How World’s Strongest Man Brian Shaw went from farmhand to hauling firetrucks, Tug-of-War with a lion and 12,000 calories a day

Long before Brian Shaw was the World’s Strongest Man, he was a helping hand on his uncle’s farm.

The enormous stones, trucks and tires he’d go on to haul as an adult? All of that was built on a foundation of stacking hay in the sweltering heat.

‘Those are long, hot days, and that is definitely a character builder. Because you don’t get to stop when you’re tired. You get to stop when the when the work is done. And I think that that was certainly an important lesson for me to learn when I was young,’ he told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview.

Those lessons, ultimately, left their mark on Shaw, who is considered one of the most decorated athletes in the sport of strongman.

He claimed the title of World’s Strongest Man four times. Deadlifted an 1,128-pound Hummer Tire.

He even defeated a lion in a Tug of War once.

That journey through the sport of strongman is charted in the recently released documentary series Strongman: The Brian Shaw Story, which was released in August on Victory Road Studios.

The 43-year-old – who has taken up competitive arm wrestling since his retirement from strongman two years ago – led a highly-calculated path to the peak of the sport, eating up to 12,000 calories a day and following a strict training regimen.

And he’s maintained discipline following the end of his strongman career, too. Morning cold plunges or cold showers are a daily occurrence, while arm wrestling has provided has provided a fresh challenge as well.

‘It’s very mentally stimulating to have to get better at something and to try to learn these new techniques and new training drills,’ he says.

His initial entry into the world of strongman, though, was far less mapped out.

It may be hard to tell through his hulking physique (he topped out at 470 pounds), but Shaw was previously a basketball star in his native Colorado.

During a hoops career that ultimately led him to the collegiate level, he was drawn to the weight room like many other athletes looking to improve their craft. It became more than a means to an end, though.

‘It was all kind of a cornerstone through any challenge that I had in my life,’ he said, adding that he became ‘addicted’ to lifting and that it contributed to his confidence as a high schooler.

‘You know, whether it was a good day, a bad day, whatever, that 45-pound bar is always 45 pounds, and it doesn’t care if you had a good day or bad day. And you can always go in and be in control of your work ethic when you walk in to train.’

Shaw found himself at something of a crossroads after he finished playing basketball at Black Hills State University.

He wouldn’t be playing hoops at the pro level. Perhaps his calling was as a strength and conditioning coach, he pondered at the time.

But there was a competitive itch he needed to scratch.

‘I just wanted to challenge myself in every way possible, and that’s what strongman allowed me to do.’

Those long days on his uncle’s farm had given him a ‘base layer of strength,’ and – after quietly admiring the strongmen of a previous generation as a kid – he dove into the sport headfirst.

Soon, he had taken over his parents’ garage and backyard for training sessions. Later in his career, he became known for the extreme lengths he would go to in preparation for competitions, like visiting a local fire department and hauling one of their trucks.

‘If you want to be good at lifting stones, you have to lift stones.’

‘It’s something you truly have to live,’ he added of his commitment to strongman. ‘So when the cameras aren’t on, and when nobody’s watching it, what decisions do you make to get better? Are you getting all your food in? Are you sleeping? Are you doing your recovery work? Are you doing all your training with one goal in mind, of getting better and being the best?’

A large part of that commitment, as Shaw mentioned, was his Herculean diet.

He has scaled things back now (relatively, at least) and is down 100 pounds from his competition days, though he says now he was at one point eating five pounds of meat a day.

Rice was a ‘staple’ as well, while mounds of potatoes and vegetables would fill out his meals, which still remain structured to this day.

‘You kind of do that again and again.’

He continued: ‘The eating was the hardest part… eating needs to happen from when you wake up until you go to bed,’ he recalled. ‘So you’re you’re essentially never really getting a break from eating. Whereas the training, even a hard, hard training, you know, maybe three hours.’

There have been family decisions to weigh, too.

He and his wife, Keri, share sons Braxton, 9 and Kellen, 7.  But it wasn’t always clear how he would juggle strongman with his home life.

‘I will say that, the time away from the family was something I was always concerned about, because you never want to sacrifice that, especially with our two boys being younger,’ he said. ‘You know, that’s something that I never wanted to be like, “okay, that dad was always training, you’re always away.”‘

‘There’s different times where I had to get very good at being in the moment. So when I’m training, I walk in the gym, I close the door, I’ve got to be training. And when I’m out of the gym, then I need to be dad, I need to be a good husband,  I need to be a businessman. I need to do a lot of different things,’ he adds.

At times, Braxton and Kellen would be brought along to the weight room.  

‘I’ve always told them that I want them to dream big,’ Shaw says. ‘I want them to go after whatever they want to go after, and whatever they they want to do. I want them to try to be the best at it. 

‘…I want them to find their passion and what they’re passionate about.’

Shaw also hopes that the series can leave others with a similar sort of inspiration – one which he’s still finding himself in arm wrestling. 

‘It’s insight into, what it takes, but maintaining that type of mindset, where that drive and that focus, and kind of that singular focus of being the best at something, it’s interesting I think for a lot of people to see that impact,’ he said of the project. ‘Because for a lot of people out there, you don’t get to necessarily see that. You see the end result… but there’s also so much that goes into that.’

He adds in the documentary: ‘It’s not about fun. ‘Because to me, winning is fun.’ 

Shaw certainly did that when he defeated a lion in a Tug of War for a Mr. Beast collaboration.

And as things have come full circle back home, his family recently scored a major success there as well.

Decades after Shaw worked on his uncle’s farm, he built a chicken coop on his family’s property earlier this year – fittingly described as the ‘world’s biggest.’ 

It’s been an ‘escape’ from the stresses of daily life, Shaw said. But his lessons of graft and responsibility also appear to be working.

On October 1,  his family finally celebrated their first egg being laid from the coop. 

Shaw was actually out of town for the big moment. But it’s clear that the grit he displayed throughout his strongman career has made its way to his kin.

‘As long as they work hard enough,’ he said of his sons, ‘they can do whatever they want to do.’