FROM POWERLIFTING TO STRONGMAN: MISTAKES AND LESSONS LEARNED

I know I’m not the first person to write about transitioning from powerlifting to strongman, nor am I the most qualified, but why not get some more data out there. From my own observations, there are still folks not quite understanding just what this transition entails, and what it is about the demands of strongman that make it so that you can’t just train like a powerlifter if you want to succeed.

Even Kaz took 4th in his first show and had to learn the events before he could dominate

For those of you new to my blog, for a quick background, I competed in powerlifting from 2011-2012 for a total of 3 meets in the NASA unequipped category.  I managed a 502 squat, 336 bench and 601 deadlift in my final meet as a 181lb competitor.  9 months later I would do my first strongman competition, and after that I never looked back. I got bit by the strongman bug, knocking out 8 contests in a 2 year span before being sidelined with an ACL rupture, coming back a year later and getting in my 9^th with my 10^th on the horizon.

Powerlifting was a solid foundation to transition into strongman, but it has some holes in it, both physically and psychologically, that need to be addressed if one wishes to be a serious strongman competitor.  They are…

1: You need to train events LIGHT and get faster

 
Ok, maybe not THIS light

Here is what pretty much every powerlifter thinks when it comes to moving events; “If I can move MORE weight than everyone else, that will mean that I’ll be able to move lighter weight FASTER than everyone else.”  This is clearly the thought process of people that have never actually been athletic, because everyone else knows that footspeed is a whole separate trainable quality, and if you train to be slow, you will be slow. 

 
Man, I wonder where all this misconceptions are coming from

Going too heavy on events reinforces slow feet, and makes it so that, when the weight is light, you’re still used to moving slowly with it.  You end up plodding along clumsily, and people significantly weaker than you completely blow you out of the water. What you need to do instead is swallow your pride and use LIGHT weight.  Like REAL light.  Like “how the hell am I getting a workout” kind of light weight.  Keep an eye on your footspeed, and only up the weight if you can maintain it.  If not, keep practicing with light weight until you can move light weight fast, THEN try to move heavy weight fast.

You KNOW you’re strong because you came from powerlifting.  You don’t need to prove it by walking a 1000lb yoke 5’.  Get under 300lbs and learn how to move quickly.  Once you can do that, the heavy weight will move better.

2: You need to work on your conditioning

 
If you sweat this much from SITTING, you need this

In powerlifting, you literally get the lay down for 1/3 of a meet. You perform a total of 9 reps over the course of a meet.  In general, it’s not the most physically taxing sport, and the trainees are notorious for taking super long rest times between sets in training like it’s some sort of badge of honor.  Meanwhile, if you bought into stupid internet memes, you’re probably also eating Wendy’s 5x a day and sweating pure Crisco.

Strongman, at least at the local to national level, does NOT favor being fat and out of shape.  I know you can go watch WSM or the Arnold and see some dudes pushing 4 bills, but that’s a whole different competitive scene.  At the level you’ll be competing at, being out of shape is going to make you lose.  I can’t count the times I’ve watched someone literally give up in the middle of a medley simply because they ran out of gas and didn’t have the conditioning to move on.  On the other hand, I’ve seen folks clearly lacking in the strength department crush an event because they were in monster shape.

 
Yeah yeah "lol crossfit";, no way in Hell I'd ever want to compete in a medley against this guy

Those lightweight events you were doing in step 1 can come in handy here.  Consider working medleys and circuits into your training and becoming effective in higher rep ranges.  You don’t get away with walking with a sled tied to your belt anymore; you need to actually push yourself to the point that you feel like you wanna puke. Once again; you’re already strong, so don’t worry about “losing strength” by taking the time to focus on bringing up your conditioning.  Your numbers might take a slight dip while your recovery gets impacted, but in the long run you’ll become significantly stronger when you have a better baseline of conditioning.

3: Quit worrying about your 1rm squat

 
You'll look less stupid in the long run...and the short run...just in general reallly

I know this one may have offended some of you on a personal level, so feel free to take a moment before reading on.  The 1rm squat might be the holy grail of powerlifting, but I literally cannot remember the last time I’ve seen it in a strongman comp. That’s most likely because it’s a really super boring event to watch, which is partially why powerlifting isn’t on TV while strongman is.  Anyway, the point here is that your 1rm is really immaterial on the squat. You can keep the deadlift; that shows up pretty regularly.

What you NEED to focus on instead is getting good at squat reps.  The reason is 2 fold. 1; once again, this is a sport where conditioning matters along with being strong at multiple rep ranges, and higher rep squats do a fantastic job of reinforcing that.  Secondly, squats for reps DOES occasionally show up as an event, and if you can’t go 5 reps without needing to sit down, you’re going to get blown out of the water by someone better at high reps than you.

 
Hopefully it's not this guy

As an aside, some folks like to go completely off the reservation here and decide to do ZERO back squatting once they transition to strongman.  This is viable, but I would caution you that, since the “squat for reps” event does occasionally show up in contests, you DO want to maintain the shoulder mobility necessary to hold a bar in the squat position.  If I spend too long away from having a bar on my back, my shoulders get pissed when I make my return.  Easiest way to prevent that is to having back squats at least somewhat regularly rotated into the training.

This post is going longer than I imagined and I still have LOTS to talk about, so I'm going to cap it here.  Stay tuned next time when we discuss treating the powerlifts like assistance, the value of leg drive, technique and maintaining static strength.  As always, if you have a question or comment, feel free to write your thoughts.

TURN UP THE VOLUME WITHOUT SOUNDING LIKE AN IDIOT

I’ve written before about how people screw up bulking by doing it backwards.  Basically, you shouldn’t forcefeed yourself to try to gain more muscle; you should increase your training volume to the point that you NEED to eat more food to recover, which in turn creates more muscle.  However, inevitably, when I bring up this point, the question is asked of HOW to increase volume.  Sadly, most folks settle on the most obvious and easiest answer; just do more sets and reps.  This is uncreative and ineffective thinking.  It’s the most basic way to address the issue and, as we’ve observed time and again, taking the easiest path in training inevitably results in the least amount of progress.  Just slapping some more sets and reps onto your training is going to have minimal impact; the 2 less obvious yet more effective means of upping volume are through adding assistance work and conditioning.

No, not all at once

So why do we use these 2 things to increase volume?  Because thinking reasonably, if your core program structure has been working up until this point, simply adding to it for the sake of more volume is nonsensical.  The core structure’s job is to get us stronger, whereas the increased volume’s function is to get us bigger (along with improve work capacity and stuff, but you get where I’m going).  Altering the core structure is most likely going to alter the results it generates, and that’s unnecessary if one is simply engaging in a higher volume training phase for the sake of accumulation.  Of course, if your core structure ISN’T working, feel free to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Onto the methods, regarding assistance work, I must once again reiterate that we’re not adding reps and sets to pre-existing assistance work; we are adding assistance work PROPER.  If you normally bench and then incline bench for assistance work, now you’re going to bench, do incline bench, and do DIPS for assistance work.  If you’ve been neglecting isolation work, now is the time to throw it in.  You get where I’m going with this.  The benefits to this approach are many.  As already stated, we leave a working program in its place, so we continue to progress from the system.  Additionally, we now start training additional angles and weak areas that were previously neglected, which is another avenue to get stronger.  Yes, conventional wisdom tells us “don’t just add thing into a program”, but keep in mind we aren’t mindlessly adding into the program; we are intentionally accumulating a greater amount of volume and mindfully eating enough to recover.

Also no

There are many ways to sneak in additional work without having to endure 3 hour long training sessions.  Of course, the best thing you can do to prevent that situation is to not be a fat slob with a 120 bpm resting heart rate and a bloodtype of ragu, but I also understand that even the fittest of us only have so much time to train.  This is where work between sets becomes invaluable.  In between all of your benching, do some band pull aparts, chins or rows.  Do your ab work between warm-ups on squats.  Work sub-maximally, so that you don’t interfere with your recovery between sets, and you’ll amass a substantial amount of volume without affecting your strength.  Giant sets are another fantastic way to accumulate a lot of volume in a short amount of time.  Chain together 3 movements, rolling from one to the other to the other.  Make logical selections that compliment each other, like going from bench to chins to band pull aparts.  Or feel free to go full on bodybuilder mode and roll from close grip bench to skull crushers to tricep kickbacks.  In either case, you rest for 90 seconds, start the whole thing over, and generate a huge amount of volume.

Another thing to keep in mind regarding creativity; not all work needs to occur during the workout proper.  Extra volume is extra volume.  An effective way to get in more volume with minimal impact to your key lifts is to get in the extra work OUTSIDE of the workout.  Hit your workout in the morning, and then later in the day throw in 100 band pull aparts, or a max set of chins and dips, or some GHRs, or some ab work, etc etc, you get the point.  Run a training phase where you do this everyday and you end up accumulating a ton of volume over the span of a month, with minimal negative effect on your lifting.  Make sure you ease yourself into this type of training.  If you go from 0 to 100 chins a day, you will blow out your elbows by day 12.

Although some folks can do it in 1 rep

Finally, the most overlooked and neglected avenue available to trainees looking to increase volume is conditioning.  My regular readers have already seen me lament the lack of conditioning in most programming, but to summarize; no one likes to do conditioning because it makes you feel like you are dying.  HOWEVER, consider this; conditioning IS a form of accumulating volume.  It may not seem obvious, but when you are pushing the prowler and your lungs are trying to escape through your esophagus, you are accumulating volume in your entire posterior chain.  When you run a 15 minute conditioning circuit of kettlebell swings, dips and chins, those are tons of reps of those movements that are added to the volume you have performed.  EMOM drills, tabata, medleys, etc etc, it’s all extra volume.  And, of course, not only do you get to add more volume to your training, but you get the myriad of benefits associated with improved conditioning.  You’d honestly be a sucker NOT to do more of it.

There are creative and intelligent ways to add volume to your training, and the people that figure those ways out are going to have advantages over those that always pick the easiest way.  Good luck, and feel free to ask any questions.  

READER REQUEST: COLLECTIVISM AND LIFTING

This request came in a while back from my old old old stomping grounds on Gamefaqs, from a member named Barackaveli.  It took me a long time to get to because it was a pretty difficult topic to address.  Most of my regular readers have probably picked up the strong, almost Rand-ian individualesque vibe that exudes from my writing, and how little stock I put into seeking the aid of others.  It’s true that, as someone that primarily trains alone, I vastly understate the value of others when it comes to reaching your goals.  However, it is worth observing just HOW collectivism could benefit us in lifting, and what we can do to positively contribute to the process.

Like maybe we could all come together as a community to stop this

I have lamented the reality of forums on many occasions.  I truthfully do so because, when I see a forum, I see so much wasted potential.  The internet is an incredibly powerful resource, connecting people from the world over instantly on a widely accessible medium.  Gone are the days where you can NOT know something.  Literally all things are there, ready for you to discover them, with the only limitation being time and energy.  You would think with such a powerful tool, there would be no room for ignorance on any topic, yet what we witness is that the internet has become an ignorance MULTIPLIER, not a reducer.  There is FAR more stupidity being perpetuated, and in turn things have become far more damaging.

Why is this?  One can make an argument that it is the absence OF collectivism that results in such a toxic environment.  Few, if any people, are participating online with the goal of making the experience of others better.  Instead, the individualist streak mandates that one uses the internet for their own ends, which primarily ends up being for the sake of entertainment, and specifically, at the EXPENSE of others.  If a topic comes up on a forum, most folks feel a need to contribute, regardless of their credentials.  They simply NEED to populate the discussion with their own thoughts on the matter, because they are USING the forum rather than contributing to it.  Given that, in any situation, the uneducated will always be the majority with the educated being the minority, this creates a terrible noise to sound ratio, and results in pollution of poor information and, ultimately, the spread of ignorance.

Most often perpetuated with terrible memes

Then, let us explore further with the notion that, due to either screennames, handles or, in the case of many social media sites, our own actual names being associated with what we write, an issue of “reputation” exists.  Once one has put down their own ignorant thought, any counter to said thought is perceived as an attack on their character, and any admission of ignorance or being wrong is a slight on that person’s reputation.  Once again, we are witnessing prizing the individual over the community.  People will choose to ruin a sound topic by engaging in a multiday long flame war with insults, barbs, slights and snarky comments taking up thousands and thousands of post with no beneficial end in sight.  Rather than engaging on the forum in the hopes of making the place better, these people engage in the hopes of making their own personal experience better.

And boy am I just as guilty of this.  I spent many years on forums solely for my own entertainment, and I trolled and I flamed and I did everything that a poor citizen of the net did, and I made communities worse with my presence.  And these days I do my best to not do this.  And it’s tough.  It’s tough to see a perfect opportunity for a “that’s what she said joke” where I KNOW I’ll get so many internet thumbs up, and just let it pass by, because such a comment does nothing for the community.  It’s tough to have someone attack my very character because they disagree with how I lift weights, and to amicably and peacefully disagree with them or just quit responding.  It’s tough to let someone ignorantly get the last word on a topic when I know that they’re wrong.  But it’s not MY internet.  It’s not MY community.  It’s not MINE.  We’re all in this.

Anyone that has watched my lifting videos knows I have a NIN obession

YOU can exercise collectivism and make lifting better by being the change you want to see.  And this goes beyond forum etiquette; that is the mere tip of the proverbial iceberg.  More time needs to be spent appreciating the other disciplines than dividing ourselves between them.  Crossfit, bodybuilding, strongman, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, highland games, etc etc, it’s all a bunch of folks that like to lift things.  There is so much to learn from each discipline rather than to cloister off into our corners and bicker and moan.  Of course, I say all this, but I know that the real competitors get this; it’s the wannabes online that are causing the strife, trying to hitch their wagons onto some discipline and distain all others.  Let this be your rallying cry to knock that crap off so that you can make the community better.

And don’t think that this WON’T benefit you the individual.  When your community is prosperous, you prosper as well.  You benefit from the more free exchange of GOOD information, when only those with qualified opinions contribute, and those that need to learn listen.  You benefit when you don’t have to read through 4,000 posts of insults and hate to find the 12 posts actually related to the topic at hand.  You benefit when powerlifters share squat techniques with strongman, and the strongman share conditioning strategies with Olympic lifters.  You benefit when not everyone is jockeying for the best one-liner 100% of the time.

Even these folks knew when to take turns

You don’t even need to lift with a group to benefit from some collectivism.  Try to be a positive source of information and inspiration, and let all that insignificant stuff slide.

And if you still need to vent, just make a blog.