Any powerlifters here see any benefit from incorporating strongman techniques such as tire flips, yoke walks, farmer walks, stone lifting, etc. into their routines?
Works great for conditioning.
I’ve always been confused on how movements like these can be used for conditioning. To me it seems like they would be too taxing and take away from training the big 3 lifts.
Choose loads and exercises that aren’t overly taxing and are more in the conditioning kind of thing (don’t do a max tire flip, instead flip it around a bunch till you’re out of breath basically). Personally, since it’s getting too cold for me to bike ride, I was thinking about carrying sandbags through sand.
Tire flips can translate pretty well for both deadlifts and squats. You can almost treat them as a dynamic effort movement. Also, the farmers walk, if done without straps, can great contribute to grip-strength needed for DL. I have used them in rotations, but not as a weekly deal.
I’ve only done farmer walks, but they’re great assistance for dead lifts. Also it usually feels like your traps are going to fall off afterwards.
Also, 1 arm farmer’s and yoke walks are good ‘core’ exercises.
Really just walking with anything heavy will do it, like the husafell stone or just a heavy sandbag in the bear hug position. It’ll get some bicep work in, too.
Also just the stones, I remember the first time I lifted one and it felt like my abs were going to rip in half. I can’t do it without tacky though and its a pain to clean up.
Heavy carries work your core like no other exercise. Event training does help break up the monotony of being stuck in a power rack all the time as well.
the group of guys i train with have event day every sunday. that day is all about strongman and highland games stuff. even if it has no carry over to anything else i look forward to that more then anything else.