Baddest Motherfuckers Ever #24- Stan "The White Rhino" Efferding

A couple of years ago a competition was arranged at the Arnold Expo to determine the World's Strongest bodybuilder.  The competitors were Branch Warren's apparent BFF Johnnie Jackson and a guy of whom I'd never heard named Ben White.  The results were fairly unspectacular, and prompted a challenge from a third party dark horse who was only on your radar if you had it calibrated to identify threats who were about as freakish in nature as an echidna's dick- Stan "The White Rhino" Efferding.

Echidnas have 4 heads to their penises, only two of which work at any given time.  This is incontrovertible proof that if there was intelligent design, the gods were drunker than 1980's Nick Nolte when they designed the shit running around Australia.

In 2010, The White Rhino got his opportunity to compete in the World's Strongest Bodybuilder versus the aforementioned Ben White and made like he was Godzilla in the old-school game Rampage- Ben White was his bitch, and he destroyed Johnnie Jackson's two lift total by almost 100 lbs.  After that, Efferding was even showing up on the Bhutanese Air Force's Gilligan's Island-style bamboo and chewing gum radars.

Amusingly, Efferding's sudden rise to fame would have been called the result of years of hard work, if it wasn't for the fact that he took 10 years off from competition to make a shitload of money.  Although I cannot locate my source to properly cite it (it was the Muscular Development wherein the above pic was first featured), Stan started out competing in bodybuilding and powerlifting in the early 1990s and continued until 1997, when he quit to start a telecom company.  Going from memory, The White Rhino pulled a couple of moves that make Oskar Schindler seem like a shitty boss in comparison, buying a fleet of Hyundais and renting them to his lower-paid employees who lacked cars for $100 a month or something ridiculous, and after a couple of years of living on ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches ended up rich as all hell.  Since then, he's started a couple of other companies in a variety of industries and gotten even richer, to the point where he lists his Rolls Royce Phantom as his favorite automobile.  HIS Rolls Royce, not THE Rolls Royce, which lists at Jesse Marunde-style heart exploding $380k-$450k according to Kelly Blue Book.

Discontented with merely flying in the face of established American tradition in the treatment of line workers as if they were mildly retarded and offensive-smelling Mexican day laborers, Efferding decided to jump back into the competitive waters and taking a steaming shit on convention there as well... "out of boredom", according to the man himself.  At 38, he returned to the bodybuilding stage and won the Superheavyweight class in the 2006 Emerald Cup.  Two years later, he won it again, pulling down the Heavyweight and Overall trophies.  The following year, because he fucking felt like it, The White Rhino competed in the APA "All RAW" Northwest Regional Championships and totalled 2,070lbs at 275.  He then switched back to bodybuilding and won his pro card at the Masters Nationals Bodybuilding Championships by winning the Superheavies, five months after his meet.  Then, just fucking because, he competed in  the SPF Sanctioned Raw Powerlifting meet less than two months after that show, crushing the holy fuck out of everything in his path and looking goddamned good while doing so.  Less than two months after dieting like a motherfucker for a bodybuilding contest, he totaled 2,221lbs in 275lbs category.  The next time you think about skipping a fucking workout, put that shit in your pipe and smoke the fuck out of your workout..

To recap, after taking ten years off from lifting hard to make millions of dollars and be, by all accounts, an awesome boss, the White Rhino is the #1 ranked raw powerlifter in the US and the #3 ranked raw powerlifter in the world with a 2,226lbs total.  He's ranked #1 in the squat and bench, and 10th in the deadlift, and was the bad motherfucker who unseated Konstantin Konstantinov as the leanest and baddest 275 lb powerlifter to ever walk the Earth.    Not only has he kicked ass in the world of powerlifting of late, but he continued to bodybuild as well, and pulled down his pro card in record time, nabbing it 3 years after he stepped back onto the platform.  Compare that to NPC staples like Dave Palumbo, who attempted for nearly two decades to get his pro card before throwing in the towel- grabbing your pro card in three years is not an easy thing.  Essentially, Efferding is to life what Teddy Roosevelt was to the Presidency- he's a rich, good looking badass who bends over whatever he wants to do and fucks it til it loves him.

Powerlifting PRs
Raw Bench press: 606 lbs (US Record)
Raw Squat: 854 lbs (US Record)
Raw Deadlift: 793
Equipped Deadlift: 825lbs
Raw Total: 2,226 (US Record)

Bodybuilding History
2010 Europa Show of Champions
2010 Phoenix Pro
2009 Masters Nationals, Super Heavyweight and Overall Champion, Earned IFBB Pro Card
2008 Emerald Cup, Heavyweight and Overall Champion
2006 Emerald Cup, Super Heavyweight Champion
1997 Emerald Cup
1996 Emerald Cup
1992 Junior USA, Heavyweight, 6th
1991 Mr. Oregon Overall

Because he's richer than Scrooge McDuck and wanted to a place to train, he built a gym in Calicalled Super Training that appears to be affiliated with Mark Bell, and co-owns Flex Fitness in Dallas with Flex Wheeler, where he does all of his training now.  To my understanding, he simply invested in the gym because Wheeler wanted a gym and The Rhino wanted a place to throw his monolift while managing a conveyor belt company or somesuch.  This is how you roll when you're 43, wiegh 275 lbs with 5% bodyfat, and are a multi-millionaire and world record holder.

Training Takeaways

• Credits training with people stronger than him with his success in strength sports
• Says "Cardio is the least effective tool you have to burn bodyfat" (Bell), though he does brief intese fasted cardio upon waking.
• Ices his shit every day for a couple of hours
• Doesn't use cortisone or NSAIDs for any extended period of time because they weaken the joint and prevent them from rebuilding themselves
• Avoids exercises that hurt his joints
• Lifts heavy 3x per week
• Has one light and one heavy bench day per week, one squat day per week, and one deadlift workout every other week.
• Trains each bodypart once a week, 2-5 reps for powerlifting and 5-12 reps for bodybuilding, using one heavy basic and one assistance exercise for two hard growth sets per bodypart
• Keeps his workouts to less than an hour a day

Diet Takeaways

• Does progressive overload with dieting- he adds food incrementally to ensure digestion and assimilation.
• To get lean, recommends you "eat at least 5 meals a day, consume 50% of your calories from quality lean animal protein sources... then 20% of your calories come from complex carbohydrate sources eaten at breakfast and post-workout meals only.  The remeaining 30% of the calories are primarily from mono and polyunsaturated fats.
• Getting strong and lean is 90% nutrition- two grams of animal protein per pound of bodyweight, complex carbohydrates, and mono and polyunsaturated fats like coconut oil, macadamia nut  oil , olive oil, or peanut butter
• To lean out he adds a meal and drops his carbs, getting up to 9 to 10 meals a day

Additionally, it helps to be richer than all fuck, so you can sleep in a hyperbaric chamber Michael Jason-style, get all of the best training aids, equipment, and supplements, and be able to set your own hours so you can train when you want.  If that's not the best reason I've heard to make some fucking money, I don't know what is.  The key, however, like all of the other Baddest Motherfuckers, is that you do shit your own way- if you do everything like everyone else, you'll suck just as fucking badly as they do.

Sources:
Andros, Sean.  The Big Picture: The Stan Efferding File.  Flex Magazine, May 2011.  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KFY/is_3_29/ai_n57431667/pg_2/?tag=content;col1
Bell, Mark.  Interview with Stan "Rhino" Efferding.  Power Magazine,  Sept/Oct 2011, Vol 2 #5.
Efferding, Stan.  About.  http://stanefferding.com/about
Hildebrand, Bryan.  Efferding's Two World Records.  http://www.rxmuscle.com/strength-articles/3181-stan-efferdings-two-world-records.html