Petr Petráš - when I make 1140 kg, then I will be the strongest in the world!

As you already know from us, the Czech "crumb" Petr Petráš, a member of the Extrifit team, dominated this year's prestigious Big Dogs powerlifting competition with a total of 1120 kg, only 20 kg behind the highest performance in history!

Today we offer you Petr's retrospective on the competition and his performance, through an interview with Pavel Vacek, PR manager of the Extrifit brand.

[Text. After all, it's not so surprising. The Big Dogs has a very short history, it is only the third time it has been held, but in such a short time it has earned a considerable reputation by following a simple recipe. Only selected invited powerlifters can compete, the best of the best of course, and the winner gets a fat bonus of 22k. Australian dollars. Petr Petráš won this competition with the second best 1120 kg RAW performance in history and thus aroused an unusually high response. In the following interview we will take a closer look at the atmosphere of the competition and take a detailed look at the individual attempts.

Hi Peter, when I called you, you were just training. I was quite surprised, I thought you would be resting a bit after your incredible performance.

So I haven't been exercising after the races, but when it's been over a week, it's too long for me to just lay around and do nothing. But I was just stretching. No heavy benches or deadlifts, I don't even want to see that for a while now.

How long do you take off from those basic lifting exercises?

Well... I've been training for four months now. I'd like to lose some weight now, I'll keep some 150-155 kg and at this body weight I'll do some medium strength training. So that's kind of how I would see it for now.

What is moderate strength for Petr Petras?

Well, I'm not going to spell it out, am I? I don't know..., well, the squats up to 350 kg, the benches up to 220 kg, the deadlifts up to 320 kg, I don't think more...

Those are still terrible numbers. Don't you feel that when you talk to normal exercisers and tell them you're gonna do 300kg squats so lightly for stretching, they think you're kidding them?

(Laughs) So I don't know, well... So they've got a hard time, well... (Laughs) What do I tell them? That's just the way it is.

Have you actually gotten over the fact that you're one of the strongest people in the whole world now?

When I'm over 1,140 kilos, then I can say this. Other than that, yeah, it's nice to win the Big Dogs, but I'm not living it yet. I'm going back to work on Monday.

Still, it must have been a great experience for you, right? We've been talking about this competition for three years and now it's finally happened.

Yeah, that's right. Three years ago I was going to do it for the first time, but I busted my chest then, then it didn't work out because of finances because Extrifit would pay for the trip, like this year, but I didn't have the support team for it and it was only this year that it all came together. Well, but what am I going to tell you? I fucked up as much as I could there, so it didn't really go to plan, and I didn't really enjoy the competition that much as a result.

Before we get into the individual attempts, I was wondering if Big Dogs will motivate you for next year?

Yeah, I definitely want to race there again. They've invited me to do Pro RAW in March now, but that's too early for me. I'd have to take two months off and jump back into it. I'm not the type that can put on a world-class performance 3 times a year. I mean, it's not that I can't compete, I can and I can win with some fun totals, but I want to beat my total every time and that wouldn't be possible with that many races.

So let's get to the individual attempts. It seemed to me that you started the competition very nervously. The first squat attempt didn't quite work out, did it?

I'll start off by saying that this is the last time I'll be going in without my bandages because I had someone else's, theirs, but they twist in a completely different way. I tried it two days before, we changed some things so it was better, but it still wasn't the same at that race. They take a long time and still don't reel you in like you're used to from home. I'm a very bloodthirsty guy and only Green and Czech can be very bloodthirsty. So I'm having trouble getting someone to wrap bandages here in the Czech Republic. He must have the strength in his fingers to wrap it. And then, as it took a long time, they were already waiting for me, they were already swearing at me, so it was all rushed. But anyway, it was mostly my fault because I reported my rack too high and I couldn't dig it out from there. So when I tried to hook it, it got a little bit stuck and it went down my back. At first I thought it was loaded with shit and I could hold it, but I had to throw it away because it started breaking my fingers. After all, you can't hold 420 kg in your fingers, can you? But throwing it backwards and not making the first attempt at the race, that was the first time that's ever happened to me.

You can see in the video that the helpers were sweating when they caught the barbell.

He behind me saw that there was this problem, so he was prepared. But, you know, that 400 kilos is not the same to catch in your arms as a three-pound kid...

The second attempt seemed fine...

... well, okay... I knew I was trained. I squatted 470 pounds at home, so I had the 450 pounds loaded, but I'll tell you straight up, I've never squatted heavier than 450 pounds in my life. Like if the bandages aren't wound well, it's hard with that weight... Like the guys tried, but when you don't have your own guy there, it's stupid... Plus, when I was nervous after that first attempt, I threw up while warming up. I threw up in the hallway and in the bathroom. I was fine, I don't know what happened. I was warming up with 375 kg, I squatted it and suddenly it just kind of unscrewed and I couldn't hold it back. And now I had to go with an empty stomach to the 450 kg... So I was so sleepy after the vomiting and I didn't want to go there. So I started sucking on these Express gels, they woke me up a lot. I ate a banana and stuff, but the fast sugars in the Express and the caffeine helped. You know, I react a lot to those stimulants. So it still worked out pretty well for the misery and I didn't lose much to the others.

One other thing caught my eye. Purely from a layman's point of view. That dumbbell axis didn't bend a millimeter at the heaviest weights. Is that a very special bar?

There used to be a special bar for squats that is hardened to a ton, and that bar alone is 25 kilos. Compared to the Eleik, it's about five kilos heavier. But the Eleiko is better to squat with because it sort of hems you in and that helps a little bit. This one's so hard, it doesn't help you by a kilo. The Eleiko is mainly used by weightlifters because it gets them in and they can use it.

And you train with which axle in the Czech Republic?

The hard one. I bought one. That's my axle actually, so I'm used to the hard one. But they all train on it. It has the advantage that it's a little bit longer, and as all these guys are big, it's hard to fit under the normal one, because when you hold it on the edges, it breaks your wrists and elbows and it hurts your tendons.

All right, let's move on to the bench. That's where you caught up.

Yeah, I've got a strong bench, so I knew I could outrun them all here. Not by much, of course, but I managed to get it straightened out and I knew that now it was dead heat. I calmed down a little bit on the bank and it was better.

So how did the dead bodies go?

After the squats and the benches, it was still pretty even, so it was clear that the dead man would decide. Especially the holds. But they almost all got callouses on the corpses, so it worked out the way it did. I just didn't have the strength for the 400 kilos anymore. I was good, nothing broke off, but the strength wasn't there anymore.

You say you didn't have the strength, so it seems like you didn't lift it, but you did, you just didn't get it recognized. Why?

JJ, I did pull it, but I did have a momentary drop, if you noticed. And that's why I didn't get it, that can't be. The barbell's supposed to go up smoothly, but it didn't. I dropped a little bit because.... I don't really know why. I just ran out of strength. I myself felt it wasn't quite finished because I knew my head wasn't straight. When you finish, you stand up straight, you look at the referee, you know you've finished, but if you can't look properly, you're still sort of pulling. So I knew they wouldn't give it to me.

Did you even have time to watch your opponent? Manuel Odell was probably the one that bothered you the most, right?

Yeah, he's a local, Australian, former rugby player. He was a very good opponent, very cool. He squatted 10 kilos more and then I think he pushed 15 kilos less on the bench. He was putting 390 kg on the deadlift, but I had the feeling that they were trying to confuse me or make me nervous or something... But I did my own thing. It's because when I compete here, I have no competition, so I'm really only competing with myself. I'm the last one to come to all the trials here, so I'm used to just focusing on myself and not noticing it too much.

So when you find out that you're losing by ten kilos, does that make you nervous or does it make you feel better?

Well, when I didn't put the base in, I got really angry. I was like, this is all fucked up... well... I was really pissed off at that point and normally I would have repeated that base. But here it was different, a lot of competition and I thought to myself that the 420 kilos is light, I've got it trained and I made the move to have 450 kilos loaded straight in. I think I would have put more, but as I said, a lot of things didn't sit right during that squat, bad constellation and at least it turned out like that.

Petr Petráš and his competition attempts:

I can't forget the ending when we all took out our handkerchiefs and started booing as he knelt in front of his girlfriend and now fiancée Denisa. Did he hide the ring somewhere in his underwear?

(laughs) No, Franta Brejcha had it on him. But I didn't tell him until three days before we left. I told him, if I don't win, don't even give it to me...

So the family luck was in trouble because of the squat?

Well, I would have proposed to Denise on a beach or something, but not there, well... (laughs)

What did Denise say?

Well, how about that? She said she had a clinical death there, because if she could, she'd pick it up for me. She's been coming to training with me, she knows how I feel and she knows when I can't, when to support me and stuff... She's been through a lot.

How did you even celebrate your victory being a teetotaler?

How did you...? Not really. I had an Agrezz during the race, and you know how I am with that. I can't even do that normally, how strong it is on me. But now I've had it, and I'm up till 2am staring out of the window and at the ceiling, and now the pain of the race was getting to me... So I drank a litre of milk and tried to sleep. I guess that's how I celebrated.

Did you have any more supplements with you?

Yeah, I did. V52, vitamins, that Agrezz and Express Gels, magnesium and magnesium for cramps, and some protein because I can't eat breakfast without it. I have cereal and protein for breakfast every day and I don't know how I could have eaten that bread and sausage all those years ago. I wouldn't have that today and that was a big change in how I got to you, knowing more about food and stuff..

Tell me again, how did Australia affect you?

Australia is very nice, it's clean, the people are so helpful and nice. I haven't met an unpleasant shop assistant in all my time there. But if it wasn't for the organizer, Mark Markopoulos and his brother, I probably wouldn't have seen much anyway. He had this older, but very modified Ford, so he drove us around in that, took us to the beach and stuff. He gave us homemade kangaroo sausages. The kangaroo meat in general is awfully good. It's almost fat-free, it doesn't make you feel heavy, even the sausages. Here, you get a sausage and you burp it for two days. The food there was so good, you could tell right away.

Well, wasn't there an offer to stay and train there?

Yeah, there was. But I don't speak English, that would be a problem.

Well, I guess you could learn if you stayed there for a while.

Oh, I don't know. I think I'd squat 500 pounds before I could learn English.

I thank you for the interview, Peter, and I hope that the 500 kilos will fall there next time.