Coming off a fifth-place finish at the world amateur under-175-pound Strongman championships in Columbus, Ohio, last March, Cristian Candemir, who has found that intense challenges best enable him to grow, said he wanted to move up a class and to compete internationally.
The 29-year-old Montauker and Starbucks barista was training to compete in the under-175 division of the Middle East’s Strongest Man championships set for mid-November when he learned in September that he would indeed be moving up a class, given the invitation he’d received to compete in the inaugural America’s Strongest Man under-200 championships in Orlando, Fla., on Nov. 3 and 4.
“To be invited to what used to be a pro show is incredible . . . very exciting,” Candemir said Friday at The Star. “I had no idea, I wasn’t anticipating that I’d be invited to compete in the next class up.”
This summer, though, he learned that it was very hard for him to gain weight — “I couldn’t push past 205.” Thus, he has not been able to bulk up 10 to 20 pounds and chisel down in typical strongman fashion.
“The guys I’ll be going up against will be a lot stronger, but I’ll be happy to be there,” he said.
Asked how his summer had gone, Candemir, who was eating some steak, broccoli, and jasmine rice, said, “It was great . . . very, very busy. I work three jobs. I’m a barista at Starbucks” in East Hampton Village, “I drive electric shuttles to the beaches in East Hampton and Montauk — I’ve done that for three years — and I’m a personal trainer too.”
Was he bearing up well? “I’m taking it one day at a time,” the Montauker said with a smile. It was stressful sometimes at Starbucks, but it was “familiar stress.” When the middle school let out, he agreed, it was a madhouse.
As for training, he has been doing most of it at the Body Tech fitness studio at the Playhouse in Montauk, approximating as best he can the six Strongman events he’ll be asked to attempt in Orlando. He has also trained two to four times a month in the actual events he’ll be facing in Orlando at Todd Giorgi’s NY Strong gym in Mamaroneck. “Saxby Payton, whose father, Nathan, has been the dietitian for seven Strongest Man title-winners, is my dietitian,” he added. “She’s been great.”
Had he done just 1.5 points better at the world finals in Columbus, had he finished fourth, in other words, he would have had a go at three of them — the Ukrainian deadlift, the circus dumbbell series, and the power stairs lift and load. “Funny how life works . . . now I’ll get my chance.”
Candemir’s coach, Kalle Beck, who’s based in California, “is very adept at helping me adjust Strongman events to commercial gyms. There are no circus dumbbells, for instance, at Body Tech, so I do a javelin press with a regular barbell. . . . Another Orlando event is a 750-pound yoke — yes, like for oxen — that you have to pick up and carry 40 feet before dropping it and picking up two 300-pound ‘handles’ that you have to walk back 40 feet. They call that a ‘farmer’s carry.’ I did that in Columbus.”
To simulate the Ukrainian deadlift at Body Tech, he’s attached a chain of plates weighing 400 pounds to a kettlebell. “The power stairs are like the Ukrainian deadlift, but between the legs. You lift and jump up. It starts at 350 pounds . . . very uncomfortable.”
There will also be an axle bar that contestants at Orlando will have to clean and press, an event, Candemir said, that begins at 250 pounds, and a natural stone series, whose positioning problems remind him of the 265-pound fire hydrant he had to lift and hip-thrust onto a 48-inch-high platform in Columbus — the mystery event that, as it turned out, he had trained for, thanks to a friend of Matt Galcik’s in the city who had one from the turn of the last century in her front yard.
That the fire hydrant had been included in “the Arnolds” had been serendipitous, Candemir said at the time. His invitation to the under-200 America’s Strongest Man he views as serendipitous as well. “Pro cards aren’t given out to 175 or 200-pound competitors — I’m as close to having a pro card as a 175 or 200-pound competitor can be.”
