Life, Learning, and My First Strongman

     November 1st I did my first strongman competition.  A fairly docile Halloween competition, made all the more less intimidating by the fact that everyone was in costume.  It's hard to be nervous for too long when the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man is wandering around bumping into people and nearly catching himself on fire.  I didn't really know what to expect.  I had watched strongman before, but never participated, had only vaguely considered it really.  Thus, I had an idea of what the events would be, but I did minimal prep for them.  I went in slightly less than completely unprepared.  That's ok though, and I will tell you why...

      The strongman community is fantastic.  They are warm, friendly people, who welcome anyone willing to try.  Always offering advice, encouragement, and food, you rarely hear them be anything but incredibly supportive of their fellow competitors regardless of how bad that person is performing.  Guys from the same weight class will cheer each other on, yell out coaching cues, or lift a participant up when they preformed badly on an event.  They know that one terrible event can wreck a persons confidence in the rest of the competition and regardless of who it is, encourage the crap out of them to ward off any negative thoughts.  They also welcome all comers.  Sure, they will pick on you a little bit if you are a Crossfit junkie, or a marathon runner, but at the end of the day they respect what you do and that you showed up to give their sport a try.  Plus they are picking on one another just as much, if not more.  It's a light hearted, good natured group of people who just want you to enjoy the experience.  At the end of the day it is you vs you.  Everyone is trying to do better than previous attempts and everyone else wants to watch the numbers go up.  It's a good time. Plus...food ('nuff said).

      A second thing I enjoyed was the learning.  I was told once that "when you stop learning you're dead".  It's been stuck in my head every since.  I'm always trying to learn, and learn I did that night.  Almost every single one of my events I could have improved upon by simply being more prepared and more aware.  This didn't shock me as I had done limited prep to begin with.  It also didn't shock me that some things went less than smoothly during the competition as I am more than a little accident prone.  I'll go through them event by event...LEARN FROM ME.  Or laugh at me. Or both, that's the route I took anyway.

Event 1: Deadlift.  Three bars were set up heaviest to lightest (275/185/155 in our case).  Heaviest pull trumped all other, lighter pulls, most reps won.  This went well for me, I like to deadlift.  I did go all out,  however, and it kind of toasted me for the other events.  This is more of a conditioning issue that prudent planning.  Lesson here is don't skimp on conditioning, even if it resembles cardio for a hot second.

Event 2: Sand bag load into a cart, then wheel the cart however many feet.  I didn't get to wheel the cart, I really wanted to, but I didn't.  I hadn't really practiced sandbags ever (prep), but also accidentally stood on one of the straps and got the bag yanked out of my hand when I went to load it onto my lap.  This caused me to lose most of my momentum and I ended up tapping out on that bag.  This bummed me out.  The lesson here is to mind your feet.  I also felt my wrist pop and it became weak for the next 5 minutes after and hurt most of the next day.  Work with bags, see if you need wrist wraps, and find out whether or not they will get in the way.  The mostly comes back to prep.

Event 3: Kettlebell hold for time.  I got second in this simply due to not being mentally as focused as the other woman.  She was awesome.  It was a pleasure to get to compete with her.  I'm not sure how to get past this one other than to practice pushing through things you hate.  Keep going when you want to stop simply because the job is not done yet.  Do this within reason, many an injury has been caused by being a total jackass.

Event 4: Chain Drag.  This killed me for some reason and I realized after that my shoes did not help me at all.  I had worn a boot instead of my Chuck's thinking that I would have more traction.  I did, but the boots were heeled and I couldn't drive my body back efficiently.  I don't think this would have helped me win the even per say, but I really wanted to finish it and it probably would have made that amount of difference.

Event 5: Atlas Stones.  These went pretty well, other than a smashed finger.  I don't know how to prevent that.  Don't smash your fingers.  It hurts. It's unpleasant.  I'm going to have a hell of a time explaining to people why that nail is gone (if it falls off...please don't fall off).

I came. I failed. I learned.  To some the failure might seem like a hit on your self esteem, a shining example of inadequacy.  I see failure as a place to start.  You cannot climb a mountain if you are already at the top, and why would you want to.  Everyone starts from somewhere, some higher than others, but usually everyone is at about the same place.  Let it aid in your goal setting, let it ignite (or reignite) the fire inside you to train hard, and let it lift you up rather than pull you down.  You got to compete in something ridiculously fun with a boatload of amazing people who wanted nothing more than for everyone to have a good time.  Let your failures give you something to work for in the future, something to laugh about in the past, but don't let them spoil your present.


And that is why I'll probably be doing more strongman.  Plus...food.  And of course all these awesome ladies.

P.S. I came in 2nd of 2 in Light Weight Women's Novice in case anyone wanted to know.  That's really neither here nor there, as I did it for the experience.