How to Train for the Jump from Tested → Untested, Intermediate → Open, and Open → Nationals
- JHEPCxTJH
- 22 hours ago
- 35 min read
How to Train for the Jump from Tested → Untested, Intermediate → Open, and Open → Nationals
Read this first
This is not Part 2 of my tested vs untested series. Think of it as Part 1’s cousin-the practical field manual that sits alongside the data piece you’ve already read: Bridging the Divide: Tested vs Untested Strongman - Part 1 (UK & Ireland Nationals). That article mapped the terrain. This one hands you a route card, a compass, and a time cut-off.
Part 1 showed a consistent ~20% gap between tiers. Not just tested → untested, but also intermediate → open and open → nationals. The weights rise, the pace rises, the demands on recovery and execution rise. Numbers are useful; programming to reach them is the point. That’s what follows.
What the “20% gap” actually means (and why it isn’t just heavier kit)
When athletes describe the jump, they talk about weights. Fair. But underneath the headline loads sit four non-negotiable shifts:
Load: the obvious one. Bars, logs, frames, stones and carries trend ~15–25% heavier at each tier.
Skill density: the same time cap, now with heavier implements and tighter transitions. You must move cleanly under fatigue.
Event ecology: stricter judging, faster turnarounds, less setup time, and fewer friendly concessions (kit rules, tacky timing, lanes, judges who say they didn't see what you're talking about and the livestream wasn't pointed at that bit).
Recovery ceiling: everything about you-sleep, food, body mass, soft-tissue tolerance, aerobic base-must scale, or the training that used to build you will start to break you.
So, the gap isn’t only a barbell problem. It’s a systems problem. You close it with systems thinking.
PEDs matter. They always will at the top. But if you think the entire 20% gap is chemical, you’re missing the point. The other half of the equation is environment, programming, and body composition. Ignore those, and even “enhanced” athletes stall when the kit rises and the chaos multiplies.
You bridge the gap by programming to hit standards. Use ratios to identify what’s holding you back, Conjugate to progress multiple qualities at once, event-specific KPIs to gate each step up, and recovery/ body composition to raise the ceiling so training can do its job. That’s the spine of this article.
How to use this article (so you don’t skim, nod, and change nothing)
Pick your jump. Intermediate → Open, Open → Nationals, or Tested → Untested Nationals.
Run the diagnostics. We’ll give you ratio targets and event KPIs that predict readiness.
Choose the template. Each jump has a weekly structure built on the 2026 Protocol spine, with Max Effort, Dynamic Effort, Repetition/Special Effort and event slots laid out.
Bias the work. Conjugate never changes; your bias does (which lifts you max, which you wave, which accessories you rotate).
Track ratios weekly. If ratios shift in the right direction, stay the course. If they flatline, rotate the constraint, not the dream.
Push the ceiling. Sleep, calories, lean mass, tissue capacity. Without these, the best programme becomes a blender.
The ratios: your compass, not a trivia game
You asked if we mention lift ratios enough. Here, we put them to work. Ratios convert “I feel stronger” into “I am measurably closer to the tier above.” A few examples you’ll see used throughout (illustrative bands that you can tighten to your federation/kit reality)
Press-to-pull balance (upper):
Log (clean & press) ≈ 58–65% of max deadlift (tested opens sit lower; nationals clusters sit toward the top of the band).
Close-grip bench ≈ 70–78% of deadlift.
If your log or bench sits under these bands while your deadlift keeps climbing, you’re building the wrong ceiling for strongman.
Speed-to-static balance (lower):
Sprint yoke at comp distance should clock inside a fixed time gate at ~70–80% of your comp yoke. If your barbell squat rises but yoke time stalls, you’re widening the wrong gap.
Farmers hold / 20 m run scaled to ~80–90% of your deadlift tells you whether grip/brace endurance can cash the cheque your static strength is writing.
Stone capacity vs overhead:
Top stone of a standard national series commonly tracks ~85–95% of your max front squat for a clean lap-to-platform with good tacky. If you can’t live near that, your carryover from front-loaded strength to stone mechanics is leaking.
These aren’t absolutes; they’re decision rules. If a ratio is out of band, your next block biases the quality that closes it. That is how you stop “PR hunting” and start tier hunting.
Why Conjugate is the right chassis for the job
You’re closing multiple gaps at once-max strength, speed strength, positional strength, skill under fatigue-inside a season that moves. A single-quality block won’t hold when events and schedules keep shifting. Conjugate lets you:
Maximise a limiter weekly (ME) without sacrificing
Speed/skill under load (DE) while accumulating
Tissue capacity and bracing (RE/SE) and
Event proficiency in the same cycle.
We’ll bias which lifts you max, which waves you run, which accessories you rotate, and how often you touch implements-but the skeleton stays. That means you can progress without losing the qualities that actually get tested on the field.
What changes as you climb tiers (and what doesn’t)
What changes:
Bias of ME/DE/RE. Intermediate → Open needs exposure and consolidation. Open → Nationals needs specificity and peaking. Tested → Untested needs static force production without letting speed collapse.
Accessory rotation cadence. Higher tiers rotate a touch faster to manage joint load and maintain novelty without disrupting the main arcs.
Event density and order. You’ll train sequences, not just single implements, and you’ll place them where they make physiological sense in the week.
Recovery load. Sleep, calories, soft-tissue, and aerobic base go from helpful to mandatory.
What doesn’t change:
One maxed quality never beats five practiced qualities. You cannot arrive with just a big pull.
Ratios rule decisions. You don’t guess at weaknesses; you measure them.
KPIs gate progression. You don’t enter a heavier tier because you want to. You enter because your training data says you’re ready.
The programme materials you’ll see in this article
Tier-specific templates you can run as-is or blend into your current split.
Diagnostic checklists for stones, carries, overhead, and speed implements.
Ratio ladders to tell you if you should bias strength, speed, or skill next.
KPI time gates (yoke, farmers, frame, medleys) that travel with you from gym to comp prep.
Body composition targets that support leverages without sacrificing pace.
Recovery hierarchy that makes hard training possible.
What “success” looks like
By the end of this piece you should be able to:
Identify your jump and the three ratios most limiting it.
Select a weekly template that respects your calendar and closes those ratios.
Set event KPIs that prove readiness before you hand over an entry fee.
Know exactly which lever to pull next: add muscle, add speed, or add skill density-and how to programme each inside the Conjugate frame.
If you coach, the result is a season plan with fewer “surprise” misses and fewer athletes who look great in the gym but go flat on the field. If you’re self-coached, the result is clarity: a way to convert good weeks into tier-appropriate readiness, not just nice-to-have PBs.
The Nature of the Gap
When people hear there’s a “20% gap” between tiers in strongman, they picture a simple increase in weight on the bar. Tested log 120 → Untested log 150. Tested deadlift 300 → Untested deadlift 360. Job done. But the reality is far messier, and far more brutal. Bridging the gap means adapting to a whole new ecosystem of demands, not just hitting bigger maxes. The difference is structural: skill density, recovery expectations, event speed, body composition, even the psychology of competing under pressure.
The smartest way to understand the gap is to break it down into the three main transitions that athletes actually face:
A. Intermediates → Opens
This is the first real leap. In novice and intermediate shows, promoters often use “shields”: slightly lighter yokes, reduced deadlift bars, tacky stones that cap lower, or generous time limits. When you step into Opens, those shields vanish.
Event Density: In novice shows you might get five events, but they’ll usually be straightforward - max deadlift, log for reps, farmers into a short medley, sandbag load, stones. Opens starts stacking more complex medleys, heavier ladders, and tighter transitions. That means you’re suddenly being tested on your ability to recover within a comp - not just across a week of training.
Load Reality: Novice women might run a 40-50 log for reps. Intermediates face 50-70. Opens expect 75–100 with strict judging. Men face the same escalation: novice/intermediate deadlifts in the 180-220 then 220–260 bracket then jump to 280–300+ just to be in the game.
Ratios that shift: At this stage, the biggest red flag is usually overhead. Intermediates often sit with a log at ~50% of their deadlift (e.g. 100 log to a 200 deadlift). Opens expect closer to 55–60%. If you don’t pull your press up, you’ll survive deadlift ladders but hemorrhage points on log or dumbbell.
Body Composition: At intermediate level, you can “get away” with being under-muscled if your technique is good. In Opens, leverages matter more. A 95 kg man cutting to U90 may look sharp in novice, but if he hasn’t filled out his frame with back, legs, and trunk mass, he’ll collapse under 340 yokes. Women face the same: a lean 65 kg athlete might run farmers like lightning at novice, but without glutes and hamstrings to match, she’ll stall under 200+ yokes in Opens.
In short, the Intermediate → Open gap isn’t just about heavier kit. It’s about removing the shields and forcing you to demonstrate complete strength across the classic strongman canon. You can no longer hide weaknesses.
B. Opens → Nationals
If stepping into Opens is about surviving the full event slate, the jump to Nationals is about standing out against athletes who are equally well-rounded. Podium density changes everything here.
Standardisation of Loads: By the time you hit Nationals and beyond, the event kit is standardised. Men’s log is 140–150, women’s is 80–100. Deadlift ladders for men push to 360+, for women 180–240. Stones for men end at 180–200, women 120–140. There are no “surprise light” shows. The weights are stable, predictable, and universally brutal.
Podium Compression: At Opens, one standout event can carry you. You might deadlift 20% more than the field and make up for a weak log. At Nationals and beyond, that margin vanishes. Everyone deadlifts. Everyone presses. Everyone runs sprint-speed yokes. If you don’t hit minimum podium ratios, you’re irrelevant. Concrete example:
At Inters to Opens level, a 120 log with a 240 deadlift (50%) might score you decent points (might but probably not that deadlift is too low realistically)
At Nationals, the expected ratio is 60–65%. If your deadlift is 320 but your log is stuck at 145 (45%), you’re exposed.
Event Speed: Nationals don’t just raise loads - they keep race pace identical. Yokes still need to move in <14–15 seconds, bag tosses still clear the bar in under 25 seconds, medleys are still capped at ~60–75 seconds. You’re not asked to grind heavier kit slower; you’re asked to move heavier kit just as fast.
Recovery Demands: Nationals weekends are also denser. Six events across two days is common. That requires a recovery ceiling most Open athletes have never trained for: between-day glycogen restoration, inflammation control, and enough structural resilience to hit day two stones after day one max pulls. If you’ve been surviving Opens by peaking one or two events, Nationals will bury you.
Body Composition: This is often where athletes need to “go up a size.” Men competing at U90 often find they need to be walking around at 95–100 just to survive Nationals kit. Women moving from 63 to 72 kg classes run into the same wall. The load jump requires leverage. But - and this is crucial - too much excess fat is a liability. Too much slows your moving events disproportionately, and Nationals punish slowness harder than Opens.
C. Tested → Untested Nationals (The 20% Gap Proper)
This is the jump that inspired Part 1’s analysis: the hard ~20% increase across domains when you step from a tested pathway into untested nationals or pro-qualifiers.
Load Inflation:
Log: men tested podium ~120×4 (~136 est 1RM) → untested podium 150×4 (~170 est 1RM). That’s a 25% leap.
Deadlift: women tested podium 180×6–8 (~210–215 est 1RM) → untested 220–240×6–8 (~250–260 est 1RM). That’s a ~25% jump.
Yoke: tested men ~340×24 m in 16–17 s → untested men ~400×20 m in 14–15 s. Same pace, 18% heavier.
Stones: tested women end at 100–120 → untested end at 120–140. Same series length, 20% heavier.
Depth of Field: Tested comps crown winners who may dominate one event. Untested comps bury them in the mid-pack. The ceiling isn’t just higher; the floor is higher too. What was a podium-level deadlift in tested becomes a mid-field standard untested.
Skill and Equipment: The untested side introduces new demands - most notably, proficiency with suits and straps. If you’ve never pulled in a deadlift suit, you’re 20% weaker in practice than the field. If you’ve never practiced stones without tacky (common in certain finals), you’re already three placings down.
Recovery Demands: PEDs shift the recovery landscape. In tested, athletes rely on training economy, intelligent deloads, and managing systemic fatigue. In untested, athletes push higher workloads and recover faster, which means programming and peaking cycles compress. If you cross without recalibrating your recovery inputs (food, sleep, recovery modalities, body comp), you’ll be overreached before you even peak.
Ratios in Play: At tested nationals, you might see log:deadlift ratios around 55–60%. On the untested side, they climb to 60–65% consistently.That shift matters: it tells you the jump isn’t just in one lift, but in relative balance across the board.
Body Composition: The untested side rewards mass. It’s not uncommon to see opens podium men walking 10–15 kg heavier than their tested counterparts in the same height bracket, and women holding a leaner but denser frame with more posterior mass. But - the law holds - fat is sometimes a penalty. If your sprint yoke slows by two seconds because of excess weight, you’re out of contention no matter how much your static lifts jumped.
Body Composition as the Silent Gatekeeper
Every single jump - intermediate to open, open to nationals, tested to untested - has a body composition story running through it. The difference isn’t just technical or psychological. It’s anatomical.
Muscle mass = leverage. A bigger back makes a heavier deadlift possible. A denser trunk keeps you upright under 400+ yokes.
Too little = collapse. Athletes who stay at “lean Instagram bodyweight” get buried once implements cross a certain threshold.
Too much = slowdown. Athletes who bulk recklessly trade sprint pace for fat mass and lose moving events they should dominate.
The art of bridging the gap is adding the right tissue in the right places: posterior chain, trunk, delts, and hips. Not “bulking up” blindly, but deliberately filling out leverages to meet the load inflation at each tier.
Pulling It Together
The “nature of the gap” isn’t a mystery. It’s a matrix of overlapping demands:
Load jumps of 15–25% across every event family.
Ratios that shift upward, demanding better balance across lifts.
Faster pacing under heavier implements.
Higher recovery demands across training and competition weekends.
Body composition adjustments that add leverage without killing speed.
The lesson: if you train for the gap as if it’s “just 20% more weight,” you’ll fail. If you train for the ecosystem - skill, speed, recovery, composition, ratios - you’ll be ready to step into the next tier and not just survive, but podium.
Principles of Programming for the Jump
You don’t close the 20% gap with “more effort.” You close it with principles that scale. Conjugate provides the chassis, but how you bias the system changes with each tier. The rules of progression are the same; what you rotate, how you wave, and what you prioritise determines whether you stall or whether you bridge.
Conjugate Carries Across Levels - But the Bias Shifts
The structure never leaves:
Max Effort (ME): build absolute force.
Dynamic Effort (DE): build speed, skill, and repeatability.
Repetition/Special Effort (RE/SE): build tissue, capacity, and durability.
Events: practice the chaotic, non-standard loads you’ll be judged on.
What shifts is the weighting of emphasis:
Intermediate → Open:
ME is still broad (SSB, axle pulls, incline log, partials) to expose the athlete to load and strain.
DE is more about control under speed than absolute bar velocity (e.g., sprint yokes at 70–80%).
RE volume remains high because the athlete still needs muscle mass to stabilise the bigger kit.
Open → Nationals:
ME narrows toward competition-adjacent lifts. Your log needs to be heavy logs; your deadlift waves must include suits, straps, or comp bar.
DE shifts toward bar speed under fatigue. Sprint yokes after squats, frame picks into axle presses.
RE is less about size, more about bracing, grip, and endurance - the qualities that collapse when events stack.
Tested → Untested Nationals:
ME frequency may rise to weekly deadlift exposures and near-weekly heavy presses, since recovery ceiling is higher.
DE needs to hold bar speed as the static numbers climb; otherwise, you become strong and slow.
RE is pared down to protect joints and energy, but still maintains balance (hamstrings, upper back, rotators).
The mistake most lifters make: trying to train the same way at each tier, then wondering why a 260 pull doesn’t survive at a 300-pull show.
Weakness Elimination: No Longer Optional
At lower levels, you can lean on a dominant strength. A big deadlift, a fast yoke, or a strong press can carry you into placings. But as you climb, the podium closes its loopholes.
The ratios expose you.
If your log is still 50% of your deadlift, you’ll get murdered at nationals where the average is 60–65%.
If your frame carry is <80% of your max pull, you’ll blow up on the course.
If your stone load lags 10–15% behind your front squat, you’ll be wrestling tacky instead of scoring points.
Weakness elimination isn’t a motivational slogan; it’s a numbers game. The ratios tell you where you’ll fail before you step on the floor.
Principle: every block, bias the quality that closes the largest ratio gap. Rotate events, maxes, and accessories accordingly.
Recovery Ceiling: From “Helpful” to “Non-Negotiable”
At novice and intermediate levels, you can cut sleep, skip meals, and still get stronger. The weights are forgiving. Once the kit rises 20%, that leeway disappears.
Sleep: <7 hours = wasted training. Sleep isn’t recovery support; it’s the platform that makes high-volume ME and DE waves possible.
Nutrition: recovery is fuel and material. Calories build tissue, carbs restore glycogen, protein maintains turnover. Every gap in intake becomes a cap on training.
Bodyweight Gain: most athletes under-eat mass. You cannot bridge the 20% gap with the leverages of a middleweight if you’re pushing into opens or nationals. Mass gain isn’t optional - but it must be useful weight (lean tissue that aids bracing, pressing stability, and frame carrying).
Mobility / Tissue Work: heavy stones, bag toss, and moving events amplify tightness. If joints lock down, technical execution under fatigue collapses. Mobility work is the difference between smooth stones in the 6th event and tearing a biceps.
Recovery isn’t the thing you “should do.” At this level, it’s the limiting factor between those who adapt and those who get buried.
Technical Execution Under Fatigue
This is where mid-pack lifters die. At opens, you can still brute force a stone series or a bag toss. At nationals, technical decay under fatigue is the separation point.
Stones: if your lap-to-platform technique falls apart after the 2nd rep, you’ll bleed 10 seconds and 3 placings.
Bag Toss: rushing technique under time cap = wasted throws. Consistency wins here.
Medleys: being able to pick, move, and transition without fumbling chalk, belts, or implements matters as much as raw speed.
Principle: train fatigue-specific execution. Not just skill in isolation, but skill after squats, after carries, after sprints. Conjugate accommodates this by sequencing events intelligently (DE medleys after ME squats, stones after pressing).
Ratios in Practice: Turning Numbers into Programming Decisions
The concept of ratios can sound abstract until you start applying them to the bar and the field. Here’s how to read them in practice - once again I’m a cheeky cunt the sources for all these numbers are on Conjugate Cult VIP.
Deadlift ↔ Log Press
Intermediate level: log sits at ~45–52% of deadlift.
Opens: 52–60%.
Nationals: 60–65%+.
What this means: if you’re pulling 300 but still stuck at a 130 log, you’re behind the curve. That’s not a “press strength” issue alone; it’s a recovery and programming priority. Your ME upper needs to bias strict pressing and triceps strain, your DE upper should feature banded log/axle, and your accessories should hammer overhead stability.
Deadlift ↔ Frame / Farmers
Carry distance: 20m unbroken should land around 80–90% of your pull.
Hold for time: most national-level athletes can hang onto ~90–100% of their pull for 15–20s in a frame hold.
What this means: if your 300 pull only carries 220 for 20m before grip/brace collapse, your grip and upper back lag the ratio. That shifts your RE/SE work - more shrugs, picks, rows, timed holds.
Front Squat ↔ Stone Load
Intermediate: top stone ≈ 70–80% of front squat.
Opens: 80–90%.
Nationals: 90–95% with tacky, sometimes higher.
What this means: if you front squat 200 but bomb out on a 150 stone, the leak isn’t strength but technique and specific stone practice. You rotate stones into ME lower waves and drill speed under fatigue on DE days.
Yoke Speed ↔ Back Squat
Measured as distance vs load vs time.
At nationals, a yoke of ~2.5x bodyweight over 20m in <15–16s is standard. That usually corresponds to ~70–75% of max back squat.
What this means: if your squat rises but your yoke time doesn’t improve, you’re not translating static strength to dynamic brace. You need DE yoke waves and bracing-specific RE work (front rack carries, SSB good mornings).
Bench ↔ Deadlift (supportive, not primary)
For men at national level, close-grip bench tends to hover around 70–78% of deadlift.
It’s not a comp lift, but it predicts overhead ceiling and upper-body pressing density.
If your bench lags well under that band, your triceps and chest endurance will choke out overhead medleys late in comps.
How to Use These Ratios Weekly
Track them alongside PRs. Every block, log not just your best numbers but your ratios.
Identify the lowest ratio. That’s the weakness that dictates your accessory rotation for the next 6–9 weeks.
Bias training until it closes. ME rotates to that plane, DE carries it under fatigue, RE builds the tissue base.
Reassess at the end of the block. If the ratio has climbed into range, move the spotlight. If not, double down with more specific event exposure.
Ratios tell you where the gap is real, and they tell you where to aim the next cycle so you’re not wasting time chasing PRs that won’t cash out on the competition floor. Now again they’re not a panacea but if we spot something glaring they’re super effective.
The Four Principles in One Frame
Conjugate adapts; your bias shifts.
Ratios show where you’re exposed. Rotate to close them.
Recovery is your ceiling. Lift it, or training fails.
Skill under fatigue, not just skill fresh, separates podiums from pack.
These principles aren’t theoretical. They’re the logic you’ll see hard-coded into the templates that follow. Each weekly structure, KPI, and accessory block is built on this frame.
The Case for Taking a Year Out
Most athletes treat competition like oxygen. They think if they’re not entering a show every few months, they’ll suffocate. The problem? Constant competing locks you into the same tier you’re already in. You peak, recover, repeat - and never grow into the athlete who can actually make the jump.
Sometimes the fastest way to the next tier is to stop competing for a season and force the transition.
Why a Year Out Works
Volume and Recovery Capacity Go Up
During comp seasons, you burn bandwidth on peaking cycles and tapering.
With no looming show, you can push higher training volumes, expand work capacity, and build the aerobic base that keeps you alive in medleys.
This is when you finally address the weak tissue that breaks when weights hit the 20% bump.
Body Composition Can Shift Properly
Gaining 8–10kg of useful muscle isn’t happening between qualifiers and nationals. It takes time, food, and stability.
A dedicated growth phase gives you the leverages you’ll need when yoke, log, and stones step up a class.
And because you’re not under a comp clock, you can gain slower, leaner, and smarter without wrecking speed.
Weakness Elimination Isn’t Cosmetic
In-season, you patch weaknesses. Out of season, you can nuke them.
That means 6–9 month waves of rotated max-effort lifts, direct accessory cycles for grip/brace/overhead, and entire blocks for conditioning.
Instead of “good enough to survive,” you build “bulletproof under any implement.”
Skill Density Improves
Comp preps narrow focus. A growth year expands it.
You can drill stones, carries, medleys, and overhead variations without peaking fatigue looming over every rep.
It’s the difference between being competent at the kit on comp day and being a weapon with any implement you touch.
Psychology Resets
Constant competing burns athletes out mentally. A year to train without the pressure of performing resets confidence.
You come back hungrier, not worn down. You see training as a place to stack wins, not just chase readiness.
How to Structure the “Year Out”
Phase 1 (3–4 months): hypertrophy and conditioning base. Conjugate bias → RE/SE, higher accessory volume, controlled aerobic work.
Phase 2 (3–4 months): static strength wave. Rotate barbell/event ME lifts weekly, wave DE progressions, bias heavy implements.
Phase 3 (3–4 months): event density and competition rehearsal. Medley blocks, timed transitions, simulate faster turnarounds.
Finish: you’re not peaking - you’re arriving bigger, stronger, faster, and harder to kill.
The Trade-Off
Yes, you’ll miss a few shows. Yes, your Instagram feed won’t have podium shots. But when you step back in, you’ll be 15–20% stronger, faster under load, harder to break, and ready to not just qualify - but podium at the level above.
If you’re serious about crossing the 20% gap, consider pressing pause on the calendar. Competing keeps you where you are. Taking a year out can put you where you want to be.
Practical Templates
Knowing there’s a 20% gap is one thing. Programming to cross it is another. You can’t just train harder; you need to train smarter, layering static strength, event skill, and recovery capacity in ways that match the demands of each transition. Below are three progression templates that mirror the real paths athletes take - each built on Conjugate principles but biased to the reality of strongman events.
A. Intermediate → Open
Focus: consolidate event skill under heavier loads, reduce missed lifts, and establish baseline ratios.
At this stage, the biggest killers are inconsistency and technical breakdown. Intermediates often survive on brute strength and adrenaline - but Opens punish missed cleans, sloppy pick mechanics, and grip slips. The goal is to harden technique under heavier weights and raise weak ratios to “entry-level open” standards.
Programming Template
ME Lower:
Rotate barbell deadlift variations weekly (conventional, deficit, axle, block pulls).
Pair heavy squats with yoke picks or short carries. Example: 4×5 back squat → 3×20 m yoke at 75%. This teaches you to brace into the yoke after loading your spine.
ME Upper:
Log and axle alternate weekly. Build strict pressing as the “engine” (if you can strict press 90, you can push-press 110).
Include clean variations: pause cleans, continental technique, and doubles/triples with comp logs. Missing the clean is the #1 intermediate bottleneck.
DE (Speed/Power):
Sprint yokes and farmers at 70–80% comp weight, for timed 20 m runs. Goal: no stumbles, consistent line.
Submax overhead with bands/chains: e.g. log 6×3 @ 60% + bands. Builds bar speed and teaches you to “finish fast.”
RE (Repetition Effort):
High-volume bracing: front squats, Zerchers, good mornings.
Grip: axle holds, farmer holds, plate pinches. Open shows often expose grip more than novices expect.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
First clean at open log weight (men ~120, women ~80).
Farmers: 20 m unbroken with comp weight (men ~130–140 per hand, women ~90–100).
Stones: 120+ (men) / 80–100 (women) without tacky disasters.
Ratio check: log should be ≥50–55% of deadlift. If below, overhead is your limiter.
👉 The intermediate → open stage is about survival. Hit these KPIs and you won’t zero events. Miss them, and you’ll find yourself invisible by event two.
B. Open → Nationals
Focus: event specificity and peaking.
At Open level, you can “get away” with being dominant in one or two lanes. At Nationals, everyone is balanced. You need to sharpen execution, raise ratios to national minimums, and periodise conditioning to handle compressed points spreads.
Programming Template
Competition Event Rotation: Every two weeks, run nationals-standard kits (OSG/UK’s/Britain’s). Don’t just train “strongman-adjacent” - practice comp events as they will appear.
Fatigue Layering: Frame pick into axle ladder. Stone run after heavy deadlift. Medley following yoke sprint. Nationals always test events in ways that punish fatigue. Train that deliberately.
Conditioning Periodisation:
Early cycle: contrast sessions. Example: 2×20 m yoke @ 70% → 1×20 m @ 100%. Builds speed into heavy.
Mid cycle: comp weight runs under strict caps. Example: 400 yoke in 15–16s.
Late cycle: simulate nationals - 4–5 events in sequence with ~10 min between.
ME Rotation: Tighten around nationals implements. If the kit is log, axle, and circus dumbbell, those should be your weekly ME upper rotation.
KPIs:
Sprint yoke: men 400×20 m in ≤16s; women 240×20 m in ≤15s.
Log: 3–5 reps at comp weight (men 140–150, women 85–90).
Stones: full run to top stone (men 180–200, women 120–140) inside 30s.
Farmers: 20 m with ≥80% of comp deadlift (if DL = 320, farmers should be ~130–140 per hand).
Ratio Standards:
Log: ≥60–65% of deadlift.
Stones: ≥70% of deadlift.
Farmers/Yoke: moving loads at ~1.5–2.0×BW (men) / 2.0–2.5×BW (women).
👉 This stage is about compressing performance. You can’t just be strong; you must be strong at race pace, under fatigue, with no zeros.
C. Tested → Untested Nationals (The 20% Gap Proper)
Focus: static lifts rise fastest, but endurance/skill cannot drop.
This is the hardest transition: not just heavier kit, but deeper fields, stricter judging, and recovery ceilings that break most tested athletes. Survival requires a double push - add 20% to your statics while maintaining tested-level speed and efficiency.
Programming Template
Deadlift Priority:
Suits/straps introduced early - not “last 6 weeks.”
Weekly ME pulls: rotate between suited bar pulls, raw axle pulls, and frame/partial ranges.
RE pulls for tolerance: 70% × 8–12 with straps to build back density.
Event Medleys: Heavier implements, identical time caps. Example: tested medley 260 yoke + 100 bag load in 60s → untested 320 yoke + 120 bag in the same 60s. This trains both load tolerance and pacing.
Accessory Reduction: Volume drops ~15–20% compared to tested templates. Recovery economy shifts to food, sleep, and tissue work.
Body Composition Push: Targeted mass gain, not sloppy bulking. Posterior chain, trunk, and delts need more size; fat mass beyond 15–20% (men) / 20–25% (women) slows you in medleys.
KPIs:
Deadlift: tested 280×5 → untested 320×6–7.
Log: tested 120×4 → untested 150×3–4.
Farmers: 20 m unbroken with ≥90% of comp deadlift (e.g. DL = 360 → 160–170 per hand).
Stones: tested max 160 → untested 200 in <30s.
Bag toss: tested 24–26 kg → untested 28–30 kg at 4 m+.
Ratios That Decide It:
Log: 60–65% of deadlift (if you DL 360, you need a 220 log).
Stones: 75% of deadlift.
Farmers: 80–90% of deadlift.
Yoke: 4–5×BW, still sprint pace.
The untested gap is brutal because it requires ratios in balance. A 380 deadlift won’t save you if your log is 130. A 160 log won’t carry you if you can’t sprint with 400 on your back. The podium is reserved for those who raise everything together.
If you want the full programs, diagnostics, and progression maps, all of this is covered in detail inside Conjugate Cult VIP.
Body Composition & Recovery – The Hidden Gap
Everyone obsesses over implements and PRs. Few obsess over the chassis they’re driving. Yet when you look at the numbers from Part 1 and overlay them with real-world comp footage, one truth screams back: athletes don’t fail because the yoke or log is 20% heavier; they fail because their body can’t carry, brace, or recover at that load.
This is the hidden gap. Not the kit on the floor, but the body under the kit.
Mass and Leverages: Why Size Is Still a Weapon
Strongman is a weight-classed sport, but it’s also brutally simple: bigger lifters with more lean tissue have better leverages, better bracing, and higher ceilings.
Bracing strength: abdominal wall, obliques, spinal erectors, lats - all of these scale with muscle cross-section. A 110kg athlete at 12% body fat simply has more material to “lock down” under a 400kg yoke than a 90kg athlete with the same skeletal frame.
Overhead stability: delts, triceps, and upper back mass are not just force producers but shock absorbers. The heavier the log or axle, the more those tissues act as stabilising pads.
Contact events: stones, sandbags, kegs. The athlete with more chest, more arms, more trunk has better surface area and mechanical advantage to lap, hug, and extend.
You don’t need to love mass gain to respect it. Across every tier jump, the athletes who break through are almost always the ones who built an extra layer of armour first.
The Real Target: Useful Weight
But here’s the distinction: not all mass pays rent.
Muscle: supports lifts directly. Every kilo on the posterior chain, delts, triceps, and torso makes static and dynamic lifts more stable.
Fat: some fat is leverage (especially around the trunk), but beyond a narrow band it becomes ballast.
Ballast kills pace. Too much excess slows transitions, bogs down carries, and wrecks bag toss timing.
You’ve seen it on the comp floor: the openweight monsters who are huge but still athletic versus the ones who are just heavy. Now it should be known I support all SHW's and we love ourselves some Women of Width, Girthy Gals, Towering Tortas and BBW Behemoths but purely from a performance point of view the mass must be justified.
Principle: gain useful weight. That means hypertrophy bias on accessories, targeted mass in the areas that support comp lifts, and conditioning so you never trade speed for bloat.
Conditioning as You Grow
Every kilo you add must pass a test: does this extra tissue let me move faster, longer, or stronger in the events? If the answer is no, you’re building the wrong body.
Yoke and Farmers: extra body fat makes you slower per metre than it makes you stronger per pick. The carryover diminishes.
Stones and Sandbags: excess gut mass limits lap mobility and hip flexion.
Bag Toss: too much bloat reduces overhead speed and accuracy.
Condition as you grow. That doesn’t mean running 10ks. It means:
Push DE and RE conditioning waves (yoke sprints, farmers for distance, prowler medleys).
Track pace and recovery as closely as barbell PRs.
Never let fat gain outrun the conditioning work that keeps you mobile.
The strongest openweights and supers aren’t just big - they’re fast, they’re durable, and they can sustain power for all six events.
Recovery: The True Ceiling
Recovery is not optional. It’s the ceiling that dictates how much training you can actually adapt to. At intermediate levels, you can skate by on bad sleep, skipped meals, and guesswork. At the tier jumps, that ceiling becomes the bottleneck.
The hierarchy is blunt:
Sleep: 7–9 hours. Non-negotiable. You can’t accumulate volume without it. Every missed hour cuts into nervous system recovery and hormone regulation.
Food: total calories, macronutrient balance, and micronutrient sufficiency. You can’t add mass, restore glycogen, or recover from high-volume ME/DE waves if you’re under-eating.
Body Composition: a managed balance of muscle and fat that supports leverages without capping speed. Not tracked = not controlled.
Mobility and Tissue Capacity: joints, fascia, tendons - the infrastructure. Without upkeep, you collapse before adaptation sets in.
Supplements: at the bottom of the pyramid. Useful, yes, but they’re garnish. Creatine won’t save you from 5 hours of sleep or an empty fridge. Test helps - this isn’t an article thats going to tell you what cycle to take going from tested to untested. I have written about that elsewhere though.
The Non-Optional Upgrades
If you want to close the 20% gap, you must treat body composition and recovery as programme pillars, not lifestyle extras. That means:
Weekly weigh-ins and visual checks. Is the mass you’re adding useful? Are you holding speed as weight rises?
Conditioning metrics logged alongside lifts. Don’t just track deadlifts; track yoke times, farmers distances, bag toss heights.
Recovery audits. Sleep logs, step counts, nutrition adherence. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
Deliberate body comp phases. Hypertrophy blocks with Conjugate bias toward RE; leaning phases with DE conditioning waves to hold pace.
Bridging the 20% gap isn’t just about lifting heavier - it’s about building the engine room to support it. More lean tissue, better leverages, conditioning to keep it fast, and recovery practices that let you adapt to the hardest training of your life.
Body composition and recovery are the hidden gap. If you ignore them, you stall. If you respect them, you create the ceiling that lets every barbell, log, stone, and carry rise with you.
Coaching the Transition (for 2026 Season Prep)
Bridging the 20% gap isn’t just about bigger numbers in the gym. It’s about navigating the competitive calendar, choosing the right qualifiers, and programming in a way that systematically erases weaknesses while sharpening strengths. Coaches who manage the transition well treat it as a long-term project - a season or even two seasons - rather than a mad dash.
1. Season Design: Pick the Right Qualifiers
The first mistake athletes make is chasing every shiny show on the calendar. That’s how you burn out, expose holes too early, or worse, stall progression because you’re always peaking and never building. A well-designed season has a clear arc: qualify → build → peak → podium.
Qualifier Selection:
Choose shows that lean into your current strengths while giving exposure to your weakest domains. Example: if your pressing is behind but your moving events are strong, target a qualifier with a log ladder rather than a deadlift max-out.
Avoid “hero jumps.” Don’t chase Britain’s if your KPIs show you’re barely surviving at Open level. You want to arrive at nationals ready to contend, not just survive.
Season Phasing:
Phase 1 (12–16 weeks): Build base strength and skill density. Train across wider rotations (log/axle/DB, barbell/axle/frame deadlifts, medley variations).
Phase 2 (8–10 weeks): Narrow focus to nationals kit and federation bias (e.g. bag toss if aiming at OSG, deadlift ladders if BNSF).
Phase 3 (6–8 weeks): Peaking cycle. Every heavy session maps directly to the comp kit. Event days mimic show pace (90s caps, fast transitions).
Federation Bias Maps Matter:
UKNS: endurance bias, frequent medleys, lighter stones.
BNSF: heavy statics, fewer moving events.
Giants/Ultimate/OSG: balance of statics and moving, but all ~20% heavier than tested. Choosing the wrong qualifier is like training for a marathon and showing up to a sprint.
2. Avoid Early Jumps: Prove Readiness Before Crossing Tiers
Strongman’s graveyard is littered with athletes who jumped too soon. They win an intermediate show, then get buried at Opens; they scrape a podium at Opens, then zero two events at Nationals. The common thread: no KPI testing, just hope.
The KPI Readiness Test: Before you register for the next tier, you should be hitting these benchmarks in training consistently, not once on a hyped max day.
Log: 3–5 reps at the projected comp weight.
Deadlift: top implement of the ladder clean, under fatigue.
Yoke: race pace at comp weight × 20 m inside the cap.
Farmers: 20 m with ≥80–90% of comp deadlift, no drops.
Stones: full series loaded in under 30 seconds. If you can’t hit these in training, you won’t magically hit them on the day.
Readiness Ratios: Ratios matter more than single lifts:
Log ≥ 60–65% of deadlift.
Stones ≥ 70–75% of deadlift.
Yoke = 4–5× bodyweight at sprint pace.
Farmers = 80–90% of deadlift for 20 m. Falling short on these ratios is a warning sign: it means you’ll bleed points outside your strongest domain.
3. Conjugate as Roadmap: Rotate Weaknesses, Peak Toward Kits
The Conjugate Method is perfectly built for this transition - because it thrives on rotating emphasis while building toward a competition peak. The key is to bias your rotations not toward what you love, but toward what the podium will demand.
Max Effort (ME):
Always anchored by your weakest static. If your log:deadlift ratio is 50% instead of 65%, your ME upper should rotate log intensities weekly. If your deadlift ladder stalls early, your ME lower should live on axle pulls, suit pulls, and deficits.
Rotate heavy implements every 1–3 weeks so skill doesn’t decay.
Dynamic Effort (DE):
Sprint-speed yokes, farmers, and sleds at 60–80%. DE teaches you to carry national-level loads without losing pace.
Band/chain work on overhead and pulls - builds acceleration so you’re not grinding under comp weights.
Repetition Effort (RE):
Grip, bracing, trunk, and high-rep posterior chain. If RE is neglected, moving events break you down even if your statics climb.
Event Integration:
Every 2–3 weeks, run a “chaos day”: multiple events in sequence with minimal rest. Nationals and untested shows run hot, with fast turnarounds. Train that chaos or it will eat you alive.
Peaking:
Six to eight weeks out, narrow everything to comp kit and time caps. Drop accessory volume. Sharpen execution, speed, and recovery. The toolbox gets smaller, but sharper.
4. Coaching Checklist: Are You Ready to Jump?
For coaches guiding athletes, the transition isn’t about hype or “gut feel.” It’s about objective readiness. Before green-lighting the next tier, run this checklist:
Numbers: Are they consistently hitting the KPI loads and ratios?
Event Skill: Can they perform the clean, the pick, the load without misses?
Conditioning: Do they move at comp pace under comp weights?
Recovery: Are they managing the load without breakdown (sleep, food, body comp in check)?
Mindset: Have they competed under pressure, against deeper fields, and stayed consistent?
If the answer is “no” to any of these, they stay in the current tier until the gap is closed.
Coaching the transition is about resisting ego, respecting the numbers, and building athletes who don’t just qualify for the next level, but arrive prepared to score points. With the right season design, KPI testing, and Conjugate roadmap, the jump from tested to untested, from intermediate to Open, or from Open to Nationals stops being a gamble and becomes a programmed inevitability.
Everything Else That Makes or Breaks the Jump
Up to now we’ve looked at programming principles, templates, recovery, and body composition. But ask anyone who’s actually stood on the competition floor at the higher tiers: the 20% gap isn’t just the kit weight. It’s the ecosystem around it. The judging, the pressure, the speed of turnarounds, the chaos of logistics.
This section covers the “everything else” that makes or breaks the jump. These aren’t extras - they’re the factors that separate the lifters who look strong in the gym from the ones who actually podium on the day.
1. Event Ecology: Training for the Chaos Factor
When you step from intermediates to opens, or opens to nationals, you enter a different environmental ecosystem. The rules of the game shift.
Faster turnarounds: at novice or regional comps, you might get 3–5 minutes between attempts or events. At nationals, it’s often 90 seconds, sometimes less.
Tighter judging: down commands come faster, lockouts get scrutinised, stones don’t count if your hands slip. That “good rep” at your gym doesn’t always survive.
Shorter set-up windows: no time to chalk, belt, or wrap leisurely. You’re often called, moved, and started before you feel “ready.”
Kit restrictions: straps banned on certain pulls, tacky only allowed in finals, different bar diameters, slicker log sleeves.
Training the chaos factor:
Run stone series with a training partner shouting “GO” before you’re ready, forcing quick setups.
Do yoke or frame runs with a strict timer so you can’t waste chalk or belt time.
Rotate kit: train with worse implements than you’ll see on comp day (slick logs, odd stones, fat farmers). If you can succeed with bad kit, comp kit feels forgiving.
Practice “rush reps.” Example: stone run while your partner slaps tacky on your arms mid-set. Bag toss with no warm-up throws.
At higher tiers, chaos is a feature, not a bug. If you don’t simulate it, you’ll be caught out.
2. Psychological & Competitive Readiness
Plenty of athletes are strong enough for the next tier but crumble under pressure. They fail not in strength but in headspace.
How to build readiness:
Crowd training: run heavy event days in public gyms, in front of teammates, or film everything live. Get used to eyes on you.
Judge simulation: have a coach or training partner enforce commands. No down signal = no rep. It conditions you to wait for the call.
2nd/3rd attempt pressure: in barbell lifts, run “mock meet” exposures where you have three attempts and must nail the third under fatigue.
Worst lane practice: load up awkward kit, bad footing, or uneven lanes. Nationals won’t hand you the perfect setup.
Mental resilience: Conjugate rotation itself builds resilience - constant exposure to new lifts makes you less fragile when faced with unknowns. Add deliberate exposure to stressful conditions to compound that effect.
At the higher levels, the podium doesn’t go to the strongest alone. It goes to the lifter who can execute their best under the worst conditions.
3. Seasonal Periodisation
So far we’ve talked about weeks. But the jump isn’t solved in a single mesocycle - it’s solved in season design.
Example: 12–16 Week Block (Open → Nationals)
Weeks 1–4: Volume foundation. High accessory rotation, build mass and capacity. ME broad, DE waves at lighter comp implements.
Weeks 5–8: Specific overload. Comp implements rotated every 2 weeks. DE waves tightened, conditioning contrast (speed + comp weight).
Weeks 9–12: Peaking. ME narrows to comp implements. Events rehearsed as in-show sequences (stone runs, frame-to-yoke). Fatigue taper begins.
Week 13–16 (optional): Deload and test week, or comp week depending on calendar.
For Tested → Untested, the season matrix has to account for recovery bottlenecks. You can’t hammer max-effort pulls every week for 16 weeks natural and expect to survive. Block rotations matter more: speed emphasis phases, recovery blocks, and hypertrophy returns between heavy exposures.
Without a seasonal matrix, you’re just stringing weeks together and hoping. That’s not programming - that’s gambling.
4. Monitoring & Diagnostics
How do you know if you’re actually closing the gap? Not by feel. By monitoring.
Bar speed: even without a velocity tracker, watch video. If DE pulls aren’t crisp, recovery is lagging.
Heart rate recovery: a simple pulse check 1–2 minutes post-yoke/farmers tells you if conditioning is where it needs to be.
Grip diagnostics: timed hangs, frame holds, or weekly grip tests can expose declining grip endurance before it kills your comp run.
Predictor lifts: as covered in your diagnostics article - track lifts like close-grip bench, front squat, or stiff-bar pulls as proxies for comp performance.
Session quality (no-RPE version): measure how many top sets are completed as planned. If you consistently cut sessions short, recovery isn’t keeping pace.
Principle: ratios + KPIs + readiness checks = a real dashboard. Ignore them, and you’ll think you’re stronger when you’re actually just more fatigued.
5. Special Populations / Edge Cases
The 20% gap isn’t uniform across every division. A few caveats matter:
Women: the static gap (log, deadlift) is often wider between tiers, while the moving gap (yoke, farmers) is narrower. That means female athletes must bias static lifts harder to close the jump.
Masters: recovery is the limiter, not strength. Masters athletes can absolutely hit the loads, but weekly intensity and event density have to be scaled. Programming bias must tilt toward quality and readiness, not sheer volume.
Lightweight classes: the jump often demands body mass gain. Staying at the same bodyweight but expecting a +20% performance shift is fantasy. Targeted hypertrophy phases matter more here than in heavy classes.
Ratios remain the compass, but context changes the interpretation.
The 20% gap isn’t just a barbell problem. It’s:
The chaos of event ecology.
The psychological stress of competition.
The seasonal structure that lets you actually peak.
The monitoring that tells you if you’re adapting.
The context of your class, body, and recovery ceiling.
Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids & Image and Performance-Enhancing Drugs
Ignore these, and you’ll stall at the tier below. Respect them, and you turn the 20% gap from a wall into a programmed climb.
Stepping Across the Divide
The data makes one thing brutally clear: the 20% gap isn’t myth or mystique. It’s a repeatable pattern across podiums, across federations, across sexes. Strongman doesn’t hide its standards - they’re written into the scoreboards for anyone willing to do the work of reading them.
Bridging that gap isn’t about luck or “having it on the day.” It’s about treating the jump like any other training problem: break it down, measure the difference, and build the missing pieces until the numbers line up. The athletes who cross cleanly aren’t the ones who train harder; they’re the ones who train deliberately, step by step, until their performance ratios are balanced and their event skills don’t break under pressure.
The message is simple:
Know the standards. Every division, every show has load profiles and pace demands. If you’re guessing, you’re already behind.
Program against the gap. Use Conjugate structure to rotate weak domains, peak for the right implements, and chase KPIs that actually match the podium.
Treat body composition and recovery as training. Strength doesn’t live in isolation. If you’re under-muscled for your class, overweight for your frame, or underslept for the volume you’re handling, you’re not closing the gap - you’re widening it.
The divide between tested and untested, between intermediate and Open, between Open and Nationals is real. But it isn’t insurmountable. Program for it, train for it, and step into the next tier ready not to scrape through, but to fight for the podium.
Final Bonus Points to Consider
Everything we’ve covered so far gives you the systems, templates, and mindset to close the 20% gap. But there are still a few additional realities worth surfacing - the sort of lessons that don’t always make it into programming templates but become painfully obvious once you’re standing at the next tier.
1. Injury Risk and Management During the Jump
Every step up means heavier loads, denser schedules, and greater accumulated fatigue. The margin for error narrows. You can’t keep training like an intermediate and expect your joints, tendons, and spine to cooperate at nationals.
Prehab priorities:
Hips and low back: static lifts like heavy pulls, squats, and yokes punish the posterior chain. Direct accessory work (reverse hypers, belt squats, hip abduction/adduction) isn’t optional - it’s protective.
Shoulders and elbows: overhead lifting density (logs, axles, dumbbells) skyrockets. Rotator cuff, triceps tendon, and scapular stability need dedicated work (banded rotations, JM presses, heavy rows).
Ankles and knees: moving events beat them up. Calf raises, tibialis work, sled drags, and hamstring curls are what keep your knees and ankles from folding under medleys.
Conjugate logic: Accessory rotation is your injury management system. Rotate the strain, build the small stuff, and you’ll still be standing when others are broken.
2. Equipment Adaptation
Tier jumps often mean a shock in kit quality and size. Bars are thicker. Logs are heavier and slicker. Stones are larger diameter. Frames and farmers are clumsier.
Principle: train harder kit than you’ll see on comp day.
If you can press a fat log, the comp log feels light.
If you can lap a tacky-less stone, tacky becomes a weapon.
If you can move a rough farmers set without straps, straps on comp day feel like a cheat code.
The mistake: only training with your perfect gym implements, then being blindsided by bad kit on the floor. The stronger athlete is the one who’s prepared for worse.
3. Travel and Logistics Factor
Nationals and internationals often involve long travel, disrupted food, and chaotic warm-ups. This catches out more athletes than the weight of the kit.
How to prepare:
Travel simulation: run event days after long drives or early mornings. Train in a different gym or on borrowed kit to desensitise yourself to environment shifts.
Food prep: practice comp-day eating. If you can’t perform without your exact macros and timing, you’re fragile.
Warm-up chaos: rehearse fast warm-ups, reduced time, or being called out of sequence. Many lifters never practice this, then freeze when they don’t get their ideal prep.
If you don’t account for travel and logistics, you’ll feel weaker not because of strength loss, but because you’ve never trained the reality.
4. PED / Recovery Divide
Handled carefully, but it must be said: the tested → untested gap isn’t only load. It’s recovery bandwidth.
Untested lifters can tolerate higher intensity, recover faster, and survive denser schedules.
Tested lifters can still compete - but they must be more disciplined with sleep, nutrition, body comp, and programming.
Principle: don’t ignore the divide. If you’re staying natural, your programming must be smarter, not braver. If you’re untested, recovery practices still matter - drugs buy margin, not immunity.
5. Post-Transition Pitfalls
Making the jump is one thing. Staying there is another. Many athletes sabotage themselves after they qualify:
Sandbagging: some hit nationals, then coast at the new tier without pushing to podium. They stagnate instead of progressing.
Brute force reliance: athletes who rode a big deadlift or huge press up often get caught when medleys and technical events dominate. Efficiency and conditioning can’t be neglected.
Recovery neglect: “I’ve arrived” syndrome leads athletes to drop sleep, mobility, and conditioning. The comp floor punishes it fast.
Principle: don’t treat qualifying as the finish line. Treat it as a checkpoint. The climb never stops.
The 20% gap isn’t just about lifting more. It’s about managing the ecosystem that surrounds the lifts: injury risk, equipment differences, travel logistics, recovery realities, and the discipline to keep progressing once you break through. Ignore these, and you’ll fade at the tier you worked so hard to reach. Respect them, and you’ll not only arrive - you’ll stay, adapt, and rise again.
A Final Word on AAS & IPEDs
It would be dishonest not to acknowledge it: anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) and broader IPED use are a major factor in the jump from tested to untested competition. Recovery bandwidth, training density, and absolute static strength all rise when these compounds are in play. That’s the reality.
But here’s the nuance: when we look at other strength sports with clear tested vs. untested data — powerlifting, weightlifting, even track and field throws — the performance delta sits closer to 10–11% on average. Yet in strongman, the numbers from Part 1 showed a gap closer to 20%.
That tells us something crucial: the gap is not explained by drugs alone.
Event density, environmental chaos, and kit adaptation all scale more violently in strongman than in barbell-only sports.
Recovery demands are higher because athletes aren’t peaking for a single lift, but for six events across multiple qualities.
Body mass distribution, conditioning, and skill density under fatigue all contribute to the extra 8–10% difference we see in practice.
PEDs matter. They always will at the top. But if you think the entire 20% gap is chemical, you’re missing the point. The other half of the equation is environment, programming, and body composition. Ignore those, and even “enhanced” athletes stall when the kit rises and the chaos multiplies.
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