Over the course of the three years Daryl had transformed himself into one strong dude.
That’s because Daryl was smart enough to know not waste time pussyfooting around with little foo-foo exercises.
He focused on big, manly exercises like squats, deadlifts and presses.
Progressive overload was all that mattered to Daryl so he added weight or reps and gradually built up his strength to a very impressive level.
Of course, with that added strength comes a lot of added size, too. The best way to get bigger is to get stronger. We all know that by now. There are no two ways about it.
So Daryl finally started to develop the look that turned people’s heads. He also started to get requests to help friends move or pick up heavy stuff on a regular basis.
But Daryl started to notice something when he did things outside of the gym or played any kind of recreational sports. His strength didn’t seem to transfer quite as well as he thought it should have.
When his cute neighbor Layla asked him to help rearrange a few things in her living room Daryl tweaked his back slightly. Not a good look in front of someone he wanted to impress.
A couple weeks later he was back in the gym hitting it hard when his buddy Mike asked him to join in on his Saturday strongman sessions that weekend. Daryl was never one to back down from a challenge so he met Mike and a couple other buddies at the field on Saturday. Mike unloaded his pickup truck and they got after it for an hour with sleds, tires, farmers walks, sledgehammers and various other implements.
Daryl was hooked. It was the missing element in his training. Previously his training had been too rigid, too static, too “locked in.” Strongman training built real world strength.
Instead of taking two steps back out of the squat rack, setting his stance and squatting down he now had to walk with a heavy yoke across his back, maintaining super-stiffness and perfect posture the whole time. Instead of using the perfect bracing technique with a flat lower back to deadlift like he always did he now had to get super low with his upper back rounded over a big stone, pick it up, and throw it over the hurdle they’d set up.
This is the kind of training that builds raw, bear strength. The kind of training that takes someone from “strong” to “strong as a motherfucker.”
If you want to be a badass you can’t simply just lift weights. You have to carry them, drag them, push them and throw them.
That’s why various strongman exercises are staples in Renegade programs and why I recommend that everyone include exercises like these in their training on a regular basis:
• Sled pushing
• Sled dragging
• Farmers walks
• Sandbag cleans
• Sandbag carries
• Sandbag shouldering
• Sandbag overhead throws
• Sandbag rotational throws
• Heavy medicine ball throws
• Yoke walks
• Keg cleans
• Keg throws
• Car pushes
• Thick hand over hand rope rows
• Log cleans
• Sledgehammer swings
• Tire flips
• And various other odd implements
After a few months of strongman Saturday’s Daryl’s physique took on a different look, his strength and his conditioning improved dramatically and he felt better than ever. He went from just being strong to being “strong as a motherfucker.”
And isn’t that how all of us want to be described?
