T Nation

'CrossTraining' for Powerlifting

Powerlifting
#1

I’m just curious how some of ya’ll incorporate elements from other strength sports into your training.

For example, I train upper body two days. One day, I train the competition lift or a very close variant and the other is closer to an upper body bodybuilding day. Since I’ve started doing this, my shoulders, wrists, and elbows have felt a million times better and my upper body is muscling up too in short order.

Another one is I’ve been adding in strongman and odd lifts/carries into my conditioning. Again, it seems to help my shoulders, and it also seems to help with my hips and SI.

#2

I have had a similar experience to what you wrote. I simply treated the Strongman training to be an alternate form of assistance work to keep things fun. The most beneficial thing I’ve done was atlas stones. That made my dead off the floor and my out of the hole strength really take off. If you don’t have access to stones you can use a sleeve off an old bar to put plates on it akin to a home made EFS stone trainer. Bumper plates are ideal for this or rubber coated plates so that you can grip them better.
Another fun thing is training with sandbags. A 75-80# sandbag can be surprisingly difficult to play with after a few min. Plus you can toss it over the shoulder and run hills with them.