USAWA

Well, as Al states in the Nationals Report, I am ECCENTRIC and he doesn’t mean the muscle contraction!! I feel bad for Olympic Lifting and Powerlifting. Their whole training revolves around improving two or three lifts.
Olympic Lifting accessory training mimics what they’re already doing: Front Squat, Snatch/Clean Pulls, Pulls from Knee. The furthest they go from the competitive lifts is the High Bar ‘Olympic’ Squat. How boring!!
Powerlifting, thanks mainly to Louie Simmons and the conjugate method, now has a bunch of different exercises utilizing chains and/or bands. Chains/bands can be a little tricky to figure out if you’re a RAW lifter. Most of the info on this type of training is gleaned from ELITE Powerlifters who not only wear the strongest of suits/wraps, they tend to be on copious amounts of steroids. Still, there are a plethora of accessory exercises now but, its all for the glory of hitting it big on just three lifts.
Then there’s Strongman…I love Strongman training!! Its like anaerobic training for Strength. Crossfit is ok but, I’m sure with in a couple months I could handle some tougher WODs. How long would it take a Crossfitter to handle the medley we had at our last Strongman comp? For the lightweights(105kgs/231lbs and under(as if our lightweight class is the HEAVIEST class in Olympic Lifting before it becomes SHW!?!?)) we had to walk a 650lbs Yoke 50′ followed by 235lbs(per hand) Farmer’s Walk 50′. That Crossfitter could Crossfit quite a few years and NOT come close to being able to finish that Medley. The problem with Strongman is that it requires getting good at the IMPLEMENTS. IMPLEMENTS=MONEY+STORAGE+PLACE TO RUN AROUND. Big investment just to add some variety to your training. Then there’s All-Round Lifting.
You see, just a bar, some weight and you’ve got literally HUNDREDS of exercises. You can move to the more exotic Heavy Lifting which is in my experience relatively cheap to add to your repertoire. How many people get bored with there training? That’s where I come in. I’m trying to generate some curiosity/interest in what we do. Even some of our own All-Rounders have learned from my videos. If I can get people to look at Barbell/Dumbbell training a little differently, maybe they’ll find something they REALLY like and may start coming to our competitions or at least train a little differently….maybe.

and yes RJ, they DO think I’m crazy for this and other offenses to the normalcy!