elitefts™ Sunday Edition

“What’s a good beginning Strongman program for a noob?”

I get asked this question a lot in real life and via the internet. "Why?" you might ask. Because there are only two types of people in Strongman—those who believe there are two types of people and those who do not. On a more serious note, there are many types of people in Strongman, but the newcomers fall mostly into two categories—powerlifters who hate everyone in the sport and want out and regular people who have never lifted a weight in their life with any amount of aggression and really think they want to. I say “think” because everyone wants to be strong until three weeks of submaximal squatting. Then most of them realize, “Wow, I’d rather just be doing wall balls and jumping at the ceiling for time.”

I used to think that barbells showed a lot about a person. Now, I believe that they show who would really be willing to drive the Batmobile into a wall at 101 mph with the afterburner going while praying that Alfred didn’t turn off the automatic garage door opener. On a side note, have you ever seen anyone at Walmart run into the doors? It's priceless! So I digress...

First, we have to define “Strongman” and “strong man.” A Strongman is an athlete of the strength variety who is a member of an organization that holds sanctioned Strongman meets (like the NAS, ASC, etc.). The keyword here is 'competitor.' They compete in the sport of Strongman. Women and teenagers can be Strongman competitors. A Strongman’s accomplishments and rank can quickly be summed up with a call to Dione or Willie at the American Strongman Corp and are based in fact.

A "strong man" is a dude who can lift more than all of his friends on a general basis. Women and children can't be strong men. Well, I guess they could become one, but that requires time and surgery, depending on age and original gender. A strong man’s accomplishments are mostly surrounded by mystery, lore, and a lot of bro science. So now that we have all our verbiage (nonsense) straight, let’s get into lifting.

As a Strongman, you need to be able to squat like there is no tomorrow. The better you squat, the better you will be overall. You should squat a lot. In fact, squat as much as you can every week. That's right. Some of you weaklings should squat two to three times a week until your absolute strength levels go up. I advise it.

In Strongman, we often do a lot of reps and become “throwing up on yourself" tired. The hot dog truck is always way over there at any event. So work off of your true maxes, build to a five-rep max, and use Jim Wendler’s handy dandy 5/3/1 formula to find your true calculated theoretical awesomeness from there.

Do back squats, front squats*, and Zercher squats. Make sure that you rotate them frequently. Yes, I'm aware that you're all pissed off now because you can’t brag about your continuously stalled back squat numbers. This is what will happen though—you’ll show up to a meet in a Walmart parking lot, and the last event will be to put a five foot, one-inch woman weighing 350 pounds back into her rascal in sixty seconds and you’ve only been back squatting. You're screwed!

*Do Olympian front squats, not bodybuilder front squats. They will help your clean.

Always stand up and press. Sometimes lie down and bench. I'm not condemning the bench because it has its purpose, but you'll need to press on your feet. As one who competes to win at the sport of Strongman with specific lifts (versus a strong man having a dick measuring contest with the guy you don’t know across from you at Planet Fitness), you need to be good at “sport-specific stuff.” So one of your core lifts is now, in fact, pressing. Bench pressing is still in there. It helps you clamp down on those stones, so get some sets of bench in there as well. Benching just isn’t always your 'go to' upper body max effort lift. Get over it.

For Strongman, an 18-inch deadlift is better than off the floor. I get a lot of theoretical grief on this topic, and I can certainly understand why. In my defense, it works in real life. The grief is “if I don’t pull off the floor, I will suck at it.” Most people's five-rep max from 18 inches is their one-rep max off the floor, so it translates over. The pro is that it gets weight in your hands, strengthening your grip and preparing your back for cars, Atlas stones, and other weird stuff.

I got this ground shattering notion at the elitefts™ compound. It was a Saturday morning. I looked around and it hit me—everywhere I looked, I saw one of the top fifty living powerlifters on the planet getting ready to bust someone's ass at a contest. They were all box squatting and pulling off the floor with Ice T playing loudly on the stereo. My gears started to spin, so I polled a couple of my World's Strongest Man friends and asked one two-part question—how deep do you squat and do you listen to Ice T?

All answers came back with a resounding, “All the way down and sometimes.” So from this, I devised that you have to get your 'new Jack hustle' on if you want to be fly, and Strongman competitors get more out of squatting deep and pulling from 18-inches than squatting to just bellow parallel and pulling off the floor.

Alright, so let's sum all this up. You need to be squatting deep, you should be pulling from altitude, and you need to press heavy and bench for speed, reps, accessory, or size. Now, I'm well aware of the fact that I didn't lay out all the event-specific lifts. I did this on purpose because it's Strongman, not Weakman. If you can't press a solid 110-pound wooden log five times, you need more axle pressing under your belt, not a 60-pound metal log for your Instagram photo shoot scheduled at noon today. If you can't pick up a 160-pound Atlas stone, you need to squat deep, pull more, and work on your grip, not shoulder a 12-inch stone for time while your buddy pats your ass.

As always, have fun and bust some shit up!