{"id":3017,"date":"2024-07-06T03:02:39","date_gmt":"2024-07-06T03:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/?p=3017"},"modified":"2024-07-06T03:11:42","modified_gmt":"2024-07-06T03:11:42","slug":"elliot-hulse-is-making-men-strong-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/2024\/07\/06\/elliot-hulse-is-making-men-strong-again\/","title":{"rendered":"ELLIOT HULSE IS MAKING MEN STRONG AGAIN"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Elliot Hulse, photographed by Jack Donovan. 2021.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This interview was originally published in the CHEST magazine project in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Elliot Hulse made a name for himself when he opened his first Strength Camp<\/a><\/span> gym and started promoting strongman-style strength training on YouTube<\/a><\/span> in 2007.<\/p>

Since then, strongman competitions have grown and become more popular. I remember being interested in strongman training myself around that time \u2014 back when I was delivering exercise equipment \u2014 and there were far fewer resources available. You could mail-order some molds for making cement stones, or get ideas from books that became classics in the genre like Dinosaur Training<\/a><\/span> from Brooks D. Kubik<\/a><\/span>. Strongman training at that time was kind of a fringe, DIY subculture for men.<\/p>

Strongman training reaches back to the primal roots of strength training \u2014 back before everything seemed to revolve around dumbbells and barbells, and long before exercise machines as we know them today were even a twinkle in anyone\u2019s eye.<\/p>

You can imagine a group of guys in Ancient Greece or in Scotland, or just a bunch of cavemen standing around shooting the breeze.<\/p>

\u201cI bet I can lift that big rock.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

\u201cI bet I can lift that rock and carry it father than you.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

\u201cWell, I bet I can lift that log over my head.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

And they did, and there\u2019s evidence of traditions like stone and log lifting all around the world.<\/p>

One can imagine that the guy who lost the bet went out into the woods every day for the next six weeks and lifted that stone or that log over and over again until he knew he could beat some of the other guys in the next competition. Perhaps that is the true and natural genesis of strength training.<\/p>

A lot of young men were and are hungry for that kind of primal physical experience. Hulse tapped into that because it was something he enjoyed and excelled at doing, and over time he found himself becoming a kind of mentor and father figure within that growing community of men.<\/p>

Over several years, his YouTube channel blew up to over a million subscribers, and a lot of what he found himself doing was answering questions about fitness, but also about life and philosophy.<\/p>

Hulse told me that one of the things he really enjoyed doing at his gym was hanging out with the young men at his gym after their workouts.<\/p>

\u201cThey asked me questions, because they trusted me, about life, relationships, careers, family, and things of [that] nature. And apparently, they benefitted greatly from hearing my insights on things outside<\/i> the gym.\u201d<\/p>

So he started a second YouTube channel<\/a><\/span> devoted to answering questions about life outside the gym, and that also gained almost a million subscribers.<\/p>

\u201cAnd now, here I am sitting as a washed-up old strongman strength coach who posits as a father figure to perhaps millions of men worldwide.\u201d<\/p>

Hulse is a big personality online. High energy and right up in your face. I remember hoping that he wasn\u2019t that way in person. I met Elliott for the first time at the 21 Convention in 2019<\/a><\/span>. That online personality is obviously part of who he is, and when you get him started talking about something about which he is passionate \u2014 you definitely get that energy and authority. But Hulse is also polite and pensive and generous. He has mature, grounded confidence. He\u2019s not the kind of guy who has to \u201cbig-dog\u201d a whole room.<\/p>

I snapped the photos for this article quickly in the \u201cgreen room\u201d at the 21 Convention in 2021. Hulse was in \u201cguru mode\u201d when I met him in 2019. But in 2021, he was looking bigger in preparation for his first strongman competition in years. His presence was stylish and athletic, and his wife was at the conference with him. I\u2019ll also say that I thought Hulse appeared to be especially\u2026happy. I reached out to him in early 2022 to conduct the actual interview for this article online.<\/p>

The Joy of Being a Brute<\/h2>

Hulse got into strongman training \u2014 and eventually competing, coaching, and YouTube \u2014 because he played football in high school and college and learned that he really enjoyed \u201csmashing heads.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt was such a joy to be a brute!\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m built to do. I\u2019m like a Mack truck. I like to smash myself and smash into things.\u201d<\/p>

When that came to an end, Hulse said he felt a little lost for a while, until he discovered strongman training and eventually got his pro card in 2010. Strongman is a little less predictable than sets and reps under a bar, and Hulse thinks his YouTube audience grew because he was always doing something different \u2014 flipping tires one day and pulling a truck the next.<\/p>

He kept filming and competing and winning until he popped his bicep and stopped competing. That\u2019s when Hulse decided he could make a bigger impact by going \u201call-in\u201d on the Internet.<\/p>

The Mid-Life Opportunity<\/h2>

Between age 30 and 40, Hulse said he was busy building a family and a brand and a business, but around 40, he stopped to re-evaluate.<\/p>

\u201cThey like to call it a mid-life crisis, and maybe it is in a way, but it is also an opportunity to take a look at your life. I took a look at my life from a helicopter view, and had to come to peace with the things that weren\u2019t going to be, and I had to be realistic about the things that I am called to be. So I revived my love for lifting again. I can do it. It\u2019s a gift. Why not exercise the gifts God gave me? So I decided to go back into strongman training and I competed last year for the first time as one of the \u201cmasters\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s what they call the old guys.\u201d<\/p>

Elliott said he was nervous about competing again after so many years, and at 5\u20199\u201d\/220#, he found himself surrounded once again by much larger men. But he said he \u201cwiped the floor with them\u201d and \u201czipped through everything\u201d and figured \u201cthis is what I am supposed to be doing.\u201d<\/p>

Hulse thinks he\u2019s going to continue competing in strongman, perhaps once a year.<\/p>

\u201cI want to be OLD. I want to have gray hair and a big, long beard and still be jacked and lifting stones.\u201d<\/p>

Hulse has a collection of atlas stones ranging from 100 pounds to 300 pounds, but he says there is one right in the middle \u2014 a 220-pound stone \u2014 that he has his eye on.<\/p>

\u201cWell into my old age, maybe 80-year-old Elliott, I want to be able to pick up that stone and put it on my shoulder.\u201d<\/p>

On Becoming a Leader of Men<\/h2>

We talked about his evolution from being a strength coach into becoming a leader of men, and the responsibility that comes with that. Hulse said that he got carried away with it for a while and convinced himself that he was changing men\u2019s lives \u2014 which he absolutely does \u2014 and changing the world. But eventually, he felt that he was becoming prideful and needed to humble himself, and he wanted to make it clear that, at the end of the day, he\u2019s just a man.<\/p>

\u201cI give my opinion on stuff. That\u2019s what I do.\u201d<\/p>

Hulse also felt the weight and the responsibility that comes with being a leader, and he wants to make sure he\u2019s leading men in the right direction.<\/p>

\u201cWhen I die, it\u2019s true that God\u2019 is going to judge me, and he\u2019s going to say, \u2018Look, you had all these guys \u2014 and THIS is where you led them?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWe are suffering as a people because men are weak, men have been feminized, men have been subverted in their powers in the home and in the world.\u201d<\/p>

Hulse explained that because of this dire situation, the sentiment that motivates his work of \u201canswering questions and giving opinions\u201d is his belief that we can only restore what is lacking in the world today by \u201cmaking men strong again.\u201d<\/p>

Estranged from Our Own Nature<\/h2>

I asked him what problems he encounters most with younger men, but he made the point that so much of the confusion he sees in young men today is a consequence of the breakdown of the family. They\u2019re confused because their fathers weren\u2019t present, or they were effeminate or incompetent. He attributes this to the proliferation of communist ideology in the West after the Bolshevik revolution. \u201cIf you want to break down the power structures in the home, you make women hate men.\u201d<\/p>

While men are often accused of misogyny, Hulse said he doesn\u2019t see a lot of it out there. He admits that there are some angry men \u2014 some of them justifiably angry about what has been done to the family and the country \u2014 but Hulse believes that we see far more misandry than true misogyny in the world today.<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019re living in a matriarchal world, where men are trained to think in a gynocentric, pro-feminist way \u2014 which, number one, is not attractive to women at all. It destroys relationships, it destroys the authority structure that is important to any organization\u201d<\/p>

\u201cMen are so estranged from our own nature.\u201d<\/p>

Hulse credits much of his understanding of this to having been lucky enough to grow up with an \u201calpha male dad.\u201d Elliott\u2019s father is from Belize and he \u201cgrew up in the jungle.\u201d His father grew up around manly men who \u201cclimbed trees and killed things.\u201d Elliot\u2019s father wasn\u2019t indoctrinated in the school systems with \u201call the garbage that keeps us weak.\u201d Elliott was, however, and when he was younger, he said that he resented his father and thought he was some kind of caveman.<\/p>

Hulse said he couldn\u2019t relate to his father or really understand him until he was in his late twenties or early thirties. He slowly started to realize that, \u201cI and everyone else had this backwards, and my dad\u2019s been right the entire time.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cSome people said I had become toxic, but really, I\u2019ve atoned with my father and recognized who I really am, and this is what the world needs: strong fathers.\u201d<\/p>

On Raising Daughters<\/h2>

Elliott Hulse has one son, but he also has three daughters, and he had some thoughts about raising daughters in our upside-down world with a patriarchal mindset, \u201cwithout making them hate me.\u201d He told me that he prides himself on creating an environment where his daughters can learn to be like their mother, who he described as a great wife and a great mother to her children.<\/p>

Elliott chuckled and told me that he has some selfish motives involved in his work with young men. \u201cThere\u2019s no way I\u2019m going to send my daughters off with any of these weak, weird men.\u201d<\/p>

Hulse says part of what he is doing is \u201cplanting seeds\u201d in a generation of men, so that hopefully some of them will make good husbands for his daughters.<\/p>

He also observed that so many alpha male men, \u201craise their daughters to compete with men. So they raise their daughters to be alpha women. They\u2019re doing a total disservice to men. by teaching your daughter that \u201cyou don\u2019t need any man.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHold on buddy. That\u2019s not your son. You want to do us a favor here by allowing your daughter to be feminine. Especially in a world that\u2019s so anti-sexual polarity \u2014 because it\u2019s anti-male and it\u2019s anti-female. As much as it is gynocentric, it\u2019s not feminine. It\u2019s a perverted form of female nature that they\u2019re promoting. And so, if we\u2019re going to get this all right, it can\u2019t just be us men making men strong, somebody, somewhere, at some point has to make these women wife-worthy.\u201d<\/p>

I asked him about some of the challenges he\u2019s encountered in the process of raising daughters, and he said that the primary challenge was dealing with the prevailing culture.<\/p>

\u201cEverywhere you look, every movie you watch, every series on Netflix, every song you hear sung, everywhere you look \u2014 it\u2019s feminists and feminism. It\u2019s teaching men how to be effeminate and teaching women how to be feminists.\u201d<\/p>

Hulse explained that part of the problem is the way that people from the 1960s forward have been trained to see generations laterally instead of vertically \u2014 identifying primarily with their same-age peers instead of their parents, ancestors, and extended families.<\/p>

\u201cChildren feel the need to separate themselves from the vertical integration of the family. There was a time before this idea of \u201cgenerations\u201d when a son would want to behave more like his father and grandfather because there was wisdom there. Now it is a matter of \u2018this is what my friends are doing, this is what the movies are doing, this is the Zeitgeist is all about \u2014 and my parents are dumb.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

He says his strategy for combatting all of the ideological propaganda slipped into cartoons and entertainment and the attempts to turn children against their parents is to point it out immediately when he sees it, and talk about it with them.<\/p>

\u201cA lot of dads leave the raising of their daughters up to their mothers. We don\u2019t know what to do \u2014 they don\u2019t even know how to be men, so they don\u2019t want to interfere with these girls. But we need to be able to understand the enemy and point it out to our children. I would hear my daughter say certain things \u2014 and I\u2019d say \u2018whoah, I know you heard that on a YouTube video and that\u2019s what your friends are saying, but you have to understand that that\u2019s not realistic and you have to understand that is in fact a form of ideological subversion meant to destroy your psyche and your soul and ultimately your life because that doesn\u2019t work in a family.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWith my daughters especially, I plant the seed that family is the most important thing that you will achieve in your life.\u201d<\/p>

He noted that they also see bad examples in their friends\u2019 homes, and he believes it\u2019s important to point that out, too.<\/p>

We ended our discussion with some shop talk about censorship. Hulse says he\u2019s been banned and shadow-banned and de-monetized on several platforms. But he said he realizes that the idea that we get to use these platforms and advertising channels for free to disseminate our messages is fairly new. People always had to \u201cpay to play,\u201d and he is working on investing in other channels and outlets so that, no matter what happens, he can keep making men strong.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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