Author: sigfusfossdal

The last few months have been highly unorthodox for all of us. But for Sigfus they have had its ups and lows. In November last year, only a few months after the achilles tendon tear at WSM, and fewer months from a shoulder injury he won the Thors Power Challenge in Reykjavik with a 190 kg log press and 365 kg deadlift. But the shoulder never fully healed. He competed in a few shows this summer but the shoulder and an elbow injury kept him from being there at 100%, but he still showed up. Last October Sigfus had the tendon in the shoulder repaired and will likely heal well from that, but he will also have a surgery on the elbow in a few weeks.

In April Sigfus started working with Pro Body coach Nathan Payton and has since then dropped over 20 kg of body weight, after having already lost 10 kg before that, he is now sitting at 154 kg, and is going to go a little further down while healing up. Working with Nathan has been a game changer and will result in bringing back better then ever version of Sigfus.

Before the surgery Sigfus was also working with Laurence Shahlaei former Europe’s Strongest Man and legend as a coach, and despite the underlaying injury things were moving well, but Sigfus aims to start working again with Loz as soon as the shoulder and elbow are ready.

This might all mean that Sigfus wont compete next summer, but time will tell.

Last spring Sigfus finished his Bachelors degree in psychology with a paper on the correlation between exercise and depression. He is planning to go for his masters in the fall of 2021.

At the Worlds Strongest Man competition 2 weeks ago I had the bad luck of tearing my achilles tendion. Up till that point I was happy with how things were going and enjoying to finally be at the top level in the world. Now injury is never fun and it can easily tear you down.

But then again, we feel how we think, and how we think is under our control. I focused no the fact that I reached my goal of getting to the WSM. Looked at my wife, father and friends who had all made this trip to support me. Reminded my self that this was only my second real injury in my 22 years of lifting. So all things considered I am lucky. Even if this injury sucks or the timing is bad,,,,,, I am still f***ing lucky. For that I am grateful.

So I stayed smiling, even when folks came up to me and were telling me how sorry they were, how bad of a luck this was. I simply told them this was ok, this was going to be fine. that I WASNT DONE.

The energy that I could have put into feeling down, telling my self this wasnt fair, and vine about how long my recovery would be I put into making plans, into finding away to make sure this injury would make me better then before. And then again, when I came home we found out the injury isnt even as bad as we thought it was. Imagine sulking for days over something that isnt as bad as you thought? Sure it might have been the other way around, but lets not focus on what might be, lets focus on what we know and on what we can do about it.

This injury is going to take time, but in that time I will focus on other things that I can do better, and in the end I will be a better strongman for this.

I will be back to the WSM and I will get to the finals.

How do you treat your setbacks?

After 22 years of training I have finally earned my spot on the World Strongest Man 2019. At the age of 16, 20 years ago I first spoke out about my plan to one day be part of this, the biggest venue of strongman. And even though I still spent the next 16 years working on powerlifting reaching many big numbers, that goal never left me. Then in 2015 I changed sports all together and went after my dream. I had done some strongman shows along the powerlifting but only as secondary sport.

Having reached this goal does not mean that I am done or even close, but I have raised the bar and now I aim to get to the final (top 10), if not this year, then the next.

To get this invite is not only an honor, but a motivation as well. I will make it clear that I belong on that stage.