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Matt Ball: husband, father, nerd, strong person, code monkey, coach and teller of stories

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Competition Write-up: Worthing's Strongest Man 2016

Dec 12, 2016 · 9 minute read · Comments

On a cold, windy and occasionally wet August Sunday (bank holiday weekend) I took part in my second strongman competition down on Worthing’s seafront.

I put a lot of preparation into this competition and placed absolute rock bottom. Like 10th out of 10 bottom. But I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with what I think is basically a worst-case-scenario, but also accept it and move on with some positives.

Categories

To clarify this was only my 2nd strongman competition. Outside of the weight and age categories within the sport (of which there are a growing number now as it becomes more mainstream) - there are basically 3 levels of competition:

Obviously Novice is intended as the starting place, where athletes can try the sport out, and get some experience under their belt. The weights are relatively light (though you’ve still got to be a pretty strong person to work with them). It’s a Gentleman’s Agreement to only participate in about 3 novice competitions or until you get a podium spot before you’re encouraged to move up to the next level, Intermediates.

The Intermediates (more often than not referred to as just Inters) is where things get a little more serious. The weights are downright heavy and the athletes tend to have a year or so experience at competitive strongman. I guess a lot of athletes burn out at this level because from my experience at looking at competitions now, the Open level category doesn’t fill up anywhere near as much as the Novice and Inters - either they’re competing less often or there are fewer of them around (probably a mixture of both, for reasons I’ll probably explain another time).

Finally, we have the Open category. These guys are big lumps. Absolutely great athletes with crazy strength. As a fan of the sport it’s hard not to watch these guys in awe, more so I think when you know full well how hard what they are doing is. To be a good strongman you can’t have any weaknesses - so not only are they massively strong, they are often fast, with good cardio fitness and endurance/recovery and mental grit and determination that isn’t often seen.

Stepping up

So my first competition was done as a Novice back in January of 2016. As it turns out this competition was run less than 2 months after I took up the sport - and by the time that I signed up I had less than 2 weeks of preparation to make. It was a good day and an eye opener - I placed 6 out of 8.

When I signed up for Worthing’s Strongest Man I decided that - while I did not know the taste of strongman victory; I was ready as an athlete to step up to the next level. I’ve never been a super-competitive guy and in strength I’ve nearly always only been interested in what I am doing and where I am going. Keeping focused on my own personal bests, placing and performances was more important. I decided to use this competition as a way to force myself to grow. By signing up for something that I could not even do yet would force me to get stronger in order to be able to show up and get anything done.

I’ve had the same experience in my working life too - and I think it’s probably true for most things in life: get out of your comfort zone and just grow. Get better. Without an external stimulus we cannot change with much effectiveness.

The Events

Competitions tend to have 5 or 6 different events to test the strength of strongman athletes - this one was no exception; and for my category it was as follows:

At the time of registering for this event I’d only really done a Frame Carry and Axle Deadlift - the other 3 events I had almost zero experience with at all and had to first figure out how strong I was with the event, and then try and get strong enough before the competition came around in order to take part. I’m not going to go into detail of how I did that during this post - because that’s a long and relatively boring subject (more so than a competition write-up).

70kg Giant Dumbbell

Sadly, the closest that I’d got to this in training before the big day was 60kg for 2 repetitions. Going into the event I knew there was no way on earth I was going to get more than 1 repetition - so just gave it everything that I could to press the thing overhead just once. After 2-3 attempts it was very clear it was going nowhere.

Shame, it would have been a nice PB on the day.

0 reps.

250kg Frame Carry

This event annoyed me a little on the day. I was pretty good in training and had worked up to 125kg-per-hand Farmers Walk (very similar event) and it was good.

But I think I trained my grip heavy one-too-many times too close to the competition and my left hand just opened up pretty close to the finish line. Once my grip goes - it goes and each subsequent pick-up lasted no more than 1-2 seconds, long enough to move another 1m. I wanted to give up completely - but with everyone screaming at me to finish I managed to give it enough to take it over the line eventually.

Slowest time.

Max. Axle Deadlift

At the time of registering for the competition my best gym deadlift was 260kg - on a normal Olympic weightlifting bar.

We do own thicker 60mm axle bar and was able to train this now and then - and a month or so out from the competition was able to pull a 260kg deadlift on the axle. So since the competition was starting at 240kg (in a last-man-standing type event) I figured I would be good for probably 240kg and then 260kg.

It so happens that on the day the jumps were bigger than I had anticipated. After the easy 240kg lift we moved onto 270kg - a weight that had escaped me 3-4 times on an Olympic bar a few times in training running up to the competition. But I was good for it, and made a pretty good job of it too.

Finally, there was an attempt on 290kg which I got past the knees but couldn’t lockout for a complete lift.

I did better than one or two guys in this event and managed to claw a couple of points.

240kg Conan’s Walk

I’d heard that this event was a killer on your cardio as it was near impossible to breath (certainly as a guy with a big of a belly that would press down hard on you). But the reality was so much worse than the stories. I literally couldn’t take a single breath of air while moving. I didn’t get very far around the pivot before giving up (prematurely I might add) and dumping it.

Shortest distance travelled.

Atlas Stones

This is an absolute classic event for strongman and has become a go-to icon for strongman logos around the world. There were 5 stones to be lifted onto 4’ platforms: 90kg, 105kg, 120kg, 140kg and 160kg. Luckily I had trained this event a couple of times before - but hadn’t managed to pick up (let alone load to height) anything over a 105kg stone.

I surprised myself here and was able to very easily load the first 3 stones, and missed the 4th (140kg) by just a few inches.

I’m not sure where I finished in this, but let’s say it was towards the bottom on the group.

Final Place

Last. Fuck.

Losing is never easy, and even though I went into the competition knowing I was an underdog I still hoped I wouldn’t come absolutely last place. Alas it wasn’t to be. Somebody has to be last and in this instance, it was me.

Retrospective

I still look back and think it was crap to finish last. But I’ve taken a lot more positives from the competition than negatives and I’ve gone on since to compete again. But what have I learned?

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