From the NFL to Strongman - September 29, 2008
I started playing organized football in the third grade, as soon as I was old enough to understand what a play was. In Louisiana, and really all across the south, football is a way of life, a religion and like most boys I was raised on it. I was a three-year starter on a terrible high school team. We won seven games in those three years, four of which coming during my senior season. But I played well enough as a senior offensive lineman to make the All-District and All-State teams. I managed a few All-American mentions from minor publications and was recruited by several DI-A schools before signing with Texas A&M.
While college ball was one of the highlights of my young life, sometime during my four years at A&M, a funny thing happened: I lost my love of football. I still loved the experience -- traveling, being part of a team, playing on Saturdays in front of tens of thousands of people, competing - but I no longer loved football. My family were all college football fanatics and my dream had always been to play college football. Maybe it was realizing that dream, maybe it was something else, but the fire was gone and while those around me were focused on the next logical step, I didn't start thinking about the NFL until my junior year.
Instead, I was in the middle of the law school application process; I'd taken the LSAT and was putting the finishing touches on my personal statement when sports agents started calling my parents. The NCAA forbids direct contact between agents and amateur athletes, but they are free to contact the parents of their prospective clients. My name started showing up in position rankings amongst offensive linemen in the major sports publications. People started talking to me about the "The League". Suddenly, it looked like I'd be playing football for a while longer. And playing football in the NFL is not an experience that you turn down, personal statement be damned.
Despite a successful senior season, a decent showing at the NFL Scouting Combine and draft projections by virtually every major sports publication, I wasn't drafted. I signed with the Detroit Lions as an un-drafted rookie free agent, the lowest of the low. 24 hours before I'd been a NFL prospect, part of a very select group of college athletes. Now, I was whale shit.
Despite this, I fought my way through training camp and the preseason, outlasting all the other un-drafted offensive linemen. I was released then re-signed to the Lions' practice squad the following day, after spending the NFL mandated 24 hours on waivers. Life on the practice squad is interesting, in the same way that day labors waiting to be picked for a day's worth of work find standing in front of Home Depot interesting. Each NFL team has 4 players on their practice squad, and these members change from week to week depending on the needs of the team. It's as close to a complete lack of job security as I ever hope to get.
There's a motto in the NFL amongst those "on the bubble", those like myself: "The more you can do...", which means that the more value the team gets from you the better your odds of making the active roster. I spent the next 16 weeks running scout teams and as a human blocking dummy, doing everything in my power to become as valuable as possible. Though I'd only played right tackle in college, I taught myself how to move from a left-handed stance, how to play center, and how to long snap. I couldn't tell you how many days of practice I was on the field for every single snap - position drills, scout team offense, scout team defense, scout team special teams, everything. When someone asked me if I could do anything or play a certain position, my immediate answer was always "yes!"
The Lions signed me to their active roster the final week of the 2000 season in order to retain me for the following year, then released me again during the final cut of the 2001 pre-season. That same day I was on a plane to Miami for a tryout and less than 24 hours later I was a Miami Dolphin. The next 11 weeks were much of the same, except I exchanged the bitter Michigan cold for the sweltering Florida heat. I was signed to the active roster after an injury to one of their starting guards, and though I never dressed for a game I finished the season on the Dolphins' active roster.
A player can only spend two seasons on a practice squad in the NFL. Before being signed to the Dolphins' active roster, I'd sent out resumes to everyone I could think of knowing that if I didn't make the active roster, I was unemployed. I had gotten some very positive responses, but all of that was shelved when I was signed to the active roster. Then the season ended with a first-round playoff loss to Baltimore in 2001 and I knew I had some soul searching to do. I was a good collegiate player. I made the most of my natural athletic ability by working my ass off in the weight room and on the field. At best however, I was an average NFL player and I figured my chances of making the team the following season were fifty-fifty, if not worse. I'd been offered a very attractive position with a startup company that would allow me to move back to Louisiana, where both my wife and I are from, and I decided to take it. Seven years ago I made a decision that still sounds crazy to just about anyone I tell about it, even to myself on occasion: I officially retired from the NFL at 23 after spending one season on the active roster and having never dressed for a game.
The decision turned out to be a very good one. I enjoy what I do and I like the company and the people I work with. I have a great wife and two wonderful boys but something was missing. I felt like I was just drifting along, just going through the motions. I needed physical competition and adult-league recreational sports just weren't cutting it.
My wife is a runner, so in an effort to get out of my rut and try something new, I dropped 40 lbs from my playing weight and tried my hand at endurance sports. I completed a beginner's triathlon and a couple of adventure races. I was the lightest I'd been since high school, but at between 260 and 270 lbs, I was competing against guys that were over a hundred pounds lighter than I was. I was good on the bike, but I sink like a stone in the water and it would be easier to list the things that running doesn't hurt than it would be to list what does. Plus, I was as weak as a kitten at that weight, which really messed with my head in the gym. I love lifting, so I never got away from working out. The problem was that's all I was doing, just working out, and like most gym goers, I was spinning my wheels. My routine had gotten boring. I was still making gains, but for no real purpose. I needed something different. I needed a challenge, and I found it where I least expected to.
I'd been a long time lurker on the old TMMB and the new Rudius Media site, and stumbled across ChasingKaz one day after I'd gotten my fill of belligerence and debauchery. I was immediately hooked. Like virtually all men, I'd seen the World's Strongest Man shows on ESPN and always thought that type of competition looked like a lot of fun. I had no idea that there was an amateur sanctioning body that held events throughout the US, and that by winning certain events you could obtain professional status and compete with other pros all over the world, including events like the WSM. The site detailed the exploits of two amateur (at the time) strongmen, guys a lot like myself, who were athletes that had aspirations of doing something other than "normal" sports. Guys that didn't go to the gym to get "ripped" or to who did exercises that gave them the "best pump". Guys that wanted to be strong in every sense of the word. This was exactly what I'd been looking for.
I abandoned my current lifting program in favor of Mike's Beginner Program. I got back to the basics - squatting and overhead pressing. I started deadlifting for the first time. I dusted off some of my old Olympic lifts. You want to get stares in your gym? Snatch during your next workout. In a matter of weeks I managed to acquire a couple of kegs, a pair of farmer's walk handles, and a couple of tires for flipping. Since natural rock of any sort is nearly non-existent this far south, I liberated several large stones from an erosion barrier along the Gulf. I was obsessed.
I had attracted a handful of like-minded guys at the small gym I trained at, and we began meeting on Saturday mornings for strongman workouts last summer. We ran through all the events we could, the farmer's walk, keg cleans and presses, keg carries. We flipped tires and loaded stones. We worked our asses off, and it was great. Fall and then winter rolled around, and with them football and hunting seasons, and interest waned. I kept an eye out for events even remotely close to my home in Louisiana, but it seemed there was little interest in strongman in the south. Then, April brought two contests, the Lonestar College System Strongman Competition in Conroe, TX on the 5th and the Battle on the Bayou in Baton Rouge, LA on the 26th. I met up with a group in Baton Rouge and began seriously training for strongman in March. A month later, I won the heavyweight divisions in both the Texas and Louisiana competitions. I followed those with a close second place finish in South Carolina to this year's heavyweight National Champion, and another win in Dallas. I have my sights set on joining the professional ranks of a second sport in 2009.
Posted by Andy Vincent at 10:32 AM
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