Laurence Shahlaei: How To Be Your Strongest Self

GSN: Hi Big Loz! Since you stopped competing full-time in 2021, you’ve been smashing it as a coach, pundit, and YouTuber alongside your wife Liz. How are you settling into your new life?

Big Loz: It’s weird! It’s been an amazing transition from being an athlete to having this different role, where I’m doing lots of coaching, but also promoting the sport. There’s a lot of people who know me now as ‘Big Loz’ from YouTube, who don’t even know I was a competitor.

I’ll train later today, but first I’ve got work to do this morning. I’ll be programming for coaching clients, doing the school run, and I’ve got a couple of videos to film ready for our YouTube with World’s Strongest Man coming up next month.

GSN: How did you get into strength?

Big Loz: I’ve been interested in strongman since a very young age. I remember watching O.D. Wilson pull a truck at World’s Strongest Man, and I just thought this guy was a superhero. I was a young lad, and I thought wow, that’s so amazing – I’d love to be able to do stuff like that.

Through the years there’s been so many impressive strength performances, and hopefully I’ve done a few myself that have inspired people to get involved in the sport. I suppose I just like seeing people push themselves to these new limits.

GSN: What’s your approach to training, as an athlete and coach? 

Big Loz: The mental well-being of my clients is more important than the results. That’s not to say we don’t want results, but I focus on a slower, more long-term approach, rather than getting the athlete super-strong fast but then causing them to burn out. You see a lot of people in strongman and powerlifting who get strong really quickly, and then they disappear.

So, my approach is trying to keep that mental health as good as possible, and trying to focus on enjoying it first and foremost, so that we’ll keep coming back. They’re really important factors.

It’s better to keep progressing gradually, rather than having peaks and troughs where your strength goes up and down. If you steadily progress, you’re more likely to have a long, successful career and do extremely well over that period.

Ben also crafted some wonderfully tasty jalapeno & cheddar to accompany our Panko Breaded Chicken Bites, a recipe which definitely involves more cooking than this one, but is entirely worth it.

Find it here.

GSN: You’ve got a lot on your plate – YouTubing, coaching and still breaking world records. What’s next?

Big Loz: I’ve got a busy year, to be honest. Competition-wise I’m doing the Tattooed & Strong Push/Pull powerlifting comp in Manchester, the British Masters Strongest Man competition in May, and if that goes well I’ll compete at the World Masters in America in December.

I’m also gonna go to Scotland and try the Dinnie Stones again. I’ve got the current world record, and I’d like to try and go up and go all the way across the bridge, which has never been done before. That’d be cool to try. I love it up there, and the atmosphere is amazing.

I’ll also be doing commentary for ESPN, and content for YouTube at Europe’s Strongest Man, World’s Strongest Man… literally every few weeks we’re somewhere.

We’re travelling all over the world, commenting on strongman, reporting on strongman, all the different weight categories, men’s and women’s. It’s an amazing position to be in, and I’m very lucky.

GSN: What would be your advice to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps, and become one of the world’s strongest people? 

Big Loz: It’s a hard question because everyone’s different. One thing that’s important to understand with something like heavyweight strongman is that genetics play a role. A lot of people find this very hard to accept.

My advice is to focus on enjoying everything first. If you enjoy strength training, you can go to the gym and progress, compete in novice competitions and work your way up. If you enjoy it, you stick with it. But if you come in and your goal is to be the world’s strongest man, and you’re not genetically gifted, it’s gonna take you much longer.

You should have no limits on where you can get to, because who knows how good you can be? All of us can achieve whatever we want, but we have to be realistic about the process. Focus on the next goal, rather than the top goal – if you keep doing that, the top goal keeps getting closer.

For more Laurence Shahlaei content, follow @BigLozOfficial on Youtube and @biglozwsm on Instagram.