The super yoke is a gruelling event plain and simple. Picking up 3-4 times your bodyweight on your shoulders and walking/running/stumbling anywhere from 10-40m with it makes for a challenge to say the least. How you train the yoke is important however as with all events if you haven’t mastered the basics it won’t matter because you will spend more time dropping and picking up the yoke than moving with it.
Yokes can vary greatly in size, shape, balance and design. This element you as a competitor or trainee really have no control over so it’s important to practice technical proficiency in the part of the event you can control. How you set up and move with heavy weights on your back.
Here are my best tips for giving yourself the best chance of success;
1- Select a pickup height that allows about 10cm-15 cm of ground clearance. This is enough to prevent the yoke catching the ground when moving fats and not so high you have to do a half squat to lift the weight in the first place.
2- Find the tightest position for you under the yoke. For me it’s hands on the inside uprights pressing outward and forward as hard as possible. This gives you greater control of the yoke once it’s moving and makes it feel lighter on the back. For smaller trainees and competitors you might find it better with your hand under the crossbar which is ok but it does make it harder to control swing in the yoke meaning you have to nail the footwork side of things.
3- To move fast you want to take small steps and keep the yoke balanced. The key to moving it fast is to take short fast steps that allow you to sprint as fast as possible while keeping the yoke moving forwards and balanced. Everyone is different so practice, practice, practice!
4- Keep your eyes ahead and focus on moving OVER the finish line. So often I see people dropping their heads and in turn the yoke. Don’t look down and keep moving forwards. There is nothing worse than dropping the yoke 1m before the finish line!
The below image is a great example of how NOT to do a super yoke. Stance is way too wide and hte yoke rocked the whole way down the course for 14.7m…..
Training The Super Yoke
In the early stages of training we have been hitting the yoke twice per week focussing on speed and increasing work capacity. I cannot stress enough how important these two points are. We do one session to focus on speed and accumulating volume with lots of sets of lighter weights and short rest periods. I like to do this after Squat training and use it as a conditioning and technique development tool while building up work capacity.
We back this up with a slightly heavier session done for competition distances as part of our event training day. We threw in some medleys to make it interesting and further work on work capacity, so doing Yoke & Farmers Medley or Yoke and Drag medleys to really condition the legs to the rigours of strongman events. Here is what a week might have looked like;
Day 1- Squat Day
Squats, Squats and Skwats followed by a deadlift accessory exercise.
Yoke- 5-6 x 20-30m runs at 50-60% max yoke or comp weights
Event Training Day
Yoke & Farmers Medley- 3 sets of 20m each at 70% max or comp weights
The first 6 weeks of our competition preparation centered around this model before moving into a more specific phase that closely resembles the competition weights and distances for the final 6 weeks.
For an in depth breakdown of how to do the super yoke you can look into one of our strongman coaching packages or the Strongman 101 Workshop that will be kicking off in early 2017. Drop me a line on the contact form below to find out more.
