What My Training Currently Looks Like - Remembering The Seasons

This year was not the year of strongman in my life. Having started a business that requires as much care and attention and a newborn baby, I have had to be much more deliberate about the balance of training and competing in my life. There aren’t many people in the world making a living off of strongman and so even if you consider training to be a top priority in your life, it’s still a hobby at the end of the day. As I talk about in Seasons of Strongman, there is a cyclical nature to the sport of strongman and you should definitely honour that if you’re looking to properly recover and improve during your offseason.

This decision was abruptly thrown at me as I felt good coming off of a fourth-place finish at the Canadian Hercules in September and riding on that wave, I was working towards setting a new high for the gym’s deadlift record board which I believed to be an achievable goal with a bit of training.

This post-competition season push was cut short though when working up with double overhand deadlifts feeling good, I pushed a little further past where I would usually switch my grip and felt a pop in my pinky finger. Having gone through this before I knew that feeling intimately and realized I had “done screwed up.” Some sort of sprain or strain to the smallest and seemingly insignificant appendage makes a disproportionately huge difference on the majority of your training.

With no events coming up, I stopped using my grip for anything for the rest of training that day and have spent the last month being cautious and in more of a true off-season mode, looking to take it slowly while I build strength and shore up weaknesses before next season.

Whether you’ve been competing in strongman for just a little while or for many years, know that the seasons of strongman are real. Make use of the offseason as a time for regaining balance and don’t push yourself to the point of injury. Know that your body will be ready to ramp up when event training picks back up when preparing for the competitive season again.