[quote]buckeye girl wrote:
mom-in-MD wrote:
HAHA! Thanks sb-that would be a serious drive for you anyway…
Buckeye-REALLY?! Im not too sure what the weights are…I’ll ask what the entry fee will be…PA wouldn’t be too far of a drive for you? For me, I think it’s about 6-7hrs…but I was going to leave early friday morning, and make a weekend out of it!
Yes. Well, at the moment I’m just curious. It looks like its about a 4 hr drive for me. I’d make a weekend out of it too.
I don’t know how I would train for strongman, but I’m pretty sure I can rig up most of the stuff at my gym. We have tires, sandbags, fat bars…
I’m not really interested in competing in PL again yet, but was considering an August meet. So I don’t know if the two will conflict. Or if I could just get away with doing a PL meet later in the year. I’ve been getting a lot of shit lately for not doing the last 2 meets my gym put on…[/quote]
BEG, if you’re even thinking about doing this comp, I strongly encourage you to go ahead and do it. Obviously I’m biased because I’m a strongman competitor and I love it, but my honest opinion is that its at the very least worth a shot.
I’ll tell you right now that I dont think the weights will be a problem for you. The women’s division has a) a wider talent range between the elite-level womens competitors and the lower level competitors than the men and b) a greater percentage of first-time competitors than the men (this is my impression, not established fact.) Both of these factors combine to make promoters very hesitant to make the weights too intimidating, especially since the sport would love an influx of more women. I’m sure it will be challenging for you, but I cannot conceive of a reasonable contest promoter using weights that a woman who has been training for strength for any appreciable time would bomb.
As far as training for it, just for anyone interested … in looking at the event list, 3 of the 5 events can be reasonably copied in the gym.
The log lift: obviously work your overhead, preferably DBs, palms facing together. You’ll also need hip pop for the clean so DB or KB swings would be good. Clean is rep is also a gut buster, so you’ll have to be in condition to go all out for 60 seconds.
Car deadlift: if you have a trap bar at lexen, just put it up on blocks and pull from 16" the technique change wehn you actually get to the contest and have to “lean back” to finish the pull is negligible
Farmer’s walk: obviously grip. Do your deadlift warmups double overhand as heavy as you can before switching to mixed grip, do plate pinches in between sets … anything you can think of to work grip really. I will add that dumbbell farmers walks are MUCH harder than farmers walks with actual farmers handles (because of the tendency for the DB to want to “roll” out of your hand) so if you do those - which would probably be another good idea, as long as youre not dropping Lexen’s DBs all over the place - dont be discouraged by the weight you use
Tire: this is one that cant really be replicated in the gym, so the fact that lexen has tire is good. One word of advice, in addition to the “sumo” technique you guys may be using, try getting your feet close together and your hands wide - tough to explain, but im sure you can find vids on youtube. For everyone else, full olympic squats are the best advice I can give, but try to get access to a tire even if only for one day before a contest. Failing that, pay very close attention to guys before the contest. If you’re feeling very daring ask someone to show you how to flip a tire day of the comp. If I weren’t too far zoned out right before a contest I’d be perfectly willing to help out a newb, so it’s worth a shot. Maybe the promoter could even suggest someone day of.
Stones - I’m not gonna lie, stones are tough/impossible to really truly replicate in the gym. Best you can do is deficit deadlifts with the bar touching your toes to replicate the pick and front squats to replicate the load. And even that’s not the same. IF you could get your hands on some stones and tacky even ONCE before the contest that will help tremendously.
