Whilst browsing lifting videos on Youtube, or on television late at night, you may have come across the sport of Strongman: giant human beings pulling semi trailers, lifting entire tree trunks above their heads, or boulders onto towers.  You have probably even seen our very own strongmen Rory and Bryce moving crazy amounts of weight, or swinging giant dumbbells to their shoulders with ease.  But what actually is ‘Strongman’?  And more importantly, how can it assist your regular CrossFit training?

Strongman is lifting large, heavy, and usually awkward objects, and quite often moving them over some distance.  Simple right?  Unlike the Olympic lifts, a high degree of mobility, agility and precise movement patterns aren’t required to participate.  To use a famous phrase, many of the techniques take a day to learn, but a life time to master.  The reasoning behind this is that most of the techniques mimic very instinctive, human movement patterns.  It’s how our body wants to lift the weight, rather than how we are taught.

Now let’s look at how strongman fits within the Crossfit model.

1. Constantly varied – absolutely.  Different weights, rep ranges, time domains, and then the obvious, the objects themselves will vary dramatically.  For example, we all know how to strict press or push press a barbell, but what happens if it’s a stone, a yoke, a log, an axle bar, an anvil, a PERSON?
2. Functional movement – we could argue strongman movements are the MOST functional movements you will use in the gym.  Not everything in life has a barbell to grab to pick it up, it’s likely to be far more awkward than that.  Picking up a heavy bag of concrete or wheat or rice and loading it into your car.  That’s strongman.  Carrying logs back to camp for a fire.  That’s strongman. Carrying your husband into the emergency ward because he fell down the stairs.  That’s strongman.
3. High intensity – most strongman events in competition have a time cap of 60-75 seconds.  Anyone who has competed will be able to tell you that those four 60 second events were some of the toughest of their life.  The heavy weight involved, and functional nature of the movements will demand everything from your body in those 60 seconds.

Many of the skills we have learnt in CrossFit are used in strongman; deadlift, squat, press, and clean for example.  But applying these to odd objects is where it can be most beneficial to your everyday training. If you can get a 100kg concrete ball to your shoulders, just think how easy a barbell will be?

So now you are excited to give it a shot, how do you get started?  Firstly, just like CrossFit, everything is scalable to your level, so don’t be put off by the fact you can’t carry 4 times your own bodyweight on a yoke straight away, try starting with just your own bodyweight, or less.  Talk to your coaches about learning the fundamental technique on the different implements, just like we do with CrossFit, then start light and build up to heavier weight.

Secondly, Strongman’s unfortunate title suggests you have to be strong and a man to participate.  This is absolutely NOT the case.  The sport is open to EVERYONE; all sizes, ages and genders.  Just this weekend, a lady dead lifted a 240kg axle and wagon wheels, then lifted an 80kg atlas stone over a bar 7 times in a minute.  It was awesome to watch!

For those more interested in general fitness and health, or improving their physique; short, regular bursts of high intensity activity has been proven to improve physical health and fitness in many ways and reduce the likely-hood of disease.  Increasing our lean muscle mass is the best way to increase our metabolism and in-turn, reduce our body fat.  You can achieve both of these things through ‘strongman’ training.

There will always be people who fear the chance of injury when lifting heavy (we’ve all come across those Crossfit critics), but as we know, with correct technique, strongman improves one’s functional strength and this will reduce the chance of injury during everyday life tasks.  This means it’s not limited to the ‘young and supple’, it’s beneficial for all ages!  Carrying heavy shopping bags, loading them into the car, and lifting them up onto the kitchen bench will seem an effort no longer.

It is a really exciting time in the sport at the moment, with new opportunities for anyone to compete locally, state wide, nationally and internationally, at both novice and advanced levels.  But even if competing doesn’t interest you, the best part about strongman is it’s FUN!  Get together with your friends and lift some heavy things.