Advice for Getting Back into Strongman

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
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Hey guys! Been reading the forum and learning from the articles for a long time now, finally decided to jump on board the forum because I’ve got a question that I think can only be answered here.

I want to get back into strongman and actually stand a chance at being competitive.

Back in 2008 I started competing in strongman meets at the tiny size of 155lbs, at 5 foot 11. I’d never trained with weights in my life at that point, all body-weight training. I loved strongman immediately, and that got me jump started on training with weights.

Well after two years of floundering around not having a clue, I got my body weight up to 185lb, and still pretty much sucked at strongman cause for all my trying, I could never press even my own body weight. Deadlift strong, not to much issue with other implements. I’m great at the farmers walk for my size, but pressing? Yeah, not so much.

Then in 2010 I got serious and training with planned intent for two years, got my body wight up to 200lb, and not as lean as i liked, and I still sucked at strongman. I was having difficulty getting my press over 175lb consistently. Everything else was drastically stronger though, but how embarrassing is it to be at the right weight, and can’t even move the log off my chest no matter what I tried. It was humiliating.

Last year, 2012, having been utterly frustrated in my inability to press, and not being happy with my not-so-lean self, I gave up, leaned out to a solid 175lb and am going to try my hand at powerlifting this year.

My question is this: I want to keep competing in strongman, but lets face it, no one shows up in the under 175lb class, so I get lumped in with the under 200lb guys. This would be ok if my press was up to snuff, cause I can hold my own in the other events. But I just can’t press with them. My best ever press, at a bodyweight of 200lb was 195lb and I barely got that. ALL the pressing in the under 200lb class is over 200lbs, you guys know that, and it’s for reps. I just don’t stand a chance.

I’m not a top competitor in the other events, I don’t pretend to be, but it’s fun cause I can perform the feats at the very least. Although with deadlift I was usually in the top three. My first ever strongman meet, having never deadlfited in my life, at a body weight of 155, i pulled 300lb for 14 reps, no straps or belt. Deadlifting is kinda my thing :slight_smile:

But back to the issue: I was wondering if any one on here had advice for how I could increase my press to the level needed to just be able to have fun at strongman meets. That is, be able to actually press the weight for a handful of reps.

If your curious, I’m stepping over to powerlifting because it’s not really that hard to get the squat, deadlift, and bench press up to a level that makes it fun. But the overhead press, why I can’t get it to grow is beyond me. Right now I’ve been excited just to able to press my body weight, barely again, and I’m 175lb!!!

Please, any advice on this would be VERY appreciated!

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Can you please post a video of your press? No reason you,shouldn’t be able to move body weight in the press if your using your legs unless you have some kinda crazy shoulder impingement. There is something else going on here. How ever if your talking you can’t strict press your body weight that’s a different story and may take a little bit of effort but even if that’s the case why are you strict pressing in comp. That’s one of the beauties of strongman they pretty much could give jack shit how a implement gets from point a to point b as long as it gets there in the time allotted

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Reed,

for training I stick to the strict press, figuring the stronger my arms the better my press will be. My fear with training the push press exclusively is my arms wont really be getting stronger, which will hurt my other lifts, like stones and sandbag carry.

As far as pushpress goes, it increases my lifts in comp, sure, but not by 50lbs. I can get a few more reps out with a weight I cans strict press, and I can move about 10-20 more pounds for a handful of reps, but it’s not magical. It certainly won’t turn my current 175 single into a 225lbx10. Pushpressing also hurt my knees a lot in training, so I haven’t done it except in comp. Seamed like the amount of knee bend I needed to get a good start puts to much sheer on the knees.

Is push pressing really the secret? Was I really watching guys who couldn’t strict press their own body weight toss up over 200lbs with ease?

I’ll see if I can get a video of my press, and my pushpress tonight.

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I recently hit a 170lb PR in the strict press. The next week, I hit a 215lb PR in the push press. Obviously, neither of those is very impressive, but there’s a big difference. And to be honest, the PP felt like I had a little more while the strict press was a real grinder. That’s a 45lb difference. I think the PP and the OHP are quite synergistic.

If you worry about arms lagging, make sure to do other types of pressing as assistance. And still do strict pressing as well. My pressing started to go up when I realized how to actively engage my core and get big air for the press (this applies to both push press and strict press).

As far as knee pain, a video would help. However, two things that I would consider:

–try sitting back more when you dip. The power in the push press comes from the hips, not the knees. Keep the core tight to transfer the hip power to the bar.
–don’t dip very far. Dip depth during a push press has rapidly diminishing returns. You are strongest at the top range of motion in the squat anyways and that’s the only place where you get enough acceleration to really launch the bar off your shoulders.

Watch Big Z press. He doesn’t dip very far. Some say that is because he injured his patellar tendons, which is true. However, I imagine that he wouldn’t get much more by dipping deeper. Another thing to watch here is Oly clean and jerk. If you blink, you’ll miss the first dip on the jerk.

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That’s better than I can do right now. I tried a push press with 185 two weeks ago, and it didn’t go anywhere :frowning: -but again I don’t practice it often.

Tonight I’ll post videos if I can. It will be with lighter weight since I don’t normally train press on Wednesday, but it should give you a better idea of what I’m doing. I may have been dipping to far in an a futile attempt to get more momentum.

How the heck do some guys strict press over 300lbs?

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Back in the day, Oly lifters strict pressed over 500lbs. I have no idea how. It’s insane.

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Yes Push Press or jerk is the secret. My best strict press recently is 215 best push press is 305. Best log clean and press 280 but I couldn’t press 200 strict most likely on a log. Get your Push Presses down figure out the knee bend so it doesn’t kill you… Take a anti inflamatory and were knee sleeves or knee wraps if needed to keep them fresh. Unless your a 400+ bencher your never going to win a strongman comp with strict pressing in your weight class.

Just to prove the point get on YouTube and search Log Press. Look at Big Z, Derek Poundstone, Brian Shaw, Misha, the list goes on and on. These guys are some of the best presses in the world and every one of them uses leg drive when pressing.

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Here is video from the front. First rep is strict, the last two are pushpressing…or me attempting to pushpress. I can tell my drive isn’t moving the bar, and I’m not sure how to fix that. Not sure if you can see it, but I can feel that almost nothing of my drive is launching the bar up.

What am I doing wrong here? How do I get the leg drive to transfer into the bar?

Is the split jerk legal in strongman, so that if i practiced this olympic style in a clean and jerk fashion I could carry that over to strongman? I ask because I’m wondering if the way I’m holding the bar is the problem…although the pro strongmen don’t push press that way.

Advice?

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Yes, split jerk is allowed. The only exception is the viking press, where a double rebend is often not allowed. But for logs, axles, blocks, stones, and kegs, the only real restriction that I know of is that you can’t rest it on your head. In regards to the way pro strongmen press, some do use a split jerk technique on the logs. Misha Koklyaev is probably the best known for this.

Zack McCarley is a lightweight pro strongman who is on here sometimes and he uses a split jerk for logs. But you’re right that not all the pros do it. I think that has to do with the fact that strongman implements are less stable overhead and don’t lend them selves to as comfortable a rack position (as compared to olympic barbells). It may also reflect the fact that they just don’t have the training time to drill movement patterns the way olympians do as there are so many other things to train and practice.

As far as your video, it looks like your elbows are behind the bar or close to it. The further you get your elbows out in front of the bar, the more of a shelf you will have to rest the bar on and the easier it is to transfer leg drive to the bar. If the bar is only resting on your hands, the only way to transfer hip drive to the bar is through your arms, which will still end up being the weakest link.

By getting your elbows under the bar more, you get a shelf position and can transfer the hip drive into the bar through your chest, completely bypassing your arms. However, you don’t want to get your elbows too far out in front, or your upper body will be in too disadvantaged a position. It’s definitely a tradeoff, but I think you are too far back. For jerks, your elbows should be even further in front of the bar.

The only other thing I could say is to try and snap back up faster from the dip. This comes with practice, but your snap isn’t really that fast. Obviously, that’s easier said than done. Get big air at the top and push your core out. Dip and then think about exploding your chest into the bar. Get your head through and then lock it out.

Read this:

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Silyak,

I’ve read that article before, and about the elbows forward, but the problem I keep having when I try that is my wrists feel compromised. It’s like all the power goes out of my wrists because the bar ends up sitting closer to my fingers. Do I have to practice changing my grip quickly as I launch the bar with my body so my wrists are rotated to a more advantageous position? Or will my wrists adapt over time, and I just have to drop the weight until that happens? I would like to be able to use the same grip for strict and push presses to keep the carry over as great as possible. This article seams to indicate this is not possible.

When you say sitting on a shelf, are you referring to the front delts moving to a position where the bar then rests on them when my elbows are in front of the bar? I’ve tried getting into this position a few weeks ago after reading this article the first time, and with no luck, as I said, my wrists felt weak in the positions i was in. I do presses on Fridays, so I’ll post video again of my attempts at doing the push press correctly.

I haven’t yet figured how how to jerk the bar for the above reason. I can shelve more than I can press fairly easily, but then the bar is sitting on my finger tips and and front delts, and when i try and launch it, I have been unsuccessful in transitioning my hands to a position that allows me to push against the bar. Is this just practice or is there a specific sequence of movements I’m missing? I tried looking for material on this, but the hand position is just completely ignored in any in depth details, even though it is where i seam to have the most difficulty.

I’m leaning towards focusing on the split jerk because it technically allows for more weight to be lifted, but I’m open to every ones advice on this, since obviously i can do neither the pushpress nor the jerk correctly yet.

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Yes, when I talk about a shelf, I am talking about resting the bar on the front delts. It sounds like you have poor thoracic mobility. While most people eventually start to roll the bar onto their finger tips when getting into a front squat position with high elbows, you should be able to get your elbows in front of the bar while maintaining a closed grip on the bar.

Do some drills for thoracic mobility right before your push press and you should see some improvement. I like to do shoulder dislocations right before pressing. Foam rolling the t-spine is also good.

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Here is my attempt at push-pressing from the shoulder shelf. As you can see from my face, my wrists are not terribly happy with this arrangement.

After this video I started doing power-cleans. I was using substantially heavier weight, 185lbs. Given that I’m trying to learn how to push press, instead of catching the weight like I normally would have, in a position for the strict press, I decided to try and catch the weight in the “shelf” position seen in the video. With the heavier weight this seamed to force a slightly more comfortable positions for my wrists. Towards the end I started practicing the push movement after each clean, just like in this video.

In this video it doesn’t feel like my arms have any power at all, even with such a light weight because of the position of my wrists. With the heavier weight, which for some reason changed the angle, it felt better, but not good.

The first video i posted with the strict press hand position, feels much stronger for my arms, and doesn’t bother my wrists. It’s not on the video, but I tried push-pressing the 95lbs and my wrists felt like they were going to snap because of the angle they were forced into. Normally 95lb is nothing for me.

At this point I’m still practicing getting the push movement down, but I need to learn to use that push momentum, so is there some trick to pushing that bar even though my wrists don’t like the angle? Do I have to dynamically adjust my wrist position as the bar is launched from my shoulders? And then do the reverse to catch the bar again?

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Maybe my question wasn’t clear, I seam to be able to get the weight onto the “shelf” of my shoulders, but my wrist don’t like it. They are not quite in pain, but very uncomfortable, and it feels like I have no leverage to press with my arms after my body has launched the weight (feels like my wrists are going to snap).

Thus my question now is: Is there is a technique to change the wrist position in order to press the weight after the “push” phase? I tried rotating my wrists, but wasn’t able to do it. Is this something I just have to practice at, or do I have to suck it up and my wrists will just get used to the compromised position?

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[quote]b-marz wrote:
Maybe my question wasn’t clear, I seam to be able to get the weight onto the “shelf” of my shoulders, but my wrist don’t like it. They are not quite in pain, but very uncomfortable, and it feels like I have no leverage to press with my arms after my body has launched the weight (feels like my wrists are going to snap).

Thus my question now is: Is there is a technique to change the wrist position in order to press the weight after the “push” phase? I tried rotating my wrists, but wasn’t able to do it. Is this something I just have to practice at, or do I have to suck it up and my wrists will just get used to the compromised position?[/quote]
When I push press, I definitely have a solid wrist position. I am not in a full blown front squat style shelf position. However, the bar is resting on my shoulders and chest. I think this is important as it allows me to get hip drive into the bar without transferring force through my arms. On the other hand, some of the bigger strongmen definitely press with the bar just resting on their hands in the starting position. Derek Poundstone is an example. I would continue to practice and work on your mobility. Just like squatting, pressing has a lot of variation as to form and you have to figure out what is going to work for you.

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Silyak, I’ll honestly say I had no idea what you meant about thoracic mobility, but it clicked friday. Just out of practicing cleaning and pushing the weight (no press yet, don’t want to get my arms involved until i got the launch figured out) I got a few good launches that sent the bar up much higher than i expected. I thought with thoracic mobility you were referencing the position of my arms.

Call me dense but i had no concept that the mobility of my chest was an issue. Friday was the first time I really have pushed my chest up high enough that the bar was resting on it, and it made a big difference.

Now it’s just a matter of practice. Thanks for the advice.