12 WEEK TRAINING PROGRAM AND EDUCATION PACKAGE

STRONGMAN
OFFSEASON
THIS COMPREHENSIVE PROGRAM IS DESIGNED TO PROPEL STRONGMAN
ATHLETES TO NEW HEIGHTS OF STRENGTH AND PERFORMANCE DURING THEIR
OFFSEASON.
 TABLE OF
CONTENTS
STRONGMAN OFFSEASON

WEEK 1 - RPE PG.3

WEEK 2 - USING THE OFFSEASON TO CHANGE YOUR BODYWEIGHT PG.3

WEEK 3 - PRIMARY DRIVERS OF MUSCLE GROWTH PG.4

WEEK 4 - THE THREE PILLARS OF RECOVERY PG.4

WEEK 5 - PURPOSE OF A DELOAD IN AN OFFSEASON BLOCK PG.6

WEEK 6 - USING VOLUME TRAINING FOR RE-SENSITIZATION PG.7

WEEK 7 - GRIP TRAINING DONE RIGHT PG.7

WEEK 8 - TRAINING FREQUENCY VS SESSION VOLUME PG.8

WEEK 9 - TECHNIQUE CARRY OVER FROM VOLUME TRAINING PG.9

WEEK 10 - NEURAL DRIVE AND WEIGHT FEELING HEAVY PG.10

WEEK 11 - INJURY RISK TRANSITIONING BETWEEN BLOCKS PG.10

WEEK 12 - IN CLOSING PG.11

2
WEEK 1 - RPE
In week 1, we are using RPE based training. Put simply, RPE is a judgement of how hard you are
working out of 10, with 10 being the most challenging load you could have possibly done. An RPE
of 9 would mean you could have done 1 more rep, RPE of 8 means you could have done 2 more
reps, RPE of 7 means you could have... well, you get the picture.

All you have to do is input your numbers into the week 1 “load” column of the program and the
numbers for week 2 will automatically pop up.

WEEK 2 - USING THE OFFSEASON TO CHANGE YOUR

BODYWEIGHT
Offseason is an annual must for every strongman. This is a vital time to address weaknesses, nurse
nagging injuries and resensitize yourself to low volume, high intensity strength training. For some,
this is also the time to change your bodyweight. Whether changing weight classes, dropping
some weight to move quicker or gaining some weight to help out with your static strength, you
have no choice but to wait until the offseason to plug away at these secondary goals.

In the offseason, intensity drops and volume increases. This high-volume stimulus is fantastic for
muscle growth, given high protein and a caloric surplus. The same stimulus will also retain muscle
in the presence of a caloric deficit. Think of this as efficiently building the engine (if bulking) or
retaining the engine (if cutting). Remember, your body is a highly complex, integrated system. If
you aren't eating enough to maintain your bodyweight, laws of thermodynamics dictate that
bodyweight will go down, but the signal sent to your body through high protein consumption and
high volumes of training is to build muscle. The same principle holds true (with a compounding
effect of a caloric surplus and high volumes of training) for lean muscle growth and high-volume
training.

3
WEEK 3 - PRIMARY DRIVERS OF MUSCLE GROWTH
Muscle growth is not as complex or complicated as people think. In the most basic sense, muscle
growth is driven by mechanical tension. Wolff’s Law, established in the 19th century, tells us that
our bodies will adapt to the demand that we place on it (to better handle the demand in the
future). I will add a caveat that this requires adequate recovery time to rein true.
If mechanical tension drives muscle growth, how do we
achieve this? Simple. We resistance train. Putting a muscle
against resistance, and working hard, accounts for the vast
majority of what you need to know about muscle growth. The
method in which the body adapts is slightly different whether
this is high volume or low volume training.

High volume training causes damage to the muscles, the

muscle fibres break down and grow back larger.

Low volume, high intensity training causes less muscle

damage but has a much stronger systemic effect and a
significant hormonal response will drive muscle growth.

We can’t use one or the other forever, due to the principles of diminishing returns, so taking the
offseason for higher volume training is a great way to grow (or retain) muscle without exhausting
your endocrine system.

WEEK 4 - THE THREE PILLARS OF RECOVERY

Recovery separates the good from the great. This is because recovery ultimately dictates levels of
systemic fatigue. While some of the factors of recovery are outside of our control (genetic, for
example), there are many things you can do to improve your ability to recover and limit your risks
of systemic fatigue. In brief, here are the 3 pillars of recovery:

064
SLEEP
Everyone and their dog knows that sleeping well means better recovery, but exactly how does
sleeping well help? When we sleep, our parasympathetic nervous system takes over and signals
the body that it is time to “rest and digest”. In contrast, when we are awake our bodies are often
driven by our sympathetic nervous system (“fight or flight mode”). This means we are signalling to
ourselves that we need to have all of our resources ready for the wooly mammoth (or dickhead
boss) and it is no time to begin the repair process of our body. Hell, we don’t want to go wasting
precious supplies on recovery when we might need them any second!

Deeper, longer sleep means that our parasympathetic system has time to signal our body to
repair our tissues, reduce our systemic inflammation, drop our blood pressure and prepare to
smash our training the next day.

So, how do you sleep better? Nothing you haven’t heard before. A darker room, a regular night-
time routine, limiting blue light before bed and keeping your cell phone in a different room can all
help. Waking up at the same time each day is also integral to a healthy sleep pattern.

NUTRITION/HYDRATION
Simply put, you can’t repair something if you don’t have the resources to repair it. Furthermore,
you can’t repair something if the resources are inaccessible or can’t enter the cell. You also can’t
repair anything if you can’t transport the resource to where it needs to go.

Macronutrients (protein, carbs and fats) are the resources you require. Micronutrients (vitamins
and minerals) make the resources accessible and help them to enter the cell.

Blood (comprised mostly of water) transports the micronutrients to the cell. If you are dehydrated,
your body priorities vital organs and doesn’t care how sore your quads are. In short, eat lots, eat
your fruits/veggies and drink your water and you’ll be fine.

NUTRITION/HYDRATION
Simply put, you can’t repair something if you don’t have the resources to repair it. Furthermore,
you can’t repair something if the resources are inaccessible or can’t enter the cell. You also can’t
repair anything if you can’t transport the resource to where it needs to go.

Macronutrients (protein, carbs and fats) are the resources you require. Micronutrients (vitamins
and minerals) make the resources accessible and help them to enter the cell.

Blood (comprised mostly of water) transports the micronutrients to the cell. If you are dehydrated,
your body priorities vital organs and doesn’t care how sore your quads are. In short, eat lots, eat
your fruits/veggies and drink your water and you’ll be fine.

5
STRESS
A stressful life takes us back to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. If you are
constantly under the pump, you will never get out of the “fight or flight” mode. This means you
(subconsciously) believe that you always need your resources and you can’t direct any of them to
resting and repairing.

Getting your home life in order, working a fulfilling job, meditation and taking time to unplug are
great places to start if stress is a regular issue for you. No, you don’t have to cool your palms or
jump in an ice bath. No, cryotherapy isn’t required and you don’t need compression leg sleeves.
Massage, acupuncture, dry needling, stretching and “adjustments” are mostly crap (according to
peer reviewed evidence), so don’t feel the need to spend your money on these things! If they feel
good then go for it, but make sure your pillars are in order before getting fancy. My #1 recovery
method, that reduces stress, increases blood flow and helps me to sleep better - non-negotiable
10,000 steps per day.

WEEK 5 - PURPOSE OF A DELOAD IN AN OFFSEASON

BLOCK
While many systems, and coaches, inexplicably program a series of exercises and bump them
along, simply prescribing new exercises without taking a step back. This inhibits the rate of
adaptation of not just the muscular system, but the nervous system.

Deloading gives your body a chance to catch up. A week where things slow down, loads are very
manageable and you do just enough to maintain your progress. You may lose over a 6-week
period (if you reload after 4 weeks) but over months and years you will be miles ahead of a
competitor spinning their wheels with never-ending “progressions” that are leading them
nowhere. In summary, the faster you learn that adaptation is not linear the better off you’ll be as
an athlete over the long haul.

066
WEEK 6 - USING VOLUME TRAINING FOR
RE-SENSITIZATION
Let’s do a deep dive into the practical applications of the law of diminishing returns. The challenge
here is that we need to spend periods of time throughout the year (around half the year, really)
performing movements that aren’t our competition lifts. If we did, plateaus would arrive left right
and centre. BUT we can’t just do rope tricep extensions, cross our fingers and hope our log press
increases. So what are the strategies we can use in maintaining our strength by performing similar
movements without doing the actual movements themselves?

Changing the implement

1. Changing the rep range
2. Working with variations (pin press, for example)
3. Dedicate most training to general preparedness (eg leg
press to have strong legs)
4. Changing your posture (standing to sitting) This list is far
from extensive, but it gives a good place to start from.

WEEK 7 - GRIP TRAINING DONE RIGHT

Grip can be a real make or break in a competition, and its one of those things that doesn’t take a
ton of energy in a comp (at least it doesn’t have to). If you’re a strong deadlifter it will still take a toll
to perform a near maximum effort while the competitor with a strong grip simply breezes
through the farmers walk without breaking a sweat. While most mid-level strongman attribute
their grip strength to their hand size, indicating it can’t be modified all that much, nothing could
be further from the truth.

Let’s start this discussion a quick review of muscle fibres. Type 1 muscle fibres are fast twitch and
type 2 muscle fibres are slow twitch. In more detail, type 2 muscle fibres have many subtypes
spanning from type 2a (slowest twitch) to type 2x (fastest twitch, of type 2 fibres). The human body
has a very clever, intuitive design to match the muscle composition with the daily demands of the
body. When it comes to your calves, they have to hold you upright all day so they are primarily
comprised of type 2 fibres. Think, when is the last time you couldn’t stand up any longer because
your calves are exhausted? The same composition applies to your forearms, you wouldn’t get tired
typing all day because of these slow twitch fibres that are very fatigue resistant and recover very
quickly.

Continued on page 8.

7
WEEK 7 - GRIP TRAINING DONE RIGHT CONT.
The application for training then becomes working fatigue resistant muscles. We must take a very
different approach than we do for other movements because these muscles won’t respond to low
volume, high intensity training. It simply doesn’t target the bulk of the slow twitch muscle fibres.
This means you have to meet them halfway between low rep ranges and performing fine motor
tasks all day. Working your grip for a minimum of 30 seconds per set, ideally in the 45-60 second
range at a high intensity, is ideal. Furthermore, since these muscles recover quickly, you must train
grip on a near-daily basis to see big improvements.

Training a muscle with very high frequency requires some consideration of injury risk. Changing
the type of grip each day is important (pinch to crush, for example) and ensuring that you aren’t
training grip every day year round will prevent nagging injuries like golfers elbow from popping
up. Maintaining your improvements doesn’t take much, but making those improvements in the
first place can be quite a challenge. 3x10 twice per week just won’t cut it if you’re trying to make
grip improvements.

WEEK 8 - TRAINING FREQUENCY VS SESSION

VOLUME
The two most important variables when looking at a session as a whole are frequency and volume.
Traditional systems have 1-2 days for each major movement, usually with 1 squat day, 1 deadlift day
and 2 pressing days. This is using the (outdated) principle that all muscles need a 48 hour recovery
between all sessions.

This falls apart when we look at lower volumes. If you did 1 bench press at RPE 5, surely you don’t
have to recover 48 hours, right? Obviously. This means there is a sweet spot where you can strike
the balance between low to moderate volume per session for each body part and maintain a high
frequency of training each body part. The result is a “low volume per session” structure actually
results in more weekly volume. This allows you to get to a place where you get the neural benefit
of training a movement regularly and the muscular benefit of putting high mechanical tension on
the muscle.

0668
WEEK 9 - TECHNIQUE CARRY OVER FROM VOLUME
TRAINING
Technique has become a highly contentious proposition in the exercise industry as a whole over
the past few years. With some sitting on one end that say there is a perfect way that everyone
should be moving, while others others sit on the other end that say you can move in any way
whatsoever and it doesn’t matter at all.

As with most things, the truth sits in the middle. There is a general rule for how everyone should
be performing movements, in the end we all have the same muscle structure, but there is room
for individual variability. In the offseason, people love to talk about how they’re scaling things back
to work on technique. Unfortunately, the carry over at lower loads is limited. If I had a dollar for
every time an athlete came to me with a technique cue they read online that make 50% of their
1RM feel super snappy I’d be a rich man.

This isn’t to say you can’t make ground on your technique in the offseason, but recognize the 2
elements of technique. One is the coordination to perform the movement well and the second is
the underlying strength to perform the movement well. The former can be addressed at 90% or
more of your 1RM, but the latter is a great offseason objective. If your upper back simply doesn’t
have the strength to hold a yoke while standing tall, building your upper back strength could help
you. The primary predictor of a muscles strength? The cross-sectional area. The best way to grow
the muscle? Lots of mechanical tension (resistance exercise). Get after it!

069
WEEK 10 - NEURAL DRIVE AND WEIGHT FEELING
HEAVY
The body is entirely controlled by the mind. The brain sends messages through the spinal cord,
branching out into the smaller nerves of your body, to let your heartbeat, your lungs expand and
your muscles move. The ability for the brain to send messages to the muscle is aptly referred to as
the “mind-muscle” connection. This is a highly adaptable skill and is the reason that a powerlifter
can look fairly unremarkable and move incredible weight.

This connection is very specific and can be very transient. During the offseason, when you are
dealing with heavy load less often, this system goes on vacation. Any time you go to lift a heavy
load it will feel like crap. 80% of your previous 1RM feels like its going to kill you. You take a video
and realize it moved fine, even though you felt like death. What is going on? Your ability to rapidly
communicate to your muscles in a correct and efficient manner is diminished. Your brain simply
isn’t ready for that load and signals an emergency. You will lose the skill of performing your heavy
movements, but this isn’t to say that the strength isn’t there. This is the entire purpose of having
“seasons” and peaking towards competitions. You aren’t preparing the body as much as you’re
preparing the nervous system.

WEEK 11 - INJURY RISK TRANSITIONING BETWEEN

BLOCKS
To address injury, first we must talk about the true risk factors for injury (they’re not what you
think).

• poor recovery
• external life stressors
• rapid changes in volume or load

While point 1 and 2 can be controlled, the easiest one for us to look at is point 3. Mitigating any
rapid changes in load or volume is the easiest way to avoid injury long term. Notice, this is change
and not increase. You go on vacation? Find a way to do some things or injury risk skyrockets. Done
comp? Don’t feel like you can go from 1RM’s regularly to sets of 15. Starting comp prep? Don’t go
from volume training straight into high loads. You’ll notice that this program takes you gradually,
over 3 or 4 weeks, into high effort training. As you get to the end of your projected offseason, this
puts you in a really strong spot to begin a peak. Ensure that you always adhere to this principle
and enjoy the fruits of your labour.

0610
Thank you!
Hope this has given you the tools and resources to be able to build your body and your
strength to align with your goals. You can follow along with the program, but it
is important to me that you understand the “why” more than the “what.
Building muscle and getting stronger doesn’t have to be complicated. Difficult, yes.
Complicated, no.
I would love you to send over your feedback
to info@mitchellhooperstrongman.com to
let us know what you thought about the
program. If you haven’t already, check out
our clothing at www.lhbk.shop and our other
programs and education on offer at
www.moosecoaching.com.

Lastly, my sponsors are listed below and I

would love you to check them out. I am in
the very fortunate position of being able to
hand pick the sponsors that I love, run by
people I back.
Again, thank you for your support and we
can’t wait to have you join the next program,
see you at the next show or see that you’ve
tagged us in our merch.