Zydrunas Savickas: The Strongest Man Who Ever Lived
A book review and appreciation article to the great Zydrunas Savickas
Zydrunas Savickas. Big Z. Known as one of, if not the greatest strongman of all time. His accomplishments in the sport are among the all time greats having won every major contest during his competitive years and also winning more international competitions than anyone else in the history of the sport with 84 wins. Along with the 2nd highest win percentage of any strongman ever at 55%, he set numerous strength records throughout his career.
His one of a kind autobiography, “Born to Be Strong”, is unique in the fact that it takes you through not only Zydrunas’ life and upbringing but also gives an in-depth history of his strongman career, his competitors, and the sport itself. Zydrunas competed during a time where the sport of strongman was in an evolutionary period fracturing between legacy organization and new start up federations with high aspirations. The book was easy to read and an intriguing and insightful look at the Lithuanian strongman’s life, career, ambitions, and the history of the sport itself. I don’t believe you will find another like it where you get a deep look at both an individual and a sport at the same time. This article is a recap and tribute to Big Z, one of my favorite strength athletes of all-time.
Zydrunas grew up in Soviet occupied Lithuania, which was a communist country at the time. He mentions the difficulties he experienced growing up in a totalitarian state such as scarcity of food, low incomes and poverty, dangerous crime and drunkenness. Most people did not know just how poor and terrible their living conditions were because they had grown up and lived in this society their whole life. Access to information outside of Soviet control was prohibited. Everyone was equally poor with no rich. Zydrunas mentions playing outside often with friends as a kid and despite all of the hardship caused by the government, he says he grew up fairly happy. He watched his mother and father work hard for everything they had and credits both his genetics and circumstances to giving him the opportunity to one day become the strength athlete he ultimately became. His father, a taxi driver, was a big man of 6 ft weighing over 220 lbs and having never lifted weights and his mother worked at a local milk factory where she would steal tons of milk and cheese which allowed a young Zydrunas to grow. Theft as a means to survive in a communist control country like the Soviet Union was common because there was a constant shortage of food and long lines when food supplies did arrive.
It was in his early teens, 13 years old, that he began to go to a new local gym that had opened only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is in this gym that the Zydrunas began the journey to become, “Big Z”. He met a gym coach named Stasys Cesnauskas who offered to train him. Zydrunas’ early lifting looks similar to many of us when we first start. It was focused on a bodybuilding approach modeled after Arnold Schwarzenegger’s routine. The biggest influence that he got from his coach was the fact that Coach Cesnauskas began to organize local strongman competitions where Zydrunas would go on to compete for the first time.
At the age of 16, Savickas competed in his first strongman competition. A local competition in his hometown of Birzai. Although he did not win this competition, it sparked a love for lifting heavy weights and a desire to become a professional strongman.
Because of the cold climate in Lithuania, strongman at the time was more of a summer sport. During the cold months, Zydrunas focused more on powerlifting, which he also excelled at having totaled 2404 lbs at the Lithuanian National Championships in 2004.
In his early competitive years which would’ve been the mid-1990s, Zydrunas read all he could about physical fitness as well as talking to many strength coaches with the purpose of developing a routine that would allow him to reach his ultimate goal of becoming the World's Strongest Man one day.
Zydrunas developed the concepts of this routine that he claims to have followed all throughout his career and still follows today:
A blend of bodybuilding, powerlifting, and strongman with some light calisthenics
2-3 hours of training six days per week focusing on heavier weight and perfect form
Big Z has no distractions when he trains. There are no other people with him. He likes to train alone.
A diet of high-protein foods, good fats, and good quality carbohydrates
Gain weight leading into a competition
In 1998, Zydrunas won his first of 16 Lithuania’s Strongest Man competitions. He won his last in 2020. A remarkable two-decade plus span to be at the highest level in the sport. 1998 was also the first year that he was invited to the World’s Strongest Man competition. However, it wasn’t until 2002 that he would place in the competition having earned 2nd place that year. One of the reasons that it took 4 years from first invitation to earning a place was a devastating injury in 2001. At the end of a wet and cold strongman competition in the Faroe Islands, Zydrunas incurred an injury, tearing both patella tendons while performing the Conan’s Wheel event that would require surgery on both kneecaps. This injury set him back both physically and mentally to the point that Savickas contemplated life after strongman. Thankfully, he had a successful surgery and would go on to achieve great feats of strength after a lengthy rehab.
And now we get to the time period where Zydrunas became the dominant strongman that we all know him to be. From 2005-2015 between the ages of 30-40 years old, Zydrunas would go on to win every major competition during that time period. He notes that of that 10 year time period, 5 of those years were clearly his best, 2005-2010. During this time period he won 73 competitions, came in 2nd place eight times, finished third twice, and was unable to make the podium just one time.
This is without a doubt a dominating time period for Big Z, the problem is that strongman as a sport is divided at this point. This is one of the reasons why this book is so interesting. Zydrunas covers not only his own career in depth but also the history of the sport of strongman and his time within it. From 2005-2009 the sport of strongman split between World’s Strongest Man, the legacy federation that is the most prestigious competition within the sport and an upstart organization, the International Federation of Strongman Athletes, IFSA. In 2004 the investment group that bought IFSA had a goal to grow the sport internationally and make the sport of strongman more lucrative for the athletes. The World's Strongest Man had their own vision. Because of their differences, the sport of strongman split. Between the years 2005-2009, athletes had to choose what organization they would compete in, with World’s Strongest Man or with its direct competitors (which initially was IFSA but also included Fortissimus, another competing organization that rose after IFSA folded in 2007). No one was allowed to compete in both organizations.
Most of the highest level strongman athletes at the time chose to compete with IFSA, leaving only Mariusz Pudzianowski as the remaining elite competitor in World’s Strongest Man. There’s no doubt that Mariusz was a great strongman, but there’s also no doubt that a weak field also contributed to him winning 5 WSM titles, more than anyone else (Zydrunas and his greatest rival, Brian Shaw both have 4). There’s also an argument to be made, which Zydrunas does, that World’s Strongest Man does not actually find the strongest man whereas the Arnold Strongman Classic does. WSM incorporates much more moving events into the competition with relatively lighter weights. In comparison, the Arnold typically uses heavy, heavy weights and has more static events which measure true, brute strength. During this time period, Zyrdunas did not compete in WSM and instead competed in IFSA along with most of the other highest level competitors. He was dominant in this organization but when it comes to measuring WSM titles, this fact is often overlooked unless you are talking to true historians of the sport. However, in the heaviest competition at the time, Arnold Strongman Classic, which invited all competitors to compete no matter their affiliation, Zydrunas dominated, winning four years in a row from 2005-2008. During this time period Savickas would go on to achieve the following placings in major competitions:
2005 1st Arnold Strongman Classic
2005 1st IFSA World Championship
2006 1st Arnold Strongman Classic
2006 1st IFSA World Championship
2007 3rd IFSA World Championship
2007 1st Arnold Strongman Classic
2008 1st Arnold Strongman Classic
2008 2nd Fortissimus
2009 1st Fortissimus
These placings alone would qualify Zydrunas as one of the greatest Strongman ever. But he’s done so much more throughout his entire career. I won’t list out all 84 of his international career wins but I will list his major wins below:
4X World’s Strongest Man winner (6X runner up)
8X Arnold Strongman Classic Champion (most of anyone ever)
2X IFSA Champion
1X Fortissimus Champion
3X Europe's Strongest Man winner
16X Lithuania’s Strongest Man winner
3X Masters Worlds Strongest Man winner
There are very few people who have a resume that can match what Zydrunas has been able to put together over a 20+ year career in the sport. It is not out of the realm of possibilities that if the sport of strongman didn’t split during the prime of his career, Big Z may have ended with 6-7 WSM titles, which would’ve easily put him in a category of his own.
What’s interesting to me is the lack of in depth discussion of Savickas biggest rival, Brian Shaw. Between the years of 2009-2016 either Shaw or Zydrunas were WSM champions, no one else. They had epic battles that came down to 1 point here or there and a mistake one way or the other that caused the title to change hands. It’s not that he doesn’t discuss it, I just thought there might be more detailed, longer, in depth coverage of a battle with a rival that spanned such a large portion of his career.
For me, this book is a must read. Zydrunas has been one of my favorite strongman competitors for many years now. Not only has he put his Lithuanian flag on the podium permanently in the annals of strongman history but there is an additional layer to rooting for him, for me. I am fully and completely American at this point. My family has been here for enough generations that I do not associate myself with any other country of origin other than the USA. However, growing up, my Dad had pictures of family all throughout the house. Old pictures, people I’ve never met. He knew who was who and could easily explain how they were related to us. As a young kid, I remember him mentioning we had relatives a few generations back who came straight from Lithuania to America and by my math, that made me 1/32 Lithuanian. Which was something I always thought was cool because who is from Lithuania? Nobody I knew. Knowing Lithuania is such a small country and not many famous people come from that part of the world, seeing Zydrunas represent Lithuania on a world stage was cool to see.
Putting my personal feelings aside, I think when you consider everything there is to consider, Zydrunas is quite possibly the greatest strongman in the history of the sport. There are many others that can be in the argument to hold that title, but when it’s all said and done, Zydrunas’ accomplishments stand alone at the top of the sport. I highly recommend reading his book. There are many more captivating stories he shares that I obviously don't discuss here in detail.
