He-Man: Gustine’s Rubio wants to become World’s Strongest Man

When Graciano Rubio started lifting weights, he only wanted to be stronger than the men in his family – his older brother and father.

“I was 14 when I started at the gym, and my older brother is 10 years older. That’s how I got into it,” he said, “just trying to keep up with them.”

Nearly a decade later, Rubio has surpassed his bloodline in sheer strength and now has designs on becoming the strongest man in the world.

The Gustine resident took an important step at the San Jose Fit Expo on June 13-14, capturing the title of Lightweight Pro Strongman during the Odd Haugen Strength Classic.

“I thought I had a pretty good chance at this contest,” but so did everyone else, Rubio said. “These were events I was comfortable with. Four of the five were classic strongman events – everyone knows them, everyone knows the movement. It really comes down to how good you really are.

“I had competed against all those guys before, and we all felt like we had a chance to come out on top.”

Rubio took the drama out of the contest early, winning the first four events, including the one he believed was his weakest: the farmer’s walk.

A CrossFit instructor at boxes in Los Banos and Patterson, the 23-year-old assumed he’d struggle in the opening event and be forced to play catch-up the rest of the way.

“That’s always been my worst event, but at this one, I ended up taking first in the very first event. After that, they were all strong events for me,” said the mustachioed Rubio, who is currently enrolled in online courses at Oregon State but hopes to complete his economics degree at Cal State Stanislaus. “I figured I’d do OK and it would be a battle till the end to make up those points.”

Instead, Rubio, wearing a CrossFit ValleyView (Los Banos) T-shirt, took command of the strongman competition from the start, lugging 250 pounds in each hand for a distance of 400-plus feet.

He won the yoke walk by carrying 700 pounds the requisite 120 feet and then maxed out in the 270-pound log press and 550-pound deadlift to go 4 for 4.

He would have swept the competition, too, if not for a tiebreaker in the finale – Mas combat. In Mas combat, athletes sit across from one another, placing their feet on a board that separates the arena. They grapple over a short stick, hoping to pull their opponent over the board or the stick from their hands.

Rubio said he won all three of his matches to force a three-way tie but slipped to third on the first tiebreaker: body weight. The 5-foot-9 He-Man weighed in at 231.4 pounds – the class limit – while his competitors were slightly lighter.

“I thought I had won that one, too,” he said.

It mattered little in the end. The victory qualified Rubio for the Arnold Amateur World Strongman Championship in Columbus, Ohio, next March.

In October, he’ll compete at the America’s Strongest Man as a professional, beginning the years-long process toward a World’s Strongest Man qualification.

Rubio said athletes must qualify at a Giants Live event. He insists he’s still three or four years away from competing at a World’s Strongest Man.

“I grew up as a kid always watching it on TV,” Rubio said of the World’s Strongest Man competition. “I would say that’s been a goal of mine since as long as I can remember; maybe 6 or 7 years old. I’ve been competing for three years now, and I’m making pretty good progress.”

He idolizes five-time World’s Strongest Man Mariusz Pudzianowski of Poland and American Jesse Marunde, the 2005 runner-up.

“At the time, Marunde was the best American strongman,” Rubio said. “The sport is usually dominated by the European athletes. I idolized him because he was competing against the best European athletes, which hardly any Americans could do.”

Rubio trains and coaches at CrossFit ValleyView in Los Banos and Stampede CrossFit in Patterson. He maintains a six-day training schedule, with each day’s workout focused specifically on the events he might come across at a competition.

For the last year, he’s blended CrossFit into his training regimen. CrossFit, he says, has helped with his conditioning. When he began competing, Rubio lacked the stamina to keep up with the elite strongmen.

“The first (competition) was supposed to be small but ended up being extremely competitive. I didn’t do well at all, but it let me know what I needed to work on,” Rubio said. “I wasn’t comfortable with longer-duration events. My conditioning wasn’t very good. My strength was there, but to keep up with these guys for 30 seconds to a minute, I really needed to work on it. After one or two reps, they were blowing me away.”

Today, he sets the example. His technique and diet have been emulated by athletes and coaches at CrossFit ValleyView, and Box Manager Rick Sanchez loves Rubio’s energy.

“Just watch his programming. Nutrition wise, he knows what to do a week out, three weeks out, and a month out. He knows how hard to go and what techniques to apply,” Sanchez said. “I pick up a lot of stuff from him, stuff to improve my own technique and what I teach in my classes.

“He brings a lot to the table. He’s young but has a ton of knowledge.”

This story was originally published June 26, 2015 at 6:54 PM with the headline "He-Man: Gustine’s Rubio wants to become World’s Strongest Man."