an article in muscle and fitness magazine offers ways to keep strong during stressful times one way is to find a solid body weight program you can do at home while waiting for your favorite gym to open again tonight we talk to 1999 strongest man in america and get his advice it's good to have you here from los angeles this is klcs pbs welcome to everybody with angela williamson an innovation arts education and public affairs program everybody with angela williamson is made possible by viewers like you thank you and now your host dr angela williamson ode hogan is our guest ode thank you so much for being here thank you for having me before we get started i want to hear a little bit about you so tell us about yourself well i'm an old guy that done a lot of sports and business activities over the years going all the way back to starting lifting weights when i was 10 years old so that's i have to say 60 years ago and i made my first weights out of birchwood i grew up in norway and my hometown we didn't have nobody had weights but i was intent on lifting weights so i made my own and started when i was 10 years old and really never stopped wow okay you're going to go on but you are really young in a small hometown and you how did you even find out about weights i think actually i was looking at the you know the newsstand they had like the muscle magazine or back then and uh and they were all most of them were in like in english like either from the uk or america and i was reading i started reading those and i said this is for me i had to do this so yeah that's how i started basically wow it's amazing well and another question too i wanted to ask you is so how does this young person or young lad from norway get all the way over here to the u.s well i think because of the magazines and stuff like that reading i was always like i really wanted to go to america to train and do because it sounded like everybody was lifting weights here but of course i found out that the hard way that i came came here and i probably had better facilities when i where i left in norway but that wasn't here no there i actually first time i went to came to america i was in high school i was a exchange student in upstate new york for one year and then came went back finished school in norway and came back and went to college here and my question too you were talking about you came over here and you were an exchange student you went back home and you still wanted to come back to the united states yeah i definitely wanted to come back why did you want to come back to the united states well land of opportunity i guess i i mean i really always wanted to be here in america i think since i was a young kid i guess yeah and when you decided to come back so you came back for college and tell me when you how did you choose the university that you wanted to go to very funny story because in high school i was you know as an exchange student i could i i they had me do everything i was a bodybuilder but i tried out american football i tried out wrestling i did track and field stuff like that in upstate new york and i got this college colleges start talking to me but i'm not allowed to i was not allowed to take contact with them and they weren't allowed to really recruit me so i actually got like three three three colleges that approached me and said i'll give you scholarship just come over one was for uh brown university for wrestling no for for a real crowy accruing uh dartmouth for wrestling and then the school eventually went to western maryland college or mcdaniel college in western maryland and they said no you don't have to do anything if you want to play sports you can play sport but you want to hear to study so okay that sounds good and it was quiet the other two were not quiet and i said no not for me i had to record so you weren't coming to him no not to be in the boys school i wasn't coming here to go to boys school so that's basically what i was thinking well it's nice to know how you had your priorities straight at such a young age and so you come over here and you decide to study physical education what did you study yeah i said exercise science i was really interested since i started lifting weights early i was reading everything i mean i was actually learning english reading technical magazines and about training and all that type of thing so i was very interested in you know my my goal was really to get a phd in exercise physiology that's what was my goal was in my undergraduate school that's what i focused on at the same time as i you know played sport i led it in three sports and stuff like that in college as well but then after college when i actually got uh teaching us it's just shifts at a couple of big universities for for to get my phd but i uh signed to play football the band of albert uh with uh the washington football club now known as the hudson football club and uh but i never passed physical because i got i had an injury from running track in college because i ran a hundred and shot put discus i did everything uh high jumped even in high school in in college so i you know as big as i was i i tore my groin really bad in the last track meet i've entered and it never passed physical so i had to go and do some just part-time work in the summer waiting to go to school and i i i didn't uh i wasn't sure about the anymore sure about going right into grad school after playing football and i have to start working with i said no but wait a year so next year i went and signed with the 49ers played a few pre-season games got injured left and when i get up away injured wavers i didn't get on another team i could have gone the next year i guess but i went back to grad school but now i switched to mba program at berkeley and so that's how you get from maryland to california and you stay here yeah i stay here i stayed in northern california for a good portion of my adult life until about 1990 then i went to hawaii for like 10 years and then i went back to norway for a few years and then came here to southern california so actually now i've been in southern california about as long as i was in northern california and in between i was in in norway and in hawaii and i also read in your bio that when you were in hawaii you actually entered a competition so talk a little bit about that well that's what got me back in into strongman the strongman sport is like ireland it's all that is new uh in the sense that in the 80s 70s and 80s it was not something that you competed in so there was not any availability that's when it was probably the best age for doing it but uh uh you know all that was a tv program basically and uh and it was so it started here in southern california actually you know the world's strongest man like in 1977 but it was a tv show on i think cbs porch and uh but somebody got hurt and anyway it moved to be run in europe instead and then they only had one talk in america and come and compete for the next i think 10 15 years really and it never showed on the didn't show on us tv till uh in the 90s when he started showing it on espn and then the sports crew grew here from the grassroot and we started competing here and we were competing to get into real strongest man took me till i was 51 years old before i could get into world snows man that was my first real strongest man competition but there's a lot of competition local and regional and i i've traveled all over the world competing in you know world strongest man type competition for the audience at home explain to me and the audience about the strong man competition well for those that watched a lot of sports back in the 90s and early 2000s up till probably 2010 it was on espn all the time espn espn2 because they had reruns and everything with girls from us men so it had been on tv a lot in the last you know 30 years first uh but esp initially now i think it's on uh now it's on uh what is it cbs i think again back to cbs where it originally started but that's the only you know that's one competition a year all the other competitions are all over the place in the u.s has now become like the powerhouse in strongman because of the competitions we are holding locally and regionally and so forth and it consists of basically like you know who is the strongest he was the most functionally strength athlete it was a perfect sport for me that if i could have started with it and when i was in my 20s that would have been great but it was not such a thing because i was i was a olympia leaving norway it was a junior olympic great weight 15 championship i was a power lifting champion i was a track athlete at a very high level on shot put in discus for my age and age group and i was a bodybuilding champion so all of these things i was gonna look a jack-of-all-trade maybe not the master of any of them but uh definitely a jack-of-all-trade and um so there's a perfect sport for that because it's like when we compete in particular we're competing in like grand prix events in europe we don't even know what the events are they say you're gonna do six events you're gonna do a overhead lift you can either lift a log or an axle or something like that or then you're gonna load some stones you're gonna do this and that and that and then when you get there and you get something totally different but in any case it involves lifting lifting stones carrying stones dragging things pulling things semi trucks airplanes train involves carrying a lot of things obviously and and the sport takes a lot of speed and a lot of strength i mean a lot of people now are doing crossfit and stuff like that and that's an offshoot basically on a much lighter lighter version of it like where it's more of a probably more muscle uh conditioning or or endurance rather than absolute strength and to do crossfit you've got to be much smaller to do strong man you can be any size now because now we have weight classes and strong men as well and and strong woman i mean strong women is a very very growing sport we have multiple weight classes in that as well and for example at the training hall my training facility in newbury park last december we had a competition with six events and yet 105 athletes competing in one day over six events and i think about 40 for women so i could compete for this strongman competition yes you could yes we have it at all levels we have another one coming up in the end of november right here right after thanksgiving uh that weekend or the thanksgiving we have one and uh same as we did last year and it will be multiple classes we have men's novice events open we have teen teenage and masters men and then we have women know the same same same thing for women and multiple weight classes we are going to take a short break and then come back and then you're going to talk all about the training hall you're going to show people like me how we can be the next strongest man or woman in america and last but not least you are going to show us that grip stay tuned and come right back [Music] 145 over 92.
180 over 111. i had a heart attack and a cardiac arrest and then a stroke your blood pressure numbers could change your life if i would have followed a treatment plan i would not be in this situation lowering your high blood pressure could save you from a heart attack or stroke if you've stopped your treatment plan restart it or talk to your doctor about creating one that works better for you start taking the right steps at managerbp.org now i'm you know trying to get better shorter than ever [Music] welcome back okay oh tell us about this unliftable dumbbell you brought with you today yeah i thought maybe you're starting a segment here with i brought some prop with me it's not really a hollywood prop because it actually weighs a lot of my weight it's 172 pounds it's a replica of their thomas unliftable dumbbell the handle is the handle is as thick as a as a coke can and 99.9 over all strong people cannot lift it even off the ground so it's very it's very difficult but you know if you if you're strong big and strong you may be able to lift it i uh i set the world record on my 65th birthday [Music] thomas in stumble 172 the handle is the size of a coke can and that's all it is easy to pick up right my name is old haugen i'm originally from norway and i live in california 66 years old now and have been lifting weights or doing strength sports since i was 10 years old [Music] this year i'm going to attempt to lift the inch dumbbell 66 times i have a 10 minute time limit i hope i'll do it around six minutes because i'll be barely standing if i'm going to be taking 10 minutes on it if anybody out there has even tried to pick up the hunch dumbbell i think you'll understand how difficult this event is this is going to take a couple minutes so everybody let's cheer him on while he's going ladies and gentlemen we're ready to go this here for 66 years old hogan this is unbelievable it's not certain that any man of any age could do 50 or 60 of these [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have just three minutes and 45 seconds left odd time is ticking i'm afraid we're on 44. over 50 reps with the unliftable dumbbell two minutes and six seconds he's on 52. you gotta dig in here brother come on 54 the hands starting to open up that grip is getting fatigued this is not easy now 56.
10 more we have a less than 90 seconds on come on you're running out of time you got to go for it 60 seconds come on there's one number 60. come on come on man no matter what make it happen 30 seconds to go number 62 four more four more come on three to go 12 seconds come on [Applause] took up the 10 minute challenge and his 60 feet repetitions let's give him another one round of applause come on code hogan utmost respect from 10 000 people [Music] i know i shouldn't say but someone get about beer that man deserves it [Music] i'm not planning to do that today but maybe i can lift it once if i'm lucky because this is tough so i'm gonna go and just show you this what it is this is obviously not something for most people to do but if you want to come and try it out at the training hall we have two of them at the training hall and you can lift one or two i sometimes lift two at a time and it's always available for anybody when they come in and you think you're strong you got to try it at least and most people can't do it so it's just no matter grabbing it there's no real trick to it it's just like grabbing and holding on hard and lifting it up oh wow don't want to drop it yes definitely you don't want to drop that on your toes or on the floor yes yes so anyway that's all there is to it but anyway this is uh over 100 years old and um for the longest time nobody lifted it you know the guy that had it thomas in she lifted it in shows and some of them say uh he faked it sometimes because he had lighter ones that looked the same and but basically he uh he was very strong because he did it all the time i'm sure he was doing it like on the uh going to having shows every every few days or every week or something like that so anyway uh for for probably another 50 years or 60 years before people started uh trying it again uh i first saw it probably in the late 1990s i think and tried it and i could lift it right away most people can't but i i was able to lift it right away and some of the other strong man can do that too and how do you prepare to lift that i mean you said you were able to lift it right away yeah i mean i i didn't know first time i lifted i just lifted it up a little because that's what the truth the challenge was just to lift it a little bit so we just changed the channels because they're so easy so we lifted it changed it to lifting it dead lifting it all the way up but uh it's basically just all about the grip strength but because it's 172 pounds and you have to lift it with on the hand you still have to be you know your body got to be strong too because a very strong grip may not be able to lift it because they can't lift 172 pounds but uh anyway it's uh it's a fun fun gadget in a sense uh because it's uh very difficult i love how you say it's just a gadget yeah but you know i have another question for you too as people age sometimes it's hard to grip things so how can we do what can we do to actually work on our grip well there's a lot of things you can do for it and i it's good you brought that up because i think that's a very important point uh it is very important as you get older to you know your whole body being stronger because of bone density and so forth like that and grip strength i think is particularly important uh but you can use grippers for example like the you know those grippers you do like this that those would help do the grip but uh challenge your grip if you're lifting weights or during the training with barbells and stuff like that challenge your grip don't use straps and so forth that to make it easier to lift because the grip is really important probably the most core to your strength because somebody that's innately strong is usually have that are strong naturally without even training i usually have a strong grip as well so it's a very very important uh part of it and i think like if you've been sick and coming out of some illness and the doctor check check if you're getting better they usually have you squeeze stuff to see if you're actually getting better because the grip strength is very core to your uh overall health and do you find that people have problems with their grip not just with just aging but some of the jobs that they do as well yeah i mean most of us are really working in such a way that we don't use our hands very much here on the computer me included i all my life i've been an executive and basically been working on computers and stuff like that so i don't use my grip in my daily life in that sense but i always also but i always been lifting weights and always been training so that's why i opted that for part but when people come in and train for example the training hall we do incorporate a lot of grip training because it's a very important part and we have a ton of different handles and grip handles and apparatuses that you can use to do it to make it fun you actually have like a little challenge every sunday where we have two or three different events if we do everybody can come and just join and just try out these different things and see how high they can do it one thing that i love about the trainee hall is that you do have a lot of people that are part of this training hall because they do competitions like yourself but like regular people like me can also be part of the training hall as well right yes absolutely we have a lot of people from all walks of life and all levels of a competition we have a lot of people that want to be strong men strong women and we have people that just want to come in and get stronger and we also have some power lifters as well as people that do moss wrestling which is a straw another string sports we do uh it's a moss means stick in your kitchen language is it's an old ancient sport that's now become a modern sport eskimo calls it eskimo wrestling actually they asked him was to use it this is from the the modern version of it that we competing are from yakutia in northeastern siberia of russia and it's their national sport so they brought it back and they brought it back with english name moss is actually in their language stick not in russian but in the yakutian language stick and wrestling of course is wrestling in english so even in russia they call it moss wrestling they don't call it mars whatever whatever wrestling would be in the russian language they use the english word okay so then you're pulling you can be a real big jerk and lay on your side [Music] [Music] we're pretty evenly matched and on any given day either one of us will win and this has led to some serious epic battles you see in moss your average ballot is 5 to 15 seconds for it to hit 20 seconds at the marathon 30 seconds and that's an eternity when a bounce starts approaching a minute you're seeing gods you don't even pray to real mark and i often have some of the longest matches in the tournament like this [Music] so this is the modern version but my ancestors their vikings uh i used to do it and it was a a common physical education activity or a physical activity or game up through the early 19th century i was born in 1950 in my hometown they never did it so i never had heard of it until i came here but but uh in some some cultures like in uh in the islands out of scotland which has a lot of viking leftovers and they they have a sport they do that activity and some of the the uh scottish highland games had it in their games up through uh but things change so people are loose and things come back and stuff like that and now it's back it's a big international sports we have over 55 countries that are members of the international mars federation and we have a you know really formal sport that we hope to make into the olympics someday maybe in l.a no that would be great like we don't have enough stuff going on in la but we can always use more especially when it has to do with health and fitness and oh thank you so much for coming on and just bringing it down to the level of us regular folk out here so we can be our own strong people as well and the trainee hall is tell us again newberry and newbury park and it's uh you know obviously we are at this point we have outside area so we can train under the new covid 19 regulations but we have an outdoor area and we can bring the equipment outside we have equipment outside so it's open from the from that standpoint we really don't have any uh you had to contact us to sign up but other than that we don't uh you don't have classes it's basically all all uh you know you work out on the individual basis thank you so much and you heard that everyone they are open right now so definitely you want to follow up and look for the training hall in newberry park and thank you so much for being part of our show today it's been a very interesting show and it's because of viewers like you it's a reason that we have this show follow us on social media good night and stay well [Music] you
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