Strongman and Cardio

[robert da strongman]

got me thinking...just how important is cardio to a strongman?

some people are surprised at the fact i will get on the treadmill or elliptical and bang out some serious cardio. i vary between lo intensity on the treadmill and HIIT on the elliptical.

is it essential? of course, just try walking 60-100 feet with 200+ pounds in each hand. you will be winded. even a full clean and press for reps will gas the best of us.

the events are more like a sprint, not a marathon. so i train accordingly. again i often do HIIT in the gym and work the events on my training day.
the gym i train at has a baby tire. even though it isn't nearly heavy enough i work it as fast as possible and for sets.

[tjoe]

No aspect of strongman should be ignored if you want to do well.
strength, speed, cardiovascular, knowing the events... it all comes into play big time!
An overlooked aspect of cardio is the fact that it WILL help you stay strong all day. Someone with less "conditioning" may be a beast in the first 2-3 events but be gassed out by the final few. Good cardio is important during each event as well as all day long comps!

[Ryan Bracewell]

I do not do any direct cardio and I seem to do ok with conditioning in contests, but I plan to start doing more to see if it helps. Way I see it, it cant hurt.

[Iron152]

ive been doing Shawn T's "Hip Hop Abs" haha lol

honestly, dont do enuff cardio....defintly wanna up it

[robert da strongman]

one problem i have is on sled drags or keg carrys....my quads burn like hell and i just can't get them to move. i have always tried to push through that.

so i guess i have to ask...is there a difference between cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance?

[Ryan Bracewell]

yes. The way I look at it is cardio exhaustion is when your stopping to gasp for air, while muscular exhaust is when your push as hard as you can and nothing happens.

[robert da strongman]

yes. The way I look at it is cardio exhaustion is when your stopping to gasp for air, while muscular exhaust is when your push as hard as you can and nothing happens.

so what to do about the muscular endurance?

high reps, volume, supplements....

[s2h]

so what to do about the muscular endurance?

high reps, volume, supplements....put some dmso on your quads..you wont feel the burn...

[robert da strongman]

put some dmso on your quads..you wont feel the burn...

but eventually they will stop. need to keep them going longer.

[Ryan Bracewell]

so what to do about the muscular endurance?

high reps, volume, supplements....

Im still working on that answer for myself. Still have not reached the level I prefer, but one thing that has helped is light and medium weight sled drags. I do believe that doing cardio could help increase muscular endurance because your body will be more efficient at circulating blood(oxygen and nutrients) to the muscle.

[robert da strongman]

Im still working on that answer for myself. Still have not reached the level I prefer, but one thing that has helped is light and medium weight sled drags. I do believe that doing cardio could help increase muscular endurance because your body will be more efficient at circulating blood(oxygen and nutrients) to the muscle.

yeah sled drags should help. pulling my training partners truck works well too.
i think this is the dilemma of strongman...how to balance brute strength with endurance

[smj091977]

Robert, great thread! I ran into this problem at the ILSM this year. I held the keg and farmers for a full minute each, but the speed wasn't there. I barely finished the 250# farmers for 160 course and only made it 110 or so feet with the 260 keg. I was burning the entire way. I have been thinking of cutting the weight by about 30-40% and going for distance and speed. No clue if this is going to help.

[robert da strongman]

good idea! light but fast and explosive work should help.

[rinse]

Robert if strength endurance is an issue I think you should do sled drags and similar stuff for time or longer distances. Don't focus so much on speed but on the endurance part. Mix that in with more explosive sprints and I think you're well on your way.

For example how long does a sled drag or keg carry take in competition? Work so that you can have endurance for more than that. Run longer distances and also for longer times. Sometimes quite a bit longer. This should raise your strength endurance and together with the rest of your training make you more complete.

[robert da strongman]

Robert if strength endurance is an issue I think you should do sled drags and similar stuff for time or longer distances. Don't focus so much on speed but on the endurance part. Mix that in with more explosive sprints and I think you're well on your way.

For example how long does a sled drag or keg carry take in competition? Work so that you can have endurance for more than that. Run longer distances and also for longer times. Sometimes quite a bit longer. This should raise your strength endurance and together with the rest of your training make you more complete.


my thought was to make the event explosive. use a light weight but go the time or distance and repeat. speed does make a difference in the events so it has to be trained.

[robert da strongman]

ok from what rinse and smj posted and my own thinking i have come up with something....

i ride a bike everyday to work....it is brutal and it really hits the quads. good for the muscular endurance and cardio. one thing i can do is ride faster. i can also hit my legs with high reps and volume int the gym.

events...i can combine both lower weight but longer worktime and distance with a heavy explosive sets of the event.

[rinse]

Yes I would explosive stuff but also what I said. I mean if strength endurance is your weakness you need to work on that. Not by just doing the event over and over but just bring up your overall strength endurance.

I tihink timed work would be great for you. Make sure you work for longer periods of time than the events take in competition.

[rinse]

But also of course if you can run faster the event will be over faster. This is obviously the best. So speed is essential. Try to be fast but for even greater time/distances than in competition.

Name of the game is to fast for a certain time/distance and strength endurance training has it's place for this. In my opinion atleast.

[rinse]

Normal cardio has its place but for endurance that carry over to strongman more weight oriented stuff would be better.

[rinse]

Who much volume do you do in your normal training?

[robert da strongman]

Yes I would explosive stuff but also what I said. I mean if strength endurance is your weakness you need to work on that. Not by just doing the event over and over but just bring up your overall strength endurance.

I tihink timed work would be great for you. Make sure you work for longer periods of time than the events take in competition.

strength endurance would be something to train in the gym by adding more volume to my training. the event training would be specific to the competition i am doing.



But also of course if you can run faster the event will be over faster. This is obviously the best. So speed is essential. Try to be fast but for even greater time/distances than in competition.

Name of the game is to fast for a certain time/distance and strength endurance training has it's place for this. In my opinion atleast.

by extending the time or distance and going for speed, the cardio should
should take over, especially with a lighter load.



Normal cardio has its place but for endurance that carry over to strongman more weight oriented stuff would be better.

i do "normal" cardio just to keep the weight down.


Who much volume do you do in your normal training?

gym training? total sets are about 25 but the reps vary from 3-20

[rinse]

I just wondered about your total gym volume because if you would just be doing low volume all the time that could be a factor.

[rinse]

with the timed sets I would recommend stuff like dragging a sled, flipping tires, farmers walk, carrying sandbags, beating sledge on a tire etc. more fullbody movement like you do in competition than timed sets in the gym.

lighter weights as fast as you can for X amount of time. try to do a little better each time or atleast once in a while. when you get to a certain level with a weight up the weight to next time and try to do the same thing with a heavier weight but with the same speed and time.

how your going to put this into your overall training with recovery and all I have no idea because I haven't ever competed in strongman.

[Jon Buettner]

Conditioning is something I feel I need to improve to get to the next level. I have noticed in the past if I do to much traditional cardio my strength becomes effected after about 4 weeks. I have been doing H.I.T. cardio 2x a week and then I started doing simple agility latter and quickness drills as a warmup but have been surprised by how winded I get just from doing those for 10 minutes. I am glad that it seems this year the Plat Plus show were heavier but i would like to see more max events, especially overhead pressing because its strength. The previous year it seemed like strongman was turning into cardio man. Definetly training the specific events you struggle with for endurance will help. I find that if the event is log for reps that the only thing that gets me into shape is doing log for reps.

[robert da strongman]

Conditioning is something I feel I need to improve to get to the next level. I have noticed in the past if I do to much traditional cardio my strength becomes effected after about 4 weeks. I have been doing H.I.T. cardio 2x a week and then I started doing simple agility latter and quickness drills as a warmup but have been surprised by how winded I get just from doing those for 10 minutes. I am glad that it seems this year the Plat Plus show were heavier but i would like to see more max events, especially overhead pressing because its strength. The previous year it seemed like strongman was turning into cardio man. Definetly training the specific events you struggle with for endurance will help. I find that if the event is log for reps that the only thing that gets me into shape is doing log for reps.


exactly!
i noticed there seems to be a balance of events at the few comps i looked at this year. but they are getting heavier...

[wolverine565]

I was thinking about the endurance problem. My idea is to do medium weight sled drags as sprints. Sprints are the most taxing on the system. Each week increase the distance be 10yards and or increase weight based on time improvements over a aet distance. It makes more sense to work up the most taxing thing on your system than, medium speed long distance. Strongmen don't run marathons.

[rinse]

Well by timed sets I don't mean 5 minutes. I mean more 15-30 secs longer than want the event takes in competition.

[robert da strongman]

Well by timed sets I don't mean 5 minutes. I mean more 15-30 secs longer than want the event takes in competition.

done in intervals!

[Ibarramedia]

Relative to cardio endurance, I guess you guys can do football workouts like the running and the sprints and other exercises.

[robert da strongman]

Relative to cardio endurance, I guess you guys can do football workouts like the running and the sprints and other exercises.

running is not in my vocabulary...haha!

bleachers or stairs are a good choice

[Jon Buettner]

I train mainly with a westside split but I started doing Dorian yates H.I.T training with my assistance lifts and am finding that by just doing 1 sets to an all out failure with 5 or 6 assistance lifts has really fried my nervous system this last week. I'm comparing it to when your in a contest and your doing an event for reps or a medley and going all out for 60 seconds.

[robert da strongman]

I train mainly with a westside split but I started doing Dorian yates H.I.T training with my assistance lifts and am finding that by just doing 1 sets to an all out failure with 5 or 6 assistance lifts has really fried my nervous system this last week. I'm comparing it to when your in a contest and your doing an event for reps or a medley and going all out for 60 seconds.

yeah that is brutal....

i try to find something to push me past that barrier when i want to just quit.
lately it has been riding my bike. i noticed my quads quit on carrys and sleds.
when i get that nasty burn i just keep pushing past it.

i certainly hope this caries over to events.

[Rich Gregg]

Rob let me start out by saying that cardio is boring but because of my cardio endurance I have placed well in events like farmers, Yoke and tires.

Since I started training for strongman in Nov 2009 I have switched up my routines several time. I even was doing some crazy stuff like doing shrugs every other day because someone told me that would help my lagging over head game. After suffering a nasty groin pull early this year I changed my routine and was doing cardio basically every day for 30 plus minutes and my workouts followed a BB scheme of 20,15,10,8 reps. I found that his helped my recover from my injuries and kept me from going ape shit with weights.

After basically training light for 3 months I started to hit the heavy stuff with only taking one day off a week from training and doing no cardio. I got to a point in about 2 months were i wasn't improving in strength gains and it felt hard to breath every day I put my bullet proof vest on to go top work.
Right after the Central FL Strongest man Show I totally changed my routine again. As you saw my pressing gave me some shit at that show so I went back to the drawing board. For several weeks I continued with no cardio and focused on changing my routines and hit most of the auxiliary exercised I used in PL to gain a bigger bench. Well it worked and now things are moving nicely. I'm still doing the same exercises but I have mixed in the 5,3,1 routine and added two days of cardio.

I love to hit fun cardio stuff like box jumps and bleacher but i dont always have acess to those because schools are closed and the only place that has boxes is the gym at OPD. So if i cant hit those exercises I do 30 mins on the tred mixing in a brisk walk and jog then I stop let my hard rate come down before I go hit the elliptical for 20 min on a hid stride and high resistance setting.

In the past I would have problems with loosing strenght from cardio but with the 6 meal 2 shake diet that my peep at Space Coast Barbell drew up Im getting in enough good protein and carbs to stop the back slide.

My goal is to get up to 300lbs but look and feel the way I did back at 242. Ill keep you posted on how this works out.

[robert da strongman]

Rich...right on brudda!

i think that not only cardio like elliptical is necessary but more volume in the gym is extremely important.