A strong run of success for Cardoza
By JON COUTURE, Standard-Times staff writer
Brad Cardoza is feeling a bit run down these days. The former UMass hammer throw star and man behind North Dartmouth's Pinnacle Strength and Fitness took a week off recently to recover from a hectic few months.
He deserved the break.
Twelve months ago, the Mattapoisett native was the ninth-ranked amateur strongman in the country, just beginning to explore a sport he learned about while a personal trainer in Connecticut. Today, he's America's fourth-best professional, claiming that prize at the first-ever IFSA Pro Strongman Light Heavyweight National Championships, held Aug. 6-7 in Fort Worth, Texas.
"This is a dream come true for me," Cardoza said of his finish. "To think that I missed going to World's Strongest Man on ESPN by two spots is motivation to keep me going for a long time."
It's even more impressive when you consider how close a hamstring injury came to keeping the 28-year-old from even making it to the Lone Star State.
Cardoza became one of the first light heavyweights -- those 231 pounds and under -- to earn a professional card when he won April's Azalea Strongman Festival in Norfolk, Va. To fit the heavy training required for everyday feats like deadlifting a car and flipping 800 lb. tractor tires around his personal training businesses in New Hampshire, Andover and at Gold's Gym in North Dartmouth, Cardoza walked a fine line of sleeplessness, heavy travel and high stress he knew wasn't a good idea.
The proof came just three weeks before the championships.
"It was sort of a freak accident … just doing deadlifts because I knew we had one in the competition," Cardoza said. "I think I was (lifting) somewhere around 400 pounds, and I was plenty warmed up, but on my way down I heard a couple pops in my leg.
"For two weeks, I couldn't even pick up a 40-pound dumbbell off the floor."
Cardoza immediately cancelled the trip, fearing all his hard work would have to wait for another year. A doctor in Waltham, however, had the answers he needed. Ernie Hackett, a former world powerlifting champion and strongman competitor, is an expert in Active Release treatment techniques -- a method of healing soft tissue injuries with a combination of doctor-delivered tension and specific patient moves.
"I knew I needed Active Release," Cardoza said. "And I figured I couldn't go wrong with someone who squatted 1,000 pounds in 1980."
The rest and treatment were enough for Cardoza to book his plane tickets in time to compete, but he had another heavy problem to clear up first.
And it wasn't the cost of booking airfare a week and a half before travel.
"The week before the competition, I was 238, 239 pounds," said Cardoza, who regularly carries just 7-8 percent body fat. "I was thinking to myself, 'I've done this five times in the past year,' and I knew I was down to 233, 234 a day and a half before. I just assumed I'd make weight."
Cue the cliche about making assumptions. Whereas he usually loses 4-5 pounds of water weight before a competition, Cardoza said he lost just a single pound in the final 48 hours this time.
It took more, well, sacrifice for the 5'11" Cardoza to take his place in the 13-man field.
"Why the hell was I wearing briefs?" Cardoza said.
It proved worth the scene, however. Taking third in the opening event, nearly completing the first 300-plus pound log lift of his career, Cardoza completed just three lifts in the 625-lb. car squat.
"I should have had my feet further forward," said Cardoza, who'd completed six lifts on a similar apparatus the previous weekend. "All of the guys who had their feet set up correctly got six, six-plus reps."
After a fifth place in the medley, where the 50 foot drag of an 800-pound keg nearly leveled the field -- "I had so much lactic acid flowing through my quads I couldn't stand up for 15 minutes," he said -- came the car deadlift he'd injured himself training for. Going in, Cardoza said, he knew he'd either make it through healthy or completely tear his hamstring.
He completed six reps, good for a three-way tie for third.
"On the third rep, I felt the hamstring starting to go, and adjusted my body so that I was using more quad than hamstring," Cardoza said. "At about rep five I heard the announcer say that I was looking like a machine, and as soon as that was said I hit a wall.
"I was a little mad because I knew had I been healthy I was good for an easy ten, but still pleased because I got through the event."
Cardoza finished with a second place in his strongest event, the stones of strength, only surrendering first when Dr. Kirk Nowack became the only competitor to load the fourth of the series of five spheres (weighing 240-365 lbs.) to its five-foot platform. In strongman's lowest-score-wins system, Cardoza's 26.5 points put him well behind 41-year-old winner Wille Wessels -- organizer of the amateur North American Strongman Society that Cardoza formerly competed in -- and Nowack, but just a point behind third-place finisher Brad Johnson.
"Almost every guy there had a shot at it," said Cardoza. "[Wessels] came in fourth at Azalea, and he won this weekend. The guy that won Amateur Nationals last year came in last this weekend. It's a real day-to-day sport."
Even knowing the injury cost him a strong chance at a trip to Finland, Cardoza had few complaints on his finish.
"It's a real bugger, that one point. If I had gotten one more rep in the dead lift, had I gotten the sled (in the medley) moving a little bit sooner … just so many things that could have gone my way for third," Cardoza said. "The guys who got first and second, though, they really deserved it."
For now, Cardoza will enjoy a little rest and recovery. He has only one competition left this year -- the Pro-Am Highland Games this month in New Hampshire, where he'll compete both in a kilt and against a group of heavyweight professionals.
"It'll be a fun day. I have no plans on winning, but I do want to hold my own," Cardoza said. "It's time to get healthy and get back to the basics in the gym."
The trainer -- who readily admits his trip wouldn't have been possible without the generosity of Gold's Sol Friedman, client Pam Evans and his sponsors at APT Pro Wrist Straps -- has at least thought about spending more time with the heavyweights. Cardoza could compete in the upcoming amateur heavyweight national championship upcoming in Atlanta, but cites a number of reasons in staying put.
"I would never be (as successful) as a heavyweight," Cardoza said. "The heaviest I could realistically get to is 250, and as a heavy, you really need to be 280, 290. It would be the same events, but I just realized with the hamstring, I would just be doing it for myself and to prove a point."
And really, when you're the fourth best at something in your nation, there's not a whole lot of points you need to be proving to anyone.
Videos and more photos of Brad Cardoza's performance at the Pro Nationals are available at PinnacleStrengthandFitness.com
This story appeared on Page C1 of The Standard-Times on September 1, 2004.
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