending injury.

But, you know, we have a lot of athletes like that on our team that are just gonna keep going. And you, I feel like it’s gotta be a hard, a hard concept to know like, ok, you’re hurt, you’re injured, you’re badly injured but you’re gonna keep pushing because you, because your goal is to get to the next competition.

Bradie:

Yeah, so I, I competed in April. I qualified for nationals. I was actually competing on a torn meniscus in my knee so that my surgery to repair. This was literally the week after my qualifier competition. I worked with my surgeon and my doctors to literally schedule it the week after. And I did work closely with them to like so prepping for that competition.

I basically had one good knee and I had to rework my technique for every event so that I wouldn’t damage the meniscus on. So I had to do certain things like stack my joints properly and all my technique changed for the stones. You know, I couldn’t squat down to pick up the stones. I had to do like a straight leg deadlift.

So to lift the stones, So anything to avoid, basically squatting down in the events I, I did and I ended up

winning that competition despite having that injury. And now I’m, I’m honestly within two months of that surgery, I’m 100% fully recovered already. So like New Pr s knee doesn’t bother me at all.

Giacomo:

Yeah. Stories like that to me is super inspiring because they show others what you can truly be capable of. You can work through things while getting more athletic, you can work through things while becoming more competitive. It’s just a different path, potentially a little bit of a riskier and scarier path. But if you do it right, and you try your best to work through things, you can like you’re living proof, you, you get, you can get on the other side of it and still recover from

your injury and do what you have to do. It’s just a matter of where your priorities are and what you’re willing to do to get there. So that, to me, those kinds of stories are incredibly inspiring because when someone gets hurt, it’s so it’s, it’s the controllable that I feel like people enjoy the most because you’re active, it feels good and it’s hard to do the things you need to do to recover and focus. But that’s the, that’s the stuff like that’s what’s gonna get you on the other side

of it. Not just, you know, being bummed out or the fact you can’t train the same way. So, you know, it’s, it’s admirable that you were able to do that And to me that’s again, like some of the most inspiring stories that I’ve heard about people just like that. Yeah, totally. what, what else, Bradie? So, what, so tell me, is there like a shelf life to how long you can do your sport?

Bradie:

The strongman is kind of an interesting sport because most people, they peak probably around sometime in their twenties. strongman. guys usually peak, you know, closer to their forties, like 35 to 40 range because it just takes so long to develop that base strength and muscle mass that you need to do well in strongman. So the careers tend to be a little longer for the guys that do well. Now, of course, that longer career means you have a lot more time for injuries too.

So there’s sort of that downside of it. But it’s, you know, basically the goal for me is to stay healthy and then keep progressing and getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And knowing by the time I hit 35 which I’m, I’m 27 now I’ll be very competitive and hopefully competing at the highest level of strong man.

Giacomo:

Nice. There’s your ultimate goal? Cool. How can our listeners and watchers find you in the future?

Bradie:

Yeah, so they can find me on Instagram at Vegan Hercules. Then I’m also on Tik Tok at Vegan Hercules.

Giacomo:

You can do this right on. I’ll put that in the show notes. I thank you so much for your time today. You’re a very busy person and you’re already contributing so much to what we’re doing. I’m super psyched to watch your team and cheer you all on and I, I’ll see you soon, buddy. So thank you everybody for tuning in to another episode of vegan proteins. Muscles by Brussels radio. Feel free to reach out to at Vegan Hercules on tiktok and on Instagram.

And of course, you can reach out to us at muscles by Brussels and at vegan proteins on all the socials. You can also hit the contact button on vegan proteins.com for anything including coaching and we’ll be getting back to you right away. Once again, my name is Giacomo and this is Bradie and we’ll talk to you soon.