Robert Oberst is a Professional Strongman that recently represented the U.S. in Sanya, China at the 2013 World’s Strongest Man. Official results are not available, but remember, Google is your friend…

Mike: Tell us a bit about yourself.

Robert: Robert Oberst, 28 years old, 400 lbs, 6’8”, and I was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California.

Mike: Have you always been into strength sports? (you look like you may have played football)

Robert: I got into strength sports a little less than 2 years ago. Before that I played football for what seemed like FOREVER!!

Mike: How did you get into strongman?

Robert: I first got into strongman through my buddy Evan. We were working security at a bar together and it’s all he’d ever talk about so I decided to try it with him one day and LOVED it.

Mike: What kind of training split do you have between gym lifts and strongman events? And what are some of your PR’s?

Robert: My training split is pretty normal. 3 days in a regular gym and one long day of events, but when I was training for worlds I did an extra day of events. As for PR’s, you gotta sweat in a gym with me to get that info.

Mike: Where do you train? Do you train alone, with a steady group of people?

Robert: I train at a local gym in Hanford, CA and do events at my or a buddies house. Just recently my dad retired and is at all my training sessions and I usually have at least one more guy, my buddy Aram.

Mike: What is your diet like?  

Robert: Nathan Payton does my diet and it’s basically a lot of clean protein. I eat 3 1/2 pounds of meat a day. If you wanna know what else I eat you gotta ask Nathan.

Mike: You’ve risen pretty quickly in strongman, what do you attribute that to?

Robert: There are several reasons I’ve risen so fast in the ranks of strongman. Obviously I work my butt off. You’ve gotta earn it cuz it won’t be handed to you. I also have the greatest support anyone could ever ask for. My family is obsessed with my success and always willing to do anything to help including supporting me when nobody else will. My wife has been stronger than I can ever dream to be. She takes care of everything and never slows down for a second. She’s so supportive and involved that she has more nervousness for shows than I do. When a show ends it takes her longer to recover than me!

Mike: Other than winning World’s Strongest Man, what are your goals in the sport?

Robert: I haven’t set super high goals for now. All I want is to be the strongest man who ever walked the earth.

Mike: If you could give any advice to anyone wanting to turn strongman from a hobby into a lifestyle, what would you tell them?

Robert: There’s too much talent now in this sport to half ass it, so if you aren’t sure or you just wanna do enough to look cool online DON’T cuz you’re only in the way.

Mike: What percentage of your power comes from your beard? In a one-on-one fight, would your beard defeat Andrew Palmer’s?

Robert: I’d say whatever power doesn’t come from my family comes from the beard. Easily 40-50%. My beard has been taking Andrews beards lunch money since it was a 5 o’clock shadow!

Mike does a 10set of rack deadlifts for Believe in Bre

Paul Sousa believes in Bre with this strip set of deads

 
Here is Careen and Patrick, video courtesy of the interwebs

You can donate here. Remember, we are always trying to stick it to cancer.

If you missed out Mike talked about prepping atlas stone molds on the FB page. Check out the video here. Make sure you guys try out other strength related sports. It can be exciting and refreshing. Many of our 70’s Big members such as Paul, Mark, and Gina have all tried their hand in strongman.

It is PR Friday so let us know if you had any updates with weights lifted, competitions slain, and chainsaws swung over-head. We also want to see pictures of you guys rocking a 70’s Big tank-top. Submit your pics to AC@70sbig.com

PR Friday rolls around yet again. This week, AC gave us a quick update on the site (w/ text from Brent), and continued his Wednesday Interview Series with Callahan.

Also, Mike would like to share this challenge with the community, for a good cause:

Van Hatfield’s (2004 America’s Strongest Man) daughter Bre is undergoing Intense Chemotherapy treatments for bone cancer. Information for donations is available through the link. Additionally, “all of you that donate, we would ask that you video yourself doing deadlift for reps. You can use any implement or amount of weight. In the picture include a sign that says, “Believe in Bre”. Send a link to admin@americanstrongman.com.” I know a lot of us deadlift towards the end of the week, so I’ll post a reminder up on Friday morning. I’m going to do block pulls for reps on Saturday. http://americanstrongman.com/?p=4709

Since the 70’s Big community always seems to come through huge for charitable causes like this, I’m sure we can make a big difference again. Share your deadlift videos on the 70’s Big facebook page (or tag 70’s Big) and we’ll post them up next week here on the site.

We also got a bunch of “pressing things overhead” submissions this week:

Matthijs writes: “On vacation with parents of the girlfriend,this happened”

Mike gets some pressing in while at work serving in the Coast Guard

Justin built his own log, and shows off the finished product by pressing it overhead

And then, we have this. A reader with the email name “Fat Lenny”, sent us a video of him pressing his couch at home. I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll leave this one as a caption contest for the comments:

PR Friday Ladies and Gents. How was your week?

Here at 70’s Big, we released the new tank tops for sale on Monday. If you missed it, you can still check them out and buy one here. AC also started his “Wednesday Interview series” this week, first up was Callahan.

2 weeks ago we presented a new challenge for our readers, to submit photos of themselves pressing random objects (or people). Only one person submitted a picture, so the challenge still stands. Send in your pictures, and we’ll post them here next week. In the meantime, here’s Matt:

“Dug up a tree. Pressed tree. Job done.”

Mike’s also been doing some technique analysis for some of you guys, here’s his most recent video, with an analysis of Adam’s Axle continental clean

Check in and let us know how things are going in the comments today, and leave any questions you might have for Justin or any of the gang, and they will answer them when they get a chance.

My name is Andrew Watson, I’ve been a long time reader of the site ever since the short short article caught my interest, in the past 5 years there’s close to a 2:1 ratio of days I’ve squatted vs days I have not, so I feel that any shorts that fall past my mid-thigh is a crime to society since these thighs should be shown to the world as we are all better for seeing them.

But Back to Raw Nats, I currently hold the Open Squat/Dead/Total American Records for 67.5kg in the USAPL and go in very confident, although recently I have been training more for weightlifting, my meet pr total is about 10kgs above my biggest competitor Shawn Fasquillo(National Champ and World team member last year), and I’ve been doing nothing but squatting as and despite knowing my bench is down I still believe I can walk out with a win. I weigh in at 65.2 the next day and lifting begins shortly after.

Squats – I fucking love to squat, I squat every possible moment, so much so I’ve earned the nickname Squatson at my gym at home. I open with a moderate 200kilo, get it up easy(that’s what she said) , but I beat the rack command and get redlighted, rookie mistake, I have some jitters. Same Attempt for attempt two and smoked it, but did not feel as easy as I would of liked, me being light, still in the process of rehydrating and deciding to stay conservative I just do a 5kilo jump on my last lift, hit it easy, and come out of the squats in 1^st overall with 205kilos.

Bench – Bench is stupid and I don’t like it, I hit 127.5/281lbs. Fasquilo hits 150/330, and I go into a 12.5kilo hole.

Deadlifts – This is where it becomes interesting, I am down by 12.5kilos, needing to tie since I weighed in lighter, and will have the last dead of the meet. I know his results from worlds about 2 months earlier and he pulled 232.5kgs on his third attempt there he went 3/3 so I believe he is capable of more, he knows what I am capable of, we all have a general idea of what each other will put up so competition can get pretty intense. I open with 230kilos, Shawn 215, putting me in the lead by 2.5kilos, next attempt, Shawn hits 227.5 I hit 242.5, this lift breaks my own dead American Record and keeps me up by 2.5kilos. Now onto thirds originally Shawn has his attempt listed at 240, so I put down 252.5. My handlers(Mike Talyor and Arain Khamesi from FSU, also Kristi Polizanno another worldteam member comes back to help with changes on dead as I have barely done this before.) drop my attempt to 250kilos after he drops his to 237.5, per usapl rules you are allowed 2 changes to your last dead attempt, with this pull I will win nationals and I will be heading to worlds. I walk out to the platform to the biggest ovation I have ever had for a lift in my life, screams, and my teammates behind me cheering me on. Holly fuck I am pumped, I begin my pull and immediately knew something was up, my ass shot up and the bar got slightly infront of me, for what feels like 3 mins but in reality less than a second I struggle with the weight right by my knees and it comes crashing back down, it happened, I missed the last dead, on a weight I have hit before and that’s it for me, tough fight but I come up short.  For this meet I was a member of Team Unconquered, noteables on this team were Rob Trettin and Mike Hedlesky both members of Team USA for this past worlds. We placed third in team scoring.

242.5kg dead

250kg attempt

After crying hysterically all night I come back the next day and watch some lifting, I see Jen Thompson and Kim Walford lift, who are two of the strongest women in the world. Kim deads 507 at 140lbs which is insanely impressive for anyone at that weight male or female, which was the loudest I’ve ever seen a pl crowd. LS McLain and Dave Ricks have another awesome battle at 93kgs, and I watch via live stream Blaine Sumner vs. Williams. This was an insanely well run meet, Robert Keller the meet director deserves some props for this as this had to be very strenuous to put together.

For me I’m going to continue being an asshole and training both for wling and pling going up to 74/75kgs for pl and will make the cut to 69 for wl, hope that somehow I get a call from the usapl about being an alternate to worlds, and now I’m planning a local wl meet, the American open (Weightlifting), and the arnold for powerlifting in the future.