Brute Strength has had a spectacular second season of their Brute Showdown series. If you missed it, last year was the first season that pitted a bodybuilder (Lawrence Balleneger), powerlifter (Steve Gentili), Olympic weightlifter (Luis Mosquera), and CrossFit® athlete (Jacob Heppner) against one another in a series of events designed to find the most well rounded athlete.
This year they’ve brought in four female athletes with the same goal, and they’ve landed some big names: World Weightlifting Championships silver medalist Mattie Rogers, former CrossFit® Games athlete Brooke Ence, former Ms Olympia Dana Linn Bailey, and national level elite powerlifter Maddy Forberg.
The first episode introduced the athletes and the second, which aired last week, had them competing in the max clean and the max deadlift. It ended with Brooke Ence with 6 points, Mattie Rogers and Maddy Forberg with 5 points each, and Dana Linn Bailey on 4 points.
There were six events left and today we’ve got the third, the CrossFit workout “Christine,” which looks like this:
3 rounds for time
500m row
12 deadlifts (95 pounds)
21 box jumps
Forberg was pretty concerned from the get go, given she had never done any rowing in her life. (“I may vomit, die, or break an ankle, but I have faith that I’ll finish it eventually.”) She’s not the only competitor who talks about vomiting.
Traditionally, Christine has bodyweight deadlifts but this event brought them to 95 pounds for every athlete. Here’s how it shook out — it starts at the 2.18 mark.
We’ve often found that physique competitors have better cardio than you might think.
Next week we’ve got the pose down, an event that pretty much everyone (including the host, who has said this multiple times) agrees Bailey will win, although we think Brooke Ence may give her a run for her money. Watch this space.
Featured image via Brute Strength on YouTube.
