There are certain moments in strength sports that stay with athletes long after the competition ends.
For Brian Shaw, one of those moments came through a brutal lesson in how far intensity can carry a person before it starts taking something back.
The four-time World’s Strongest Man has never hidden the fact that his approach to training during his peak years was deeply personal. Every session carried emotion behind it, and when Shaw reflected on one particular period of his career, he admitted that mindset pushed him into dangerous territory.
“There’s a lesson that I learned, a very important lesson: I train with rage; it was a very personal thing to me there, very personal,” he said.
That mentality shaped the way Shaw attacked events in training, especially when it came to overhead work with the axle press — one of Strongman’s most unforgiving tests of brute power.
At the time, Shaw fully embraced the old-school mentality of sacrificing everything for performance. Pain was secondary. Recovery barely mattered. The goal was simple: get stronger at any cost.
He said: “So I was going in, and that exactly was the moment where it was no pain, no gain, so I lifted that axle and I trained it so hard”
The punishment quickly started to add up.
Unlike a standard barbell, the axle places enormous strain on the upper body, particularly when repeatedly cleaned to the shoulders. Shaw revealed the extent of the damage he believes he caused himself while obsessively drilling the movement.
Shaw said: “I mean, I’m quite confident that at one point I cracked my sternum because you’re setting it on yourself, and I was just constantly bruised. I’d stretch, and it would pop like it was just”
For most athletes, that kind of physical warning sign would force a rethink.
For Shaw, it became part of the process.
The relentless approach was fuelled by the belief that if he suffered more in training, competition day would feel easier. And to an extent, it worked. By the time contest day arrived, Shaw knew exactly what he was capable of.
The event in question involved a 460-pound axle clean and press to the shoulders, with athletes needing to complete as many repetitions as possible inside the time limit.
Shaw was certain he had the numbers.
“I went in the contest, and it was a 460lb axle that we had to put up to our shoulders, and I was fully capable of doing a minimum of four, maybe five reps in the contest in the time given; I’d done it in training. I knew I was capable of that,” Shaw said.
That confidence had been earned through sheer repetition and suffering behind closed doors.
But the lesson Shaw now reflects on goes beyond whether the training “worked.”
His comments reveal the darker edge of elite Strongman preparation — the line where obsession, emotion, and physical punishment begin to blur together. Training with anger gave Shaw the intensity required to become one of the greatest strongmen of all time, but it also came with consequences that his body still remembers.
The image of repeatedly smashing a 460-pound axle into an already damaged sternum perfectly captures the mentality that defined an era of strongman competition. Athletes pushed through injuries, ignored warning signs, and treated pain as confirmation they were doing enough.
For Shaw, that period became a reminder that emotional intensity can be a powerful weapon, but also a dangerous one when left unchecked.
Even among elite strength athletes, very few people truly understand what it takes to prepare for those events at the world-class level. Shaw’s recollection offers a rare glimpse into the physical and mental extremes behind the sport — and why some lessons only become clear after the damage is already done.
The honesty of his reflection is also what makes it stand out.
There is no glamour in talking about cracked sternums, constant bruising, or body parts “popping” under pressure. But that reality formed a huge part of the mindset that helped build Shaw into one of Strongman’s defining figures.
And while the “no pain, no gain” philosophy helped produce legendary performances, Shaw now seems to view that chapter with a different perspective.
The rage may have fuelled the training.
The lesson came from surviving it.
Featured image credit: SHAWSTRENGTH PODCAST / YouTube / Brian Shaw / Instagram
