Tom Stoltman was diagnosed with autism at an early age, and he says he remembers the teachers that painted a bleak picture for his future. But last month, a day before his 28th birthday, he became only the 10th person to win the World’s Strongest Man competition twice.
The 6’8, 384-pound Scotsman was always athletic, and he shifted his focus from soccer to weight training when he was 16 and never looked back. He had plenty of motivation growing up under the same roof with his brother Luke—an elite strongman competitor in his own right. Now he holds the world record for heaviest Atlas Stone lifted (630 pounds), but he says there’s nothing like the prestige that comes with being known as the World’s Strong Man.
Stoltman sat down with GQ to discuss the sacrifices he made to secure back-to-back titles, high-calorie fueling before competition, and how he recovers from these enormous lifts.
For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and other high performers about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.
GQ: Looking at your YouTube channel, the eating leading up to comp is insane. What's a day of meals look like?
Tom Stoltman: The week before World Strongest Man is the most intense for food in our life. It’s about 13,000 calories, but that’s only one week out of the year. Obviously, in America, the meals are triple the size of what they are in the UK [laughs]. I always go to IHOP first thing in the morning. I get a pancake stack with strawberries, bananas, honey, and anything I really want on there and I’ll demolish that. About two hours later, I’ll get a wee snack of my choice. Lunchtime is a burger or a double burger and chips. I’ll repeat that meal three times in a day, so I’ll have three burgers and chips in a day—that’s when I’m in America a week before comp. My last meal of the day is usually something with pasta because it’s extra starchy and it’ll sit in your belly and digest slowly. Then maybe some chocolate cake at night. I do that for a week—World’s Strongest Man is a six-day event and you’re burning so many calories throughout the day.
I know it sounds like a lot of food but when you break it down, you’re probably burning over 6 or 7,000 calories a day during the event. I always go on about peaking, and that kind of food is what’s best for me to get my energy and strength at 100 percent. But I don’t enjoy it. By the end of the week, I’ve put on 10 kilograms, I can hardly walk and I’m not sure how I lift. People will look at that and say it’s unhealthy, but we eat for fuel—we’re not eating for quality. We’re eating to use it to be the most effective we can for lifting weights. If we just ate chicken, to get the same effect, you’re going to have to probably eat eight or nine chicken breasts. Why do that when you can just eat a burger and chips? But yeah, i you’re in our hotel rooms the week before comp, it’s just disgusting to witness that amount of food.
How do you train to be at your peak for a competition?
It’s about 10 weeks. We have training cycles, so the first two weeks is more of getting the feel of things, seeing where you are and just talking with your coach to see what the plan is. For me, it’s about eight weeks and that’s the best training cycle because it gives me enough time to peak. The first few weeks is conditioning and high reps—getting my body fit, healthy, and used to the reps. The next few weeks is the strength stuff—dropping down the reps and sets and increasing the weight. The last week you’ll know if you peaked right because it’s really light weights just to get you aggressive and get your edge.
You want to be 100 percent the first day of competition. You can feel a bit rubbish a few days before it but as soon as the comp comes, you want to be at your best. I have nutritionists and coaches but the perfect training cycle for me is eight weeks, and they plan it perfectly for me. Any more than that and I just peak too early or burn out quickly. It’s really hard to get that perfect balance and you need to try and find that because it’s very important in strongman not to overtrain or undertrain.
What does recovery look like after a hard training session?
I like to do the hot and cold contrast. We have a cold tub in our gym and it’s 36 degrees Fahrenheit. My thing is usually two minutes cold, five minutes hot. Each day, I try and increase the time with the cold. I won’t ever go above five minutes in the cold tub but when my training gets intense, that’s when the need for recovery gets higher. If I have a light week, I’ll only do a minute in the cold and two minutes in the hot. As it gets closer to competition, just like the food gets increased, my recovery is increased.
Physio is also really important. I do three massages a week. One is injury prevention and stretching. Another one is the dry needling, and the other is deep tissue. I do mobility as well, which over the last year has been key to keep myself as mobile as I can. That really benefits recovery as well because you can get into positions other strongmen can’t get into because they’re not as mobile. Conditioning as well, because that aids in recovery. For me, I tend to focus more on recovery and food than what I do in the gym because that’s what wins you the competitions. If your recovery and food is off, you’re never going to be able to compete with the best.
How does it feel to be back-to-back World's Strongest Man?
When I won it in 2021, I always wanted to come back and battle again. I think if you win the title, you should go back and try and defend it. I did that successfully and the best thing about it was having my wife and some friends out there because [the restrictions] with COVID are easing up. I was able to enjoy it with her, which was amazing. She hasn't been able to come out for a few years and to do that in front of her made it more special.
I just think about all the hard work and sacrifice. I’m willing to sacrifice a lot of things to do what I need to, and I think that’s what makes me different—I work harder than the rest and I sacrifice a lot to be the best in the world.
What have been some of those sacrifices?
The last two years have been especially hard with COVID. I had to train totally differently than I trained before. I had to separate a wee bit from my wife and family because I was in the mindset of, I’m going over to the World’s Strongest Man by myself, so I need to train and be able to do everything by myself. That entire period was hard. It’s already a very lonely sport as it is and all I was doing was training, going home, eating and sleeping, I didn’t see my dad for nine weeks straight and it’s a very hard thing, especially when he’s getting older. The training is massive but it’s kind of the easy part—even the recovery and the stuff you do outside of the gym. But you can’t really have a social life. You can’t go and enjoy time with your wife because you’ve got meals to eat, video, and recovery to do. 24-7, your brain is just on the strongman and that's very hard. Luckily, I have a wife that supports me and is supportive of what I do. It’s a lonely sport but it’s even lonelier when you have to sacrifice time with the people in your life.
What does a celebratory meal look like after becoming back-to-back World Strongest Man?
[Laughs[ A big, massive pint and as many carbs as I can eat. It was a lot of burgers, pasta and loads of sweets. I love all jelly sweets and cakes. Just be as fat as I can be and drunk as I can.
You’ve been training for the strongman since you were 17. What drew you to compete knowing the commitment involved?
Having my brother around. He’s 10 years older than me and he had already been in the gym for years before I joined. I saw the competitiveness from him in seeing a few of his competitions. I saw how good he was at it, and he was beating people who were the best in Scotland. It was like if he can do it, why can’t I go do it? He took me into the gym, and I think I got a bit more competitive once me and him started training together, because you always want to beat your brother. I saw him getting bigger, so I wanted to get big. I saw him getting stronger, so I wanted to get stronger. Him pushing and helping me stay on the right track in the gym and with the diet to start got me obsessed to want to be better than him. We always had that competitiveness as brothers, and I think that really helped us later in our careers as well.
You've been outspoken about your experience with autism—you call it a superpower. How did you come to think of it that way?
Winning [World's Strongest Man] and being the first Scotsman to do it—I think that kind of stamped the fact that autism doesn’t place a limit on you, and people with autism can do anything in the world. I started labeling autism as a superpower because I’m different, but I’ve been beating normal people with something that only a certain amount of people in the world have. I just want kids to be able to look at me and say they've got the same superpower as Tom Stoltman. If you have the support system, anything is possible. If a kid goes up to their mum and dad and says they want to be a professional soccer player, and they say, “let’s go for it,” then they’ll go as far as that dream can take them.
That’s what my mum and dad did when I told them I wanted to be the best at something. They told me, “Go for it, Tom.” As soon as you have the push from your parents and family, you’ll get far in life. People with autism drive off of that and I drive off of a lot of positivity. The people that love and care about me, that’s who I do it for.
People with autism get labeled a lot. They get told in school that they can’t be this or that and I got told that as well. I always tried to prove people wrong and that people with autism can do as good a job, or better than people without it and that’s why I want it to be labeled a superpower: You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.
Is a three-peat in the future?
I want to take some time away from the strongman now. I’m going to do a few competitions but nothing where I’m going to sacrifice and put my body through torture—just kind of go to competitions, meet fans, and have fun. Obviously, my eyes are always set on World’s Strongest Man. That's the pinnacle of the sport and I want to go back next year if the timing is right and defend my title again. I’m just going to enjoy my life and see what comes up in the future. I’ve obviously done a massive thing with Soccer Aid, which has blown my profile up even more. At the same time next year, I could be doing something different but I’m just going to take each day as it comes.
This interview has been edited and condensed.