What I Learned from the 2014 Crossfit Champions

So here are a few takeaways from the Crossfit Games winners two weeks ago that are applicable to anyone competing in strongman. Coaching, diet, strength, and weak point training are the basics here. I'm sure if you hooked these four horses up to a carriage it wouldn't move because they are all dead but perhaps you are missing part of the picture. For me, this confirmed what I already knew and reassured me I'm on the right track.

1. Coaching

While Froning appears to be the roguish cowboy who follows no set plan and basically trains as he wants, Leblanc-Bazinet's coaches program for her. I think this is an important tool that we can easily forget to use. If you pay attention you will also see that many pros and high level amateurs in strongman either have a coach who assists with or designs their program. Plus, there are many more that train with a group that pushes them past their capabilities should they train or plan their training alone. That extra watchful eye and authority you must be accountable to beyond yourself can push you to new heights and expand your own wealth of training knowledge.

2. Diet 

Fucking eat already.  Leblanc-Bazinet eats like a bodybuilder! She claims to consume 200 grams of protein a day in about six meals! Ok, two of those meals are shakes, but this girl is putting away some calories. She also said in interviews that her main carb source is the sweet potato. High protein, sweet potatoes... Sounds familiar? 

You've seen this.  After the chicken and the vegetables come the sweet potatoes.

As for Froning, he does whatever he wants. Again. Like Leblanc-Bazinet, he relies on lots of protein shakes to get through the day, but at night eats whatever he wants. This doesn't include bread or pasta, which he doesn't like (wtf?). But he does like lots of peanut butter which he washes down with whole milk.

Another huge front squat for Leblanc-Bazinet

3. Strength base. 

Did you know Leblanc-Bazinet did a double bodyweight front squat! 265 at 130! That is fucking strong. The bulk of her training is also barbell training, either building strength with squats and deadlifts or working on her weightlifting technique, as she reports in a recent interview: "I don’t even do a lot of wod … it is a lot of strength training and skill work… some aerobic too... I might do typical sod [skills] 4 times a week but mostly strength work…"

Froning is also strong, showing us what he is capable of with that 377 overhead squat in the games. But he doesn't have a plan for getting there so we'll just not talk about him anymore...

"I just do what I want, dude."

4. Weak point training.
The whole idea of this sport of fitness is to be well-rounded. At least that's the definition of fitness according to some of the the commercials aired during the games. For Leblanc-Bazinet, as a smaller athlete, she needs to be efficient and strong. She has repeated in interviews that weak points are the focus of her training and thus you can see how, being smaller, strength is key. Her coach had this to say about the matter:

"I wouldn’t say that Camille had any major weaknesses. She’s a smaller athlete, so she needed to get stronger to handle the heavier loads we expected [and saw] at Regionals. She had already started to focus on Olympic lifting and was making great progress. We kept that focus and added in supplemental strength and skill progressions. We worked a lot on cycling moderate to heavy loads for multiple reps, and we carved out time for her to continue to develop her gymnastics skills outside of the pressure of the clock. We structured her energy-systems training so as not to impact her strength development and then moved into building her aerobic base later in the season.”(1)

There you have it. After the Games, I looked into the winners and I wasn't surprised to find out what I did. In strongman or any other sport, you must train, eat, and problem solve to reach the highest levels and do so consistently.

Strongman and squats

When I got into strongman I loved squatting. I had done some powerlifting competitions and it was my best lift. It was always my best lift as long as I could remember. When I first started training at the age of 14 I always put more into that lift and took pride in the fact that most guys were not willing to match my efforts there.

Fast forward about 20 years to my first strongman contest and three months of event days and I had developed a deep anxiety for my old friend. My back hurt all the time. I was deadlifting, squatting, cleaning, pressing, loading stones, carrying kegs and sandbags, moving yokes and farmers and lifting whatever else I could. Obviously, I was overtraining. But this led me to really delve into programming for a sport that requires strength across multiple movements.

Besides planning my event training more efficiently, I had to plan my squat training more efficiently. As a low bar, wide stance, squatter that used a lot of back strength to move the weight, I needed to change my pattern and squat variations. Here are the changes I made.

1. Front squats

Front squats became my primary focus. I didn't do them at first because I hated the. I hated them because I wasn't good at them. I couldn't hold the bar with an Olympic grip and the bodybuilder's cross arm style usually ended up with me dumping the bar. I learned a good trick from some fellow trainers (Kyle Hunt and Jonathan Lespinas) to solve my problem: load up a bar or a yoke, assume the Olympic grip and have a buddy pull your elbows up into a good rack position. You will have to do this more than once.

The benefit to doing front squats is obviously you will be using more leg power (quads) and not as much back (so you can get more from deads and events). Therefore you can expect better recovery following your squat sessions. Furthermore, most of our events are front loaded so they have a more direct carryover to your event training. Front squats will build your upper back by forcing you to maintain thoracic extension throughout the lift. This will carryover directly to front loaded events such as sandbag and husafel carries or keg and stone loading.

2. Back squats: from low to high

Again, this will save your back and open up those hips. If you are like me then you will need oly shoes or a board underneath your heels to perform these. 

Instead of pushing your butt back and descending slowly, you let the knees translate forward a bit and drop a bit more quickly. You will end up with a greater range of motion and better quad development.

3. Hack squats

I swear these are awesome for strongman. I like to do these with both heavy weights and high reps. All the grind is in my quads and the unbearable pain is similar to the kind I feel in a car deadlift.

4. The bodybuilder: high reps and pumps

Since we are now using squats to help us improve our sport training we need to think about the how we organize our sets and reps. 

When a contest is near I like higher reps. 8 will be the lowest I go and I love sets of 20. At a certain point, it's all heart and conditioning and that will help big time on competition day.

5. Programming squats with all those events 

You can be creative here, but these plans have helped me in the past:

A. Squat and deadlift on the same day. I prefer to deadlift heavy first then squat for reps.

B.  Train legs early in the week and then deadlift with events later in the week.  When the leg strength needs to come up, you must prioritize.

C. Squat before events. You can never be sure how fatigued you will be when you do farmers, yoke, Conan's wheel, or medleys in a competition. By leading your event day with squats you will acclimate yourself to the severity (hopefully) of competition day.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to respond. Thanks.