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The NEW World’s Strongest Man (with Mitchell Hooper)

Written by David Tao
Last updated on November 11th, 2024

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Today, we’re talking to the NEW World’s Strongest Man, Mitchell Hooper. Mitchell is actually joining the podcast for a second time! He’s the first Canadian athlete to ever hold the title of World’s Strongest Man, and he did it in a Finals packed with former champions. Did we mention it’s only his SECOND year as a pro strongman?

Mitchell updates us on 24 hours in the life of a new World’s Strongest Man, along with how his goals and outlook on the sport have shifted since we last chatted. He also talks about getting back to his day job — yes, he has a full time job outside of strongman! — and the media circus that started right after he hoisted the famous trophy.

 

Mitchell Hooper BarBend Podcast

 

 
 
 
 
 
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In this episode of the BarBend Podcast, host David Thomas Tao talks to Mitchell Hooper about:

  • Has Mitchell’s victory sunk in yet? (1:30)
  • Diving right back into the media circus post-victory (2:00)
  • Weaknesses Mitchell drilled in pre-comp training, including circus dumbbell (4:40)
  • Going head-to-head with previous champions (8:30)
  • The thrill of victory and sharing it with his fiancé (11:25)
  • Has Mitchell had THE fastest rise in pro strongman history? And what would he change about the sport? (14:00)
  • Mitchell’s clinical practice and day job (16:00)
  • Can Mitchell complete the first-ever men’s pro strongman sweep? (17:00)

Relevant links and further reading:

 

Transcription

 

 I didn’t have the best chance, I had a chance, but then after I went out and hit the 140-kilo dumbbell, which was a 13-kilo lb for me, I sort of knew it was on from there.

David TaoDavid Tao

Welcome to the bar been podcast where we talk to this Wireless 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 strong men, the first Canadian strongman to ever win World’s Strongest Man, Mitchell Hooper. He is the 2023 World’s Strongest Man. I actually talked to him while he was driving back to Toronto after that event, and wow, has he had a fantastic first couple years as a professional in the sport.

 

Mitchell’s rise to the top ranks of elite men’s open strongman might be the fastest we’ve seen in history. Mitchell joins us again, he’s actually been on the “BarBend Podcast” before, I’ll link that in the show notes, to talk about what this means for him, the media circus he’s been on a week after winning World’s Strongest Man in South Carolina, and much, much more. I hope you enjoy.

 

Mitchell, congratulations. It feels like just yesterday we were talking a little bit about your strongman career, your rookie year at World’s Strongest Man. I think it’s less than a year later, and now I’m talking to the World’s Strongest Man. First off, congrats. Has it sunk in yet?

Not really, no. It’s come quite quickly for me in the whole Pro Strongman scene. I don’t think I had enough time to digest everything around how this would feel. It’s certainly a little bit slow, but I’m happy for that to be a slow burn and make me happy for a long time.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

How long is the off period you get before you’re back to training? I’m hoping you’re taking at least…Are you taking a vacation? Is it a relaxing period, or are you right into the media circus?

No, basically right into the media circus. You’ve got to get in while people are interested. They’ll only be interested for so long, to be honest. [laughs]

 

I’m driving back right now to Toronto. I’m back at work tomorrow. No vacations for us until November. Training-wise, training’s always my break from life, so I still went in and I still trained yesterday, but it’s obviously very different. I’ll probably be another week or so until I do anything too intense.

David TaoDavid Tao

I think that that makes sense. I got to ask, you posted a video that was 24 hours with the World’s Strongest Man trophy or 24 hours as World’s Strongest Man, and I think it was a little satirical. Are you actually sleeping next to the trophy? Be honest. Come on.

[laughs] It’s very close to me. It’s not in the bed. It would feel like infidelity, but it’s very, very close.

David TaoDavid Tao

[laughs] It’s the hit spicy. I’ll let people think about that one and use their own imaginations. I want to say it’s always a dramatic week at World’s Strongest Man following along very closely. I was not on the ground there.

 

We had people from “BarBend” on the ground, but to say this was not a come-from-behind victory, you had a pretty commanding performance out of the qualifying stage. You established a lead early on in the finals, and it was kind of your lead to maintain.

 

I feel like it was a little bit like Tiger Woods at a Masters Tournament or at a major, kind of the red shirt going into Sunday. How did it feel going into the final day of competition knowing that you were in pole position?

I was in pole position within three events that came up on day two. They are a particular challenge to me. I historically have not been good at heavy dumbbell pressing. That was the event one was Dumbbell Max, so prognosis wasn’t great there.

 

Then, the Bus Pull. The only other time I’ve done that in competition, I came 8th out of 10. Then, Atlas Stone last year, I came 9th out of 10. It looks from the surface like I would be very happy, but I was hoping to be a couple of more points ahead going into day two.

 

To be honest, I didn’t have the best chance. I had a chance, but then after I went out and hit the 140-kilo dumbbell, which was a 13-kilo lb for me, I knew it was on from there.

David TaoDavid Tao

Congratulations on the personal best. I knew heavy dumbbells were something that you’ve been drilling a lot in training and posting a lot about on social because that’s a particular, I don’t want to say weakness, because you’re still elite at it, clearly. I think you’ve made a lot of progress.

 

Was that something specifically you were tackling in the offseason and leading up to the competition, and were there any other specific weaknesses that you were drilling and training every single week, just to shore up your abilities and bring it up to par?

Yeah. After I came 8th out of 10 on the heavy dumbbell at Rogue, I took a bit of an Olympic-style approach and did lots of days of 10 sets of 2 at very lightweight and tons and tons of drilling that.

 

As we got closer in the competition, we basically focused all of my energy on the things that I hadn’t been successful at in competition before or hadn’t done much in competition before. I worked very, very hard on the truck pull, worked extremely hard on the dumbbell. I ended up winning the two events that I was most concerned about.

David TaoDavid Tao

That’s a way to turn the negative into a positive. I want to talk a little bit about your rapid progress in the sport, which we talked about last year. I think last year you were almost exactly four years out from running marathons, right? We kind of talked about your transition into the sport of strongmen and your very rapid rise in the sport.

 

Your training age in the sport is…Your training age overall is fairly high. You’ve been an athlete most of your life. Your training age in this particular sport is a bit lower than most of your competitors. Do you feel like you’re able to make quicker gains because of that?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s almost like I trained for strongmen for a decade before I actually tried any of the implements. I think I had a lot of the base there to do what I do now. It was just being able to expose it with a bit of use for the implements. To your point, I still with my training age in the sport being fairly young, I think I still have a fair way to go until I’m at my best.

David TaoDavid Tao

That is a scary, scary statement for the rest of the men’s open field, I’m sure. I do want to talk a little bit about an interview that was posted that you did with Big Loz last year, where he made a bold prediction that you were going to win it all this year, and you sort of laughed it off.

 

Mitchell, you’re an extremely friendly guy. I know that from experience. Along with that goes a good sense of humility and a good dose of reality and objectivity. When he mentioned that last year — that interview — you kind of laughed it off a little bit. You were like, “That’s a bold prediction.”

 

Did you think at the time that you had a real shot to be this year’s World’s Strongest Man, or did you think it was still a few years out?

Yeah, that was after Rogue. In that Rogue, I came third.

David TaoDavid Tao

Oh, sorry. I wasn’t up to Rogue this year. My apologies. Rogue last year. OK, I got it. Calendars are a thing.

Yeah, and I lost to Leksii and Trey. I never beat Trey before. I’d also never beat Brian or Tom or Luke before. There was a lot of reason to give pause to the thought that that I was going to win. Loz is also a very honest guy, so when he says that he thinks you can do something or thinks you can’t do something, you know that that’s true.

 

Someone like that is telling you that you’re going to win next year, the confidence sort of builds in yourself as well.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

Let’s talk about performances over the weekend that really impressed you or pushed you. Were there any…Obviously, we can look at the leaderboard, right? We can look at Oleksii, at Tom, at Trey and Evan coming in with the same number of points at the end of the finals.

 

Were there any particular athletes who probed you over the course of the week or even in the finals competing alongside them? It was Brian Shaw’s last World’s Strongest Man appearance. Anyone that was just kind of really nipping at your heels or you felt was?

Well, Tom. Whenever you have an event that ends in Atlas Stones and you’re going head-to-head with Tom, you can never sort of pass him off. Now in terms of performance, he underperformed slightly on…

 

We went head-to-head on the Shield Carry first, and then I, in a very epic battle with the shield, ended up injuring past him when he thought that I was down about 10 meters before.

 

Then in the deadlift, he slightly underperforms. After that, he hit, I think, a 15-kilo, 20-kilo maybe lb, on the dumbbell. He was coming to play there. Then in the truck pull, there’s a whole group of guys at 32 seconds. Tom was going before me on the truck pull like, directly before me.

 

Tom then pulls that in performance to be put in first. If I was a couple seconds slower in the truck, he would have been up ahead of me, and then head-to-head with him on a stone one.

 

It’s always intimidating when he got the best in the world straight across from you, and you sort of trying to keep up with them. He’s a phenomenal athlete, and to be able to come out on top over him is pretty meaningful.

David TaoDavid Tao

One other thing I want to talk about, I do want to talk about some of your broader goals in athletics and life which we mentioned last year. I think it’s a really good time to impact that.

 

When you finished the stones — the final event of World’s Strongest Man — you knew you had won. You threw your arms up in celebration. You were clearly impacted emotionally. Your wife…Is she wife or fiancé? Sorry. Forgive me.

Fiancé, soon to be wife.

David TaoDavid Tao

Fiancé. I’m skipping ahead. God, I always do that. She comes up and gives you a big hug. You did the most conscientious thing I think anyone who’s just…

 …won a World Championship has ever done, in that, you lifted your arm so you wouldn’t cover her in stone tacky.

 

 

Yeah. [laughs] It’s funny. When it comes to her, I’m still such a normal person. Even though I just won World’s Strongest Man, I still know that she would hate to get the tacky on her shirt. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

 I remember I watched that video probably 10 times, and it took me until the third time. I was like, “Wait a minute, I see what he’s doing. He’s making sure he doesn’t get her clothes dirty,” because you can’t get that tacky off of normal clothes. I was like, “That is so thoughtful. Who else would have the wherewithal to do that?” [laughs]

Pictures that look like I’m just celebrating and she’s hanging off of me, when I’m just trying to keep my arms as far away from her as possible. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

 

It was a very koala bear moment, right?

 

[laughs] Absolutely.

David TaoDavid Tao

You’re like a tree and she’s just hanging all her limbs or just hanging off you. If you’re willing to share, what did you two talk about in the moments immediately after that? Obviously, she’s seen the work that’s gone in. She seen the sacrifices you’ve made more than anyone, perhaps.

 

Was there anything specifically that she told you or words that you were exchanged that are cemented in your memory?

 

Well, she told me before the comp started that she was going home with the winner. Whoever that was, she’ll hop with.

She just jumps up. There’s a couple of angles, a couple of videos that you can see, she screams, “We did it,” and then kept saying how proud of me she was. It’s very much a team type of thing. The “We did it” statement is, she’s changed as much a part of my success as I am because I wouldn’t be able to do the things I do without her.

I was the one performing, but it was a big, giant win, definitely a lifelong memory that.

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s nice to have those lifelong couple’s memories recorded by dozens of media outlets. You don’t have to pay for a photographer or a videographer to celebrate those moments if you’re doing it in the competition, there you go. That’s my cheap brain kicking in.

 

I do want to transition a little bit. One thing that really impacted me when we talked previously was the fact that for you, or at least it was last year, your success in this sport is really just a way to build, or as you stated — I might be paraphrasing here, and my apologies — is a way to build a platform to reach more people.

 

It might impact more people through health and movement. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that, to talk about if that has evolved. If so, how? If not, what is the ethos behind that and behind that goal?

It’s evolved in a way, for sure. I think my goals have shifted a little bit more to my ability to grow the strength community. I think I would add that as a point of clarity that growing strong men is 100 percent aligned with those goals.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

I appreciate that clarification. What do you think should change about the sport of strongman if you could wave a magic wand and change it over the next few years?

To know it’s a sport that’s treated me so damn well. It’s practically…

David TaoDavid Tao

 

I’m talking to the person who set the most rapid rise in the history of professional strongman. You might be actually the worst person to ask this question, but I’m still going to ask it.

Oh, man. I think the root of strongman is you get, pick up something random, however heavy it is, whatever shape it is. Continuing on with things that are odd shapes are back to the root of the sport where we might not be told the exact weight of something.

 

We might not know exactly what’s happening. We might not know the implements that we’re loading, of course within safe reason. I hope that part of the sport is retained, I suppose, over time.

David TaoDavid Tao

Let’s talk a little bit about your professional life. You mentioned training for youth and escape from life. You’re a busy guy with maybe basically more than one full-time job, it seems, beyond competing in strongman. Talk a little bit about your practice, if you don’t mind.

 

When we chatted last year, you were just getting established in a new location. How has that evolved? How are those professional goals, or at least in that professional sphere, that part of your life, how have those goals shifted or evolved at all?

The clinic is going very well. I’ve got someone who runs it for me making sure that I can dedicate time to strongman. I’m very, very proud of that, and where that’s gone.

 

Basically, what we do is we exercise people in unique circumstances, whether that’s a chronic condition, whether it’s a chronic injury, or say, just someone who needs an educated eye. They might be on medications, anything like that.

 

We provide a safe environment for them to exercise in with university-educated staff so that they can feel comfortable and they can get themselves moving under a watchful eye.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

 

Do you think that you’re going to get a lot more inbound patient requests because of the fact that you’re the current world strongest man?

Yeah, it could do. It’s all a bit indirect. It’s quite funny, some people would rather not train with me because they think that I’m going to try to turn them into a strongman, and that’s a whole [inaudible 16:06] . [laughs]

 

The leverage that I gained from strongman to be able to impact my community, because everyone’s going to know who I am now, I assume, in my hometown. If they know who I am, then they know what I do. That has an obvious commercial return and health return for that person.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

I like the idea of someone coming into your clinic just looking to move a little bit better, live a higher quality of life, and then accidentally putting on 100 pounds of muscle…

…and labbing 400-pound stones.

 

Despite the fact that there’s no Atlas Stones are logs or any strongman equipment in there, [laughs] we would work it out, somehow.

David TaoDavid Tao

You’re going to turn people into strength monsters. “I just wanted to be able to be a little bit more independent.” “Sorry, buddy. You’re doing 100-kilo dumbbells. That’s what’s happening now.”

 

Let’s talk a little bit about the fact that you were the first Canadian to hold the title of World’s Strongest Man. What does that mean to you?

What’s crazy, there’s been so many great Canadian strong men before me. I hope they see this as an extension of the work that they’ve done, and that the platform that they built in Canada. From J-F Caron, to Hugo Girard, all the way back to Louis Cyr, that the history of strength in Canada is very, very strong.

 

To be a small continuation of that by being the first one to win World’s and the first one to win the Arnold, I think it’s just a recognition of where the country is getting to in terms of strength sports.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

You’re holding simultaneous majors in the sport of strongman. I have to ask, do you have your sights set on Rogue for later this year?

 

Well, I think the grand sign for strongman is the Arnold World’s, The Shaw Classic, and Rogue in full show. I think we have four where I got the Shaw Classic first and if I could do those four, that would be, arguably, the best year in strongman that I’m on.

David TaoDavid Tao

 I would say so. I have to say that the Shaw Classic has. I think you’re totally right. It is such an elite test of strength. It’s a competition that’s not even five years old and it’s already being talked about as the sport’s major.

 

It’s a real testament to the impact of Brian Shaw, the organization he and his team and the work he and his team have put into it. What is it about the Shaw Classic that you think has allowed it to, in just a few short years, be talked about as one of the sports’ majors?

Well, I think Brian himself, anything that he does has an era of profession to it. For athletes, we’re treated really, really well on a couple of fronts. One of which is we’ve got all pre-made food ready for us when we get there.

 

Another which is there’s a lot of consideration given to our health and safety in terms of the speed of the show and things like that. Then he chooses very good events to test your strength. Then, when it comes to payouts, usually in Strongman, you make great money if you come first.

 

OK if you come second or third, and then it’s virtually nothing if you’re lower in the third. Brian really spreads it out a lot more. If you go you’re going to get a payday even if you don’t perform incredibly well, so it decreases the risk of going.

David TaoDavid Tao

Certainly, a very thoughtful organizational aspect there. Brian puts in two decades of experience when it comes to figuring out how athletes want to be treated and how to optimize their safety.

 

Last realm of questions I want to ask. Looking ahead — you’re the Arnold Champion. You’re the World’s Strongest Man champion. You’re going for perhaps the first-ever strongman Grand Slam with four events in a calendar year — what are your future goals beyond that Grand Slam as a pro strongman.

Do you know Laurence asked me that yesterday? I’m actually taking time to think about that exactly because I won this a lot faster than I thought. I thought that if I won this, I would lose a bit of fire towards the sport, but there’s fire still there.

 

For me, I just have so much, so far to go and so I’ve accomplished as much physically as I can. I’m not sure it’d be titles based, but it would be certainly something to do with the influence and something to do with if I believe that I’m at my best.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

From earlier answers, it seems to indicate you don’t think you’re anywhere near your peak?

 

No, it doesn’t feel that way. Who gets to the apps and peak in the sport? Got a couple of walls off to starting in it.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

I really appreciate your time, Mitchell. I know you are busy with the ultimate media circus in strength, probably the biggest media circus in strength. I will ask, is there anyone that has interviewed you or approached you for interviews, or talked to you, or reached out to you that really surprised you? You’re like, “Wait, they’re paying attention? They want to talk to me?”

 

Yeah. I’ve been on all the national news in Canada. There’s a eight-page spread going in a British magazine about me. There’s a German television channel who asked if they could take some pictures for the promotion. I think it’s just no individual person, just a widespread reach of how many people from many different outlets are interested in this.

David TaoDavid Tao

 

It’s a heck of a title. It’s well deserved, something you put a lot of work into, something that people who support you, including your fiancée, made a ton of sacrifices for. I’m incredibly excited to see what you do with this when an international spotlight is on you.

Mitchell, I super appreciate your time. I know you’re busy in this media circus. It means a ton to me. It means a ton to the BarBend readers and listeners that you took the time to chat today. Godspeed, and hoping that vacation actually comes in November. You get to enjoy it after a very busy and successful year, my friend.

 

Yeah, fingers crossed. Thank you very much for having me.

About David Tao

BarBend's Co-Founder and CEO, David is a veteran of the health & fitness industry, with nearly a decade of experience building and running editorial teams in the space. He also serves as a color commentator for both National and International weightlifting competitions, many through USA Weightlifting.

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