Beginning Strongman Training Part 1

Training for Strongman can be as complicated or as simple as you would like to make it. The sport draws from the individuals strength, endurance, athleticism, and mental toughness. This alone can make it very difficult to train for the sport and be successful, but it can also make it very easy.

My simple advice is to train to be stronger while taking measures to make sure that your cardiovascular capacity and your athleticism are also in check. Quite often people will only train for strength and they will lose their ability to have any endurance.

A few simple guidelines are as follows:

1) Make sure that you squat, deadlift, and overhead press every week. You do not need to train them with maximum weights, to total failure, or with complete intensity every week or every training session, but they should always be trained. Twenty rep squats, 5 sets of 5, 3 sets of 8, one set to failure, etc…are all good programs.

2) Make sure to include some type of cardiovascular exercise at least once a week. Most strongman events only last 75 to 90 seconds so it is important that every muscle in your body can work at a 100% capacity for that full amount of time. This can be trained in many ways. Of course, the best way is to actually do the events and simulate the contest but often this will wear your down mentally and physically and most people simply do not have the implements to train with. One can also swim or run in sprints lasting for 75-90 seconds. This will really tax the body both physically and mentally. Pushing your car down the street for 3-5 sets of 30-50M will also work very well.

3) Eat a lot of good quality foods. Make sure to eat at least 2 times your bodyweight (in kilos) in grams of protein each and every day. This means that a 100 kilo man should eat at least 200 grams or protein every day, minimum. This could easily go higher in the 250 grams, daily. This can be done through eating pork, beef, milk, tuna, eggs, etc…but you may find that supplementing with a good quality protein powder can help you as well.

4) Have fun!!!! Always make sure that you are having fun both in your training and in your competing. The sport of Strongman brings with it a group of people who are unlike any other athlete where we all want to win but we do everything that we can to help the other athletes both in their training and in their competition efforts.

This is just a simple outline of some easy things that you can do to make sure that you are started in the right direction for the sport of Strongman.

Please feel free to contact me anytime about training or any questions at clint@cystrongman.com

Clint