Strongman fans, rejoice! Zydrunas Savickas has appeared in a lengthy interview in which he discusses a tremendous variety of aspects related to his training, and luckily for us, it’s been translated into English. Take a look at the video below, which was filmed in Lithuania’s capital of Vilnius.
Hailing from Lithuania, Big Z is one of the biggest names in strongman, with his main rivals being Brian Shaw and frenemy Hafthor Bjornsson. Bjornsson may be better known outside of the world of strongman and Brian Shaw is rapidly accumulating titles, but Big Z has a serious resume: he has won the World’s Strongest Man four times and Lithuania’s Strongest Man eleven times, and he’s a two-time IFSA Strongman World Champion, eight-time Arnold Strongman Classic winner, three-time Europe’s Strongest Man, and four-time World Log Lift Champion.
Some highlights from the clip: he condones partial reps for extra muscle, when training for a competition his regime revolves around two-rep sets, and he’s a surprisingly big fan of the Smith machine.
“It’s much safer,” he says, “because during the competitions, you can’t risk… there were some bad accidents, so I don’t want that to happen to me.”
That said, he wasn’t using the Smith machine when he was squatting 340kg (749.5lb) for 5×5 last month, so it’s clear he like some variety in his training.
Sadly, Big Z announced earlier this week that he won’t be participating in this year’s Arnold Classic. While performing a 710kg (1565.3lb) yoke walk, the yoke squeezed his nerves and disconnected his deltoid muscle. We’ll have to wait a little longer for a face-off between Big Z and Brian Shaw.
For now, we wish all the best to Savickas and hope for a speedy recovery.
Featured image via Zizas on YouTube.
