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/
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