I’ve been training for a competition in August and I am confident I’ll do well on all the events (might need some work on the deadlift). Interestingly, all the events are “as many reps as possible in 1 minute with a fixed weight” with the exception of the farmers walk.
Anyway, I’ve got more than enough strength to beat the required weights but I tend to gas out within the first 20 seconds. For example, I hit 200 for 7 on the atlas stones (competition weight is 160lbs for Novice), but hit 5 of those 7 reps in less than 30 seconds. For the log, I hit 170 for 9, with 7 of those in 20 seconds. For the deadlift, I am a little underweight but found my grip was shot within the first 20 seconds (or once it got really sweaty).
I was thinking since the strength is there to pace myself, ie do sets of 3 with 5-10 seconds rest.
You mention that you’re doing novice weights and my first question would be if you can do the open weights. If you can, why not just register for the open class. The novice class is usually won by somebody who could have gone open and ends up doing insane numbers of reps in the novice class. It doesn’t sound like you’re conditioned to be that guy and frankly I don’t think that’s the point of strongman.
As far as your original topic, you are overthinking it. Get stronger and you’ll get better at reps. Gassing after doing 5 reps in 30 seconds isn’t abnormal. I can’t give you the specifics of the energy systems, but if you get stronger, the lighter weights will gas you less.
It is a novice/open class. All of the weights are fixed and the goal is to complete max reps in 60 seconds. The exception is the farmers walk which is a medley. I think Ill do fine on most of the events except the FW, as my back pain has been acting up. Rather than creating another thread does anyone have advice for dialing down training before competition? Instead of going for max reps I was thinking just do low volume heavy singles. My biggest concern is hurting my back.
[quote]Aero51 wrote:
It is a novice/open class. All of the weights are fixed and the goal is to complete max reps in 60 seconds. The exception is the farmers walk which is a medley. I think Ill do fine on most of the events except the FW, as my back pain has been acting up. Rather than creating another thread does anyone have advice for dialing down training before competition? Instead of going for max reps I was thinking just do low volume heavy singles. My biggest concern is hurting my back. [/quote]
If I’m really gearing up for a contest, I start dropping all my assistance/strength work and hit pretty much only events toward the end. I tend to still stay pretty close to competition weight, but you could also go lighter and focus more on technique/transitions.
Ironically, I did exactly the opposite of that yesterday. I was feeling pretty strong and went for a new PR on the Farmers Walks (260/hand). I think if I didn’t do so many warm up sets (250, 230,180,140,90) I probably could have gotten 270.