Hey everyone. It’s been a while since i last wrote anything but now after Finland’s Strongest Man competition i felt like it was time to write about the competition itself.

The Qualifying events were

Stones 110,110,150,150,200

Qualifying day:

I did well on the wheelbarrow push. In the warmup i felt a little bit unsure of how it will go as my lower back didnt feel too good. I ended up finishing second on this event.

Because of my limited range of motion on upper back i knew that the rope pull from overhead will be a difficult task. I tried to cheat as much as i could on this with using my whole body and i think i did well enough for this.

On Log press i only managed the starting weight which was 120kg. I messed up completely with balance and everything for this and i still feel ashamed for it. All the hard work i put on last winter didnt help me at all here as i could have done 120kg on the log the year before aswell. This has to change, i need to put on more raw pressing power to stop these kind of things from happening.

Sandbag loading went well enough for me. I didnt practice this as much as i would need to as i dont like this event too much. But now i know where my weaknesses lie and i will be putting more work on these types of medley events.

Final events:

I did as well as i could on the house pull. I dont have the equipment to really train this anywhere so i think i did well enough for the amount of practice i’ve put into this kind of event.

Boat Deadlift was brutal. It was a reverse pull and the lockout was really tough for this. I almost didnt get the opening weight of 250kg up but i somehow managed it. I changed my technique abit and found that if i get it above my knees i can hitch it up quite well. I got split second place on this event with a 300kg pull.

Conan’s Wheel didnt go too well. These types of events that require more fitness haven’t been my thing at all. As i have said before, this has to change.

Stones went well enough, i got third place here and managed the 110kg and 150kg stones. Nobody lifted the 200kg stone as the diameter for it was MONSTROUS. It was absolutely massive.

I ended up finishing the competition on 4th place out of 13 competitors.

End results were:

1. Niko Vesterinen
2. Andreas Ståhlberg
3. Roger Karimus
4. Jesse Matilainen
5. Topi Ovaska
6. Veli-Pekka Kauhanen

You can watch competition in all of its glory on 3.7 at 14:00 on YLEtv2.

Here is a video made of all my events.

On a sidenote, i have already started working more on rep work and cardio. I guess we will just have to wait and see how this HIIT-Training will effect my fitness on certain events. I just wish i could do more training with strongman implements for the summer but unfortunately i cant.

I have next competitions coming up on 2.7, 23.7 and i will use those competitions as a way of practicing the events for the Finnish Open which is on 6.8.