Strongman and the Bench Press

Strongman and the Bench Press

I haven't seen a bench press in a strongman competition with the exception of the incline log press in Lightning Fitness' 2013 Battle of the Thundergods. I doubt I will see another one for a while. 

While the bench press is not an event you will likely perform, it is a lift you should be proficient at. The bench press, like it or not, is still one of the best builders of upper body strength and mass that you can perform. And if you want to be strong, you need to get to work.

Of course, we need to excel at all variations of overhead pressing and the bench press is not the primary press exercise in strongman since . And, of course, the best way to excel at overhead pressing is to do lots of it. But bench pressing will give us necessary chest, deltoid and tricep mass and strength to help push out those heavy weights.

For newer trainees, I would focus more on higher volume, high rep training to build mass. Building a solid foundation will go beyond just the extra pressing power, but will also create a bigger shelf to sit your bars on when overhead pressing and provide a big surface to sit other implements on in carrying events if you can hold your carries high. Furthermore, the extra triceps strength you will develop will contribute to your ability to lockout heavy weights if your jerk is not precise.

You don't have to reluctantly go to the flat bench with the Olympic bar to get the benefits, but you can find variations of bench press that are comfortable and advantageous for you. Mike Jenkins liked to use the incline log press and the floor press. Svend Karlsen liked to use the log for incline presses. I prefer to use an axle for bench pressing and floor pressing and switch things up by using dumbbells. Some of my training partners like to use the Swiss bar to mimic the log grip without the limited range of motion the log will create.

Now that you're ready to put the bench press back in your routine, you have a couple of options for where to place it. If you press once a week, I suggest you do it after your main overhead pressing movement. To create balance, I would likely use a different rep scheme from my primary presser. So, if I did log clean and press and was working in the 2-3 rep range I would probably do my bench press for sets of 10. If I was using 10 reps on the log, then I would probably do 4-6 reps on the bench.

If I'm pressing two days a week I would have an overhead press day and a bench press day. This was my favorite split for a while. For example, I would do axle clean and press and dumbbell bench press week 1, log clean and press and axle floor press week 2, and db clean and press with incline press week 3.

So, keep in mind that the bench press does have place in strongman. You will need it to develop your upper body pressing musculature and strength. It will be a good assistance exercise to help your pressing short of practicing the overhead implements. And for those of you with a strong push press or jerk, you might need the added triceps strength to lockout the heaviest lifts.

However, as I conclude, let me state that some of you might already have a base and that the bench press, while excellent as an assistance exercise, might be altogether dropped from your program. This is especially true for powerlifters who are converting to strongman. These trainees will often lack the skills to translate their pressing power from the bench press to the push press/jerk and might benefit from excluding the bench press from their program. 

If you need more help in programming your lifts for strongman, feel free to contact me through this site or my Facebook page.

Improving Deadlifts: More of These, Lots of Those, Bigger You

Whether you're a strongman, powerlifter, crossfitter, or gym bro, you probably want a bigger deadlift. If you're willing to put in the time and work, here are some things that I learned over the course of my training.

More volume. 

Programs such as Cube Boss, Coan-Phillipi, Ort-Mag are not magic formulas. They simply prescribe more volume than you are used to. Cube Boss uses a variety of deadlifts and multiple sets giving you the bulk of your volume by actually deadlifting. Coan-Phillipi really just makes you do explosive sub max work and a variety of assistance work. Ort-Mag pushes you to do more reps. Think about why these programs work and what you need before you try them.

More reps. 

I pulled heavy singles for a while and noticed I always used the same weight. That's because heavy singles didn't help. I started doing reps but they were touch and go and my max still stayed the same. So that didn't help either. Dead stop reps from the floor finally got my numbers moving again. I tend to work in the 3-6 range. This will do a lot for your starting strength than singles or touch and go reps.

More rows. 

Your back just isn't big enough. Pull-ups are great but you need rows. Barbell rows and dumbbell rows are best. Use heavy weights here and do lots of reps. 

Leg press. 

Don't be afraid to use this machine to put size and strength on your legs.

Grip. 

Farmers carries are best because they train support grip. This is the kind of grip you need for deadlifting. Crushing grip and pinch grip don't really help so much here so put the grippers and shit away unless you want to be good at grippers.

Hamstrings. 

Put some more meat on your backside and use straight leg deadlifts, leg curls, and GHRs. Like the rows, train these heavy. 

Angles. 

This is related to deficits but experiment with different heights and variations. I found 4" block pulls helped me in the past. Unfortunately 18"/rack pulls only made me better at 18"/rack pulls, which is great for strongman when the event shows up. Sumo deadlifts can help too.

My favorite, however, is deficit deadlifts. The longer range of motion means more power off the floor and those extra 2" make the top end a real treat to lockout too. I find that being more powerful at the initiation of the lift does more for my lockout than any hip thrust does.

Strongman effect. 

Strongman training can make your back big and strong in new ways. Lifts such as stones, farmers, and yoke tax the musculature in new ways, particularly because of the increased time under tension of these lifts. It's not uncommon for a new strongman trainee to see a huge improvement in their deadlift by virtue of training events hard.

That's the bulk of my general thoughts on improving your deadlift. If you read some of my other training articles you will see the same theme: more reps and more volume and building more muscle pays off. Good luck.

How to use online food logs

By now you probably have a few different accounts at various online food logs. I know I have fitday and myfitnesspal and I can't remember the others. While I don't always use these accounts, I can take the extra time to unfurl a few quest bar wrappers and pull some Purdue chicken packaging from the garbage to figure out my daily macros.

I don't like digging through my garbage all the time so here are a couple of tips for making the most of online food calculators:

1. Enter in about 2-3 days worth of food. Eat as you normally do then enter all your foods in. If you think your diet is pretty good, you can get an objective picture of where it actually is. Then you can go ahead make adjustments. 

1. I will enter my meals in advance to get an idea of what my menu should be. Then I get my groceries and basically eat the same thing every day until I'm sick of it. Then I start over again. 

3. Sites such as myfitnesspal allow you to scan barcodes with your phone or tablet. You can enter in everything from your protein powder to greens supplements to your Purdue chicken.

4. If you need to know better what vitamins and minerals you need to buy, sites such as fitday have a pretty comprehensive list. Then you can purchase whichever specific vitamins or minerals you are deficient in.

5. I wish I didn't have to write this but most people don't know how much protein, fat, or carbs are in the foods and portions they normally eat. Seeing those numbers will help you learn... And the next time someone tells you they had 10 egg whites and 2 whole eggs at breakfast you will know why.

Cardio for Strongman

Strongman has myriad requirements that can exhaust the competitor in the training process. Trying to improve your max strength, rep strength, explosiveness, speed, and conditioning (cardio) can be difficult due to the time and energy you need to expend in order to be so well rounded. Many competitors also improve themselves in that order listed above, leaving conditioning as the final part of the equation. This creates problems when the equation is not completed. Conversely, the more ambitious competitor will overdo their cardio requirements and lose progress in the other more important areas.

Before I begin, let me say that you should be somewhat conditioned by training events. If you train stones and yoke and husafell and farmers and clean your bars from the floor to press them, you should be in some modicum of shape. But I do see some folks struggling through these and getting more than five reps on medium weight stones or doing 10 flips with a light tire has them wheezing on the floor. If you are that guy or gal, your strength won't matter too much on the big day because your gas tank is less that the of those just a little weaker than you-and you will lose to them.

How will you turn this around? There are several steps you can take beginning with an increase in your overall training volume and ending with addressing the more specific conditioning requirements.

Start easy and add volume to your training. More reps and more sets and less time in between those sets will help. That is essentially bodybuilding type training, but it will improve your work capacity. And if you have the nad for it you should be doing lots of reps on your compound sets too. If you can crank out a set of 20 rep squats with a heavy weight on leg day you are doing better.

You can easily manage this extra volume by paying attention to the amount of time it takes you to compete your session. Just try to do more total work in the same or less time than normal and you will be increasing your work capacity. 

Another easy way to improve your conditioning is to add some low intensity, steady state cardio. I know this has been shit on by everyone in the strength community by now because it's boring and so on but done right it can have a positive impact on your training. 

I like to start with two days a week walking on an incline treadmill for 30 minutes. You shouldn't hold the handrails and you should walk briskly enough to sweat. From my experience, I feel like my recovery is better in between sets and in between workouts, which is a pretty good reason for training an energy system we purportedly don't use and don't need to improve...

At some point, however, you are going to need a bit more specific conditioning. Now we now can add in some more work specific, short burst conditioning requirements and improve our alactic (atp-cp) and lactic (glycolitic) systems.

Since we have to work more (intensely) to improve our our short burst cardio I prefer to start with upper body movements so I can save my legs. I like battling ropes, concept rowers, and have just begun to use the concept ski erg in training. I have a couple different ways that I like to use these. With the rower I like to go for 15 minutes. I row hard for 20 seconds and then cruise for 40. This can really pump my arms and back so I prefer to not do it before a heavy deadlift day.  With the ski erg I have been doing 1 minute on 1 minute off for about 10 rounds. This fries my abs but has yet to interfere with my lifts. However, note that these two methods are more lactic in nature and I recommend only doing them as needed since they can hinder your strength and power.

With the ropes, I use a version of tempo intervals I read about on Chad Wesley Smith's Juggernaut website. He cited track coach Charlie Francis as the originator of this idea, which is to "improve aerobic capacity in the alactic state."* This rounds out my training in the three energy systems and most importantly it doesn't interfere with my strength gains. Smith doesn't list the rope in his intervals, but uses a bike, a prowler, or a pool. As for me I can't swim well, the bike chafes me, and I don't have a prowler. And like I said, my legs need a break sometimes. I use the rope for 30 seconds then do 20 sit-ups, leg raises, push-ups or bodyweight rows. It takes about 45-50 seconds to do that work then I wait for about a minute and start again. I just let my stopwatch run so I start my work at 0:00, 2:00, 4:00 and so on. I do 6 rounds, rest 3 minutes then do 6 more rounds as Smith prescribes. 

Of course, I haven't even brought up the prowler or sprints yet. If you're using a prowler I would do it with the tempo method and do it the day after legs or events. Or I would use it at the end of a workout if I didn't do any events. Timing is the same for sprints but you need to go hard to get anything out of them. 

Sprints can bang you up more than you need if you're not careful. If you add them to your program, start with no more than 6 runs. I like to keep them in the 40-50 yard range if possible. Don't do these before leg or event day and if you're doing squats, yoke, stones, etc start with about 4 of them so your hip flexors don't hate you. 

I particularly like doing my sprints as shuttle runs so I can get some extra agility work. Other tools for foot speed and conditioning are jumping rope, hurdle hops and ladder drills. But we're just getting started here so let's not kill ourselves...

How can you put this all together? Here is my last week of training:

Sunday long walk with dog

Monday press

Tuesday concept ski erg 

Wednesday squat, sandbag carries

Thursday battling rope tempos

Friday deadlift, farmers, tire flips

Saturday 30 minutes treadmill 

In the offseason, when I'm not competing for about 4 months, I do steady state about 2-4 times a week and nothing else. When contest season rolls around I tend to do more of the tempos as Smith prescribes with the battling rope. The ski erg is new to my gym and I simply inserted in place of my battling rope for one day just to do something new, while still working in the alactic zone. So, I'm not killing myself on these.

As you can also see I have three moving events in my training week as week as squats and deads. For this reason, there are no sprints.  I only add them when my body can handle them.

The point of all this is to be well-rounded, to not let conditioning be a hindering factor in your performance because you ignored it or overdid it. Start light, be smart about what you choose and don't ever run out of gas.

*I'm unsure how to add footnotes on blogger since I didn't type this in word. Chad Wesley Smith has several articles on conditioning, including the one I cited here:

http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2013/09/26/conditioning-strength-athletes/