The Strongest Man In The World

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that's ship station dot com. Then enter the offer code Granger shipstation dot com. Make ship happen. Today's guest is going to be a really fun one. I've known Robert Oberst for a little bit of time now. We met at the Holler Music video as I met a lot of these guys, a lot of these big influencers, and the big is an understatement when it comes to Robert. He's like three hundred and eighty five pounds and six eight He's a big dude. But there's a lot of

big guys. And what makes Robert so special is that he has taken something, you know, his his his drive is it comes from much more than just his size. I mean, the guy has competed for a long time at World Strongest Man competitions. He's been a finalist a handful of times, and he still can copeting to this day. In fact, he's training for twenty twenty and so I wanted to talk to him about what drives the strongest

man in the world. And this is not just a national event, like if you're listening to this podcast, this thing is worldwide. This guy goes out and he'll he'll travel all over the world and go to the world Strongest Man in competitions and win, and that's saying something. And I wanted to talk to him about, Well, there's millions of big guys. You know, there's everybody knows big guys, and so how do you take that and take it to the next level and decide that you want to

compete at that kind of level? And Robert is that guy. You guys are gonna like this podcast. Welcome to the Granger Smith Podcast. Eye Did Kids and dcl times and long line of bi fo of up and down the back range your cool watch eageation. So people will occasionally come to me and they'll say, do you have any advice on being a singer? I want to be a singer. What's some advice you can give me? And I have a little trick to that. My trick is I'll say my first thing else telling is well, do you have

a fallback plan? Because if things don't work out, you know what, you have a good option of something. And if they say something like actually, yeah, you know, my father in law's got a concrete company, I could probably come in as manager, then they failed to test. Right's the only answer in my business is there's no fallback plan, man, This is just what I do. No parachute man, you got to learn to fly. And I thought about you because it's got to be the same at your level.

There's no fallback plan. No. That's literally what I tell people all the time. When I got into strong Man, everyone was telling me you can't make money, you can't make money, you can't make money. And I said, oh, yeah, well I'll show you how you make money. Yeah, And it was the same exact thing I tell people all the time. If you have a plan B, then you shouldn't have that plan A. And in life, that doesn't

go for everything, it doesn't fit everything. I mean, you should always be prepared and being an eagle scout, I have to say that. But you know I know that about you, Yeah, for sure. And so you know in your passion, if you're going to pursue a dream, you got to go all out. You just have to, I mean, be it as a man. Maybe you're going to hit the ground and smash, but that's what it's going to

take for you to make it. So and there's there's It sounds easy when you say it like that, but there's a timey percentage of people that even do that. Oh yeah, and it sounds easy, but I mean most people thinking of this are like, oh, there's no, no, no, no, no no, Like I couldn't do that. I mean, it sounds it sounds like to us it was easy. I would guess they're thinking. But I mean, I mean, you've got people you got to take care of you and and for me, I have a son and and I

had to do the exact same thing. You know, you have to just got to be all in. So you want the strongest men in the world. And but I was thinking about this today. So there's a lot of big dudes, a lot millions probably in the world seven billion. There's probably a million really big guys. What six over six eight and three four hundred pounds, yeah, right, six six seven and a half three ninety five right now, So you're like right on, and a lot of them

are really strong. But to compete at your level and win or even qualified pro level, there is a switch you gotta flip. And I'm interested to hearing from you how you flip that switch, because it's not about at a certain level, you got to eat so many calories, you gotta train, you gotta train hard, you gotta have funding, you gotta have the genetics. But that just gets you in the door. So then where do you flip that

switch to become the guy that wins. For me specifically, it just comes from the way I was raised, in the environment I was around. My dad worked sixteen hour days, busted his ass, and we never had any money. And my mom, she just always made me feel like I could do anything. You know. I had a really good mom who I was a chubby kid who should have been,

you know, very self conscious, but I wasn't. My mom told me I could be anything, and I just believed her, and I knew when she said it that she meant it. So in my heart, I knew that I could do

whatever I wanted. And growing up we were just extremely poor, Like in high school for most of it, I didn't have any electricity and we had ten people in a three bedroom house no electricity, and I saw the way that we were all you're not really suffering when you're a kid, when you got brothers and sisters and you can play outside and all that, you don't feel like I'm suffering. But I knew that there was more to life.

I knew that I wanted myself and to not have that like that pit in their stomach worried about, you know, what are we going to do tomorrow or how if we get kicked out of the house again, what's going to happen? All that kind of stuff. And and for me, that's where the switch came from. The switch came from the faith that I knew I could do it, but also the fire that knew I had to do it. So good, your siblings are as big as you. No, actually I'm the big one. It's it's it happened. I

don't know, man. It took eight kids and on the eighth one it was it was the giants. So you know, there's two younger than me, so there's ten of us, number eight and yeah, yeah, and so that just came out huge. I don't know. It was weird because my mom and my dad aren't aren't big. My dad's got like a barrel chest, but he's not very big. But if you look at my dad's dad and my mom's dad,

they're huge. My dad's dad is just this big german dude who like ran a farm his whole life, and he looks like he ran in a farmer's whole life. And then my mom's dad was like six eight, just this giant. He used to run horses and stuff. And so I think it skipped a generation and then it skipped eight seven siblings right for me, and I just got it all yeah, you did so all right? So the switch right? So there is there this moment when

like what is log press? Right? So you got the fans yelling at you, You're adrenaline's pumping, and you get it right? Here is there is there a moment when it wants to come down and you go huhuh oh for sure? Do you are? Are you conscious of that moment or something else kicking in? It's it's it's unique in every situation. My favorite, my favorite memory with log presses.

I was in Australia and we were competing at Arnold Swarzenegger's show and I'm competing against my rival Eddie Hall and I'm going through and I'm I'm beating his ass. I'm doing great. And Arnold shows up for the end of the log press so I'm the last one on the log. I'm I'm nobody else can touch this weight. I'm the only one that's still on stage and I get the log in my lap. And when you get

in your lap, this is kind of a reset. You know, It's like it's heavy, you put it down, You're like, Okay, this is a break right before I go to real work. And I have it in my lap and I look up and I see Arnold there, and then I look over and I see Eddie watching. I'm like, I'm gonna eat this dude's lunch right now. And it was fire

in my soul, like I'm getting goosebumps right now. Yeah, And that it that when you when you roll, when you roll five hundred pounds up your chest and you're sitting there and you're looking up at the sky and you're you're hoping you've got enough in you not to fold in half. There's there's not much time for you to feel like the process of can I can I is it going to happen? That that kind of already goes out the window before you get it up. But for me, I always have that thought before I go.

I always I don't know what it is, but I always have this like you can snap your back, you can do this, you can do that. I always have that feeling and that that visualization in my head, and then I shake it off and I'm like, nah, we're going, We're gonna go. And I think feeling that fear and then accepting it makes me stronger. It makes me feel

like I've got I've got that. And and once you once you face down the demons and you've stared it in the face and you know it's it almost feels like there's just no way I can't do it now, absolutely, David Goggins, it taking souls. There, you got the moment. Yeah, I'm about to take your soul exactly. And that visualization. Every every major athlete, all of them will talk at some point about visualization, visualizing that final effort, that that win. Yeah,

that's one of the most important. It's one of the most important parts of training. Is that we always like to we always like to quote Madden from Football, I say ninety percent of it's half mental, and it's just because it sounds funny, but the truth is it's a big mental game. And if you haven't seen yourself succeed over and over and over, how do you know that

the pass they're supposed to walk to get there. I go on my cardio sessions and I do my weight training, and every time I'm doing it, I'm seeing myself win every single time. It's just in me now that I even I'll go for a little ten minute walks, and all my walks in my head, I'm seeing the steps I'm taking, I'm seeing I'm seeing the people falling behind

me as I creep ahead. And then I'm seeing myself at the end of that walk, even though it's just a little walk, I'm seeing myself step upon the podium and take a trophy, you know, and that has translated into real life. That's why you win. And the reason I even bring it up is because there might be people that think, yeah, you could think the same thing about NFL. I mean, when you're that big, or when

you're that big, it just comes natural. You just lift the log up and push it over yet, right, you know. But but the fact is, and what I was saying is there's millions of big guys, right, There's a millions of strong guys. But there's there's a certain switch, there's a certain level that that makes you elite. It's not just your genetics, it's not just your size that just

got you in the door. Right, There's a lot of big guys that sit at home and play video games all that, absolutely, and God bless them, do your thing, you know, but you know, to get up on the big stage. You're gonna have to pay a price for sure. Yeah. I saw something about you today. It makes me and you have something in common history majors in college. Oh yeah, yeah, I think it's important. You got to know your history. Man,

we repeat it and you're seeing it. It's a great example today we repeat history if we don't learn, absolutely right, that's that's in a personal, personal way and in a big you know, in a way for our whole country. It's it's important to know that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's absolutely right. I see when people say things like this is the most divided our country has ever been. Have you seen a civil war? Man? Do you even

know about the Civil War? Right now? I'm not saying we can't head that direction again, but but hey, we're okay right now. Right and making statements like that has become a thing where it's like it's really divisive, and it's really like polaristic, and everyone wants to say this, this half is this way and this half is that way,

and it just seems so divisive. If we all just took a minute and talked about the things that we get along with the things we agree with, Yeah, there's a lot more of those than the things we disagree with. It's way more man. That is the absolute truth, dude, yeah, absolute. I see some some some of your scars. Yeah yeah, bicep surgery. Huh yeah, that's bicep surgery. And this one actually, uh, that one, that scar cost me seventeen thousand dollars for

me to get insurance. It's I just it's almost impossible, and for me to have it, it's thought of it that way. It's not worth it. It's like I'm paying for surgeries all every month. So uh, this was straight out of pocket. And it's not like we make a ton in strong Man and strong Man. The winner of World Strongest Man gets forty thousand dollars and that's that's the big payday, forty grand. It's like, okay, you know last month exactly. And so for us, we're professional strong man,

but we're entertainers, don't. We don't get money from lifting weights. We get money from being entertaining, from having following and showing other people how to do that. That's literally I stopped calling myself a professional strong man. I am an entertainer. Now. Well okay, so what are you doing right now entertainment wise because dude, you got a new YouTube channel. Yes, just flying right now, I'm cracking on YouTube. We're doing videos, We're making stuff, and that I feel silly that it

took me so long to get going on it. But you got to have a good camera guy and everything. You can't have crap content going up because then it's no good for anybody. So I've got that going and I I just started a new nonprofit called Little Monsters, and it's where I grew up. Like I said, we didn't have much. And I fell in love with the gym because instead of getting in trouble and messing around,

I would go to the YMCA. And at the YMCA, I met people that showed me, like, you know, there's a way to get all that out of you, to feel better, to exercise, and to just feel like you have a community. And then when I went to high school, I missed my first two years of college. I didn't I was a second team All American, first All State in California, which is a big deal. I didn't know you had to take SATs to go to college. Nobody

in my family was around. I didn't know. So I fell through the cracks and right now My goal is to make sure I can sew up those cracks as much as possible for the kids in my community and help them. Free training is just the beginning I want. I want them to understand that, you know, everyone tells you you got to go to school, you got to get your grades, but nobody explains to you that getting a two point five and getting an eight point fifty on your SATs means you can go anywhere. Yeah, and

you can if you want to play sports. There's there's NAIA Division III, Division two that will happily pay for some, if not all, of your schooling. There's schools out there begging for kids, and there's kids that are ending up not having any type of education because they didn't even know about it. So that's it. That's my biggest transition right now. And just get get Little Monsters going and hopefully, you know, we'll get through this lockdown period and uh,

we'll be able to get going on that. And what's the website for Little Monsters right now? The website is just the Americanmonster dot com and Little Monsters doesn't have its own official website yet. We just got done with the paperwork and then it got it got logged back like crazy because it was right right when the when the pandemic had started, we'd we had started pushing for it, and then it going through the government. Right now is just it's really hard. They're busy, and the YouTube is

American Monster, American Monster Productions, American Monster Productions. What about Hollywood? They come knocking on the door. Yet, We've we've done a few things. I actually just yesterday I got offered a commercial for some stuff, and I've I chased a

lot of that for a while. And it feels just I moved to LA and I was living in LA trying to work, and it just felt like it stole my soul, Like when you go out there and you're going to like audition after audition and you're trying to please these people who are like So I separated myself

from that, and since I've separated myself, more people come knocking. Actually, So we've we've we've got a possible commercial coming up in the next couple of weeks, and then I've got a TV show and that we're supposed to film in Georgia. They women spent a month out in Georgia doing this big show that I'm I'm not supposed to say what it's right now, but it's it looks pretty cool and we'll see you know, I'm I'm I'm much more inclined to do stuff on my own instead of working. That's

the right way, man, make them come to you. Build this YouTube channel, and your channel is is multifaceted. You know, there's there's some just sit down serious talking, there's funny stuff, and so I think that's the right thing to do. I could see you personally. I see you one day in some medieval movie with a massive accent. That's the most common thought. My goal. I don't really have any dreams of being like big Hollywood any of this stuff.

But my goal is to just have one epic death scene, Like I just want the most gnarly like warrior death scene where I can have like a five second clip that I'll keep forever. You know, that's what the guys like you are usually the guys that get killed by the little guys. That's the hero. And run me over with a tractor or run me through with a sword. Just make it good, dude. I appreciate you getting on here me and you're about to go film some stuff.

You're at the Ee Farm. Buddy and I hope we get to do this again one day, anytime, brother, brother, Thank you. Mm hmmm mmm