If you thought that strongman training is only for overweight guys who want to lift a truck, think again. Strongman training is all about building true functional strength to an extent you never thought was possible and it could be one of the best additions to your regular gym routine – not only will it promote insane muscle growth, but it will increase your power, endurance, static strength and mental fortitude as well. And since training plateaus are usually the result of mental barriers rather than physical limitations, strongman training can be used as a vacation from your traditional workouts that will overdose your entire musculature and help you overcome any weakness, both in the mental and physical realm.
Finally, strongman training can increase the speed of your fat loss and improve your overall body composition in less time than any other program you’ve tried. And the best part? Strongman exercises have an excellent carryover to daily activities, meaning that it will make your muscles exactly as strong as they appear to be.
One recent study has shown that strongman training can be just as good as traditional weightlifting for building muscle. When the researchers compared the effects of a 7-week weightlifting training which included classics such as the deadlift, clean and jerk, military press and back squat, and the effects of a 7-week strongman training that involved exercises such as log lift, farmer’s walk and heavy sled pull, it was evident that the athletes who performed strongman exercises gained slightly more muscle and had similar increases in strength and power as the weightlifting group.
So why limit yourself to weightlifting when you can have the best of both worlds and get the best gains possible? Incorporate strongman training into your routine today to start building real muscle and functional strength, as well as melt excess body fat away. But that’s not all – read the rest of this article to discover the 6 most important benefits of strongman training.
#1. Strongman exercises give you the most bang for your back
Strongman training is an optimal mix of training for static strength, strength endurance and maximal strength, all in the same bag. Strongman exercises provide powerful co-contractions (simultaneous activation of antagonist and agonist muscle groups of the same joint) in the largest muscle groups in the body, which means they are able to stimulate greater muscle growth than other training styles. In addition, given their huge carryover to other types of strength training as well as everyday activities, they build that strength you always wished you had. Since muscle gains are the result of time under tension and heavy loads, strongman exercises, which allow for more volume and more weight to be used, enable optimal muscle overload, thus promoting optimal gains in every aspect. In addition, strongman training can do wonders for your grip strength. And the best part is that you don’t need any special equipment to perform strongman exercises – it all boils down to finding the heaviest object in your yard and lifting it up.
#2. Strongman exercises increase fat burning
When it comes to fat loss, the superiority of strength training over other workout regimes has already been proven in multiple occasions. More specifically, certain studies have shown that anaerobic workouts are at least 20% more effective at burning fat than aerobic exercises. And since strongman training takes everything on a whole new level, it also has a great effect on the rate of fat burning, due to its ability to boost the metabolism and result in a large accumulation of lactate in the body. The best part is that strongman exercises produce a lasting effect on the body’s ability to burn fat, keeping you in optimal “fat burning” mode long after the workout is finished.
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