My girlfriend Paula, and I competed for the first time in any type of strength meet last weekend. It was a NAHA sanctioned 4 event meet...meaning 2 highland game events and 2 strongman events. We enjoyed ourselves so much, and we are hooked on it now! We attended a clinic about a month before the meet where Gene Flynn taught us the basics of caber tossing and weight over bar (the 2 highland events in our meet), and he was a tremendous help. I got the chance to compete against Tim Stallings and Heath Thiel from Wisconsin, both were way better than me, and I really enjoyed the experience. I met my goal of getting the weight over the bar (could only get 10'), and turning the caber (managed an 11:00). I am 49 years young, and didn't lift a weight until the age of 44, so I have young joints and tendons in a sense! Anyway, we are going to do our best to train effectively this summer and do Gene Flynn's games in November down in NC. I am not sure how to train, but since neither of us is really strong, I think it best to concentrate on brute strength first, then go to more technical training later.
We are both pretty busy, especially Paula, but we will strive to do 3 strength days and 1 event day per week, along with some hiking, biking etc, on Sundays. Somehow we have to fit interval training in too to get our cardio capacity up. Our problem is that the days we can train are not perfect for doing events on Saturday....we can only train M, Th, Fr, and Sat for the next 6 weeks or so, then we can go to M,T, Th, and Sat. I welcome any suggestions to improve on the following schedule, and any other suggestions for getting into highland games!
Monday: Back, one week deads, the next all other back stuff
Thursday: Pressing, including mostly overhead and incline
Friday: Legs (mainly squats, leg press, stiff leg deads)
Saturday: events
Sunday: hike or bike ride