Woke at 264.3 lbs, looking the same as yesterday. Rehydration and extra salt did the trick. No headache either.
Gym Xmas party was yesterday. Jake actually had a bar tab for us, which was pretty cool. Had an interesting conversation with one of the ladies from the gym who is new to both powerlifting and strongman but has been doing it for around year now.
She said she’s leaning towards strongman because she’s more interested in competing with others than getting technically proficient. She explained it as, I can pick up a yoke badly and still walk with it, and next time pick up more weight; but with powerlifting I have to think about the technique.
So effectively, she’s picked the option that gives her free reign to just focus on beating people rather than having to focus on getting better at a couple of lifts.
I have to admit, I like that attitude. Not only is it honest, it’s focused on winning rather than participating.
What I’m curious about is how accurate her assessment is. @T3hPwnisher @flipcollar @strongmanvinny2 @Koestrizer is that the case? Is success in strongman to any extent more reliant on just getting significantly stronger and faster than it is on getting technically better at the different events?
4 Likes
At my gym are two women who compete strongman, ones like 3x Canada champ and the other Is a amateur who will be pro sooner than later. But they also said the community is a lot better for strongman. Not sure if that also falls over into where you’re at.
Not so much. Everyone in powerlifting I’ve come across seems to get along pretty happily except for one or two dickheads, which is generally unavoidable. The IPF mob mosty keep to themselves like they always seem to, but definitely don’t bother anyone.
Canberra doesn’t have the biggest strongman community that I know of, but since I don’t do strongman I could be unaware of how big it actually is.
Todays training
600 metre walk
Sprints 7x40 metres up 20 degrees and walk back
600 metre walk
Sprints were around 70%. Speed off the line was good, and the sprints felt good too.
3 Likes
I’d be interested to hear the answer to your question. My interests in strength came mostly from Strongman even back when I was a kid. I am still interested in one day giving it a go but gym options are not as easy to come by as other options like powerlifting.
2 Likes
Your post made me think of an article I read and I was happy that I found it, here,
When I give seminars I usually end them by talking about balance. I relate a story once told to me by a very experienced lifter who was about to walk out of the house to go squat. His young daughter came up to him and said, “Daddy, would you have a tea party with me?” He said, “I dropped my bag and missed that squat session because in twenty years I’d never remember that workout. But I’d always remember the tea party with my little girl.”
I’m not a father, although I desperately hope to be someday.
4 Likes
You know what @Voxel? I read the same article years ago. It’s the reason when family push comes to shove I don’t train that day.
2 Likes
That’s pretty much why all my sessions are when the kids are ready for, or already in bed.
4 Likes
Believe me, had I the option that’s what I’d do.
3 Likes
As said, don’t have kids, but I’ve given a future with them a lot of thought. I’ve seen many a parent, coworkers, completely stop training and have very preemptively considered strategies to mitigate that.
I’ll bend over backwards to be amenable to family, and requests upon one’s time from say girlfriends, and friends, and will usually just skew training to shit hours that no-one wants anyway. On the whole, I find that a session that might suffer somewhat from lack of adequate sleep is adequate enough on the whole to ameliorate the shit feeling that not training would cause making it a net positive.
Anyway, I hope you had a good time with munchkin. I think you made the right call.
1 Like
Interesting assessment. For the most part I would definitely agree. I have seen people with atrocious technique taking podium places just because they were so brutally strong that it didn’t really matter. What good is your perfect push press technique on a viking press when the next guy strict presses it for 20 reps?
At the level I compete at, the statement is overall true. Technical proficiency can give you an edge but at the end of the day, brute strength wins most of the time. On the other hand what does matter a huge deal is how familiar you are with the implements. You’re probably not gonna beat me at a yoke race even though you squat way way more than me because you have no idea what you are doing. If you count that as technical proficiency than it does matter of course to at least train with the implements once in a while. I have beaten a buddy of mine in pretty much everything overhead for a few competitions even though he benches 240 kg at 105 kg or something ridiculous like that. He was stronger but I had the better technique. Things changed once he got a hang of how to lift a log.
Lastly the level of competition matters probably the most. I compete at the second highest level in Germany but in the international comparison that’s actually not really advanced or heavy. So at my level of competition the statement holds truth. If you compete at a higher level things will probably change again as everyone is kinda brutally strong and small technical errors make a bigger impact. Lastly to counter that argument you have one of the most dominant strongman of all time, Bill Kazmaier who allegedly trained like a bodybuilder/ powerlifter and still was unbeatable in most events.
In conclusion:
- brute strength can trump technique a lot of times
- being familiar with the implements will be imperative if you want to do well (for you to decide if that’s being technically efficient)
- level of competition will play a big role
2 Likes
This will definitely work at the local level. It’ll fall apart once you try to pull it off at national level stuff. But that said, her approach is the same one I use, and it’s also why I appreciate the sport so much.
2 Likes
She shares a similar mindset to a lot of people indefinitely competing at a local level. Although the skill floor in strongman is quite low, given the parameters, the skill ceiling is also tremendously high. Far higher than that of powerlifting. There’s a plethora of people at nationals that qualify from steamrolling at local shows, but end up getting steamrolled themselves by people who leave no stone unturned in the technical aspect, while still being brutally strong.
3 Likes
Woke at 264.3 lbs, looking pretty similar if perhaps a bit bloated.
@Koestrizer @strongmanvinny2 @T3hPwnisher thanks. Pretty much what I suspected.
1 Like
Hey friend, hope it’s ok to drop this here out of the blue. I was wondering if you could further help me with my knee wrapping. Weights will keep going up and I want to make sure I actually get something decent out of my wraps.
Soo what do you reckon I need to change?
All good brother.
You’re missing two basic but essential things.
First off, you need to have your wraps rolled. It is incredibly hard to get any real tension in your wraps when you apply them when they are flapping around loose. Ideally, you’ll stretch the wrap to a degree as you roll it up. The more you stretch it when rolling, the more tension you’ll be able to generate when wrapping. So that’s the first thing.
Second, you need to keep your leg dead straight with locked knee, toes pushed up and quad flexed when you wrap. If you don’t, when you stand up the wraps can loosen around your calf and you’ll lose tension.
You could also try crossing the wrap over your patella when you’re done wrapping around your knee. So you’d do something like four revolutions spiraling up, then going back down you’d cross over the patella ending up where you started, behind the knee and come back up across the patella to the top of the wraps and then spiral back down over the cross and tie off.
1 Like
Thanks a lot man that’s some valuable information! I have squats tomorrow, so I’ll hope to put it to good use.
1 Like
Britain’s Strongest Man? Good times. I was watching that before I even knew what a powerlifter was
1 Like