For the strongman trainee the week can be a long and tiring endeavour. It can be a tough grind and for some a tedious one. I mean there is only 1 Saturday each week and that means only 1 Strongman event training day per week….
The Bread & Butter
Strongman event training is our butter. The tasty part of the sandwich that the bread holds together. Without it plain bread is boring. Lifting weights should be fun and if it isn’t something you enjoy then you need to work out a way to fix that. Squatting, pressing and deadlifting are all fundamental things that we need to practice and are crucial for building strength and muscle therefore the success of your strongman goals depends upon them. Nothing beats an event training day with a group of 10 of your fellow strongmen and strongwomen. Yoking, carrying, pressing, hoisting, throwing, dragging and whatever else we have planned it is the very reason so many of us took up the sport in the first place. To do Strongman events!
Making The Most Out of Strongman Event Day Training
For all the enjoyment strongman training brings it can be a brutal and unforgiving sport. Events can be dangerous as well as being very heavy and taxing on the body. Because of this it is so important to take a sensible and intelligent approach to program design with longevity and progress in mind. Strongman programs should always be built around your event training days. From here you can back track or reverse engineer the program building it around your schedule to suit. Whether it be 2, 3 or even 6 days a week the principles stay the same. Events in upcoming competition take priority and if there is no competition coming up or you don’t compete then the events should be rotated on a cyclical basis to cover all your bases ensuring you are ready for anything that is thrown your way. This is the essence of strongman.
At Iron Revolution I set up our event rotation based on upcoming competitions and the next Strength Challenge we have. I try to include 1 different event each week depending on the overall volume of the session and the intensity of the events for the day. In layman’s terms the closer we get to a competition or the heavier and harder the weights/events get it becomes more important to be specific with less time to dick around and do extra work.
Event Training Basics
Event training days should feature at least 3-4 events that are varied. My go to format is 1 moving event with a lower body dominance, 1 overhead event, 1 medley or carry and 1 stone lifting. This weekend at the gym we did the following;
1- Truck pull, harness only 2 x 20m timed runs
2- work up to a 5rm on the Axle Clean and Press
3- Iron Cross, 2 x max distance runs not timed
4- Atlas Stones 5 x 1-2 reps
The structure is important to cover all the main events trainees will have in an upcoming comp or for strength purposes to cover 4 of the main movements in strongman. These were the priority events for this phase of training for us with the missing elements covered during the week. You should be able to fit deadlifts, overheads and some other events in during the week as part of the main program structure. If the program is laid out well using strongman implements for your main overhead lifts each week and for the deadlift wont be a problem. Choosing the variation required will depend on individual weaknesses and issues that are covered in the regular programming.
Next week I’ll be talking about the weekday training and strength foundation work we do including strongman implements. Keep your eyes peeled as it will be a great insight into how we will programming our strongman training here over the next couple of months in the lead up to Victoria’s Strongest Man and Woman
Signing Off
