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Muscles in play on Saturdays

At the Clearwater home of the reigning heavyweight champ, Strongman competitors flex, lift and strain.

By TIFFANI SHERMAN
Published January 31, 2005

CLEARWATER - What do an ordained minister, a sheriff's deputy and a self-proclaimed computer geek have in common?

They're some of Florida's strongest men.

How strong?

Think about flipping over a 650-pound tire from an earth-mover. Or carrying a keg full of sloshing water or lead shot over your head. Or lifting and placing a huge and hard-to-grip stone, maybe weighing more than 300 pounds.

This is how Tom Mitchell and his friends spend their Saturdays.

"You have to have a tremendous amount of strength, endurance, technique and mental toughness," said Mitchell, 44, of Clearwater. "It's functional strength."

He should know. Mitchell is the reigning heavyweight division winner of Florida's Strongest Man competition.

"I was the proverbial fat kid in high school. I got made fun of a lot," Mitchell said. "That doesn't happen so much anymore."

Up to 15 strength athletes at a time gather at Mitchell's Clearwater home on Saturdays to practice. When they do, people walk or drive down the busy residential street to gawk.

"You look at big tires at red lights and say, "I could flip that,"' said Pinellas County sheriff's deputy Steve Elrod, 44, of Clearwater.

He started strongman training in 2000 while trying to rehabilitate a knee and ankle he injured on the job. Two doctors wanted to amputate his foot, he said. Now Elrod is strong enough to place third in the national competition of the North American Strongman Society.

"You have to use your whole body to do everything you do," he said.

The leg muscles help lift, as does the back. The shoulders and other muscles support and push the extreme weight. After a workout, the whole body is sore.

"You know it is going to hurt," said Joshua Davis, 26, of Clearwater, "but it's worth the accomplishment when you're done."

Davis is a computer consultant and says he is "strong among geeks." He's also strong among the nongeek population; he placed third in Central Florida's Strongest Man competition.

Only the top two or three professionals make a living being strong. The rest have day jobs, just like amateurs.

Being Florida's strongest man "pays about as much as being Florida's weakest man," said Mitchell, who is the pastor of Word of Truth Ministries church on 122nd Avenue N in Clearwater.

Not every gym powerlifter can be a strongman. Gym weights are constant, and lifters always have something to grasp. Not so in strongman contests. The tires can be taller than the men flipping them, and the round stones have no handles.

"Getting (the stone) off the ground is the hard part," Davis said. "If you can get your arms around it, you can lift it."

The men say they sometimes put their raw strength to good use.

"I got a call this week to help my friends move," Elrod said. "Moving furniture is easier."

[Last modified January 31, 2005, 00:38:15]