The Hidden Secrets of Strongman Competition (with Maxime Boudreault)

no, you’re only as strong as your weakest muscle. I always prioritize on my smaller muscle. I was having an issue with yoke, and I started doing single-leg, just bodyweight, single-leg step-ups. When I actually improved my yoke, I was able to add 200 pounds comfortable on my yoke just because my hip flexors are my weakness.

It’s really important to focus on those little muscles because those little one percent will add a lot as you go.

Welcome to the “BarBend” podcast, where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao, and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today I’m talking to Canadian strongman, Maxime Boudreault, who finished third place at the 2021 World’s Strongest Man and fifth at the 2022 World’s Strongest Man.

Maxime is sitting out this year’s World’s Strongest Man due to injury. By the way, the competition kicks off this week. Follow along on barbend.com.

This recovery time has given him new perspective on the sport, and he’s looking to come back stronger than ever. We talk about breaking through strongman’s professional ranks, competing against historically amazing athletes, and the toll of staying on top in one of strength’s most demanding disciplines.

We also discussed how Maxime has used the Airwave mouthpiece, which generously sponsored this podcast, I should add, to improve his performance and recovery on both training days and those long competition days.

Airwave is now the official mouthpiece of World’s Strongest Man and BarBend podcast listeners can use the code BARBEND to receive 15 percent off. Now let’s get on with the show.

Max, I appreciate you taking the time to join me today. It’s an important time of year for you because you’re gearing up for a lot of big things.

The first question I got to ask is, how is training going right now? How does the body feel? Maybe more importantly, how’s your mind feel right now [laughs] about everything?

I just got really bad luck eight days before the Arnolds this year. I slipped on ice and actually broke the fibula right at the ankle. I’ve been stuck with dealing with that for the past five weeks. I’m actually able to walk on my crutches right now.

I’m going to get my final checkup on the 19th. In what, two, three more weeks? I should be able to start walking. I’ve been doing a lot of upper body right now just to keep my head space going well.

It’s disappointing that I’m losing Arnold and Worlds this year, but it’s not that bad because outside of Strongman, life is going well.

With Samantha as well, she’s a good support for me to keep my head straight. We moved across Canada to open our gym in Moncton during January, so we’re starting to hunt for a location. We’re having a bit of issues of firewalls and stuff like that right now, but we should be in the process to open for May 1st. That’s the plan.

We’re busy with computer, working on that stuff, instead of focusing on training right now, which is nice. At least it’s giving me a better mindset of being injured and not doing anything.

Yeah, for sure. Is this the most significant injury you’ve dealt with in your pro-Strongman career?

I tore my pec completely off the attachment back in 2016, but besides that, yeah, that’s the worst. Well, it’s the best of the worst, no tendons or ligaments has broken, just a bone that’s fractured, so I need to let it heal and that’s it.

 How long is that? How long is the total process going to be, the total recovery process till you’re back to full-intensity training, do you think?

I’m not sure. I’ll take my time. My next show is in July, so I’m grateful. It sucks that the Arnolds and the Worlds were close together, but I’m grateful because they were together. Now, I have a building season up till July for my next show. I’m grateful for that.

I’m missing the two biggest shows, but I’m not missing a lot of shows this year. I want to focus on coming back healthy and strong because I don’t want to rush it. We only have one body, so if I injure it more, I might be out for a lot longer than this.

What does your training look like right now? I mean, obviously, training pretty much only upper body. What are those sessions looking like? How does a pro-Strongman train around having a lower-body injury, while still maintaining mass and as much strength as you can?

Right now I’m at a commercial gym, so I’m able to do leg. I’ll do single leg work on Mondays, single leg press. I’m lucky to have the little hip flexors. I’m able to train my injured leg, do kickbacks, and stuff like that. With that, so I don’t need my leg and everything else. I was doing single-leg extension, curls, and all that stuff.

Then, I’ll do my push-pull day on Tuesday, off Wednesday, and then Thursday, I’m grateful we have that Back Attack. I’m able to do my lower back. We’ll do that and then back workout after that. Then, we’ll have another push-and-pull day on Saturdays.

I’ve talked to several athletes and I have a little experience with this myself, having lower-body injury, having to focus on accessory work, upper body, and then, still being able to train the hip flexors and do some mobility.

Sometimes people come back and when they can start training full speed again, they can squat again. They feel a little bit better because they’ve been focusing on all of the problem areas that maybe they don’t get as much attention when you’re training full intensity.

My hope is that you come back and that first squat session back, you’re like, “Oh, I feel great. My hips feel awesome,” so fingers crossed on that one.

Exactly. What’s nice right now is I can sit down for two hours and not have knee pains right now. It’s weird and it’s interesting, and I’m enjoying it right now. [laughs]

You’re only as strong as your weakest muscle. I always prioritized on my smaller muscle, especially last year. I was having an issue with yokes, and I started doing body weight, single leg step-ups from a six or 12-inch height controlling the way down, controlling the way up.

I improved my yoke. I was able to add 200 pounds comfortable on my yoke because my hip flexors are my weakness, so by doing that, the small little things. A lot of time, people try to jump into it and try to do a squat, the bench, and all those big lifts without even focusing on the smaller muscles.

As soon as your foundation is grown, you get a lot stronger as well. At the level we’re at, it’s important to focus on those little muscles because those little one percent will add a lot as you go.

We’ll get back to the episode in a second, but first a quick shout-out to our episode sponsor, AIRWAAV.

AIRWAAV is now the official mouthpiece of World’s Strongest Man. Visit airwave.com, that’s A-I-R-W-A-A-V.com to find out how their innovative mouthpiece can improve recovery and performance, and use the code, BARBEND, B-A-R-B-E-N-D to get 15 percent off your next order. Let’s get back to the show.

Let’s dial it back a little bit and talk a little bit about your career and strengths. Did you have a significant athletic background before Strongman? When did you start training and then, how did you find Strongman as a sport? Where you’re like, “Hey, I want to focus in on this. I can really excel and be one of the best.”

I was a small kid. I weighed 170 at 6’3″ in high school. Hugo Girard came to our high school, and he was showing what he was able to do. I overhead pressed whenever I teach it on my quad. This is weird. I was thrown off about him. [laughs]

I’m here now, which is funny. Played hockey throughout my childhood. Grade 12, I started training at the gym because the gym closed and my friend across the street brought his equipment in his garage. That’s how I started to train because I was too embarrassed to go to the gym, and I got hooked ever since.

He was going to college, and my goal was trying to be as strong as him when he came back for holiday break, Christmas break, and summertime. I was always trying to get better. I went to college for health and fitness promotion and there I was training trying to become a bodybuilder.

I did a few shows of bodybuilding and then was grateful to met one of my friends that I was doing strongman, said, “Hey, you look strong. You should come try strongman training every Saturday, so I got hooked. Every Saturday, we’re doing farmer’s walks, slide jacks, tire flip, and log press.

Of course, every week I was getting better. I’m competitive, so seeing the fact that I was getting stronger every week, I got hooked and I’ve been training strongman since 2012, basically. [laughs]

You talked about your stats in high school. You were 6’3″ 170 pounds.

 Yeah.

What are you now?

300 pounds because of the wheelchair issue and enjoying what I eat, but usually I’m around 330, 340.

 Got it. Same height though, 6’3″?

Yeah.

OK. You’ve doubled yourself since high school. [laughs] You’ve eaten yourself and doubled your mass effectively.

Yeah. It was a lot of hard work for sure. If I miss a meal or two a day, I’ll lose five pounds easily. My body tries to go back to that weight, so every year I’m trying to push 10 pounds, 10 pounds. Now, my comfortable weight, if I miss a meal or two, I’m able to sit around 315, 320.

When I get to three 330, it’s getting harder to go up and down the stairs. Every year 10 extra pounds, I feel more and more comfortable with it, so I’m taking my time. I’m not rushing anything because if you rush, you don’t feel comfortable with that extra weight on your body, right?

Totally. Do you have a particular nutritional strategy these days, and does it change depending on the time of year, for example, off-season versus leading up to competition?

 I try to stay as clean as I can. I’m following a diet. It’s more geared toward healthy eating because you have less inflammation. That way, your recovery is a lot better. I don’t believe in eat whatever junk food you can because you feel shit the next day. Your joints are really in pain. Just all those things for recovery.

If you want a longevity into sport, you actually need to watch everything you do. If you spend $1,000 on recovery and you eat like shit, well, it’s not really helping you. I’m really keen on like 80 percent, 20 percent diet type of thing. 80 percent clean.

Then if you want to cheat, you cheat whatever, but getting closer to a show, obviously, I’ll eat more grease your food and I’ll eat a lot more just to get that dense calories because it’s just getting harder to add the calories in and calories out.

What is your favorite? If you’re like, “Hey, I just need some calories. It’s been a tough training week. It’s going to be a little bit of a cheat, maybe a little bit of a cheat meal. Something that’s just dense, greasy.” What are some of your like go-to, “I just need to get calories in meals”?

Pizza and cheesecake for sure.

Pizza and cheesecake. [laughs] That’s an easy one. Sometimes people will say like, “Oh, it’s a regional specialty.” Being Canadian I was wondering if you’re going the poutine route, but no, you’re going to classics, pizza, cheesecake, easy enough. Favorite pizza toppings?

Meat.

You’re not a pineapple-on-pizza guy, you’re not a Hawaiian guy?

No, I’ll go for it if it’s there, but I won’t pick it for sure.

Meat lovers all the way. Got it. Let’s talk about the chronology of your strongman career. You said you’ve been training in Strongman in a pretty dedicated fashion since 2012, so about 11 years.

Was there a point at which you really thought…For some people it’s like the first competition they do, they’re like, “Wow, I could be fantastic at this.” For some people, it’s not until they…podium at World’s Strongest Man or the Arnold, but what was the moment where you’re like, “Wait, I can be one of the best in the world, at this”?

I wasn’t there when we started. When I started my first show, my first pro show in Canada, in Ontario, I was beating guys that has been doing this for like six, seven years. I’m like, “OK. I can be somebody from there.” Right off the bat.

Took me a while to get to the next level because in Canada, Jeff was always there, and there’s only one keen athlete to go compete. It was hard for me to transition to the world scene. I did my first giant fly back in 2016, went to Sweden. I would just play in a top four in Canada’s show, Canada’s Strongest Man, and stuff like that.

When there’s JF Caron is standing there as the top athlete for nearly a decade in Canada, it feels like there’s probably a wall, literally he is a wall. He can actually look like a wall. [laughs]

No, 100 percent. That was the issue. Then Canada wasn’t that great of a country for a strongman, so that’s why they weren’t inviting as much people. Now we’re always those things are actually coming out.

I think I got a lot stronger when I first started dating Sam. The dynamic that we both have, we’re both the same personality, we’re both same, we’ll just push each other. We got a lot stronger when we started training together, when she moves with me as well. Then Santa Monica happened.

Then it was supposed to be a Brian Shaw and Martins Licis show, and I won the first four events. That basically changed who I was. My Instagram followers, Friday night I had 1,500 people and then Saturday night I was at 15,000 people overnight, just because of that show.

Then I got to World’s Strongest Man that year. My goal was to make the World’s. At the beginning, I was really frustrated during my strongman career because I was upset that a lot of people that were going to Worlds, I usually beat in Canada when they come, like Dimitar and all those guys.

I can beat Jason Bergmann and all those guys as well. I’ve been doing this for a while, but then I started realizing as I grow into the sport, I’m like, “Well, the longer it takes for me to get to Worlds, I won’t just go to Worlds. I’ll go to make the finals.”

It just changed my mindset. It’s nice that if you go to Worlds once and then you get forgotten because you finished fifth in your heat and you don’t get re-invited. I was up in the Stone-Off against Tom, my first World’s Strongest Man. I’m like, “Well, I’ll go balls to the wall and if I make a mistake, I make a mistake because he won’t.”

I just missed the Fifth Stone. If I was with any other heat, I would have made the finals. Then the next year, my goal was to make the finals. I’ve trained all year, made the finals, and after day one, I was in third place. Then I finished on the podium. I finished third place at World’s Strongest Man.

It took me a year for it to sink in, because when you visualize for something, my visualization was just to go to the finals, maybe get, not finish bottom, maybe seventh or sixth. I was grateful, but making the podium, that really changed how I trained, gave me belief in myself that I can beat them, I can become world’s strongest man.

It just made everything else change. I actually started focusing more on nutrition, focusing more on all those little things, because this is not just a hobby, it’s something that I can become really good at it.

I believe in myself that I can become world’s strongest man. Those are all priorities I need to focus on. That’s why we moved to Moncton, so we’re actually able to open to the public and we can just become full-time athletes, instead of we used to run just a private studio, so our paychecks were just one on ones.

We were working eight to 10 hours at PT and then trying to train ourselves at eight o’clock at night. We’re doing this transition to make us better athletes and just less stressful, right?

Yeah. The number of, if you can remove the external factors that distract from training and recovery, because if you’re an athlete at your level, recovery, you can only train for so many hours a day.

Say you’re training for two, three hours a day, the rest of the time that you’re spending awake, sleeping, it’s all focused on recovery. Even the time when you’re sleeping, it’s how do you optimize your sleep for recovery, right?

Yeah.

How do you remove all these other stressors so that you’re not spiking your cortisol? If you have to worry about clients, if you have to worry about your taxes, if you have to worry about all this stuff, that distracts from your training and reduces the amount of energy you can spend it to becoming the best.

It seems like the past year has been about you and Sam taking it from, “Oh, we’re this percentage dedicated” to “how can we just remove all those external factors and get to 100 percent being strongman athletes?” Is that a correct assumption?

100 percent. Then last year we had a lot on our plates. We got given…We’re taking care of the Strongman Corp Canada. We’re taking care of all the amateur circuit. We’re dealing with all of that as well. That was another big factor. We just hosted nationals last year, a week before Rogue.

A week before the Rogue Invitational?

Yeah.

Wow. That timing is very tight.

It hit me hard at Rogue. I was exhausted and I was having a hard time. I didn’t want to show it, but the first event right in a warmup, I tweaked my back, so [laughs] I dealt with that the whole comp, but I didn’t say anything. I just pushed through it.

Then after that, we were so exhausted I sampled that with G. We did Magnús Classic just to do it. I stopped training completely right after Rogue to Magnús. We didn’t train for a full month. We just went to Iceland just to have a vacation, enjoy. Then we just need to recover.

Then after that, we realized that we need to prioritize on our time, so then if we just need to focus on Strongman Corp online stuff and not focus on personal training, we’re right ahead.

We’re taking care of evolution, strength, athletic, for Brian Shaw’s knee sleeve, elbow sleeve in Canada as well. We’re trying to find other revenues to make sure that we can actually focus on ourselves and be less stressful about everything else.

You’ve talked about how starting to date Sam, moving in together, training together were big points in leveling up your game, and I’m sure Sam’s as well. I’m just curious.

It’s a very difficult thing. It’s not for everyone to be in the same industry, to be very competitive with and to train with your romantic partner, your life partner. That’s tough for a lot…It’s tough for me to imagine personally, but that’s just the way I am. I’m curious as to how you all have adapted to that. It’s clearly paid off dividends, right? It’s upped both of your games.

This is not a therapy session, but I’m just curious, how do you all deal with that? What are some challenges that arise? You’re both very competitive. How do you avoid that boiling over and becoming too competitive with each other?

[laughs] We’re really competitive with each other. That’s a hundred percent. Like during COVID started, we decided to do a list of different sports and board games or whatever to see who is better.

That’s, that’s who we are. That’s not an issue. Right at the beginning, when we train, we’ve set our base at like, “We’re not girlfriend and boyfriend in the gym”. We’re here as training partners. We’re here to push each other. If we have something to say, we’ll say it. Sometimes we get affected by things, but we just brush it off after when we walk out of the gym.

It’s nice. We’re always together. She’s personal training as well. We’re always working together for all our businesses. All our sponsorships are all together as well. It’s funny, when she went to Italy for the world record, for the record breakers, and when I go outside to compete, when we’re actually separated, it’s like, “Wow, this is weird.” [laughs] . But it’s great.

What are some of the things that you all…? I know that in setting up for this podcast, and as we were talking about scheduling it, it’s not just that you all are training partners, you all are very focused on recovery, sharing recovery techniques together. Again, that’s sleep, that’s nutrition.

I’d love to talk about what you prioritize on recovery to make sure you’re at your best. We’ve already talked a little bit about nutrition. Is there anything in the realm of sleep schedule? Are you doing hot-cold contrast?

What are some of these other factors that you all prioritize together?

For the past three or four years for every Christmas, our gifts are recovery tools. We bought the air compression pants, hips, and shoulders for one year. We have a set of the cupping with the heat therapy. We ordered two ice baths from a cold tub plunge. Just the little ones because I want to upgrade it to bigger ones.

We want to do a hot/cold tub therapy at our gym that we’re getting right now. That’s the next step. We’re just going to start with a cheaper ones so we save up for the big expensive ones. No, everything is based around those little things to get to the next level where we’re at because everyone’s strong right now and who comes in the event as healthy as they can be that’s going to win, right?

Yeah. I was talking to Dr. Kelly Starrett on a podcast recently, and he said, everyone’s working hard. It’s not about outworking each other, it’s about showing up fresher and better recovered and better optimized.

Exactly. Yeah.

To your level, everyone is really dedicated. It’s not like anyone wakes up as like, “Oh, I’m not going to focus today,” or “I’m going to phone this one in.” Your competitors are all super hard workers just like you are. I appreciate that perspective.

Let’s talk a little bit about another recovery tool that I know you all are really focused on and that’s Airwaav, using that for breath optimization and recovery during training sessions and ideally to kickstart recovery during your session and right after.

How did you all first get connected with Airwaav? How do you utilize in strongman training the Airwaav mouthpiece?

I’ve been having a lot of hard time with mouthpieces, especially for the fact that I’m always trying to get bigger. Having something in my mouth and the gag reflex is right there.

I try really hard with other companies to use one because I know the benefits of them and all that stuff, but I could never keep it. As soon as I put it in, walk to the bar, I was spitting it out because it was too big and not comfortable for me at all.

Then Airwaav messaged me, “Hey, Max, do you want to try Airwaav? It’s a mouthpiece.” I’m like, “Ugh.” I’m like, “OK, I’ll try it out, for sure, because I’ll never say no. I’ll only sell what I believe in because if you start selling stuff that you don’t believe into it, like your name and everything else, your word doesn’t mean anything, right?

Right.

I’ll try it out. I got into the mail, it says to wait 24 hours after you mold it in. I’m deadlifting tonight. I’m going to to try it out right away. Put it in my mouth. I have no issues breathing with it right away because it’s a lot smaller and it’s a perfect fit. You need to pull it out with your thumb. You can’t spit it out because it’s too tight.

We did that for the same way that we did the week before with more ease than we had the week before just by putting it on.

As soon as you bite in, you’re actually able to breathe better. You’re a lot more stable because it balanced all your…Your body’s off, so as soon as you had the mouthpiece you’re able to relax and all your body’s…you’re more balanced and everything [inaudible] . You’re actually able to clinch.

Right off the bat, it made a big game-changer. Even for log press because log press, I have a hard time with the mouthpiece because there’s a weight stuff crushing my chest.

Oh, yeah.

I’ll do one rep with it. I bring it down and I can’t breathe, so I take it off to do another set. My next rep is worse because I don’t have it. I actually feel it right away because I’m having a hard time getting used to it still.

Right now it’s nice. I’m able to bench press with it now because when you’re benching with a mouthpiece, it’s really hard because you can’t breathe, so I’m able to do it now. It’s the perfect timing of being injured to train with the mouthpiece right now. I’m able to use it throughout my whole workout now.

You see a difference when my gag reflex is kicking up, and I take it off for my next set, I’m a lot weaker, not stable as much as having it on. It’s true. I’m not biased at all. [laughs] It’s a game-changer right away.

Then Sam did a test at the Arnold’s with the doctor that did do his mouthpiece. There’s a post on her Instagram about what happens.

He goes through the whole test of rotation. Mobility gets improved, the breathing gets improved, and the strength and everything else improved by having a mouthpiece in your mouth and having something that you can wear through condition running and strength training.

It’s beneficial for everything because we’re actually able to breathe, the recovery, the [inaudible] is less increased because of those reasons, right?

Well, it seems with any tool, it’s like if you’re lifting with knee sleeves for the first time, or wrist wraps, or any other, or a belt, there’s a learning curve, right?

Yeah.

 I’ve heard newer lifters they get frustrated. They’re like, “Oh, I tried a lifting belt and it didn’t make me stronger, or it felt weird.” Of course, it does. You’ve never worn one before. You have to learn how to use it as a tool.

Yeah, exactly.

The rest of your positions have to adapt. It seems like it’s the same principle here.

Yeah, but it was a lot easier to adapt to that one compared to any other one that we tried, right?

Mm-hmm. Is it something that you all are going to wear in competition? Are you using it as an in-training tool?

Wear, however, I train is how I compete. I don’t believe in people. For example, the beltless one, “I did beltless.” Why would you train beltless if you can compete with a belt?

Right.

Right. It cracks me up. It’ll just throw your game off. If I do stone’s tack, I understand with how tack because you’re trained to your grip. I use tack is when you go to the comp, you’re used to that tack that you’re going to be using, right? That’s my mentality. Whatever I train is how I compete.

It’s really important, as stupid as it sound, it’s something that you, everyone should be doing because you don’t want to throw something different when you compete, especially for food. For food, you want to try to eat what you eat during your training when you go compete.

You don’t want to overload or whatever, do something not trying to overload your stomach that you’re not used to for more dense food.

 That makes a lot of sense, yeah. Control the factors and then replicate those factors, right?

Exactly. Yeah.

That makes a ton of sense. In college, I remembered a college psychology course. It’s like, hey, however, you study for a test, replicate that, replicate the test conditions so that you’ll remember the same thing. It’s the same for the body. There is also the mental component.

Not only do you want the factors that affect you physically to be the same, you want to try and control the mental factors as much as possible.

Exactly.

There’s so much of the competition that you can’t control, especially due to travel, scheduling. I mean, look, you’re a world’s strongest man podium finisher. You know better than most that competition schedule, it can be really tough. It’s a lot of sitting and waiting around, then go, go, go, then you might have to sit and wait around for hours.

It’s the worst comp of the year for sure.

We all do it for the title because it’s a TV show for sure. It’s long days. [laughs]

Long days and a lot of them. I mean, you’re basically, what is it normally? It’s five days, six days with one rest day in the middle before finals?

Yeah.

Geez. Is that the competition you’re most beat up after?

No, I’m more relaxed after that one.

Oh, I mean like your body, does that take the…Which competition in a normal calendar year takes the heaviest physical toll on you?

The Shaw Classic. [laughs]

 Oh really? Oh, OK.

Eight events in two days with the heaviest show. Yeah, it’s the hard one.

 Is that the one that you wake up the next morning, and you’re like, “Wow, I feel this.”

All by events six and seven, we’re all limping and just being warriors in the back. Just trying to finish it off for sure.

I’m sure Brian wants it no other way. That’s exactly why he designed the show like that, I’m sure.

Nah, it is the best show. It’s one of the best shows of the year for sure. If it’s not the best.

I appreciate you sharing that perspective. Max, where is the best place for people to follow along with you, your recovery as you lead back up to…hopefully being back to full speed in July?

Just on our Instagram, we’re going to do a lot more YouTube video content soon enough. Just having boring clips of me trying to walk around in crutches in the gym. [laughs]

We’re going to get back to that. Right now, we’re actually focusing on try opening our gym and then we’ll just post as much as we can on those Instagram and YouTube channels for sure.

Awesome. Max, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks to Airwave for connecting us.

Excited to see your recovery. See you back to full speed with healthier hip flexors than ever.

For sure. [laughs] Thanks a lot.