The Mountain from Game of Thrones Is Now the Strongest Man on Earth

The Mountain of Game of Thrones fame is officially the strongest man on earth, and we didn't even have to wait until Cleganebowl to confirm it. Over the weekend, Icelandic actor Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson made his eighth consecutive bid for top honors in the World's Strongest Man competition. This time, after a handful of second- and third-place finishes in previous years, he walked away triumphant.

The 6-foot-9 behemoth who portrays Cersei Lannister's zombie bodyguard claimed his title by beating out the United States' Brian Shaw, behind whom he was runner-up in 2016, and Poland’s Mateusz Kieliszkowski. Björnsson took first place in the vehicle dead lift, max overhead, and loading race; fourth in the frame carry; second in the truck pull; and fifth in the atlas stones.

As for what it takes to be crowned World's Strongest Man, Björnsson gave GQ a quick run-down of his training regimen in 2016. "I just fell in love with the weights, fell in love with training hard, started to put weight on quite fast, started to get strong really fast. I saw results," he explained. Björnsson started at somewhere between 231 and 242 pounds. At the time, he said, he sat closer to 400.

“It’s not just all about the training," he continued. "It’s all around: You have to train well, sleep well, eat well. If you don’t eat, you don’t grow. The biggest changes were that I didn’t do much cardio anymore, and I put more food into my diet. It’s just like constantly work for me: I have to eat every two hours to maintain my body mass. It is not easy. When I’m filming, I always have to have breaks to eat.”

And that was two years ago, back when his most significant feat of strength was merely breaking a 1,000-year-old Viking record by lifting a log weighing nearly 1,500 pounds. If you weren't hyped for Season 8 before, you are now.