AF Strongman


This weekend, Again Faster will be at Crossfit Boston for the first-ever Again Faster Strongman Contest.

Patterned after everyone’s favorite late-night program, World’s Strongest Man, we’ll have four events and a whole lot of weight. The only thing missing will be the massive doses of veterinary medication.

I’ve always been partial to the Atlas Stones, an event that requires competitors to lift five successively heavier boulders onto progressively higher platforms. We don’t have any Stones, but we’ve got a whole bunch of barbells.

We’ll load five of them up. Competitors will clean each barbell and place it on a squat rack. The bars get heavier and the racks higher with each attempt. The winner moves the most weight. In the event of a tie, the win goes to the athlete who moves the most weight in the least amount of time.

The second event is the Squat. Competitors will lift a 100-pound (men) or 50-pound (women) sandbag from the floor and squat it as many times as possible in three minutes. The thighs must break parallel with every repetition. The athlete with the most repetitions wins.

The third event is the Crucifix. Competitors will hold dumbbells at arms’ length, parallel to the floor (12 pounds for the guys, 8 pounds for the girls). The athlete who maintains the prescribed position for the longest amount of time wins.

The fourth event is the Overhead Carry. Competitors will lift a loaded barbell from the floor, and put it overhead in a snatch grip. They’ll then walk from one end of the gym to the other and back, maintaining the bar’s overhead position. The winner will be the athlete who goes the furthest or completes the course in the least amount of time.

We’ll meet at Crossfit Boston at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. You’ll get all the joy of Strongman with none of the inadvertent Eastern Bloc hilarity.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of dni.mojpiotrkow.pl.