(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Martins Licis!
The current strongest man!
- What's up, everybody?
I'm Martins!
I'm the current World's Strongest Man.
I'm 29 years old, 340 pounds,
and right now I'm preparing for the Arnold Santa Monica.
So I'm going to take you guys through one
of my pull and leg sessions in preparation
for this next show.
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So first coming up,
I'm gonna be working the snatch-grip
or wide-grip deadlift.
In this next show, I'm gonna have to lift 775 pounds
in a deadlift for as many repetitions as possible.
And again, work up to 700 pounds,
I'm gonna to try to aim for five to 10 repetitions.
I believe in the contest, if I can get eight
to 10 reps, I'll win.
And I typically win at deadlifting.
Right now I'm just in my warmup phase.
I'm gonna be working up to 700 pounds.
This is my last warmup set.
Just been going up by triples.
This is 605 pounds,
and then off to 700.
This feels good.
So nothing scientific here, folks.
Right before the workout, I ate two burritos,
started warming up, and then I got hungry again.
So, I'm eating a dotFIT chocolate protein bar.
(sighs)
I sure get hungry sometimes.
(upbeat music)
All right.
So we got 715 pounds for three repetitions.
I'm pretty happy with that.
This motion for the last month or so,
it's actually been very difficult for me
because I've been having some issues with my hips.
And for the last couple of weeks
I've been really doing a lot of stretches
and activations and balancing in my hips
just to get them to track right so they don't hurt.
And right now I'd say I got rid of 90% of the pain,
so weight's moving a lot better.
'Cause just a couple of weeks ago,
this was glued to the floor,
but I'm glad I was able to do it for three repetitions.
I wanted five, but it's definitely coming together.
In the next few weeks I'm gonna destroy it.
So right now I just finished my first set
of Romanian deadlifts.
The first repetitions are regular to the fall by two pause,
Romanian deadlifts, that's where I just come down,
hover the weight above the floor, and come back up.
This is clearly a lot more difficult because you need
to control that weight on the eccentric
or down portion of motion.
Pause it, stop it.
Reverse the motion without the floor helping
you stop that weight.
When I did my deadlifts, I was at 715 pounds.
We just dropped down to about 605 pounds.
So, for now I'm working with three sets of three.
This one is hurting my hamstring a bit.
On my final set, my goal is to push
for as many reps as possible to increase my work capacity
so I can get more reps when it comes down
to contest time.
Well, I'm gonna have to play it by ear right now
because my hamstring's hurting a little bit,
and it has been for the last year, so it's a fine balance
with work and also saving my body.
(upbeat music)
All right, so I just finished up
with my basic heavyweight compound motions,
my snatch-grip deadlift and snatch-grip Romanian deadlift.
Took a pause.
Now I'm moving on to more of a stability work,
'cause I have a big discrepancy in the function
of my left leg and the function of my right leg.
Currently, right on my right hip, I have hamstring pain.
I have also had that instability in my hip,
which hopefully, after a couple weeks of thorough stretching
and activations, my right leg's firing up better.
I was in Hawaii for a week,
so I didn't get to test this motion.
So hopefully today you will not see a difference
in the function of my left leg and right leg,
but there's a good chance you'll notice
that I struggle more when my right leg is forward.
So first I'm gonna start with my good leg.
I just need five repetitions or so just
to get the activation, and the muscle pattern.
Try to get, keep even pressure on my foot.
50% of the tension on my toes,
50% of the tension on my heels,
making sure my foot is staying nice and flat
on the ground, and my knee isn't bowing outwards.
Working the glutes.
Yeah, I know that hurts.
Ow, yep, that hurts.
Oh, that's nice.
All right, so the previous set I just did here,
my hip was hurting quite a bit.
Like I said, my hamstring was hurting.
Things didn't quite feel right, so I just took a break
to do some PNF stretching of my glutes
and hip flexors basically where I was stretched
for 10 seconds and flex as hard as I could for 10 seconds
to also get the muscle to activate
so it doesn't just get loose from a pure stretch.
And now by getting my gluteus medius and glutes looser,
it feels like my knee could shift inwards and be lined up
with my toes the way it should be,
taking away the pain that I was feeling.
Awesome, very happy about that, so now I can go up and win.
Feel good, pretty happy about that.
Still hurting a bit on the right side,
but less pain than there was when I did it with my leg.
- [Man] Want some more weight for it?
- More weight, 75.
All right, so a couple of weeks ago,
I tried these split squats with 75 pounds,
which normally is a very light weight for me,
but because of those issues in my hips,
like I was talking about,
I couldn't budge these off the floor with my right leg.
My left leg, it was like a piece of cake.
I could do rep after rep.
So today, crossing my fingers
that I could at least get three
to five repetitions on my right.
Oh, I'm pretty happy with that, but it hurts like hell.
Now moving on to calf presses.
So right now for the calf presses,
I'm gonna be using the Pit Shark.
You could also use a leg press
or just about any kind of calf extension machine.
So for this one, calves are more endurance muscles
than power muscles.
I'm going to be working higher repetitions.
So three sets of eight to 10 on these.
Now we're on to the interesting part of the workout.
This is the red cord, and this is one of my favorite devices
to use to build up hip stability and core stability.
One of the motions I'm going to go
through right now is just simply a squat
while being suspended.
What happens is, well, when I hang in here,
my legs naturally want to split open,
so I have to activate my adductors to keep my legs
from opening up, but the goal is
to do the repetition slowly in a very controlled manner
and also pausing the bottom,
so I have to contract my muscles or my adductors
to make sure that my hips keep everything nice and tight
and that, yeah, I don't fall face flat on the ground.
So what a workout it's been.
We're on to the last motion.
This is going to be a single arm leg hold.
I like to kill two birds with one stone here:
grip strength and core strength.
Single arm holds are very good for grip
'cause not only do you have to grip for your life,
you also have to maintain rotational forces
'cause your body's going to naturally want
to twist and turn.
So you not only need to be able to squeeze hard,
but also maintain a single position just with your wrist,
and of course, then the abs hold up the legs.
And I'll hold this typically for three sets
of 15 to 30 seconds.
All right, everybody, so that's a wrap for today.
Started off with these pretty heavy snatch-grip deadlifts.
I was only able to manage three repetitions today,
a little less than I wanted, and that's okay.
That's still an improvement over what it was,
and that's all I care about.
Every single session should be a slight step forward.
If you don't get weight, if you don't have the strength
that day or you don't have the energy
to push more weight, then push more repetitions.
If you don't have the energy for that,
at least improve your technique and form.
Always be improving something.
2019 World's Strongest Man Martins signing out.
Please buy my art.
Bids starting at 125,000.
Please buy it, 'cause I don't know
how much longer I can do this strongman stuff.
I really don't.
I need to change my career out.
I can't do this anymore.
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