ANDREW FLYNN managed to qualify for World’s Strongest Man by training in his own back garden.
Flynn, 33, will be flying to Sacramento later this month to compete against the biggest and best strongmen from around the globe – all thanks to his “poky little 8×4 single breeze block”;; home gym.
The former rugby hopeful has been lifting weights since he was 13 and training as a for 10 years, but this will be his first crack at the sport’s biggest competition.
Flynn fell into strongman when he moved house and realised that he couldn’t chase his dreams to be a rugby star and balance his life at home with a new house.
He told SunSport: “I used to play a lot of rugby, but I bought a house with my missus and I couldn’t play the rugby games and do up a house and start a family all at the same time.
“Instead I started to go to a gym near my new house, and the gym I was training at there was a strongman gym.
“They ran Worthing’s strongest man and I would see the people there that were training for it.
“So it’s kind of one of those things where I wanted to be a rugby player but I couldn’t commit to it that much.
“And there was this gym here and I could be a strong man and I could give my time to it. So I thought, I’ll give it a go.”;;
Flynn recalls taking to it “like a fish to water”;; thanks to his rugby background and his wide frame, but never thought that he would be heading to California to compete for nearly £100,000 just a few years later.
Another house move some six years ago meant that he would have to start training in his garden, something that hasn’t changed since.
Flynn heads outside where he uses a mix of weights and makeshift equipment like sandbags to prepare himself to take on the biggest names in strongman.
The 33-year-old, who could show his ‘gym’ from his window, said: “If I showed you my gym, you think ‘no, not a chance he can train for World’s Strongest Man’.
“Because it literally is just like a pokey little, eight by four single breeze block building.
“And I’ve personally built an extension on it so I could train out there in the winter because the ceiling was so low when we moved that I couldn’t even overhead press in there. So that’s why I built like a little lean-to on it.”;;
The East Sussex strongman, who weighs in at nearly 22 stone, used that gym to train for every competition that led up to his qualification for World’s Strongest Man.
It’s been a long process for Flynn, starting with virtual qualification 15 months ago to finishing third in Britain’s Strongest Man by just HALF A POINT in February – a competition that sealed his spot in Sacramento.
Flynn admits it feels “bizarre”;; to call himself one of the strongest men in the world, and after the realisation of what was ahead of him felt he needed to at least try and train at a proper gym once a week.
95 per cent of my training that I’ve done for the past six or seven years has been at the bottom of my garden
Andrew Flynn
He added: “For the World’s Strongest Man I’ve got a coach in Southampton, and he owns a gym. So on a Saturday, I’ll go to him.
“But that’s not regular, 95 per cent of my training that I’ve done for the past six or seven years has been at the bottom of my garden”;;.
The home gym is a necessity more than anything, as Flynn balances being a husband, father of two, strongman competitor and holding a full-time job in materials control for Southern Railway.
He said: “I can’t go to work, come home, travel to a gym, and come back again. It isn’t feasible, wouldn’t happen.
“It’s one of those things that I don’t have the choice about, if you know what I mean? This is the best that I can do, so this is what I’ll do.”;;
Balancing that job means Flynn has an incredible schedule that sees him non-stop working from 6am until around 11pm.
He explained: “I get up at 6am, get on the train up to East Croydon, and then I walk from his East Croydon to Selhurst. I’ll do my work and then I’ll get back about 4pm.
“Then I’ve got about two or three hours looking after the kids, put them to bed, and then usually get down to the gym between 7pm or 8pm. And I’ll get back from the bottom of my garden at around 10:30pm.
“It’s quite intense. You get into it straight away. It’s kind of like, you know, getting in, have food, shower, bed and up again at 6am.
“It’s not optimal for sleep. So I’m tired, but then again, I’m used to that having two kids, so I doesn’t really faze me.”;;
That schedule requires Flynn to keep himself fuelled, which is why he and his nutritionist have put together a plan that sees him eat roughly 6,000 CALORIES per day – spending nearly £5,000 per year on his own meals.
He describes his meals as “buckets and troughs of food”;;, but knows that eating clean will help give him a competitive edge in the USA.
It may sound like an easy ride, nipping down to the bottom of the garden to workout and managing to earn a spot in the World’s Strongest Man.
But the 6ft 2in muscle man has battled with injuries along the way, suffering from two ruptured biceps – meaning his bicep has literally ripped off the bone – and a slipped disc in his neck.
He recalled: “I’ve detached both my biceps doing strongman. What happens is, because we do this all the time it’s normally a lack of concentration.
“Sometimes the environment gets to you a bit too much, which I think then means you do something in an error, which then makes you get injured.
“When you rupture your bicep all the nerves go with it. So I couldn’t feel it... but you feel a click in your arm.
“It’s almost like if you clicked your fingers or something like that, but imagine it’s your whole bicep.
“I’ve since had operations to have both of them reattached. Before I had injuries, I thought I was a bit more invincible and I’d be fine.
“Then you have two bicep ruptures and a disc in my neck and now I’m a bit more wary of my body. There’s a life after strongman, so I don’t want to completely do myself in.”;;
That life would be his wife Ruby and their eight and six-year-old kids, who he has payed out of pocket to bring along to Sacramento with him.
Flynn described the gym as “part of his life”;; and a “non-negotiable”;;, but still sees himself as an underdog when it comes to this month’s competition.
Discussing his goals in the States, he humbly said: “I don’t have high expectations when you’re against 25 of the best guys in the world, not to say that I’m rubbish.
“I just want to do what I can do to the best of my ability and I’m hoping maybe that’s good enough to get me near.”;;
