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How to Build a Strongman Program
Strongman is three sports in a trench coat: maximal pressing, maximal pulling, and moving awkward weight over distance, against a clock. A good program trains all three every week, and turns toward your actual contest events when a show is on the calendar.
The three-day shape: pull, press, events
The proven weekly template gives each demand its own day. A lower/pull day headlines a heavy deadlift, backed by squatting and posterior-chain work. A press day headlines overhead strength, log, axle, or barbell, backed by horizontal pressing and triceps. An events day trains the moving disciplines: carries, yokes, loads, and drags, done for distance or time, with conditioning built in by nature. More training days repeat the pattern rather than invent new categories.
Train events like events, not like gym lifts
A yoke run or a farmer's carry is measured in meters and seconds, not reps, and programming it as "3 sets of 8" misses the point. Event work is dosed in distances (a typical working set covers 30 to 40 meters, heavy but controlled) and in time for holds and medleys. Logging it the same way matters too, or your training history says nothing about whether your yoke got faster. This is a big part of why r/Strongman historically lives in spreadsheets: most rep-based loggers cannot represent an event at all.
No implements? Train the pattern anyway
Most commercial gyms have no log, yoke, or stones, and that should not keep anyone out of the sport. Every event has a barbell or dumbbell stand-in that trains the same pattern: barbell overhead press for the log, conventional deadlift for the axle pull, barbell or dumbbell farmer's carries for the yoke and frame. Implement-specific skill (the log clean, stone lapping and loading) still needs the implement eventually, so lifters who train in a regular gym typically borrow event days at a strongman gym as a show approaches.
Prep for a contest by training its events
The single biggest programming decision in strongman is what happens when you enter a show: the events list is published, and your events day should become those events, every week, at contest-like loads. Specificity here is not optional; a competitor who has never touched a sandbag over a bar learns an expensive lesson on the day. Loading for the barbell lifts can run by RPE or percentages of your maxes, and the final block should peak the headline pulls and presses to heavy singles while event volume pulls back and the last week tapers into the show.
Doing it in Ægir Iron
The Program Wizard has a dedicated strongman step. Say whether you train with implements, and the log, axle, and yoke headline your days; say no, and the same days are built from barbell and dumbbell stand-ins. Pick up to three contest events from the exercise library and the events day trains them every week, with your first pick as its headline. Add an emphasis for overhead, deadlift, or moving events, choose RPE or percentage loading for the headline lifts (timed and distance events always stay effort-based), and flip on a contest peak for the final block. Carries, sleds, and yokes log by distance or time with distance PRs tracked, and meet planning covers strongman shows with their event lists. Prefer a template? Beginner and Intermediate Strongman are ready to load.