S&P UKSA 2011: Competition and Training
The Competition
About 2 weeks ago I heard about a local novice “strongman” competition being put on by a local gym.
For full details you can view their blog article at http://strengthandperformance.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/uksa-i-july-12/
After a couple of days deliberating whether it was worth trying, I applied for the over 90kg weight class (after checking that my 105kg would be allowed!) – I’ve paid my £20 and will be participating as long as I don’t injure myself between now and then.
Since then I’ve been doing my regular gym routine interspersed with a couple of days a week doing event training. This has been at Olympic Sports Gym in Ashton and near home using a sandbag created with cheap bits from Amazon and B&Q (another post will follow with suggestions for that at some point.)
Although the competition is very light in strongman terms, i’ve decided to get some films online of my training attempts, using my 5 year old youtube account. Adam Bell on youtube
The blog software is configured to automatically post any videos I upload as articles on here, so expect to see some of those popping up (or subscribe to the channel)
Training
Farmers Walk
Training Weight: 95kg x 2
Competition Weight: 90kg x 2
Olympic Sports Gym has been great for letting my push my lifts up – my first attempt at the farmers walk only resulted in about 4 metres of walking, about 8% of what I need to do on the day! I’ve uploaded a video of my current best attempt – 50 metres in about a minute including rest time. I’ve got 2 more farmers walk sessions planned before comp day to sort that out.
Tyre Flip
Training Weight: 330kg
Competition Weight: 250kg
My first try was a total failure, I got the tyre about a foot off the ground, not close enough to result in a flip.
There’s a video on here of my later tries from Monday, flipped the required 3 times, just need to improve the speed before the 10th July.
Log Press
Training Weight: 80kg
Competition Weight: 80kg
This wasn’t an issue the first time I tried, I’ve just been trying hard to increase the number of reps I can do in one go from 6. I need to time this with a stopwatch and decide how long I can rest between reps to get the best count.
Sled Drag
Training Weight: 160kg (on cement)
Competition Weight: 140kg (on astro)
This wasn’t a problem, just needs practice to improve technique and speed
Arm over Arm Sled Pull
Not done any training for this, i’m planning on just winging it
