Also it may be important to designate level of competitor. Amateur and recreational vs. Professional and highly competitive would make a big difference in health markers.
Yes that has been my line of thought aswell. As far as I know, I can only quote certain publifications and regarding this topic I would imagine there are barely any given the sport’s lack of pupularity.
The aspect of opoid addiction is something I might take in as part of the survey if I chose to focus on the health aspect… something like frequency and duration of taking in pain killers in the last 6 months or something like that.
That would absolutely make a huge difference. This poses a problem though if I want to focus mainly on the GFSA/ Germany because as I said the level of competition here can’t be compared to the level it is at in the USA for example.
As an example last year’s final competition of the pro league “Germany’s strongest man” had a max log event. The winner broke the German record with a lift of 184 kg but the second got 165 kg, third 160 kg and fourth 150 kg, it kept dropping fast from there. In open weight category. That is huge for me but also this is the elite of German strongman, so it isn’t that great compared to other countries. So I guess most people there would be declared amatuer - at least if compared to international
In general there are a lot of aspect in here that would be especially exciting to investigate in international level competitors like durg use, opoid addiction, health markers and stuff but I guess I won’t get these guys to give me that kind of information.
Interesting topic but hard to get scientific with it. Some thoughts of mine…
If you’re relying on a self selecting survey of people who do this rare and unusual thing, I would look to things that you can actually measure.
How often do strongmen train?
How many hours per session?
How many days per week?
How much do they sleep?
How much do they weigh?
How well do they perform on lifts?
Perhaps you could compare this to a different self selecting group, and compare strength performance somehow. Gym bros or rugby players or weightlifters. People who weight train but for different goals with different methods.
Of course you can’t measure something like heart, pain tolerance, grit or plain willingness to train harder than the next guy, which is one of the things that makes strength training difficult to analyze.
I would be very curious to see if strongman training over long periods (like 5+ years) produces better performance on the big 3 powerlifts than established powerlifting training. I’ve got no idea how that could possibly be measured though.
Good luck!
1 Like
Hey @twojarslave , thanks a ton for your suggestion!
I like the idea in terms of how practical it is. This is really something that can be measured and compared rather ‘easily’.
@Koestrizer
To piggy back on this, comparing the “functional” aspect of strongman to the “functional” aspect of crossfit (huge pool of folks to draw from) as far as:
-
Injuries (surgical, non-surgical-may be broken down into, “Have you missed a session due to injury?” How often? Average length of time between sessions missed due to injury/overtraining.)
-
Training time (sessions per week, length of sessions)
-
Length of time in the sport (broken down into categories competitive (minimum 2 competitions)/dedicated-recreational (3-5 times per week)/hobby-recreational (1-3 times per week)
-
Starting statistics (before/after comparisons for each sport, could be pictures, weights, blood panels, VO2 testing)
-
If you can put an anonymous poll together, possibly drug use in each sport cross referenced with their self classification? Or those “considering” drug use to support their fitness goals.
Not sure if any of them make sense to do in your scenario, but it’s all stuff I wouldn’t mind seeing answered if I were doing something similar, ha.
1 Like
I like how well fleshed out this is. Something actionable.
Definitely very interesting aspect. I think a lot of people would find this interesting!