Goals for Start of April

I am 15 years young

And in August i set these goals to achieve by April
400lb deadlift
330lb squat
220 bench press
200 strict military press
240 farmers walk run each hand
220 log press
310 duck walk

At this present moment I have

341 deadlift
295 squat
205 bench press
180 strict military press
190 log press
200 farmers walk
230 duck walk

Am I kn track to hit these goals or are they not achievable thanks

I think you set to many goals for yourself. I personally only set goals for squat bench and deadlift because I powerlift. But if you really want to increase all of those lifts I would pick just a few with goals to reach by a certain period. Don’t slack off on the other lifts but don’t push to hard to increase. Then once you’ve broke your goals switch to the other lifts while at least maintaining what you gained in the other lifts

These are the lifts I want to increase mainly though I want to do a strongman comp before I turn 16 so I need to be a very good pressed squat and deadlift also farmers walk and I will not place last hopefully

In my opinion it’s too much to focus on all at once. Shoot most of the time I only have two of my lifts going up while the third does nothing or drops slightly

Without knowing more about you - in particular height, weight and training experience - and without seeing any of your current lifts it is hard to give any opinion as to whether these goals are achievable for you.

I do agree that you have set out a large number of goals and I suspect that your chances of achieving any of them would be significantly better if you reduced their number.

I would suggest limiting them to

Squat
Bench press OR military press
Deadlift
Farmers walk

It is only seven goals I will take out duck walk so 6 goals

[quote]HitEmUp wrote:
It is only seven goals I will take out duck walk so 6 goals [/quote]

Is this going to make it easier to achieve those six goals?

Think about it.

You want to improve your squat and DL. Good idea. It isn’t uncommon for the two lofts to feed off each other, but it also isn’t uncommon to find no carryover between them. You may be lucky, or you may not. But, many, many lifters have improved their squat and deadlift simultaneously so there is no reason you can’t.

You also want to improve your bench press, press and log press. Now, I have heard many people say that their bench press improves along with their press. I have also heard the opposite. My personal experience is that there is minimal carryover between the bench press and press. Getting better at one doesn’t not necessarily mean getting better at the other. Then you have the log press, which appears to me a different lift entirely, as I understand it to include a clean element as well, not to mention the log press looks significantly different to the barbell press. If you’re lucky, you will get some carryover between two of these lifts. But, you are still going to be focusing on growing three press variations that may very well not feed off each at all and may in fact detract from each other.

Then you add farmers walks. These tax much the same muscles as the deadlift and squat, not to mention the press and log press because of how you have to fight to remain stable when pressing.

So, you are going to be hitting six lifts hard and heavy; six lifts that between them use similar or the same muscles. Are you going to be able to devote enough time to each lift to realistically get better at it? Let alone recover sufficiently to increase strength? Doubtful.

You’re 15. This means you have school five days a week, not to mention out of class activities. Even training six days a week - which I doubt is a good idea - you would only be able to devote one day per week to each lift. Given it is unlikely you are particularly experienced at any of the lifts, you will simply not get enough volume per lift to get better at them. Not to mention training the lifts six times a week will be taxing on your recovery capacity especially if you are aiming to get stronger on each one.

Now, I’m not saying not to train all those lifts. Absolutely if you are aiming to compete in strongman they are all essential lifts to train.

However, I strongly suspect that if you focus on, for example the squat, press, deadlift and farmers walk and simply include some practice on bench, log lift and duck walk without pushing the load on those you will most likely get far better results.

The other option would be to still train all the lifts but focus on only two or three at a time for blocks of time.

For example:

Block 1
Focus: squat, press,
Accessory and practice: DL, farmers walk, bench, log press, duck walk

Block 2:
Focus: DL, log press
Accessory and practice: squat, press, bench, farmers walk, duck walk

Block 3:
Focus: bench, farmers walk
Accessory and practice: squat, press, log press, DL, duck walk

Block 4:
Focus: duck walk, press
Accessory and practice: squat, bench, of press, DL, farmers walk

^ this guys got it.

I understand what u are saying to be honest from speaking to other strongmen many of them thrive to get better at everything. I will just try to increase strict press bench press squat deadlift and farmers walk I will however be training the other lifts but just drop the goals also log press and strict press do carryover a bit as most strongman there assistance to log press is strict military press I think the five goals now that I have are more than likely to be achieved if I train hard I train 5 days a week

Day 1 focus in military press
Military press
Bench press
Z press
Lat Pulldown
Face pulls

Day 2 focus in deadlifts
Deadlifts
Front squat
Axle bar deadlifts

Day 3 focus on bench press
Bench press
Military press
Close grip bench
Dumbbell row
Yates row

Day 4 focus in squat
Squats
Snatch grip deadlift
Power shrugs
Hammer curls superset side lateral raise

Day 5 focus in log press and farmers walk
Log press
Farmers walk
Keg or sandbag carry
Axle clean and press
Duck walk

I am not fussed if I do not get stronger in duck walk as that is not always seen in strongman comps however log press and farmers walk are always definitely are so I di care about them

Also I don’t see how performing 3 presses a week would detract from each other

[quote]HitEmUp wrote:
Also I don’t see how performing 3 presses a week would detract from each other [/quote]

Well, at least you’ve obviously put some thought into it.

Just be aware that the guys you’ve talked to will have been training for strongman for a while. Their training works for them, but might not necessarily work at your stage. But, like I said, you’ve at least put some thought into it and what you suggested is much better than your initial approach.

With the pressing, if you focus on getting one press stronger for a period but train the other two at lighter loads you should be fine. The lighter, different presses may well have a degree of carryover to the focus press. But, if you train all three heavy at the same time you run the risk of leaving your pressing muscles unable to recover enough to progress on any of the presses.

I don’t think recovery will be an issue I might take out axle press as that means I am doing 8 types of presses a week as for recovery I a,ways get a solid 7-9 hours sleep and I eat tons of food

I guess at your age recovery is less of an issue than when you’re in your 30s.

Still, I’d recommend monitoring how you feel and how your lifts progress very carefully.

Ok thanks is there any programs that u actually recommend thanks

I think I’m just going to run the Texas method

As a strongman competitor, of those lifts, I would focus on improving the deadlift, log press, and farmers walk. For the farmer’s walk, I’d focus much less on weight moved and far more on keeping footspeed up. Way too many guys train the moving events too heavy, and then when it’s time to actually WIN the event, they can’t step on the gas pedal. Footspeed is a skill.

Strict press, bench press and squats are assistance work for strongman. I’ve done 8 shows so far, and only 1 of them had a squat event (and, in point of fact, I picked that show BECAUSE it had a squat event). It’s rare that you’ll need to squat for strongman, whereas you’ll pretty much always have to deadlift, press, and carry something fast. Hell, a lot of strongmen don’t even perform the squat, stead using front squats, zercher squats, safety squat bar squats, or just going without squats all together. The 1rm is especially inconsequential in that regard, as if you ARE doing a squat event, it will most likely be for reps.

You’ll also never have to strict press in a show, so having the highest strict press in the crowd is a great way to be the strongest guy there and still lose. Trust me, I know from experience. At the end of the day, the guy standing on the podium is the person who was the best at strongman, not the strongest guy.

As for the bench, the last time I saw one in a contest was World’s Strongest Man 1994 (I believe that was the year. It was the one Steve Pulcinella was in). And even then, it was an incline log bench, so still rare to see a flat bench. Brian Shaw recently did an interview with Mark Bell, and when asked how much he benched, Shaw honestly had no idea. He couldn’t even come close to a guess, because it wasn’t anything he needed to do in order to win the World’s Strongest Man 3 times. Now, don’t get me wrong, bench can be a great assistance exercise, and I’m a big fan of it, but if your goal is to be a good strongman, chasing a high 1rm bench is missing the big picture.

Bottom line is you can still train all the lifts you like, but prioritizing which ones to focus on increasing and which ones to focus on using to increase others is important.

To address your primary question: sure those goals are achievable. And if you don’t meet them, but you did your absolute best, busting your ass, and did everything you could to possibly try to meet them, you’ll still be way further ahead than if you decide to quit because you can’t do it.

I fully understand this but who’s to say brian Shaw didn’t trwin AS Powerlifter when he first started lifting from what I’ve seen through own personal research a lot a lot of top strongmen have powerlifting backgroundw I’ve been training for a few months now which would class me as and begginer and which means I need to bulid a base of strength just wondering what program u recommend what program I would need to bulid a base to then go into strongman for the months to come

It sounds like you have everything figured out. Good luck!

[quote]T3hPwnisher wrote:
As a strongman competitor, of those lifts, I would focus on improving the deadlift, log press, and farmers walk. For the farmer’s walk, I’d focus much less on weight moved and far more on keeping footspeed up. Way too many guys train the moving events too heavy, and then when it’s time to actually WIN the event, they can’t step on the gas pedal. Footspeed is a skill.

Strict press, bench press and squats are assistance work for strongman. I’ve done 8 shows so far, and only 1 of them had a squat event (and, in point of fact, I picked that show BECAUSE it had a squat event). It’s rare that you’ll need to squat for strongman, whereas you’ll pretty much always have to deadlift, press, and carry something fast. Hell, a lot of strongmen don’t even perform the squat, stead using front squats, zercher squats, safety squat bar squats, or just going without squats all together. The 1rm is especially inconsequential in that regard, as if you ARE doing a squat event, it will most likely be for reps.

You’ll also never have to strict press in a show, so having the highest strict press in the crowd is a great way to be the strongest guy there and still lose. Trust me, I know from experience. At the end of the day, the guy standing on the podium is the person who was the best at strongman, not the strongest guy.

As for the bench, the last time I saw one in a contest was World’s Strongest Man 1994 (I believe that was the year. It was the one Steve Pulcinella was in). And even then, it was an incline log bench, so still rare to see a flat bench. Brian Shaw recently did an interview with Mark Bell, and when asked how much he benched, Shaw honestly had no idea. He couldn’t even come close to a guess, because it wasn’t anything he needed to do in order to win the World’s Strongest Man 3 times. Now, don’t get me wrong, bench can be a great assistance exercise, and I’m a big fan of it, but if your goal is to be a good strongman, chasing a high 1rm bench is missing the big picture.

Bottom line is you can still train all the lifts you like, but prioritizing which ones to focus on increasing and which ones to focus on using to increase others is important.

To address your primary question: sure those goals are achievable. And if you don’t meet them, but you did your absolute best, busting your ass, and did everything you could to possibly try to meet them, you’ll still be way further ahead than if you decide to quit because you can’t do it.

[/quote]

x2

A powerlifter that benches 500 can probably press 315 overhead.That doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t have made better progress doing more overhead pressing.Imo you’d be way better doing a standing or seated or incline press on your second day and then doing close grip bench or dips as a secondary.Also focus a lot on your conditioning.Doing huge lifts on seperate days doesn’t mean you can do them all on the same day.Finally if you’re gonna compete on rep competitions setting some rep goals too won’t hurt.Like deadlift 405 x 1 and 315 x 10 or 275 x 15