Former 'Little Hercules' child bodybuilder says stranger once tried to 'pull off' his abs
Gabriella Ferlita
Featured Image Credit: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo / Inside Edition
A former child bodybuilder said that a stranger once tried to ‘pull off’ his abs.
Known as ‘Little Hercules’ as a child, Richard Sandrak has spoken about what it was like being the World’s Strongest Boy in the early 2000s.
The Ukrainian-born 11-year-old admitted in a 2005 documentary that onlookers would try to touch his muscles in a bid to see whether the legendary name he made for himself was real.
Sandrak said at the time: "Lots of people will come over to try to touch my abs and my muscles check if it's fake or not.
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"I remember one time a guy tried to pull it off and check if it was real."
The documentary showed him walking through Muscle Beach in Los Angeles, California, and other people’s reactions to the ripped child.
Others asked if he really was ‘Little Hercules,’ to which Sandrak responded: "I'd rather be called Richard."
Sandrak was made to follow a strict diet of solely lima beans in order to up his protein intake, according to the Guardian, and was even reported to have less than one percent body fat, which is dangerously low - even fatal.
“When my dad left, I just thought I would take a break and eat the food that I never ate before and try everything out,” he said with a cheeky smile.
“I would take a break from training and just train very little, and then I got kinda puffy.”
But that smile soon faded when he revealed that he was unhappy about his weight - and he was just a child.
“I’m not very happy about that,” he said.
But now, the 30-year-old has revealed that he’s left that part of himself firmly in the past, instead moving to diving as fitness which he enjoys.
In a 2015 interview with Inside Edition, Sandrak revealed he had stopped weightlifting and was working as a fire diver stuntman at Universal Studios Hollywood Waterworld.
He said: "No, I don't lift weights. If anything it just got boring. I’m very proud of my past.
"It’s not something I don’t want people to know, it’s just that I’m not going to be stuck living in it."