Crossfit for Strongman

CrossFit and strongman training schedules make not the best pairing. Often Strongman are too heavy to do the bodyweight exercises without a high risk of injuring themselves. Strongman Training is usually better paired with the concepts of bodybuilding and powerlifting. Just make the objects awkward to move around.

What is your goal

Before we go into the details of whether These different forms of sports activity are effective for you it is important to take a step back and assess your goals. Ask yourself:

Why do you want to train?
Why do you want to change?
What happens when you do?
What happens if you don’t?

To be successful with your training, or almost anything in life, one of the key components is consistency. It is very hard to be consistent if you don’t know what you want and why. A bit of reflection seldom hurts and often comes short in our fast-paced, routines lives. So, take off the blinkers and take a look around. Why are you doing all of this?

What helps me for reflections and staying on trick are my self journal and scribe notebook. They are the best tools to track my progress against a goal and check whether I am making headway. They also constantly remind me of the good things in life and what actually went well.

Do you keep a journal?
Does it help you to think positive and emphasize what works in your life?

All of this will help tremendously to determine whether CrossFit, Bodybuilding, Powerlifting or other sports are the right choices to make you successful and happy.

Crossfit

CrossFit has been on the rise lately. In its core, it is an extreme form of circuit training that utilizes barbells, pull-ups and conditioning training. It has its roots in military training and has the aim to create the “fittest people on earth”. This means that CrossFit creates bodies and physiques which are able to adapt physically to almost anything you throw at them. More or less the ideal definition of what you want in a front line soldier. Not specialized in one thing and in the top 5% of fitness of anything they have to do.

What separates CrossFit from many other things in the gym is that you will be always be competing. Either against the clock or others. This introduces a high grade of intensity into the training. Based on this it yields results.

What else to consider for CrossFit

Pros of Crossfit

The big pros of CrossFit are that it has a high focus on intensity and that almost everything is measured. You will hardly find a workout that does not have any benchmarks attached to it you want to strive for. This makes it great if you are competitive or to show results over a short period of time. Many other exercise regimens leave you a lot of freedom to take rest, speed up or slow down. Not so with CrossFit. Crossfit is always gogogo.

Cons of Crossfit

The negative sites of CrossFit are the Jack of all trades approach and the high intensity even for beginners. For world-class athletes, CrossFit might not be ideal as you spent very little time to perfect one thing in favor of being good at everything. This will get you to the top 5% in the world in almost any sports activity, but not into the top 1% where Olympic medals are won. The lack of specificity of CrossFit can come as a disadvantage for athletes who want to compete at the highest levels. They are better off looking for more specific supporting exercises to their sport to support their performance.

For beginners, the quick emphasis on high intensity can become an injury risk and demotivating. If you have issues and don’t understand the movement patterns yet the last thing you want to do is to put the pressure on by creating a competitive environment. You need a very good coach to adjust for this and an individual who is willing to accept the coaching. Both are rare specimen and this is why CrossFit can be very dangerous especially for beginners. Combine this with Olympic lifting, which CrossFit does, and you have created a high risk for injury.

Alternatives to Crossfit

Good alternatives to CrossFit are

If you like competing against the clock or for repetitions to keep your mind sharp and the sweat pouring you can opt for circuit training without added resistance. Only use your bodyweight and try not to cheat your way into more repetitions by using bad form. Examples of this kind of training would be bikini body mommy or a routine like 100 push-ups, 100 pull-ups, 100 squats, and a 10km run. Of course, this one is a more extreme example, but you get the idea.

If you like working with a barbell you can opt for powerlifting instead of the many Olympic weightlifting components in CrossFit. The bench press, squat, and deadlift are easier to master than the clean and jerk, snatch and front squat you do in CrossFit. With this, you can work with a barbell without having to go too technical.

If you want to have more stamina and work on your lunges than running is a good, cheap alternative to CrossFit. Start with a couch to 5k program and work your way from there. Hal Higdon has some excellent programs you can follow to improve.

Strongman

Strongman competitions are probably as old as humankind itself. The basic principle is to move something that is very heavy and hard to carry from a to b or as often as possible. That’s it. Still, strongman competitions command huge popularity to this day and it is all about the big guys.

Usual events in a strongman competition are

Tractor / Lordy pulls
Lifting stones
Flipping cars or tires
Holding something up for time
Lifting a very heavy while standing on a platform
Car deadlifts
Throwing heavy objects as high or far as possible

And anything else the event coordinators come up with that looks spectacular and requires a lot of strength. The most insane one I have seen was pulling a container crane.

Pros of Strongman

If you are into lifting the heaviest things possible this is your playground. There are no restrictions on size or body shape. The competitions are not standardized so you never fully know what is coming your way. Strongman will combine all different types of strength like grip strength, maximum strength and strength endurance. Compared to teamsports the injury risk is lower and you can also train without meeting up with others.

Cons of Strongman

To be successful in Strongman it helps to be big. Not big like the guy you know from down the street. I mean massively big weighing 120kg plus and standing 6 feet plus tall. If you don’t bring that to the table you will have a hard time to become a professional in the sport. Based on this also do not keep your hope too high for scoring in the endurance department. Strongman is generally not known to win the 100m sprint or marathons.

Alternatives to Strongman

Alternatives to strongman training are:

Lumberjacking
Highland games
Shot put, hammer throw, disc throw

Lumberjacking can be an option if you like to work with wood and training outside. The sport requires skill, stamina, and endurance. Especially if you want to become world-class at something and you are not humongous in body size this can be an interesting alternative to Strongman Training. The downsides are a higher injury risk, bigger space requirements and higher investment in equipment.

If you live somewhere where there are more green fields than wood and you don’t want to pull cars the high land games might be something to look into. You also get to dress up and learn more about Celtic history.

If you want to be on your college’s team or win some Olympic medals you are probably better off throwing some heavy objects very far. This might be shot out, hammer or disc throwing.