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The 2019 WSM champion returned to the top of the list after recovering from injuries for a long time. Here, he shared his views on training, diet, and what is needed for strongman exercise.

If there is a story of a loser in the strongman movement, it is about Martins Lisis-his Rocky sequel just made a comeback.

Although he has been trained in the sport since he was a teenager, the 31-year-old attracted a lot of attention when he won the 2019 World's Strongest Men's competition. In "only" 6'3", he will go hand in hand with monsters such as the four-time champion 6'8" Brian Shaw and the 6'9" defending champion Hafthor Bjornsson, but he won decisively with a huge lead of eight points, the most extensive in years .

Then came the injuries: his neck nerve injury, hip and knee pain, wrist and elbow tendinitis ("I couldn't even lift a 200-pound stone"), and then a car accident that caused his tailbone And shoulder injuries. Coupled with a broken thumb and a burst appendix this year, no one expected him to participate in Rogue's first Hercules Invitational in October this year-but he was the first, defeating the strongest man in the world. Tom Stottman, and received a bonus of US$133,351 in the process.

We recently interviewed Licis to learn about his training plan, recovery, and his views on what the sport needs to continue to develop in the future.

For the sake of space and clarity, this interview has been edited.

During my recovery, I did a lot of training. I don't just sit on the sofa and wait for the injury to heal, I think many people have this method. I am evaluating my shortcomings and improving them, and try my best to improve the range of motion. Even if I do not directly exercise my brute force, I am trying to improve the quality of exercise that my body can achieve.

Then when I start lifting weights again, my strength can increase faster. It's almost like adjusting an instrument that I have been adjusting my body for the past 18 months to be able to perform better.

I often carry a lamp. A lot of people tend to make fun of me in my videos, like, "Oh, Martins can't win another game, see how light he lifts." They keep comparing the weights I do in training, but I spent a lot of time to enhance the quality of my exercise. I spent a lot of time practicing the way I wanted to lift weights, and then I started adding weight very slowly, with the focus on quality. When the game is over a few months later, I will still hone my way through some ugly representatives, because I don't want to teach my body to shut down when the quality is affected. But in most of my training, I insisted on making things as clear as possible.

Oh, I have a lot more accessories than the main lift. I have been doing a lot of things for my knees is touch squats, you can see them in squatting college. This is a very short single-leg squat, just to enhance the stability and health of the knee. It helps strengthen the quadriceps and patellar tendon so that it can bear more load and become heavier.

I did a lot of hip planes to build hip stability, single-leg hip stability training, I basically kept my balance on one leg and opened and closed my hips.

In addition, I also used a series of accessories to increase the range of motion of my shoulders so that my scapula can move and adapt to any movement I do on top of my head. If you pull too much, your shoulder blades may get stuck, which can cause stiffness in your shoulders, which can prevent you from making the most of your strength.

By far, my favorite core exercise is hanging legs, holding with two arms or one arm. I just put my legs on the L-shaped seat, or even just lift or kick.

Another very valuable thing I did is that all my training is primitive. I will wear no belt, I will train rhythm in slow motion style. For example, I don’t wear a belt when practicing rock. I lift the rock up to my chin and keep it there. This puts a lot of pressure on the core, but it’s also very practical because it directly trains my rock and me. Muscles. Abs can handle clean stones. I do the same with the log, I clean it to the neck, then squat and pause so that I can get used to stabilizing the weight throughout the exercise.

I think that in all disciplines of strength, the strongman is the ultimate manifestation of strength, because it really involves all movements. The strongman is so excessive and changeable that all other power sports eventually become appendages of the strongman. In a strong man, you cannot have any weakness in strength and the ability to express power.

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And it's not just a number on a barbell, it's ergonomic and can be easily held in your hand. Hercules often requires you to move rocks or pull things or flip things. You really want to lift things that are inconvenient or not ergonomic, so your strength must adapt to whatever you lift. No other strength exercise can do this-they are very specific to the weightlifting involved in the exercise And don't exceed that.

In Hercules, you need to be able to lift anything in front of you; I dare say this is the only real power exercise.

Learn to move; don't rush to lift weights. Heavy offline.

I learned this from the legendary powerlifting coach Tom DeLong who passed away recently. He expressed in words what I have been doing for many years: learning movements and all their mechanisms, learning to complete movements accurately and brilliantly, and knowing where you are. It depends on where it is insufficient and tight, and then control the movement. Lift slowly and steadily, making sure there is no gap in your strength.

Learn, control and explode. There is no simpler or more beautiful way to lift weights better.

Suppose you are doing a squat and half of your knees collapse inward-control it so that it feels strong at every angle and looks correct so that your form does not collapse.

Then load and decompose the movement. Once you have control and are confident in every angle of the movement, start adding weight and start moving faster and faster to gain explosive power and movement.

Summary: learn, control and erupt. There is no simpler or more beautiful way to lift weights better.

I must meditate a lot. I was also looking at a sports psychology consultant, Joar Svensson, who helped me stay on track with visualization and he helped me a lot.

But I mean, I've been doing this since I was a kid: meditating, imagining, and making battle plans. Many players generally practice their strength and then jump into the game. I like to pick the game I want to win.

Even if I participate in multiple competitions in a year, I can only focus on two to three competitions. In these competitions, I am obsessed with competitions, break them down and find ways to win them. So I set myself a goal to achieve in training. I know that I must either win the game or put me in the top position. I strive to be free of loopholes in the game.

Every event I need to be good at. I will train my weakest project.

I absolutely believe that my team has made a huge impact. When I was ready for the game, I entered a tunnel and I was not very good at dealing with things in life. My team helps me stay full and fill in holes where I cannot concentrate naturally.

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Then I get mental support and they help me set the weight and set up my training so that I can go from one event to another without having to think about setting or exhausting myself. I also went to San Pedro physiotherapy to see Aaron Horschig from Squat University-they helped me find out what I did well and what I could improve.

I actually learned single-action stone lifting from Thor. I actually didn't learn it directly from him, but I watched all the videos of how he single-moved the stones: how he rolled them and the timing of his hips pushing and stretching, I started to imitate.

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I gave him the credit. I never told him this, but I gave him the credit for the effective rock single action. You don’t need to stack the rock, but roll it to your chest and lift it to the platform.

Now, my goal is the 2022 Arnold Classic and the world's strongest men's competition. I also want to win the world's ultimate hercules, it depends on the position of my body behind Arnold and the world. The two I want to win most now.

Many big men focus on brute force, and I try to build range of motion and stability so that I can get into uncomfortable positions that they can't do. Because they are harder or larger, they require more energy to complete some of these actions.

I will directly train the hardest part. Take the stone pick as an example. I spend a lot of time picking up rocks, not even overlapping or lifting them, just lifting them off the ground and holding them. This way my wrists, forearms, shoulders, and pectoral muscles will get used to the tension of the stone pick, so that during the game, I won’t slip or hesitate to take them off the floor, or tear my biceps. I have seen a lot of biceps being torn when lifting a rock off the ground, but I believe this method of spending extra time on the most difficult part of the action helped me win these games.

I eat a lot of fruits now. A common meal is grilled meat, spinach and some fruits to supplement carbohydrates. I also ate a lot of potatoes and eggs in the morning.

Are there any micronutrients that you pay special attention to? I know that strong people tend to talk about sodium and potassium.

Yes. Especially when the training becomes heavy or I become very hot and start to sweat, I need to consume a lot of potassium and electrolytes. I often even eat mustard directly during training to get the electrolytes I need. I also know to eat six to eight bananas during training. I find it very effective. Recently I also eat a lot of spinach to supplement potassium.

I think if people see my paintings, they will be surprised. I have a semi-secret painting hobby. Occasionally I will sneak in and indulge in one or two paintings, and I find it has a healing effect. I can’t bear to look at a picture before the game because my brain is in a melee, but when I’m away from the game, I like to touch my side.

I want to bend the press, but as I get older, my shoulders become more and more stiff. I used to have a large range of shoulders, but since I was hit by a car and tore my left latissimus dorsi and right pectoral muscles, it is much more difficult to get the range of shoulders than before, so I don’t know if I Able to obtain a world record for bending printing presses.

But at this point, I really want to break Steinborn's world record again and win more strongman performances, then I am very satisfied. As a personal challenge-I am not very confident about this challenge. The log press world record will be a dream. If things go well, I will go all out.

Outside of the strongman, I want to enter MMA. Now this is not a difficult goal, it's just something I am making fun of in my mind, but when I finish my job as a strongman, I want to do something more beneficial to the cardiovascular system, and if I lose weight, I can do better . I don’t want to be so heavy anymore. In order to take care of my health, I want to lose weight and do more exercise and cardiovascular exercises.

I like acting, I only advertise, but I have some potential movie offers. I was supposed to do this this summer, but Covid and some strikes delayed them. But in 2022, I pray that everything goes well, and I will star in a Netflix Western.

I am building my gym Wreck-It Gym and application Wreck-It Power. What we are providing is my own training plan. If you use the app, you can follow my training personally and update the exercises I do every week to keep yourself healthy and prepare for the game. Soon we will start pre-packaged programming so that people don’t have to follow exactly what I’m doing, they can do a simpler version or a barbell version or more introductory strongman training. We will also add other coaches.

Strongman Corporation has just been acquired recently. They will participate in some very cool things. I will participate in it. The competition will change the way strongmen work, so we can get more audiences and better bonuses for athletes.

Every game should be broadcast live-and it's broadcast well. There needs to be a standard to describe the way this sport is performed so that we can get high-quality viewing every time.

Personally, we also hope that it will be more friendly to the audience, stop playing in the parking lot, but put them on the arena for better marketing. For example, I remember participating in the America’s Strongest Man competition. The locals didn’t know what was going on, and it happened in a convention center with no seats to watch the game. Therefore, all these opportunities can make it more approachable, but they have been missed. This is my big goal now: to develop this sport, make it more interesting and easier to watch.