You see it all of the time. That one person in strongman training who posts the same lifting videos on social media every day—oh, look, he’s deadlifting again. Sure, he is an amazing deadlifter, but unfortunately for him, the sport isn’t called “being a good deadlifter.” Before you get your feathers in a ruffle, I’m writing this as a one-trick pony. My overhead pressing carried me through much of my strongman career. I was OK at moving events. But I sucked at farmers because my hands are what one of my old training partners, Justin Richards, coined “Burger King Hands” (too small to hold a whopper). Also, I usually ran around the upper middle of the pack on stones and deadlifts, but when I was competing at a higher level, I usually knew that the overhead event/events were going to be mine.
I’m not trying to humblebrag here but rather show you my mistake so that you don’t have to repeat it. I relied too much on my overhead pressing, and instead of working harder on my other events, I focused on my strengths and let everything else fall by the wayside. This led to a series of competitions where I’d come in second or third to guys whom I, in theory, should have beaten. While I was crushing the log or axle, they were inching their way past me with second- and third-place event wins in every event. Meanwhile, I was placing in the back of the pack on farmers and medleys. While I got the glory of being a great overhead presser, they got the glory of being the better strongman.
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I realize that it’s cliche by now to say that you should work on your weaknesses. But the fact that it’s just as cliche as coaches complaining about their athletes going off program means there’s still an issue in the sport that athletes need to reflect on. Remember, strongman training isn’t just about being strong: it requires all of the attributes of a great athlete. And if you’re lacking in one area, counting on another lift to bring up your overall performance will only work for so long.
So, how do we go about figuring out where we need to bring up lagging events and where we can idle the throttle? Past events and score sheets. These types of data are invaluable not only for seeing who you’re competing against but also for developing a plan to make yourself a well-rounded strongman competitor. For example—and these numbers are made up to keep things easy—let’s say that at nationals last year, the top-five fastest yokes with 800 pounds went 60 feet in under 10 seconds. What does that tell you? On average, the best athletes are moving a yoke 6 feet or more every second of the run. So, now, I’ll ask a hypothetical question. Does it make sense to train an 800-pound yoke week after week when you can’t get it close to that speed? Instead of thinking about the weight of the yoke, think about your foot speed. Until you can run a 700-pound yoke in that time frame, there is usually no reason to add weight to the yoke.
This will help to develop you as a strongman in a few different ways. One, even though you may not be at the level you would like to be at with a certain event in comparison with your peers, you will still be able to train a weakness without adding excess stress to your training that may detract from your other events. Remember, stress is cumulative, and failure after failure builds up. Trying and failing with an 800-pound yoke over and over again will destroy gains in other events. I’d much rather come into a contest knowing I have four strong events and one weak one for which I still trained my ass off for, than having four mediocre events and one I completely neglected.
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Now that you’ve seen what the baseline for success is according to the data, the next step is to engage in some deep self-reflection and figure out the sort of non-event specific attributes in which you are lacking. Does your conditioning suck but you’re a static monster? Well, it may be time to slide that scale back toward the middle a little bit more by adding in some conditioning. Are you too fat and immobile to be efficient in certain events? Then you need to work on losing weight and readjusting to new leverages that allow you to be more efficient with your energy. Are you immobile? Work on your mobility. If you can’t clean an axle from the ground because you can’t get it around your gut, your shoulders are immobile, and you can’t hang because it’s an event for reps, having the strongest out of the rack press means nothing. That guy or girl who can hit that weight for 10 reps before you get one or two but has a lower max overhead is still going to be the better competitor that day.
Being the best competitor on the day of the competition should always be the main objective within our sport. Being the strongest static lifter is great if that’s what the competition calls for, but for longevity in the sport, more athletes need to shift their mindsets from chasing numbers to being athletes. Do what you have to do to win, not what strokes your ego. Keep winning contests by studying your competition, strategizing, crunching the data, and working on your weaknesses, and that will shift-feed your ego more than any PR in training ever will.
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