[Adam Bishop]

Made it over to the athlete hotel in Leeds and got the usual meeting going over the rules for tomorrow. Also got the tv interviews and promo photos done.

Then we headed out for an athletes dinner and now it’s time to get some sleep. Tomorrow we contest the title of Europes strongest man

[Adam Bishop]

It would be useful to see a video or even a screenshot when your form seems to break.

There are some good cues for engaging your lats and upper back to lock in a neutral spine.

The fact that you can’t hold position on an RDL would lead me to believe that you do have some weaker muscles in the upper back. My go to lifts in this situation would be pendlay/deadstop bent over rows and dB chest supported rows – both with an 1-2second isometric hold against the chest.

[Adam Bishop]

On the road today up to just outside Leeds. Me, the mrs and the dogs have booked a little place to stay for the next couple of nights.

I’ll still head over to the athlete hotel tomorrow for the interviews, meetings and meals but it’s good to have a little base up here and gives me another day to loosen up after a long drive.

[Adam Bishop]

A proper rest day today, did pretty much fuck all. Walked the dogs for 45min and got all my walks in. Watched a lot of TV and generally relaxed and didn’t think about lifting or strongman.

Got stuff to sort tomorrow ready for the trip up to Leeds tomorrow afternoon. We have an air B&B booked for tomorrow night then I’ll head over to the athlete hotel for the meeting and evening meal on the Friday.

[Adam Bishop]

Final session before Europes strongest man this weekend and it was a very simple one. Get the log press feeling solid up to 163kg and keep working on the circus DB press with my left arm.

Achieved both goals very well and it’s given me confidence for the weekend. Goal is to get the 102/140/160 logs nailed in a fast time and leave the 170 and 180.

As you can tell I am timing my peak for WSM in 2.5 weeks so ESM is very much a training day for me where I’ve got goals I need to hit on each event

[Adam Bishop]

Thanks for taking the time to reply champ, wow that’s a lot of ‘clean’ food to put away but at 150kgs you’re going to need a lot of calories to maintain that bodyweight and to fuel your workouts.

It must be really beneficial to your overall goals now that you can focus on eating around the clock full time. I can imagine working at Quins somewhat limited your ability to sit down and eat meals and you maybe had to opt for drinking your calories?

Also, thank you for sharing your views on DL/Squat on the same day x 2 a week. I recognise that there are lots of variables at play and without going into specifics it’s difficult to answer but there are some really good points for me to think on.

I don’t expect you to follow this up but for wider context I’ve come from a strongman/rugby background and have taken up BJJ 7 months ago. I’m just trying to find the balance between high pressure day job x family x BJJ x gym…shoulders are knackered but can still squat and DL so was considering just focusing on these movements – I’ll work it out in the end.

Keep up the great work, you come across as a real genuine guy on the TV and I think that’s why you have such a good fanbase #TeamBish

Thanks for the kind words Matt, I appreciate it.

I see myself as a professional athlete so I eat like a professional athlete. I’m fuelling my body for peak performance and I think that junk foods cause more issues than benefit. Of course I will have the occasional “cheat meal” but I very much like to keep myself eating decent food. The benefit of being a strongman in the open class is that I can make my food taste good and not worry about having to get lean lean haha.

For sure when I was at Quins it was very much a struggle to get my food in. I would get time to sit down and eat my first meal of the day at my desk at around 0630/0700 then most of my other meals during the day were either blended shakes or quick to eat meals. Me be king shakes in the Quins gym or on the bench at games became a bit of an ongoing joke with the players haha.

Going full time gave me the time to cook my meals and sit down and actually enjoy them.

[Adam Bishop]

Hi Adam,

Really enjoying following this thread.

Would you be able to outline your current diet? Does it ramp up as you get closer to competition or does it stay fairly consistent throughout?

Would also appreciate your views on training squats & deadlifts the same day x 2 a week? On one day one movement would be heavy and one would be dynamic and then alternate for the 2nd session.

All the best.

Matt

As for the deadlift squat question. I would say it depends on a couple of factors:

Training age
Strength level
Relative strength levels of the two lifts
Life stressors
Gender

While yes you can do that I would say that for a stronger individual they will struggle to recover between heavy sessions when training the squat and deadlift multiple times per week. For a more experienced trainer I also believe that it is difficult to improve your squat and deadlift concurrently so some programming priorities need to occur there.

For the vast majority of trainers I recommend pulling and squatting once per week on different days. Ask yourself are you getting everything you can out of each squat and deadlift session? I would always prioritise a single session per week with more volume then multiple sessions in a week

[Adam Bishop]

Hi Adam,

Really enjoying following this thread.

Would you be able to outline your current diet? Does it ramp up as you get closer to competition or does it stay fairly consistent throughout?

Would also appreciate your views on training squats & deadlifts the same day x 2 a week? On one day one movement would be heavy and one would be dynamic and then alternate for the 2nd session.

All the best.

Matt

Hi Matt

Yep no problem I’ll start off with my diet:

TRAINING DAYS
M1 – 10 whole eggs with spinach
M2 – 250g beef mince, 150g pasta
Intra – 120g sustain and 40g peak aminos
Post – 250g beef mince, 150g (dry weight) rice, 120g oats, large banana, 30g honey and 100g pineapple
M5 – 300g chicken breast, 150g pasta 100g pineapple
M6 – 6 whole eggs

NON TRAINING DAYS
Basically the same as above minus the intra and the oats, honey and banana in the pwo meal.

Since finding out the events for WSM the goal has been to maintain my current bodyweight of 150kg so there has not been a need to push my food really high. It’s important to match your body to the task/events you’re required to do so for me I wanted to stay around 150 to be more mobile and have better recovery abilities.

I’ve also recently has some digestive issues with whey (probably after 20 years of lots of protein shakes) hence my shift to more solid food.

I don’t change anything in the build up to the competition diet wise. I keep things the same as long as my bodyweight remains stable. Ramping food in the build up to a show is a recipe for disaster causing digestive issues, lethargy and a drop in cardiovascular performance.

[Adam Bishop]

Heavy session to start the week leading up to Europes strongest man. Deadlifts are now at peak strength levels once again as is my stone lifting. Very happy with where I’m at as we build into the final 3 weeks before WSM.

Deadlift – 400×3
Shield Walk – 167x40m
Atlas Stones – 180×5

Body is a little beat up today after this yesterday but I’ll get loosened off ready for pressing later today.

My split is very much designed to prepare me for the nature of WSM which is two days of competition, a rest day then 2 more days. I would say that ideally I would have a rest day between my pull and press sessions but I decided it’s more important to physically prepare my body for the WSM format.

[Adam Bishop]

Hi Edwin I feel you could benefit from improving your lat tightness at set up as this will help you maintain a solid position with a braced spine throughout the movement.

I have posted a full deadlift tutorial over on youtube and there’s a couple of cues on there that will really help – it will be easier to watch them rather than me try and explain on here.

If you search for ADAM BISHOP HOW TO DEADLIFT in YouTube you’ll find it.

If after watching the video you have any more questions tag me in them on here and I’ll get back to you.

[Adam Bishop]

Evening guys, nice little Sunday for me today. Got up and gave the 180kg atlas stone a clean and then two coats of concrete sealer to hopefully stop it shedding dust – we will see how it goes tomorrow.

Walked a couple of miles with the dogs in the rain then got some more meals prepped.

Another heavy but low volume training day tomorrow

[Adam Bishop]

Hi Ethan

There will probably be a short period of adjustment while you get used to training earlier but physiologically there will be no reason that your training will be affected.

Once you get into the rhythm of your new routine you’ll be fine.

I had a period of training at 05:00 before starting a busy period at work and I actually really enjoyed it. If anything I felt more mentally alert and focused as it was my first task of the day and I felt fresh. Get yourself warmed up effectively and crack on your session and you’ll love the early morning training

[Adam Bishop]

Rapid events session today. Dropped the volume as much as I could and just worked on quality single sets where possible.

Bag toss – 20/20/25/27/20/20/25/27 all over 4.5m barrier
Fingals finger – couple of flips on the heavy finger then a set of 5 on the light finger
Conans wheel – 5 plates per side for 3 and a half revolutions
Loading – anvil, sandbag and tyre over 18m

Conans wheel was great, 3.5 turns is where I. Red to be on this bit of kit as I know that matches up to 2 turns on the larger comp kit.

[Adam Bishop]

I prefer to pause my reps rather than go from a deadstop, as others have stated that way you can keep tension and hold position much better.

There will be times where I would choose a deadstop – a good morning off the pins or a seated pin press but if I were using a technique to standardise form on Classic bodybuilding movements I would go for a pause where I’m staying tight and locked in rather than resting the bar at the bottom of the movement for example.

[Adam Bishop]

Bit of a different session today. Lowerbody volume has dropped further and I needed to add in some technical work on the log as I adapt my pressing technique to help my tricep lockout.

The new technique felt much better today and I hit a much more comfortable 160 which has given me some confidence going into next week. Also included some SA banded landmine presses on the recommendation of my physio as we look to get my elbow used to the faster velocity lockouts.

Finished up with the usual paused reps on the leg press up to 600kg plate weight.

Log press – up to 160
SA banded landmine press – 5×3
Banded Paused Leg Press – up to 600×5

Also got a big big Costco shop in as I’m going to prep all my meals for the next 3 weeks and freeze them so I don’t have to think about it. A big weekend of cooking ahead!