Strongman

Strongman is the type of martial arts in which the focuses are set on endurance and fitness. The fighting disciplines of Strongman go back to the ancient gladiator fights or highland games. Earlier, the Strongmen's demonstrations of strength were rather carried out as attractions for the spectators, which went through a crucial change during the seventies. This was because different disciplines for competitions were developed, whose concept was broadcasted by the US-american channel CBS in those days. In this concept, the Highland Games were taken as an example for the different disciplines. These competitions are distributed in variable form and requirement to the single types of muscles, like pushing, stemming, lifting etc.

Among them are disciplines like for example Stones of strenght, where 100 till 200 kg heavy stoneballs

need to be placed on a podium. Another discipline is the Log Lift, during which a tree trunk or a pipe are lifted over the head and both arms need to be in stretched position. Or, to introduce another discipline, the Wheel Flip, where a tire of a dumper truck or wheel loader needs to be erected and thrown over again as often as possible. During the Wheel Barrow, a loaded car needs to be pushed like a wheelbarrow over the distance of approximately 20 m. There are numerous other different disciplines, like the Bavarian Stone Lift, the Farmer's Walk or the Hercules Hold, to name a couple of them. The list would be nearly infinite. In the year 1983, the competition was carried out for the first time outside the USA, in Christchurch in New Zealand. Within the years more and more disciplines were added and the Strongmen won a lot of sympathizers among the spectators, which lead to the establishment of a lot of professional martial artists.