Forget Army Strong—for years, Anthony Fuhrman has been the U.S. Army’s strongest: The 33-year old native of Erie, Pennsylvania built his squat to 705 pounds, his deadlift to 825 pounds, and his bench press over 500 on his way to back-to-back wins in the World’s Strongest Man for the 105 kg weight class (that’s 231 for the metric-challenged).
He did all that while serving as a member of the Army—bringing a lower body fat percentage to competitions than many of his World’s Strongest adversaries to maintain his active duty status in the infantry.
“I had to be like 24 percent body fat, which was way more than I was,” he says. “So I was never really worried.”
Fuhrman was eventually recruited to the Army’s Warrior Fitness Team, where he and more of the Army’s fittest competed. But he’s giving up the title of Army’s strongest now, though: Fuhrman retired from service in January. He’s launched Strengthlete Collective, an online training platform “that has about 20 of the best coaches and athletes in strength sports, powerlifting, strongman, on one platform that gives people programs for a low price.”
He’s also focusing his post-military time on another type of strength: His own mental health, and helping guys feel better about strengthening their own.
“We don’t need to lose more people to drugs, to suicides, to alcohol—we don’t need to lose people because they didn’t feel comfortable talking about it,” he says. “Everybody that has the ability to affect positive change in others … if you do that in your communities, you don’t know how many lives you might save.”
He’s still lifting heavy, too—and doing so with a Yosemite Sam-style mustache and long hair that wouldn’t have flown in his active duty days. Furhman took some time off from slinging iron to talk about his training, cramming 700 grams of carbs down his throat, and helping guys have the strength to talk about what’s going on between their ears in addition to what’s under the bar.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
When you were active duty, did strongman training help you with the job?
For the first few years, it helped tremendously. You know, I could do Army PT without breaking a sweat. As I kind of became not just really strong, but more like elite, world class rank, that's where the diminishing returns happened when it came to Army PT.
It was mainly the cardio. I’d rather run with 250 pounds of fat than 250 pounds of muscle.
But for most of my career, before the Fitness Team, I was infantry. And you're ruck marching with 100 pounds on your back. And when you train with a 900-pound yoke, a 100-pound ruck doesn't feel as heavy anymore.
How did you break down your training each week while still serving on active duty to progress towards these big competitions?
[During that strength period,] essentially, there would be a press day, squad day, deadlift day, event day. And if I'm bringing up a lagging lift, I would add a fifth day—sometimes I would press twice per week, or deadlift twice per week.
[On those days,] I might work up to a heavy set of five, and then I would back off for some working sets of six reps. Sometimes I would do EMOM (every minute on the minute). The benefit of doing that is it allows me to move maximal weight across time. So if I can do 10 reps of 90 percent on my deadlift in 10 minutes, that's going to add up to where I can do multiple reps of that in competition.
If a regular guy who loves to lift wants to get started in strongman, what should they do?
The very first step, if I was looking to get into it, is being around people that do it. So go to the gyms and just be around them. It's a great sport, but if you don't enjoy the process and the people, you're not going to last long.
Does that gym have to be a “strongman” gym with all the implements? Do beginners need to have access to things like atlas stones to get started, in your opinion?
People get confused. Strongman is not about pure strength. Strongman is about taking strength you have built to apply it to a sport-specific setting. Like in any other sport: Linebackers, they build up their hamstrings so they can sprint, right? It's the same principle, they build up strength and skills to apply. And that's what we do. People train [strongman] events too much because they don't understand that they have to build the strength to do the events. Get your ass strong enough where you can go and just molly-whop that stone.
When you get started, and we’re bring someone who hasn’t done strongman over, we restructure their lifting to mimic strongman events. So, for example, if people have a weak one-arm dumbbell press, I have them do the javelin press during the week to strengthen that shoulder, because stability is huge in single-arm dumbbell press. It starts with a low intensity, low volume. And then by the time they're done, they're ready to hit that circus dumbbell.
You competed at 230, 240, and even got up to 270-plus pounds. What did you eat to compete?
Peak training, sometimes it’s two to three hours of training. And you have to eat a lot to do a lot. A lot of times when I'm in heavy prep, I do like 6-7 grams per kilo of bodyweight on carbs. That can be 600 to 700 grams a day. I've always kept protein up about at 1 to 1.5 grams per pound.
The only thing I can eat consistently [in those quantities] is beef and rice. I try to do chicken, or even steak. I love it, but I can't eat it that often. It's about finding ways to add more nutrients to your meals. So, you know, using olive oil, you know, just throwing it in there, adding in some bacon. It's just little things here and there you have to do your meals that aren't going to fill your stomach up quite as much.
To stay as lean as you needed to be for Army standards, did you have to be really strict on your macros while eating all that?
So for me, it was not being as strict on the macros because that would hurt your performance athletically. It was about being strict on conditioning. I used to really love doing CrossFit WODs. That was one of my favorite things for conditioning, 15 to 20 minutes, three or four times a week seemed to work OK.
Sometimes if would be the WOD of the day, and other times it would be doing tabata—20 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest. You can do that with any lift. I used to have fun with it, and use a strongman log instead of a barbell.
You’ve recently opened up about mental health issues and your struggles with depression and anxiety. Did being in the Army and being “the world’s strongest man” make it harder to talk about those issues, because of the perceived “toughness” involved?
It 100 percent contributed to it. On top of those two things. I grew up in a blue collar family from the Rust Belt. You drink your feelings, you don't talk about them. So I think it did contribute. I had this kind of persona once I kind of took off, winning world titles. I had this kind of outward persona, and I just I on the mask that so many of us do that suffer from these things.
I think it's very important that everybody talks about [mental health]. We don’t need to lose more people to drugs, to suicides, to alcohol—we don’t need to lose people because they didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. Everybody that has the ability to affect positive change in others, take that chance. For me, I started just by kind of reaching out and talking about things. And from that point, you start developing this ability to really connect to people. And if you do that in your communities, you don't know how many lives you might save.
As you approach your mid-thirties, what advice do you have for guys in their mid-30s, 40s, and beyond? What should they be adding to their health and fitness repertoire?
Add loaded carries, whether it be front carry with a sandbag, farmer's carries, yoke. I think those are so beneficial to your trunk, ot your stabilizers. And the average man could just do, especially in their 30s and 40s, with moving under load a little bit. Nothing too crazy, but enough to just get working. So you can keep playing with your kids and keep doing the things for you as they grow.
And what about something they should subtract?
Subtract some of that protein. Some guys are taking 200 grams of protein just in shakes a day. They’re overdoing it.
