He’s the Original “Korean Hulk” (with Powerlifter Rich Yun)

What happened was after my very first powerlifting competition, some other coach was telling me, “Hey man, you should just change your name to The Korean Hulk. You’re built like the Hulk.” I was like, “You know what? I’ll just change it.” From right then and there, it’s always been The Korean Hulk.

That’s how people recognize me when they see me out in the gyms or somewhere. They’ll just come up to me like, “Hey, you The Korean Hulk?” I’m like, “Yeah. Just call me Rich.” [laughs]

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 powerlifter Rich Yun. Rich is best known online as the Korean Hulk. It’s a nickname that stuck after one of his first powerlifting competitions.

This conversation has a lot of parts. We talk beefing with other Korean Hulks online, the eating habits of powerlifters, and the biggest movers and shakers in strength sports today. It’s a fun conversation you won’t want to miss out on.

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Rich, I appreciate you taking your time to join us today. It’s awesome editing and writing content about you because you just have such a good personality on social media. This is a great opportunity to see if that matches up in person. No pressure at all, I promise.

Yeah, I hope so, right?

I’m joking on that. For those who don’t know, give us a little background as to what you do in the sport of powerlifting, some of your recent accomplishments. People who might not be familiar with you, just so we know what kind of athlete we’re talking to today because you’re doing some pretty cool stuffs.

Sure. If you guys don’t know me, my name is Rich Yun. Some of you guys might know me as The Korean Hulk on Instagram. I am a powerlifter. I would say that I compete in the USAPL, or did, I guess. It’s been a while since I’ve been in the game but am still lifting, still training, still lifting heavy.

Currently right now, with the COVID unfortunately going on right now, training, I’ve been lifting at a home gym, lifting at a local gym near me as well. Currently, I’m in Houston right now. I am from the Philly area in Pennsylvania.

The last meet that I had done in USAPL was back in November 2018. It’s been a few years since I’ve been in the game, but still lifting, still training, and still just do what I do.

My goal in life — this is why my social media has just always been a motivation journey for me — really just motivating people, inspiring people to get stronger and have fun with lifting. Not necessarily so that you should compete every so often, but just have fun and lift.

I want to be that person just to be a role model with a lot of people and provide a knowledge that it’s there. Overall just be an inspirational for a lot of people. That’s my overall goal with the content that I bring out to my followers through social media.

Just to give folks another bit of context, what body weight do you compete at, and what are your best lifts at that body weight?

Right now, I compete in the 82 kg class, that’s 182.6 pound-ish. Typically, I usually hover around 195-ish right now. When I do compete, I usually do the water-cut approach and drop down that 10 to 12 pound range. Basically, normally I’m around that 195 pound.

I still have some records on USAPL. I think I still hold the Pennsylvania deadlift record still, which is interesting. [laughs] It’s been a couple of years, but still there. I’m proud of that.

I’m also 25 years old, so I’m now in the open category for USAPL now, so no longer a junior. It’s been a while. That’s a little bit about in terms of my powerlifting career. Still love the game, still love the competition aspect of it, being competitive.

Hopefully, one day again when I do return back, I do want to bring a stronger version of myself. I still have a lot more goals that I want to achieve. For me, I’d like to take a longer off-season approach and really just focus on that.

What’s that Pennsylvania state deadlift record that you, as of this recording, still hold?

If I’m not mistaken, it’s 672 pounds. It’s 307 kilograms I think, if I’m not mistaken or 307.5. That’s currently what the record is right now. It’s crazy to me that I still have the record. I want to imagine some day, sooner or later someone else is going to break it.

Maybe even me personally, I’ll probably break my own record once I get back into the platform again. There are a lot of strong people, strong [indecipherable 6:00] out there, of course. It’s different states. You’ll see someone else just pop up and boom, they just got stronger [indecipherable 6:11] .

You go by The Korean Hulk on Instagram. The question I have to ask is there are a lot of strong Koreans and there are a lot of strong Koreans on Instagram. You’re just putting a target on your back.

I feel like someone’s going to have to come out with Real Korean Hulk or say that you don’t deserve the moniker and you have to have a liftoff to see who gets to take the name over. How did that come about, The Korean Hulk?

Good question. It actually came off of my very first powerlifting. That was back in March 2015. I had a very generic Instagram name at the point, it was just my name underscore my birthday or something like that.

What happened was after my very first powerlifting competition, some other coach was telling me, “Hey man, you should just change your name to The Korean Hulk. You’re built like the Hulk.” I was like, “You know what? I’ll just change it.” From right then and there, it’s always been The Korean Hulk.

That’s how people recognize me when they see me out in the gyms or somewhere. They’ll just come up to me like, “Hey, you’re The Korean Hulk?” I’m like, “Yeah. Just call me Rich.” [laughs]

I got to say it’s deserved. You’re a strong guy, you’re a heck lot stronger than me. I’m not going to be one to challenge you. I’m also not Korean, so that’d be silly. Whenever I hear Korean Hulk, I think I heard your Instagram handle before I actually saw your Instagram account.

It was some content we were doing, and I imagined, “Oh, this guy’s got to be a super heavyweight. He’s got to be a 308-plus, just absolute behemoth.” You’re obviously a very fit guy and very muscular, but you’re a normal sized human being.

Right. [laughs] I should probably be called the Korean Captain America or something like that, I guess. During that time I was a little bit more bulkier. I weighed around maybe 200-plus, and I was a little bit wider. I was eating pizza all the time. This was back in the college days so I was eating pizza. I was eating burritos and all the college takeout foods.

I gained a lot of weight at that point. I was right over 200-pound mark. I was really heavy. I was really bulky, and really wide. I could probably find a picture for you later on and see where that picture is. From that picture alone, I was pretty bigger than I am now.

Everyone has that college…If you discover weights in college or right before, we all have that first bulk phase where we think like, “I’m eating because I’m bulking because I’m lifting.” I’ve looked back at photos of myself back then and you go like, “Oh, God, look. What was I…? Beer is not a post-workout supplement. What am I doing to myself here?”

If you can go back in time and give college Rich one piece of advice when it comes to strength training or strength sports, what would it be?

Oh, man.

Or just life advice. It could just be life advice. [laughs]

I’m thinking about what would my old self do now, now that I know all this stuff about strength training and stuff like that.

I would say that if you’re interested in getting into strength training, do your research. That’s the most important thing for me. There’s so much information online and in Google, YouTube videos. There’s a lot of great powerlifters out there that provide a lot of knowledge on YouTube videos.

Just do your research, because honestly, for me, I guess one of the most fundamental things that I really regret not doing my research.

Back then, it was just a training heavy, going hard, going off to RP 10 max. Back then no one really knew what RP was back then either. For me personally, I was just training with all my friends. We just got into powerlifting all together, and we were just doing what we did, just lift heavy all the time. Of course, lifting heavy came with a lot of injuries and a lot of setbacks.

I would say nowadays it’s to really do your research, look online, and get into it. I think that the most important part is take your time with it. This is about progress so slowly take your time. Your body is going to be in that factor when you’re in those newbie gains, and then you’re going to hit a plateau.

That’s why it’s about always take your time and no need to always rush things. Slowly take your time and build progress, and learn; continue to learn. That’s the best thing I can offer.

We’ll get back to that in just a moment. First another quick word from our sponsor, Transparent Labs. You know Hafþór Björnsson, 2018 World’s Strongest Man and one of the strongest human beings in history? Yep. He uses Transparent Labs to fuel his performance.

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Powerlifting especially is a strength sport, and all strength sports have master’s divisions at this point. CrossFit, weightlifting, strongman, arm wrestling you name it.

Powerlifting is a sport where people have insane longevity if they take care of themselves. I’m recording with David Ricks I think it’s next week I believe, I’m recording a podcast. He’s 61, and he’s still one of the best in the open division at [indecipherable 11:55] US. Actually among the best in the world.

This guy has a competition history dating back to well before I was born if you look at his first totals were from the early ’80s. I think it’s really good advice. The lessons that you learn early on, even if you’re building progress slowly early on, you’ve got decades to make progress in this sport. You’re 25, and you’re just out of the junior division. You’re not even in your prime when it comes to that open category.

I would say that for me personally, I feel like I’m a veteran in this sport because I did it since I was 19…Probably 18 is when I got into the powerlifting. Typically I call myself a veteran because I’ve been seven years into the sport. Then you look at it a guy like David Ricks, like you said. You mentioned he’s been [laughs] ever since you and I weren’t even born.

It is really inspiring to see that there is a lot of that longevity like you said. There’s people that I do see that still want to get into powerlifting, and I see like 80-year-olds. 80-year-olds, 90-year-olds doing powerlifting and doing it for the very first time. I’m just like that’s great. That’s amazing. Any age is recommended.

It doesn’t even need to be…You can start at any age you want. It’s what I like about the sport. Anyone can do it. Anyone of all ages can do it. There is no expectations that you need to have in order to be in this sport.

It’s truly inspiring when you see that. When you see true veterans in this sport like Jen Thompson, and David Ricks, and people like those that have been in the sport and shinning awareness to the sport as well, which is really cool.

You mentioned Jen Thompson and David Ricks, obviously two legends in the sport. Jen was on the BarBend podcast a couple of months ago. She’s obviously just an awesome person. Really excited to talk to David Ricks; been following his career since I’ve been interested in strength sports.

Who are some other people that you look up to in the sport right now? It doesn’t necessarily need to be people who have been in the sport for a long time. Both of them have. Who are some other people that you look to as examples of people setting a high bar for not only what you lift but how people are treating the sport?

 For me, I don’t have a specific person that I look up to. I look at a lot of videos on social media. Of course, when you are in that powerlifting community, you’re going to find a lot of videos of strong people posting their lifts and things like that. To me personally, I don’t have a specific role model I look up to, but yet again, I like to look at people on social media that post videos.

It doesn’t matter if I know them or not. Seeing them lift heavy also motivates me to push up my…Like, “Oh, wow. This person is helluva strong. Time to step it up.” [laughs] Things like that. For me personally, I use that motivation just like wow.

For me personally, I see it as like I myself really want to focus on myself as in this sport and focus on my progress as well. You can always look up to someone, and look at them as a role model and [indecipherable 15:33] but you can never really compare the same way other than your own self. It’s a good question overall, but that’s how I usually see that.

What brings you to Houston, I’m curious, if you’re training there right now?

Good question too. Basically, my girlfriend lives in the Houston. I’m actually door to door to [indecipherable 15:58] . I’m just trying to spend time with her, and Houston itself it’s a great area. It’s a great place for powerlifting. Not just powerlifting, I’m sorry, but the fitness industry overall.

I have seen and hear a lot of people moving into Texas area just because there’s [indecipherable 16:17] . The land is cheap too. There’s a lot of opportunities. [laughs] That’s what I’m doing currently in Houston.

Great place overall. Love the gyms, love the people, love the food. It’s great. A huge diversity in my opinion, compared to where I live in Pennsylvania. That’s why I also love it here as well. Just really be excited to come back again here and there, just meeting [indecipherable 16:43] .

Two weeks ago I went to Russ’s gym [indecipherable 16:48] .

Oh, Russ Orhii.

He invited me, and wow, that gym looks grand. I told him straight up like, ”You know what? This gym overall it’s going to increase the sport and awareness.” I just told him, ”Thanks for doing this, man. I appreciate it. You’re making this gym like a dream gym for a lot of people to just come through and lift.”

He’s a really cool guy. [laughs] Russ, if you’re watching this, man. He’s truly a humble person, honestly. Not only is he a world champion, but he’s truly humble about what he does. His goals and [indecipherable 17:27] are helping out the community. It’s really cool.

Really big things happening overall in Texas. It’s really cool.

Russ Orhii is someone we’ve been fortunate to have on the podcast as well, super fun guy. I will say if he invited me to work out with him, A, I wouldn’t be able to keep up. B, he likes to do a posedown afterwards because he’s got a good pump on. I would just run out of the building after that.

That guy, he looks as strong as he is. Let’s put it that way.

 Yeah. [laughs]

Which is not always the case, [laughs] in reality. I want to talk about the food in Houston because I’m obsessed…I grew up eating a lot of crawfish. Have you had crawfish in Houston?

Basically, it’s when I first met my girlfriend, it’s when I started trying crawfish. It’s good. I think it’s tedious work, in terms of getting the meat out of the tail.

 I’d rather have a lobster, I guess. Crawfish, in itself, it’s a better alternative. It’s a little bit cheaper to get a whole batch, right? [laughs]

You burn more calories eating it than you get from it. That’s the problem. Well, I don’t know if that’s scientifically true. It just feels like that for me.

[laughs] Right.

Not to mention catching. When I grew up, we had to go catch them, then cook them, and then eat them. That’s like a whole thing. You get just a little bit of meat, but crawfish is delicious. I know that it’s a staple of cuisine in Houston and on the Gulf, so I had to ask.

What’s the best thing you’ve eaten in Houston? You’re a powerlifter. I have to ask you about food.

[laughs] Believe it or not, well, if you look at a lot of my stories, a lot of people really get jealous because I eat sushi almost every single week, probably every single day. Sushi is my favorite food to go to.

When I first came to Texas, I strictly told myself I would not eat sushi here because the sushi here is probably really terrible. There’s no way that they have great quality fish over here. There’s no way, but I was wrong. [laughs] There is actually really great spots here. Sushi in itself is really good over here. I think I was just looking at the wrong places, but the sushi is great here.

I think the fried chicken is good over here. There’s no really specific like what’s to go to. It seems like Houston overall, there’s just so many different foods that are great. You can just really go for anything. It’s great.

I think the burgers are pretty good here, too. Unfortunately, in Pennsylvania there is no In-N-Out Burger. In-N-Out is only in California. They also have it in Texas. I saw they had like two or three locations here. It’s crazy, man.

When I went to In-N-Out a few weeks ago, the drive-through line was like two, three loops. It was crazy. This was during COVID too. People love that In-N-Out, man. It’s crazy. [laughs] Burgers and sushi are my top to go to, for sure.

 In-N-Out might be the place that is the most popular destination for people after a meet, if it’s in the city. I’ve been to weightlifting meets.

Weightlifting World Championships 2017 was in Anaheim. I can’t tell you how many people came up to me, even people from other countries. Some of whom didn’t…We had a little trouble communicating. I didn’t speak their native language. They didn’t speak great English, but they would ask me, “In-N-Out, do you know where the In-N-Out is?” It’s that legendary.

If you just come off a meet, you step off the platform, maybe you cut some weight for that meet, I don’t care if you’re a powerlifter, or a weightlifter, or a CrossFitter, something about a burger, and fries, and a milkshake, man.

Yeah. You want to know something actually very funny, now that you mentioned it. When I was in California, and my friend who lives in New Jersey, he loves In-N-Out. He loves the In-N-Out sauce. Basically he told me to grab a few of the In-N-Out sauce packets and bring it back. [laughs] It was in my suitcase the whole time, and it was hot in there.

I was like, “All right, Steven. If you want this, go ahead.” He’s like, “Oh, my God. It tastes amazing.” He wanted to use it on his burgers and stuff like that. It’s crazy, people really love that sauce, like the…What’s it called?

It’s their special sauce, right?

Yeah, it’s the special sauce, exactly. It’s crazy. But yeah, burgers, you can’t go wrong with it [indecipherable 22:06] .

Speaking of eating, we will make it relevant to strength sports, I promise [indecipherable 22:11] . I promise I am taking it…

 [laughs] It’s OK. I love to eat too.

That’s why people, you lift big, you eat big.

Exactly.

You are The Korean Hulk. I can’t not talk to you about food.

Exactly.

What is your first meal, post weigh-in? Maybe before you weigh-in in the morning, you’re lifting a little later on, you want to rehydrate, you want to fuel up. You might have cut 10 or 12 pounds, but you also need to be platform ready so you’re not just going start downing a pint of ice cream. What is that food for you?

I took a different approach actually for my last powerlifting meet that I did. That was a little bit more emotional for me just because there was my last meet as a junior. I really want to end in a good [indecipherable 23:03] . I really want to hit all my PRs, and really go for that perfect nine-for-nine-type of meet.

I took a different approach. I did lose a lot of weight, so I was like, “How am I supposed to gain all this weight back within two hours?”

The first thing I like to say is that I ate exactly what I would usually eat every day. That’s for me personally, I love eating breakfast sandwiches every single morning. I always make breakfast sandwiches. Usually that comes with a bagel, two, three eggs on top, and then bacon and cheese, and then boom, that’s so great. I love it. [laughs]

And In-N-Out special sauce on top of that.

Yeah, actually that sounds good. Basically that, and then a banana, and I don’t know why I thought this but I had boba tea as well. [laughs]

[indecipherable 23:55] boba tea?

Boba tea, yes.

That’s good. That’s sugar. It’s got some simple carbohydrate [indecipherable 24:00] .

 Yeah, I knew I was going to be bloated especially for my squats, but it was a great carryover right to deadlifts. I was like [indecipherable 24:07] . Everything just was great. I was eating a lot, to be honest. I had salt and vinegar chips as well. Of course, it’s because it has the sodium and stuff like that. I was munching on that a bit.

There was a local poke shop right next to the meet as well. I asked one of my friends to get me a poke as well. I was actually eating that right after weigh-ins, and luckily I was able to digest everything. It was perfect.

You did breakfast sandwich, and banana.

I eat a lot, yes.

And boba tea, and pokeball.

[laughs] Yeah.

I think you’re only allowed to go to competitions in major cities now because I don’t think every town has that variety of food right next to the venue.

Yeah. [laughs] It was in New Jersey, so a lot of the places just had a lot of convenience foods nearby. It wasn’t that [indecipherable 25:09] .

This has transitioned to the BarBend food podcast.

Right. [laughs]

We’re talking about cheat meals, bulking, and what you eat after weigh-ins. That would probably be more popular than our normal podcasts, but everyone [indecipherable 25:24] .

Oh, my gosh, yeah. We have a all-you-can-eat sushi place too right near the area as well. Literally right after I was on my meet, we actually went to all-you-can-eat sushi, where a lot of us…Us powerlifters, any time you order food, especially from a restaurant like that, they’ll look at us and be like, “Are you sure you want this much?” Like, “Yeah, we want this much.”

They had a sashimi, so we typically ordered about 200 pieces of those. 200 pieces of salmon sashimi is like a whole fish. [laughs] We would eat that, and it’s crazy. I guess when you’re powerlifting, you just get so hungry, you just want to eat. That’s the [indecipherable 26:06] all these things. When I got into powerlifting, I was just eating more. It’s crazy. [indecipherable 26:10] makes sense.

They can’t call you a glutton if you’re a powerlifter. That’s the rule, right?

Yeah. [laughs]

It’s all in the name of the game.

I agree. That’s what I was eating from my post weigh-ins. It’s crazy, but it works. It works. That was great.

Rich, where’s the best place for people to keep up to date with not only the food you’re eating, but your training and any upcoming competitions you might have. I know right now we’re in a period of time where there aren’t a ton of competitions on the calendar, but where’s the best place to follow you?

The only place that you can really follow me is @thekoreanhulk on my Instagram. That’s how people really know me as. @thekoreanhulk on Instagram. I do have a YouTube channel as well. I want to start putting more content on there as well, so you can also look me up on The Korean Hulk on YouTube.

I have my latest meet that I’ve handled [indecipherable 27:05] lifted as well, which is pretty cool. You can see how everything is done with how you handle people in the meet environment too. I’m very intense as well when it comes to supporting people and really making sure everyone do their best. Those are the two platforms I’m really pretty active on.

 We’ll accept no substitutes. This is the original Korean Hulk. Anyone else tries to claim it, they are lying

I was going to say, there’s only the one Korean Hulk, but I’ll say this. There is another Korean Hulk out there. Some people actually do reach out to me and troll on me, sometimes like, “You’re not the Korean Hulk, you are not the real Korean Hulk. This is the Korean Hulk.”

His is clearly without “The” on it. That dude is massive in itself as well. There’s two sides of Korean Hulk. There’s me and there’s people like him too, as well. That dude, he’s legit like a rock, pretty much.

Him and I, [laughs] we had a small little beef back then in terms of who was the true Korean Hulk, and stuff like that. I was like, “Eh, whatever.” It’s all fun and games when I get those kind of comments here and there. I’m like, “Whatever. It’s fine.”

I remember, in itself, I’m the one that had the name first anyways. There was a backlash about King of the Lifts was talking about, “Someone should trademark The Korean Hulk Instagram.” [laughs]

Rich, you’re number one in our book. That’s what matters.

I appreciate it.

We have it on the podcast.

 I appreciate it, thank you.

This is proving the pedigree of that. Rich, thank you so much for joining us.

 Best of luck to you and to the lifters you coach in upcoming meets as things hopefully return to normal in the state of powerlifting in the foreseeable future. I appreciate your time, and excited to see what’s next for you.

Hope so. Thank you so much, David. Appreciate it.