Blog Update and Strongman Training Today

I'm trying to get the blog changed, but the Blogger platform is being really buggy tonight.  Don't know if it's my slow computer or what, but if the blog looks weird, it's not my fault (I swear!).  I may update the look slightly, but after playing around with some of Google's new looks, I don't like them enough yet.

Okay, on to the good stuff!  Today, I got up at 5:45 AM so that I could drive an hour and 45 minutes just to lift.  But it was well worth it.  I met a bunch of guys that I actually contacted through Facebook, and it was a blast!  There were about 10 to 12 of us in a garage fitted out just for strongman training.  Some of the equipment included about five different logs, three different farmer's walk handles, probably 10 stones, two yokes, one power rack, one axle, a tractor tire, lots of kegs, and some sandbags.  There were a lot of other pieces of equipment there; stuff I've only seen in the professional strongman competitions.

The group's training was kind of dictated by the guy's who are actively competing.  One was invited to the Arnold Sports Festival, so he was training for those events.  The other guy that has something to train for recently competed in the World's Strongest Man competition, which I recorded when ESPN aired it a few weeks ago.  It was awesome meeting him, and he and the others gave me lots of tips on technique.

The events started with the log clean and press.  Everyone was kind of pressing to a max weight.  My max on this is 220 or 225, and that's about all I got today.  I may have pressed 230, but after that, I couldn't lock anything out past my head.

Next was the farmer's walk.  I'm not sure what the weight was that we worked up to, but I'm going to estimate it was about 315 (3 plates each side + handle weight).  I was actually able to handle that weight and walk it about 30 feet.  I did that two times.  It wasn't fast by any means, but it was the heaviest I've ever done.

They then brought out a sandbag that was supposedly 250 pounds, but it felt really light to me.  Either way, I lifted it really fast, bear-hugged it, then walked back and forth a bunch of times.  Good times.

The last event was the atlas stone loading over a bar.  This is my first real attempt at stone lifting, and I don't think I did too bad.  Before I get into it, I just want to say how awful tacky feels on your body.  For those that don't know, tacky is like pine tar in a jar, with stickiness amped up to 11 (yes I just said that).  I only used it on my hands, because I didn't have long sleeves (or stone sleeves as some guys use).  But there was already tacky on the stones, and my forearms basically got the hair taken right off of them.  It was quite painful.  But I powered on through like Rocky.  The guys had me start on the 275 pound stone, and it wasn't too bad.  The hardest part for me was popping the stone high enough to get it over the bar.  I'm really tall, so this shouldn't be too hard, but I didn't have great technique either.  After doing that a few times, I moved to the 305 pound stone.  I did this two or three times (not in a row, they were tough!), and then I was spent.

So that was it for the day.  Now I'm really tired and kind of want to sleep.  It's only 7:30, though, so maybe I'll watch a flick from the net.  One lesson you can all take away from this is that strongman is a very expensive sport, and if you can either make the equipment yourself, or train with another group, you'll be saving a ton of money.