He got off to a roaring start in strongman, ran into a couple of bumps in the road, but don’t think about burying Kevin Nee quite yet.


Kevin Nee is a member of the exclusive +400-kg strongman deadlift club, having hit 410 kg.  IronMind® | Courtesy of remimedia.com.



“Lately I've been getting a lot of emails from people wondering if I'm retired or if I'm injured or what I'm even planning on doing,” Nee told IronMind.

“Well I'm definitely not retired and I think I'm always at least a little injured: I think every strongman is . . . occupational hazard.


“The past year or so as I trained and competed in several smaller shows, I struggled to keep 100% of my focus on eating, sleeping and training like I had for previous years.  The reason for that is stress and lack of sleep because of stress.

“I took a step back and realized that I love strongman, my ultimate goal is to become World’s Strongest Man, and I'm willing to work as hard as possible to obtain this goal, but in order to do so I need to be able to focus 100% and not stress out. I want nothing more then to train full time and be a full time athlete but right now that's not providing security for my future and my future family.

“So the next step was to figure out how to get back to being a full time athlete. This is so important because strongman is as much mental, if not more, then it is physical. Trying to train full time, while nursing injuries and running a business and having my mind running wild—it's just not healthy.  

“After hitting a wall this year and dealing with some undesirable circumstances, I decided it was time to take a step back and focus on my business, family, and to finally let my injuries heal up. I'm still training a bit but I'm not going all out and trying to hit PR's: Just working on flexibility, conditioning, and getting my confidence back along with getting my head right,” said Nee.

Asked about his new job Nee said, “Having OX Nutrition and House of OX to keep me busy and occupy my mind has been great.  It's giving me something else to focus on, and it’s helping me in similar ways to when I was a full time student: I'm getting the best of both worlds in having my mind working hard most of the day and my body working hard at night.
 
“It's also nice being able to use the knowledge gained from my supply chain management degree and try to be an ambassador for all strength athletes

“So to answer their question, I'm definitely not retiring, in fact I'm just setting myself up for a big future and a long and healthy career in strongman.”                                             
                                                                           
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