‘Practice is key’: Strongman competitor wins regional event three years in a row

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — A local strength sport competitor is basking in glory after taking the title of a regional competition for a third consecutive year.

Alex Lorincz competed in the 2025 Grande Prairie’s Strongest event on Saturday, April 5th at Evergreen Park and Gordon Badger Stadium in Grande Prairie, Alberta.

He told Energeticcity.ca he’s placed in the top overall spot every year since first entering the competition back in 2023. Lorincz is also a former bodybuilder and high school athlete.

“[Strongman] just seemed like a really good avenue for me to get into,” said Lorincz. “I did bodybuilding for years, but realized it wasn’t really my thing.

 “I played basketball and track in school and I always wanted to go back to an athletic background.”

Lorincz took the top spot in three of the five overall events during the competition, and a second place finish in the two events he didn’t win.

His wins included the ‘wheelbarrow load and push,’ where contestants load a wheelbarrow; the ‘circus dumbbell ladder’ featuring a row of increased dumbbell weights; and ‘atlas stones over bar’, where stones with varying weights are moved from the ground over a bar.

Lorincz says winning the atlas stones was “up in the air” because he hadn’t been able to prepare for it in training. The winning weight was 335 pounds over a bar 52 inches off the ground.

“The thing with stones is it’s hard to access them right now,” said Lorincz. “It’s hard to keep them inside, and everything outside is still kind of under ice and snow.”

Lorincz says preparation for a competition involves around four to five days of gym time per week and he will start planning for eight to ten weeks prior to an event, saying “practice is key.”

Outside of competing, Lorincz also works as a personal trainer as well as a carpenter for a local construction company.

He says his long-term goal is to do the sport of strongman professionally, hoping to emulate the success of Mitchell Hooper. 

Hooper, who hails from Midhurst, Ontario was the first Canadian to win the coveted World’s Strongest Man competition in 2023, and has won the Arnold Strongman Classic thrice.

“He’s a big inspiration,” said Lorincz.  “[Because] he’s such an amazing athlete.”

However, his immediate goal is to compete in both Alberta and B.C. provincial strongman events, and he will be in action at the Cariboo strongman event scheduled for early May in Williams Lake.

More information about Grande Prairie’s Strongest competition is available on its Instagram page.