That of the Strongmen has long been a world apart, almost mythological, however fascinating.
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The events that with a little luck could be seen late at night on the thematic sports channels of satellite television left us with the taste of distant worlds: that to perform on the screen were the giants in kilts engaged in lifting very high wooden poles, or strong blondes of Eastern Europe that dragged gigantic forms of metal.
However the competitions of the Strongmen have their origins in the mists of time, because literally always man needs to to test and give yourself a social position. The easiest way to do this is to challenge yourself on the field of force gross.
What we see done in Highland Games it is nothing more than the evolution of force competitions among the members of the clan of ancient Scotland The lifting of stones of different shapes, which has now been codified in Atlas Stones, was a common discipline in the villages of Scandinavia, Wales, Scotland and Iceland.
For some years, however, i training protocols of the Strongmen have entered conventional gyms, integrating in a surprisingly fluid way with the most heterogeneous types of training.
Powerlifters were the first to understand its potential. Now even CrossFit® has caught up.
So let's see how it is possible to exploit the lifts of the Strongmen to profitably increase strength, endurance and athleticism, and what are the athletic abilities put to the test.
What is the Strongman
First of all we give a definition. Strongman he is the strong man. A figure who returns through the centuries, and who makes strength his instrument of exhibition and success.
What comes to mind is the man who in the circuses of the late nineteenth century carried enormous loads, bent iron bars and undertook trials that combined strength, endurance, balance and precision.
For Strongman today we mean one sport who tests the strength of competitors through tests using tools of unconventional shapes. These are raised, thrown or dragged for defined distances.
In the Strongman the tests can be of load - raise the greater weight - but also of distance (covered or launched) or of greater number of repetitions performed.
The tools
- most common tools used, whose risers will be described in the next parts of this article, are
- Stones - Atlas stones
- Barrels - kegs
- Logs - Logs
- Aces - Axles
- The loads used for the Farmer's Walk
- Yoke - Yoke
- Tires - Tires
(For convenience, we list the original names of the tools, because the Strongman nomenclature is often in English.)
However, many of Strongman's benefits lie precisely in the unusual form of the used tools, which they test movements and mechanisms of compensation unconventional. It is therefore common to use different tools to practice the risers. This is seen regularly in traditional games, and in events made specifically for television.
In the next article we will see which are the benefits of integrating Strongman lifts in a training regime like Crossfit.