Adam Scherr has always been a big dude: Whether he was flinging giant trees in strongman competitions like the Arnold Classic, or flipping behemoths like the Big Show inside WWE’s squared circle as Braun Strowman, Scherr often tipped the scales at more than 400 pounds.
“I was eating 15,000-20,000 calories per day,” Scherr, now 39, says. But since leaving WWE last year, the man known as a “Monster Among Men” has gotten lean, tipping the scales around 340 pounds. Scherr says his main impetus for the slim-down was mental.
“…One of the big reasons why I started this body transformation that I kind of did over the last couple of years is I kind of got in a really bad place mentally. So there were things in my life that I couldn’t control, and it was starting to wear on my mental health. So I figured one of the things that I could control in my life was my diet, my training regimen and what I was consuming.”
In addition to taking more control of his diet and mind, he’s started “Control Your Narrative,” an upstart wrestling promotion of his own. Unlike WWE, where matches are called with play-by-play like regular sporting events, Control Your Narrative matches are narrated by a voice over artist to tell the performers’ stories.
“We’re not trying to recreate the wheel. We’re just trying to throw some extra sparkles on it,” he says. The narrator talks about the performers’ life stories during the matches and in between, and it’s directed by the wrestlers themselves. “It’s putting creative control into the talent’s hand versus having a roomful of writers that don’t know anything about what you’ve been through in your life throwing stuff at the wall.”
Scherr took some time from telling his own story in the ring to tell MensHealth.com about his transformation from giant to lean-but-still-giant, how his training is changing as he approaches 40, and to offer MH.com readers his high-rep hotel gym workout for when he’s in a rush.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You’ve gotten super lean this year. What was the key to making that transformation happen?
The transformation I made was 85 percent mental, and 15 percent what I do in the kitchen and what I do in the gym and what I do with cardio. I do an hour of fasted cardio every morning. So mentally, I want to get up and eat an omelet and pancakes and drink a milkshake with strawberries, but I just can’t. So mentally, you have to get yourself up at six o’clock in the morning, get out there, go for a run or go for a bike ride on an empty stomach for that hour. So I think for me, it’s always been a mental thing.
And that was one of the big reasons why I started this body transformation that I kind of did over the last couple of years is I kind of got in a really bad place mentally. So there were things in my life that I couldn’t control, and it was starting to wear on my mental health. So I figured one of the things that I could control in my life was my diet, my training regime and what I was consuming.
With WWE, being on the road eight days a week, basically 366 days a year, carrying the extra body weight around, I was carrying an extra 30 pounds of body fat around my knees, my ankles. All my joints were so much happier by getting rid of that. And then as far as like aesthetically, it’s an entertainment business. So I figured the better I could look on my shirt off, the more people would tune in to watch, more people buy tickets. So in the long run, I make the company more money, which should in turn mean I’m making more money. And you know, it’s it’s one of the biggest things is just being able to get out of the shower, look at myself in the mirror and be like, “Damn, you did that.”
Courtesy of Adam Scherr
You mentioned fasted cardio. Is it an hour of steady state? Or what do you do?
Most of the time, I get up and go for about an hour bike ride every morning. I love that. I usually do like 50-75 milligrams of caffeine into a cup of coffee or just caffeine tablet, or have 20-40 ounces of water to get the body tricked into thinking that it’s got food going in it. And then the energy from the caffeine and throw some tunes on and get out there and go for a ride.
There’s nothing better this time of the year than getting all that free vitamin D from the sun in Florida because it’s already at 90 degrees. I throw the shirt off, get out there and work on my beach tan.
What do you bring from your strongman training that’s still part of your regimen today? And how is your training changing now that you’re nearing 40?
So I’ll still do some of the strongman movements to help with explosiveness—farmer’s carries, yoke walks, working on the core. It’s nowhere near the weight that I used to move around just because my body doesn’t need that anymore. It’s still nice to test it here and there, but I don’t try and push it too far because I don’t want to injure myself. Listening to your body is the biggest thing. I try to tell anybody that’s getting involved in strongman or bodybuilding—listen to your body. I wish I had somebody tell me 15, 20 years ago when I started getting into this like, “Hey man, it’s OK to take a day off and listen to your body.” I probably wouldn’t be as beat up as I am.
The older I get, the more I do this, I figure out more every every day—a little bit easier way to do it, or a different way to perform a lift. Now it’s more like connecting the mind of the muscle, paying attention to how I lift, the form, the technique versus just brute strength getting it up. So I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am where I am in my life because of that raw, unadulterated rage of strength, you know? But now it’s nice being able to learn a little bit more of the finesse side.
You’re not on the road every single day like you were with WWE, but you’re still plenty busy—building the Control Your Narrative promotion, doing ads, working on a new tour. Do you have a go-to road workout when your schedule is slammed?
The biggest thing on the road, whether it was being full time on the schedule with the WWE or now getting more busy with CYM is hotel gym workouts. Usually there’s a treadmill, maybe a bench and dumbbells up to like 50 pounds. So I just do a full body circuit workout, just blow it through.
I grab like 25- or 30-pound dumbbells—a set of 20 lateral raises, set of 20 front raise, set of 20 rear delts. Go through like five times of that to fill the blood up. Do some overhead tricep kickbacks, do some air squats, shrugs, all sets of 20, high volume. I just keep it going, just to literally get it done in like 30 minutes, break a sweat pump the muscles full of blood, get the cells ready for the glycogen to come back in, and then go out there and do the thing.
Courtesy of Adam Scherr
What’s one thing guys in their late 30s, 40s, and beyond need to start thinking about when it comes to their health and fitness?
Stay on top of your blood work, making sure you’re where you need to be with your vitamins, your minerals, amino acids. I’m big on all that, having my blood work done. If I’m low on vitamins, I’ll go to like the I use Vita-lounge here in Orlando, and we’ll do the I.V. treatments and replenish my vitamin D, my amino acids and stuff.
Also: hydration. I’d found that as one of the most important things for me. I’ve always known it’s important to drink water, but now getting older and doing what I do and being leaner, I’m not carrying as much water. It’s so important because if I don’t get it my minimum of like a gallon and a half a day, I can feel it. By the end of the day, my fingers are stiff. Everything is just stiff and dried out.
What’s something those same guys should subtract?
Ego lifting. I still see guys in their late 40s and 50s that are in the gym just like … I get it, I get you want to relive your high school days, your glory years. But you’re in there like moving a leg press two inches with every 45-pound plate in the gym while people are standing around waiting to get workouts in. And you’re waiting for people to watch. But I don’t think that’s just older people. I think that’s everybody. Go to the gym, get your workout in. Take your pictures at home.
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