The former “world’s strongest” boy Richard Sandrak — better known as “Little Hercules” — has revealed that being a kid bodybuilder wasn’t all it was pumped up to be.
In a viral interview with the Metro 25 years after he blew up, the now-unrecognizable ex-Adonis revealed that his seemingly prodigious childhood was fraught with abuse and manipulation.
“When people talk about a childhood memory, it’s usually associated with something positive. I can’t really relate,” Sandrak, 32, told the outlet. “For me, it was a daily occurrence to where I was physically and emotionally abused by my dad.”
Born in Ukraine to a martial arts world champion father and an aerobics-star mother, the well-muscled wunderkind seemed destined to become famous for his physique.
Sandrak was working out every day by the time he was 5. By age 8, he could bench press three times his body weight and boasted rock-hard pecs and abs that were so well-defined, they looked Photoshopped.
After emigration to the U.S., Sandrak quickly took the world by storm, competing in bodybuilding contests all over the globe and earning the title “the strongest boy in the world.”
During Little Hercules’ halcyon days, he rubbed elbows with the likes of muscle mavens Arnold Schwarzenegger and “The Incredible Hulk” star Lou Ferrigno and even landed a spot in the flick “Tiny Tarzan,” the Daily Mail reported.
The iron-pumping prodigy also appeared on primetime TV, chatting with Jimmy Kimmel, Howard Stern and other media personalities.
However, while on the surface everything seemed Hulk-y dory, there was a dark side to Sandrak’s success.
Alarm bells were set off with the release of the 2005 documentary “The World’s Strongest Boy,” which depicted the grueling training regimen the child had to endure, including a stringent “athlete’s diet” devoid of the treats enjoyed by kids his age in the 1990s.
As a result, he developed an unnatural physique with dangerously low levels of body fat.
The jacked tyke also suffered appalling mental and physical abuse at the hands of his father and trainer Pavel Sandrak, who forced him to lift weights and practice martial arts for up to “eight hours a day.”
“My father would often go into rage fits and what would start as a normal workout ended up with me doing a triple split kick for 12 hours,” Sandrak recalled. “There were more times than I can count where a simple training session turned into what felt like a really intense hostage situation.”
The mini Samson was even forced to do squats while watching TV.
To make matters worse, Sandrak said he didn’t even choose bodybuilding as a career path — he was “physically beaten into it,” he said.
“My dad was very abusive,” recalled the unwilling gym shark. “I learned early on not to ask to stop. You grit your teeth and keep doing what you’re told.”
Salvation came around 2003 when Sandrak’s father was jailed and deported to Ukraine following a particularly violent assault on his mother Lena that year.
The absence of a father was transformational for the adolescent, who was finally free to forge his own path.
Sandrak gave up weightlifting at age 16 to pursue other sports like gymnastics, swimming, diving, basketball and skateboarding.
“Weightlifting was almost like PTSD in a sense,” he said. “It was connected to my past. I got tired of everything being based around my body.”
Unfortunately, due to his militant upbringing, Sandrak found himself “socially inept and unable to communicate properly” with his peers like a ripped fish out of water.
He eventually turned to the bottle, which seemed normal given that he’d drunk his first drop at age 9 and had been exposed to the liquor-laden life of a child star in LA.
“I would party a lot and anything I did, I made sure I always had alcohol around,” recalled Sandrak, who was downing a bottle of tequila a day at his lowest point.
Hitting rock bottom provided a wake-up call for Sandrak, who eventually quit boozing and has now been sober for a year.
These days, the former child sensation enjoys a quiet existence as a retail manager in Los Angeles, where he lives with his lawyer girlfriend and two cats, Miko and Mushu.
Despite leaving the bodybuilding life behind, Sandrak hasn’t entirely given up on fitness, either: He is currently considering a career as a personal trainer and nutritionist.
“When I look back at all I have been through, it feels like I’m looking back at a different person’s life,” he said. “And I’d say I’m mostly happy with the person I am today.”
Sandrak added that he hasn’t seen his father — who he claims never apologized for his actions — since he was deported, nor does he have any interest in reconnecting with him.
“I will always hold resentment towards him. They say ‘forgive and forget,’” Sandrak told Metro. “I may be willing to forgive, but I will never forget.’
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