..As I mentioned in my last post, I'm starting to train for a strongman competition and taking advantage of there being a strongman crew in the area to learn from as I take on the new challenges. (Exact competition is TBD, but it looks like Iron Asylum may be hosting one in January).
I spent the past few weeks thinking through how I should adjust training - with the main factors being:
- When the Strongman Crew at Iron Asylum trains
- Which days I have access to the gym with specialty equipment (versus when I train at the UC Campus Recreation Center where my office is located)
- My work schedule
- Recovery (stress, sleep, time between sessions, etc)
- Slowly adding in new movements and focuses for strongman while doing it in a way that keeps momentum going from current training
..While I have a fair amount of strength programming/training/coaching knowledge, I'm very new to things in strongman. So I'm sure as I learn more from the lifters at Iron Asylum, communicate more with my elitefts teammates, read more, and just generally learn from trial and error, things will evolve and change quite a bit. I'm approaching this whole experience with humility and being prepared to learn, while still primarily organizing my own training program - this is part of what I like about training, and even if it means stumbling a bit, it's an opportunity for me to learn first-hand and be accountable to all my training decisions.
Based on those factors I listed above, here is what my current weekly training split looks like to get things rolling:
Sundays - Explosive: Lower Body / Strength: Deadlifts & Squats / Conditioning: Loaded Carries
Mondays - Off/Light Recovery (aka chasing my pitbull around)
Tuesdays - Off
Wednesdays - Strongman Event Training @ Iron Asylum
Thursdays - Full Body Hypertrophy & Stability/Prehab (this ends up working around whatever we did for event training Wednesday night)
Fridays - Off
Saturdays - Explosive: Upper Body / Strength: Overhead Press / Accessories: Upper Body
..It's kind of a goofy setup compared to what I've been doing, but after 1 week down (I'll post logs from the week soon), I think it will work well as long as I'm smart about recovery and adjusting things around what we do for event day. I may move things around as I see what recovery looks like.
The main changes from my previous training split will be more explosive work added in, a larger focus on overhead work, strongman-applicable conditioning, and obviously the strongman event day (which will rotate different events each week).
Stay tuned for more info as I learn through this process and adjust accordingly..
