Wheels in Motion: The Rise of Larry “Wheels” Williams
Larry “Wheels” Williams made his name as a powerlifting prodigy, performing mind-blowing feats of strength on Instagram. Now he’s hoping to become something far bigger.
The story of how Larry Williams became “Larry Wheels”—24-year-old powerlifting prodigy, social media sensation, fast-rising bodybuilder, and aspiring strongman—begins on a Caribbean island, with a skinny teenager hoisting a pair of cinder blocks attached to a broomstick. Williams, the only son of a single mother, had bounced from one temporary home to another before he moved to the island of St. Martin from New York City at the age of 12 to reunite with the mom who had temporarily lost custody of him. Two factors, Williams says now, led him to craft that first handmade barbell: The first was boredom, and the second was bullying.
Williams was a tall and impossibly skinny kid, with “my Adam’s apple popping through my neck,” he admits. He also had no place to attend school. The only options were a French-language institution, where he would have been utterly lost, or a private school that his mother couldn’t afford. He spent his days bored out of his mind and struggled to find friends among the native teenagers, who treated him roughly. To combat both problems, Williams turned to exercise. The gyms in St. Martin didn’t allow anyone under 16, Williams says, so he’d do situps, pushups, and pullups and lift those homemade weights until he’d exhausted himself. Then he’d ride his bike around until he was exhausted again.
After a while, he couldn’t go a day without working out. When he returned to New York with his mother, he joined a gym immediately, swapping those homemade barbells for heavier and heavier iron weights. And here, he found his calling. “I realized at age 17 I was already the strongest guy in the gym,” Williams says. “I didn’t want to let this talent go to waste. I started asking myself, ‘What am I here on earth for?’ I wasn’t good at academics, I hated school, I hated studying, I hated doing homework. My heart always lay in getting strong at the gym. That was all I was passionate about.”
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Per Bernal / M+F Magazine
Seven Years Later…
Williams is still the strongest guy in nearly every gym he walks into. He has more than a half-million Instagram followers, and if it feels as if he’s setting new personal records—and some world records—every other week, that’s probably because he has been for the past few years. His feats of strength on Instagram— like a 585-pound one-arm deadlift, a 225-pound one-arm bench press, and a 440-pound overhead strict press—have become the stuff of legend and a way for Williams to continually challenge himself while also growing his online audience.
Though he knows how to put on a show for social media, he’s also done it in competition: In November 2018, Williams eclipsed the combined world record for the 275-pound weight class by lifting a total of 2,275 pounds—between the deadlift, back squat, and bench press—at a Revolution Powerlifting Syndicate (RPS) powerlifting meet in 2017. The year before, he’d already set the combined world record in the 242-pound weight class by totaling 2,171 pounds.
But as far as Williams is concerned, he’s just getting started. He recently moved to Los Angeles, and he’s training for bodybuilding competitions, both to grow his social media following and to further challenge himself. In 2019, he plans to spend time in Iceland training with Thor Björnsson, best known as both “the Mountain” on HBO’s Game of Thrones and the 2018 winner of the World’s Strongest Man competition. It’s a dream, Williams says, to someday follow in the 6’9″, 400-pound Björnsson’s footsteps and become the World’s Strongest Man. Though even Williams, who stands at 6’1″ and 265 pounds, acknowledges he’s years (and maybe many pounds of body weight) away from that goal.
Williams feels as if the best years of his career may still lie ahead of him. Yet it wasn’t always easy finding his way here, even after he knew he’d found his calling in the gym. Along the way, Williams regularly worked through injuries two or three times a year. They were mostly minor setbacks, including tears in his hamstring and soreness in his lower back—nothing that required surgery. Yet they were slowly taking a toll on his body. Williams assures he wasn’t “ego lifting” back in the day, though; rather, he had (and still has) a passion for going heavy.
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Per Bernal / M+F Magazine
Motivated by other powerlifters he watched on YouTube…
Williams figured the way to get stronger was to keep adding more: He trained every day, he ate more, and he began taking steroids to excess. Eventually, he says, “my body decided to fight back. The list of side effects I experienced—we could talk all day about it.”
What Williams really needed was a trainer who understood him and his goals and could counsel him on proper technique and how to moderate his training so he didn’t get injured. He found that person in John Gaglione, a coach based in Long Island, NY, and a former wrestler whose clients include Division I wrestlers and competitive powerlifters. Gaglione is still Williams’ primary trainer today. “He transformed my lifts entirely,” Williams says.
Williams entered his first RPS powerlifting contest at age 18, competing in the 275-pound class despite weighing only 247—and he won. For a while, he found himself waiting tables as his mother once had, and then he became a personal trainer at an upscale gym to make ends meet. But he’s now grown his following to the point where he can make his living off social media and through sponsors, in addition to being able to train full-time.
In order to keep that growth coming, Williams recognized he had to diversify. Hence, the move into bodybuilding. He entered his first competition, the NPC Gold Coast Classic, last February and won the heavyweight division. But Williams admits that the move from powerlifting to bodybuilding is still something of a work in progress—in particular, the diet, which is far stricter than what he followed as a powerlifter.
Williams still tries to keep a little bit of flexibility in his diet. (Cinnabon rolls are his favorite cheat food.) He finds that if he goes under 300 carbs per week, he can “feel a rapid decline in strength.” In the early weeks leading up to a bodybuilding competition, he’ll largely stick to beef and rice, and as he gets closer to the event, he’ll add in some chicken and maybe some sweet potato.
While Williams admits he still uses certain steroids, he says he’s cut way down from what he took as a teenager. “I prefer to use the bare minimum to get me through,” he says. In late October, Williams published an emotional 14-minute YouTube video titled, “Steroids: The Raw Truth! LarryWheels,” in which he talked openly about his steroid use and the personal issues that led him to take them. He also urged anyone who was considering using steroids for the first time to educate themselves on the risks. “My biggest issue I have right now with the feats of strength I do on social media is that I hope it doesn’t lead some people to believe they should go on gear themselves,” Williams says. “I would never recommend it for anyone coming up or just starting to work out. I think it’s too much of a risk.”
But beyond his concerns about setting the wrong kind of example, Williams has found a sense of contentment with his newfound status as a social media role model. He moved with his girlfriend to Los Angeles in part so he could collaborate with more colleagues in both the powerlifting and bodybuilding worlds (and, he freely admits, to escape the New York City weather). Thanks to sponsorships and online training program sales, he no longer has to worry, he says, about “going to a job I hate to do.” He’s planning to move his mother to Los Angeles, as well, so she can help him run the business end of his enterprise.
All that Williams has to do now is continue to focus on his training. His options are wide open. Could he leave powerlifting behind for good as he transitions to bodybuilding? He’s considering that possibility. Could he conquer the bodybuilding world and then become the World’s Strongest Man? That’s another long-term goal. He’s set up to go after it all.
“That leaves no excuses,” he says. “But now I have no fear. I have all the time in the world now to fight for my goals. Making a living off social media is by far the best part of it.”
