A six-pack is nice, but being able to pull a car, press a huge log, or flip a massive tire is something else. Not everyone wants that lean “Zac Efron in Baywatch” figure. Some people want a strongman physique that looks good and comes with impressive strength and power.
Luckily, it’s not that hard to achieve. You just need to follow the same strongman training style and dieting techniques that all strongman competitors hold sacred.
Table of Contents Show
In this article, I’ll cover everything you need to do to achieve a strongman physique. Grab your wrist straps, and let’s go.
What Is the Strongman Body?
There are three main hallmarks of a strongman physique: relatively high body weight, muscle mass, and strength capability.
A strongman competitor typically has a wide back, massive upper legs, and a layer of fat covering a strong set of abdominal muscles.
Strongman Competitors – Body Composition
The body composition of a strongman is somewhat variable.
Body Fat percentage
Typically, strongmen have a greater body fat percentage than most athletes. They’re more concerned with packing on weight to add to their strength and power rather than lowering their body fat for visible abs.
That being said, you might find the occasional strongman competitor who strives for a lower body fat percentage and a prominent six-pack.
Body Weight
While each athlete has a unique body type, the one thing in common with all strongman physiques is above-average body weight and very high skeletal muscle mass.
This is because the nature of strongman exercises and dieting techniques favors a state of constant protein synthesis and anabolism to keep up with their training.
Strongman Competitions
Strongman events are always changing. Typically, a pro strongman is required to perform 5-6 exercises during competitions. Some of these strongman exercises include:
- Hercules Hold
- Vehicle Pull
- Atlas Stones
- Deadlifts
- Fingal’s fingers
- Arm-over-arm pull
- Squat lift
During each event, athletes are awarded points based on the position they finish in and the heavy loads they can lift. In the end, the strongman with the highest number wins.
Top 8 Exercises to Get a Strongman Physique
Here are the top 8 exercises you can try at the gym to help you get a strongman physique.
1. Deadlift
Deadlifts are one of the most popular exercises in strongman competitions. It not only helps you get a strongman physique, but it’s an accurate measure of one’s brute strength and overall power.
Deadlifts can do wonders for your grip strength, core strength, and lower body muscles. If you’re looking for a starting point in your strongman training, I’d recommend starting here.
They can help you rack up muscle mass in your lower body, especially the glutes, hamstrings, and lower back. Heavy compound movements like deadlifts can have carryover benefits to other exercises and lifts like the barbell squat and Zercher squats, for example.
During a deadlift, your whole body is struggling to pull extremely heavy weights up off the floor, which is why almost all muscle groups have to kick in and help. Deadlifts are major contributors to a strongman physique and are integral to any training program.
How to perform deadlifts as a strongman
- Start with your feet shoulder-width apart with a barbell on the ground an inch away from your shins.
- Grab the barbell with an overhand grip, your arms straight just outside of your legs, bend your knees slightly, and squeeze your core while taking a deep breath.
- Lift your chest and make sure your back is straight and your shoulder blades are squeezed.
- Pushing the ground, begin to bring the bar up in a vertical path along your legs. As it passes your knees, squeeze your glutes and thrust your hips out to meet the bar.
- Let the bar fall back to the ground in a controlled manner without carrying much of the weight. Repeat for reps.
If you’re looking for more info, check out this complete guide on deadlifts.
2. Overhead Press
If you’ve ever watched strongman competitions, you probably think they don’t do the overhead press. At least not the traditional barbell overhead press you probably do at the gym.
Strongman competitors usually lift awkwardly-shaped objects, such as logs above their heads. This is much harder than lifting a barbell and requires strong shoulder muscles and a stable core.
Strongman athletes channel all of their upper body muscles into overhead presses and other strongman exercises like the atlas stone lift and heavy log carries, which contribute to their strongman body.
Since atlas stones and logs usually aren’t found at gyms, you can stick to regular overhead presses as you build up strength and carve your strongman body.
Here’s a complete guide on how to do the overhead press (aka military press) and its variations. Once you’ve mastered the regular overhead press with a barbell, dumbbell, or whichever variation you choose from this article, you can move on to lifting logs.
3. Atlas Stone Lifts
Once you’ve built enough strength and mobility from deadlifts and presses, you can try Atlas stone lifts. They target the same muscles but require excellent mobility.
As you dive deeper into official strongman training, atlas stones become an important aspect. Sure, they seem heavy and hard to lift at first, but once you have decent muscle mass, functional strength, and lifting technique, it’ll be a breeze.
Atlas stone lifts work your entire body and require athleticism along with muscular strength, which is why they’re a fundamental part of strongman training.
How to perform atlas stone lifts
- Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, the atlas stone between your feet, and grip the stone from the lowest point possible without crushing your fingertips.
- Next, drop your hips and allow your hamstrings to be fully stretched, which will cause your back to be completely straight.
- Pull the stone up to hip level and then “lap it, ” allowing it to rest on your lap. Hold the stone firmly with your hands at 10 and 2, much like you would a steering wheel.
- As you stand up, push the stone upward and thrust your hips forward. If you’re loading the atlas stone onto a platform, lift it high enough to be placed on it.
Pro Tip: When I’m in the starting position on step number 2, I like to imagine I’m doing a Romanian Deadlift (RDL). This helps me keep my back straight, knees slightly bent, and hips high.
4. Loaded Carries
An important part of strongman training often overlooked is loaded carries. It’s basically any exercise where you carry a heavy weight on your back or in your hands and walk with it a certain distance.
You know how we all like to carry a hundred shopping bags from the car to the house just so we don’t make another trip back and forth? Technically, those count as loaded carries. Well, depending on how heavy your groceries are.
Replace those bags with heavy dumbbells or jump inside a hex bar and walk a few feet and you’re training for a strongman body. The gym term for that is the farmer’s walk.
Carries such as the farmer’s walk improve your grip strength, increase aerobic endurance, and activate several muscle groups simultaneously.
The strength and power gained from this exercise are carried over to strongman competition events like the truck pull, where you literally have to pull a truck.
How to Perform Loaded Carries
To perform carries, grab a pair of heavy dumbbells or a hex bar and walk for 20 to 30 seconds.
Alternatively, you can perform a variation called the sled pull, where you attach a harness to a heavy object such as a weight sled or a tire and pull it along for 20 to 30 seconds.
5. Sled Pushes
Strongman training involves both pushing and pulling.
Some strongman athletes are required to push an entire bus or car during a competition. Now, you probably don’t have a vehicle conveniently parked inside your gym for strongman training. Instead, you can do sled pushes, also known as prowlers.
Sled pushes are a great exercise for developing a strongman body, especially thick upper legs. It’s very taxing on the cardiovascular and nervous systems, so you’ll want to build up your strength as you train slowly.
how to perform sled pushes
- Grab the prowler handles, your arms straight out in front of you, locking your elbows.
- As you start to push the prowler, lean forward so that your upper body is almost parallel to the floor.
- Use your feet to push firmly against the ground and move forward for a short distance and back, depending on the weight.
Pro Tip: The leg press can help you improve quickly at sled pushes and enhance muscular development in your legs. Add it to your workout session every now and then.
6. Kettlebell Swings
Strongman competitors need to have powerful hips and lower back muscles to be able to load atlas stones onto platforms and toss heavy kegs over their heads.
Kettlebell swings can help you develop these muscles so you can do all kinds of powerful hinging movements with more mobility. Endurance athletes often add kettlebell swings to their routines to help them with jogging and improve their vertical when jumping.
Kettlebell swings can help you carve a strongman body since they work on your posterior chain, mainly the glutes, hamstrings, and hip, while engaging your lower back and core muscles.
As you move the kettlebell upward, some of your upper back muscles kick in as well. Kettlebell swings can also contribute to your grip strength.
How to perform kettlebell swings
- Grab a kettlebell with an overhand grip, bending your body at the hip so that your upper body is almost parallel to the ground.
- Squeeze your glutes, use your hips to drive forward, and swing the weight out from between your legs in an upward position until it reaches eye level.
- Make sure your arms remain extended out in front of you throughout the movement, and keep your knees only slightly bent.
Pro Tip: Remember that this is a hinging movement, so you want to thrust the weight with your hips. Don’t squat the weight.
7. Tire Flips
If you’ve ever seen a strongman competitor straining against a tire, doing their best to flip it over, you know it’s no easy task. Tire flips are integral to strongman training, and they require a large amount of brute strength to master.
Tire flips engage almost every muscle group in your body, from the abdominal muscles to the upper back muscles and especially the legs.
How to perform Tire Flips
- Start in a deep squat position, hips low, feet shoulder-width apart, and upper chest pressed against the tire. Don’t flare your knees; keep them in line with your feet.
- Grab the tire with your fingers spread out beneath it, back straight, and push with your hips and legs, driving the tire upwards.
- Use the momentum and slight raise of the tire to get underneath it, and switch your hand position so your palms are against the tire and start pushing it to tilt it over.
- Continue driving with your body and step forward until the tire flips over.
8. Wide-Grip Lat Pulldowns
Wide-grip lat pulldowns are one of the best ways bodybuilders train their latissimus dorsi muscle or their lats. In strongman training, they’re just as crucial.
Wide-grip lat pulldowns not only contribute to strongman physiques but also help you build up the strength for strongman events like the arm-over-arm pull, log or axle clean, and deadlifts. They can even improve your bench press as a counter-movement.
Large, wing-like lat muscles are a classic sign of a strongman’s body.
How to perform wide-grip lat pulldowns
- Sit at the lat pulldown machine and grab the bar at both ends, making sure your body is upright.
- Pull the bar down as if you’re trying to touch your sides with your elbows, making sure to squeeze your shoulder blades together as you go down.
- Bring the bar down to your chest, feeling the squeeze in your lats, before reversing the movement and repeating for reps.
Strongman Training Programs
Strongman training requires a different approach than bodybuilding, powerlifting, or weightlifting. It’s almost like a little of all three combined.
You’ll need high-frequency workout sessions throughout the week but with low-volume sets during each workout. For example, you can train each muscle group two to three times a week while sticking to lower rep ranges, ideally below 10.
This gives your muscles enough time to recover between workouts and, at the same time, allows you to progressively overload your muscles for hypertrophy.
In other words, follow load progression schemes where you try to add more weight each session while remaining within the desired rep range. For example, if you can bench press 225 for 8 reps, try to do 240 for 6 reps the following session.
However, don’t compromise your safety or recovery. Certain muscle groups take more time to recover, especially large ones like the chest and legs. Train like a strongman: slow and steady but strong and relentless in the long run.
It’s all about finding the balancing act between doing progressive loading sets and giving your body and nervous system time to recover. This is the secret to the strongman body.
Strongman Diet
Do you know how they say a body is made in the kitchen, not at the gym? Well, if you want to look like a strongman, you’ll have to eat like a strongman. Take note of these key considerations:
Caloric Surplus
Strongmen require a high caloric intake to keep up with the massive exercise routines and energy requirements their muscles need every day.
Now, don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean you should eat as much as you can whenever you can. That doesn’t lead to a balanced physique. It just means you need to be in a caloric surplus, ideally around 250 to 500 calories above your daily requirements.
Some people consider a strongman diet to be a constant dirty bulk phase, but if you optimize your macros so that you’re not overeating fats and carbs, it’s actually a clean bulk.
Stay away from processed foods even if they help you hit your caloric target. They just impede your training performance and endurance during exercise.
Protein Is King
The majority of your diet should be built around protein. It’s vital to promote muscle protein synthesis so that you can keep up with maximal volume training.
Protein also has an anti-catabolic effect meaning it slows protein breakdown, which can happen during exercise.
Exactly how much protein you need depends on your body type and your training and exercise habits, but 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight is a good place to start.
As you eventually get stronger and closer to a strongman physique, you might need to increase your intake to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
Don’t Avoid Fats
Remember, strongmen train to be incredibly strong, not to show off their six-pack abs. There’s no reason you should be afraid of eating fats as long as you eat healthy ones.
Healthy fats have an important role in hormone regulation, brain function, and even recovery. If you want a strongman physique, add healthy fats like nuts, olive oil, and fatty fish to your diet.
Supplement if Needed
You can definitely achieve a strongman physique without any supplements whatsoever.
However, training like a strongman can be tough. If you feel drained during a workout or tire quickly, you might consider using an EAA or BCAA supplement. (Here’s an article on those if you’re interested).
You can also try using pre-workout pump supplements to give you an extra edge while training.
Conclusion
A strongman physique is different from a bodybuilder or a runner physique. You don’t just hit the gym, do as many reps as you can, and hope for the best. It takes concise, steady, progressive training and meticulous dieting to achieve.
These exercise and diet tips can take you one step closer to a strongman body and enhance your grip strength, power, and muscle mass. You probably won’t have a visible six-pack, but you might be able to pull a car out of the way or lift a massive tree log over your head.
I’d say that’s much more impressive, wouldn’t you?
