Matt did you compete in Thunderbay's strongest man because of the attention or "fandom"? Or did you compete because you wanted to see find out what you were capable of, to find out how you strength measured against other competitors?
These are all "vanity"/self focused endeavors. The "fans" are minuscule. Even with its "popularity" being at an all time high most of these contests aren't attended unless there is some other event tied to it.
Its competition bro.
I may have answered this already, but:
I originally trained to push myself to my subjective limit at 170-lb [although I compete at 175-lb ever since Canada got weight classes in 2014 under the CAASA organization]. I pick 170 for health reasons. BMI may be a bit of a bullshit metric, but it's not totally wrong either, and health matters.
I started to see what I was capable of, and I try to push myself to become the strongest I can be.
That being said, the average woman doesn't know the difference between the contest winner and last place finisher. So If I flip a 750-lb tire 6x in 60 seconds, and Thunder Bay's Strongest Man flips a 950-lb tire 10x or 12x in 60 seconds...it all looks the same to the average spectator watching, women included.
Just being a part of the "Thunder Bay's Strongest Man" promotion did give some level of recognition in my social circle - again, to people who have no idea what the difference is between myself and men much, much stronger.
So you could say I did do it in part for the blowjobs.
But yeah, I absolutely did do it to push myself. I think we all do. You're right about that.
It's just that one day, I was watching a Brian Shaw video, and he was saying that when his son grows up, he looks forward to him admiring his lifts, and World's Strongest Man wins. Then I thought to myself...will Brian really be around in 20-25+ years [at some point], for his son?
And the older I get, the more I see the damage done to bodybuilders, strongmen, WWE wrestlers, and UFC [MMA] fighters. And it's just a bit sad to me. I sometimes wonder if these guys were told "Doing this might shorten your life by 30 years"...would they still do it? It's clear to me that Mike Matarazzo had a lot of existential regret from pursuing bodybuilding, and Jay Cutler used to feel that if he died by 40 but became Mr. Olympia, it would be worth it. Now he says he no longer feels that way, and understandably so.
So...I don't know...I guess being a fan of the physical culture world, I don't want these guys to die young. Is any goal worth killing yourself over?
