At 8 years old what should a seemingly normal child be concerned about? Pulling on our memory, according to the experience of most of us, studying to at least pass the year in high school, otherwise Dad and Mom would put the slat on our backs.
Well, childhood was like that for most of us, as for the boy Richard Sandrax, who earned the remarkable and coherent nickname Little Hercules, life was a little different, at the age of eight in the late 90s he scared the entire world by displaying an extremely worked-out body, which was worked on for years with great discipline and all kinds of heavy physical exercises.
About fifteen years have passed since the photo above was taken, and Richard, now 23 years old, has returned to the media again, this time for having reappeared only now his body has nothing extraordinary, he has become a 23 year old normal adult.
According to Richard himself, the fact that he broke ties with his father at age 11 because they were not a happy family, added to the wear and tear with the exercise routine, made him want to give up weight training at once, and then he went from being ‘Little Hercules’ to becoming just Richard.
However, Richard, who now works as a film stuntman at Universal Studios Hollywood, says he is very proud of the period in which he was advertised as a bodybuilding icon and says he feels fulfilled for having inspired many people.
And you reader? What is your opinion on all this?
When he was just six years old, Ukrainian-born Richard Sandrak was considered the strongest human in the world, pound for pound. He could bench twice his body weight, and as an eight-year-old, Sandrak was benching a whopping 210 pounds. As a child, Sandrak was forced into an insane training regimen by his abusive father.
He would consume Lima-beans by the can and eat heads of lettuce to stay lean. His lifting became so absurd that doctors speculated he had to be taking steroids, because the amount of testosterone required to lift that heavy was simply not present in pre-teen bodies. To keep his perfect posture, Sandrak slept on the floor, something he claims wasn’t a big deal.
Next up: Sandrak gets to meet a lifting icon
Hollywood Hero
It also wasn’t until the age of 10 that Sandrak was allowed to have interactions with other kids his age. He was isolated and deprived of a childhood. But he became a sort of fringe celebrity, one that starred in a few films and was widely regarded as the strongest child in
history.
One of his movies, “Little Hercules in 3-D,” stars Sandrak alongside other celebrities such as Hulk Hogan, Judd Nelson, and Robin Givens, Mike Tyson’s former wife. Today, Sandrak aspires to work for NASA and pays the bills as a Hollywood stuntman, but his training days and out-of-this-world physique are long gone.