My definitive guide to running a Strongman Competition, part 1

As a promoter, I have run competitions from gym level, all the way up to a World Championships and there are a lot of things that I have learned over the years, which I want to pass on to you, so that you can provide the best experience for the athletes lifting in your competition.

WHICH CLASSES WILL YOU RUN?

The first thing you need to do as a promoter is decide who you are running the competition for.

A word of advice, don’t try to be all things to all people, you don’t have to offer every single class, and in all honestly, the fewer the classes the better, unless you are planning on running a competition over multiple days. Stick to 2 or 3 at the most, it’ll make your life a lot easier and you can always offer more classes on a different date.

As it stands, these are the classes most commonly found for men and women, but you will occasionally find weight class options for the novices.

• Beginners/ First timers, these are the most recent classes and were set up for people to dip their toes into the sport. weights are typically set well below what a novice would lift.

• Novice, typically an open bodyweight category. The weights here are a reasonable start point to test the vast majority of lifters just getting into the sport.

• Intermediate, also typically an open bodyweight class, this is the stop gap between novice and open weight class, weights are typically 10-15% heavier than novice weights.

• Open weight, the stronger of the amateur classes and will be about 10-20% heavier than an intermediate competition

• Weight classes, this is where we start to get to the more professional side of things and the weights will be heavier than for novices

• A mix of the above classes

HOW MANY ENTRIES WILL YOU OPEN UP FOR EACH CLASS?

You will have a lot to deal with during the day of the competition, so try to simplify things to make sure you have a fast pace, with minimum down time between events for the competitors.

Factors to consider that change the pace of a competition are,

• How many head to head events you are running, you can get 30 athletes finished in about 25-30 minutes as you are running 2 at a time.

• Max effort events where athletes go alone take a really long time to get through, if you have 30 athletes, each doing 3 attempts, at a minute per attempt (without including time to get ready and on the platform or time for loaders to change weights), that’s a minimum of 90 minutes from start to finish.

• Events that aren’t max effort, but still have athletes going alone, because equipment is limited can take up to an hour for 30 people to get through when you account for reset time and measuring distances.

• Events that are distance based with no time limit can take a lot longer as you can’t control how long someone might be capable of carrying something for.

• Logistics, how long it takes to move equipment and set the next event up. Having a game plan of where you want things set up will help reduce the time it takes.

With these factors in mind, you would be wise to reduce the number of places if you have a competition where the athletes will be going one by one, so limit those to 20 spaces at the most, If your events are all head to head, you can open up 30 or even 40 spaces per class.

Now, having said all that, there are some classes where you’ll struggle to fill out 10 spaces, let alone 20 or 30, but you won’t find that out until you put on a few competitions.

I can tell you from experience as an athlete, we absolutely hate starting a competition at 9am and not finishing until 6pm. (some comps I’ve seen have gone on until 8pm) so my advice is set a start time of 10am and aim to finish by 4pm. If you have your act together, you can run a 5 event competition with 2 classes of 20 athletes from start to finish in 6 hours.

No one wants to be there all day, especially if they have their kids watching and especially if there is a limited amount of seating or it’s very cold.

VENUE CHOICE

Most local level competitions happen in a gym, so if you are a gym owner, you are at an advantage as your venue costs will be zero. The only thing you will need to do is close the gym to members for the day you want to run the competition, unless it is large enough that you can section off an area specifically for the comp without affecting members.

If you don’t have a gym, you can look at hiring a school or local authority sports hall for a minimal charge, but then you will have the added expense of providing rubber matting to protect wooden floors.

You can choose to run your competition outside, perhaps at a local fair or agricultural show, or even at a local sports field.

You will have to provide shelter for competitors and staff should the weather take a turn for the worse, and events like stone loading are an absolute no no in the wet, unless you want a bunch of injuries to your lifters.

Any venue you choose that isn’t somewhere that already has equipment will mean transporting kit to and from it, adding another layer of admin and cost.

The Albany in Deptford was the venue for the 2023 Static Monsters World Championships.

EVENT SELECTION

The most important aspect of any competition and the one that drives interest from athletes and fans is the event selection, but for promoters who are just starting out, I’ll stick to the basics. 

Remember though, venue choice can dictate what events you can run, there's no point in planning a yoke, farmers or any other event that requires a straight, uninterupted run if you have no space to do them.

Pretty much every competition has 5 events, there will typically be

1 kind of overhead press

1 deadlift variation

1 loaded carry

An explosive event

A load over bar or to platform to finish.

As someone starting out, stick to doing the events for reps instead of for max. It reduces the time taken and logistically is much easier to run.

Rep events would have a 60 seconds time limit

Carrying events will be for a set distance in the fastest time, or a max distance for a set time.

Explosive events could be throws over a bar or tyre flips for reps where the fastest time to compete wins.

Loading over a bar is a timed event using either a sandbag or a stone, loading to a platform would be a series of weights, lifted in order to platforms of either the same or different heights in the fastest time possible.

You have a large variety of events that you can use for each category, so feel free to mix it up. 

The only caveat here is what equipment is available to you, which brings me to my next point

EQUIPMENT FOR EVENTS

Choosing the events you put on will entirely depend on the equipment you have available to you, a number of promoters will put on events that they don’t have kit for which results in them having to change at the last minute.

You should have access to the following basics,

• Loadable dumbbell, Log, Axle and bumper plates, (2 of each if you are running head to head events.) Crash pads or lorry tyres to drop impements on to.

• Deadlift or power bars, preferably 2 or more of each from the same manufacturer (different companies bars act differently under load)

• 1 or 2 yokes (a third would be preferable to have for warm ups), same goes for farmers handles.

• Throwing bags in a range of weights plus something to throw them over, a tractor tyre for flips if you want to go down that route.

• Atlas stones and sandbags. You can use a yoke if loading over a bar, otherwise you will need platforms to load to.

• Some form of lifting platforms for the deadlift or overhead events, this can be as simple as plywood covered in rubber matting

• Enough of the same manufacturers plates to load both sides of the implement the same and both sets if you are running head to head comps. 

We are looking to ensure fair competition and so the equipment used for everyone has to be the same in all events.

SETTING WEIGHTS

Once you have the classes figured out, you'll need to set the weights for each event.

One way is to look at World’s Strongest Man and work back from there, using a range based approximately on the following percentages.

• If WSM is 100%

• National championships are 85%

• Amateur opens are 75%

• Intermediate level would be 65%

• Novice level would then be 55%

• Beginner/ First timers would be 45%

Using the log lift for example, if WSM use a 180kg log,

Nationals would be 150 - 160kg,

Amateur opens would be 130 - 140kg

Intermediate level would be 110 - 120kg

Novice level would be 80-100kg

Begginers/ First timers would be 60-70kg

Obviously these weights are based on the men’s competition, but would work the same using the OSG World’s Strongest Woman numbers and the same for the weight class athletes.

Setting your weights this way should give a pretty decent spread of results, I aim to have weights in my competitions that would give the following,

The bottom 10 -20% of the lifters will get between 0 and 3 reps,

The majority, 70 - 80% of the lifters, will get 4 - 10 reps

The top 10 - 20% of the lifters will get double figures

If more than 50% of your competitors are getting 0-3 reps, it’s far too heavy, conversely, if more than 50% of them are hitting double figures, with a few 20 reppers thrown in there, it’s far too light.

Remember, you set the weights for the people you want to attract, don’t let whingers and moaners bully you into lightening the comp because they aren’t strong enough, but at the same time, if your numbers for a local competition are closer to the kind of weights you see at a Giants Live show, you will need to bring them down.

Conor Reilly lifting at the Static Monsters World Championships 2023

ADVERTISING AND PROMOTING YOUR COMPETITION

Now you have decided on the events, the classes and the weights, you have to let people know about your competition.

The simplest way to do so is to create an event page on Facebook,

You will need to include the date, time and location of the competition, a list of classes, and the events you’ve chosen along with a list of the weights for each class and how to pay.

Then add in some basic rules like,

• Are grip shirts allowed?

• Deadlift suits, yes or no.

• Straps allowed?

These are the most common questions, along with any equipmrnt specs you put out.

Be aware though, you could write the most thorough, in depth description of all of the above and people will still ask questions about every bit of information you have already provided.

Once you have created your event page, you’ll need to invite people from your contacts list to let people know it’s on.

One of the best resources you can use to promote your competition is Strength Register, an online resource in the UK that has every competition listed, they also have gyms and coaches on their site too.

You can find Strength Register here

PHOTOGRAPHER/ VIDEOGRAPHER AND LIVE STREAMING

It is entirely your choice to have a photographer at your event in an official capacity to take high quality shots for the athletes and yourself to use on social media, the same goes for a videographer. Having access to high quality images and video will help with promoting your next event.

Most photographers and videographers will have a couple of different packages to cover their expenses, typically you might be asked to cover travel and hotel costs, then they will make their money of the back end by selling pictures to athletes, if this is a route you go down, make sure that they are the only person allowed on the competition floor to take pictures/ video, 

Also for safety, it’s an absolute mess if you have 6 or 7 people running around with cameras, getting in the way because they have to get the best angles of the competitor who hired them. So if they aren’t hired by you, do not let them in the comp arena, no matter who they’re working for.

If you are planning to run a live stream, be aware of costs vs views, you will not get thousands of people tuning in to watch, so maybe start small with live streaming to your instagram or if you have a You Tube channel, stream to that.

HOW MUCH TO CHARGE

This is largely dictated by the current market, do some research on Strength Register, look at what similar level competitions are charging and set your pricing to match.

If you price yourself too high over the market average, you’ll be labelled a rip off merchant and no one will sign up.

Your entry fees will go towards paying for things like venue hire, platform banners, t-shirts, trophies,additional equipment, feeding your volunteers, insurance, etc so don’t expect to be raking cash in hand over fist.

Approaching sponsors is a good way to help with costs, but you must have something to offer in exchange for cold hard cash.

I’ll write a blog about raising money from sponsors in the near future.

REGISTERING ATHLETES

This is a crucial part of running a competition, signing people up, because afterall, without athletes, there is no competition.

I have my athlete registration forms as part of the payment process, in that as they click to pay, the registration form comes up first, before allowing them to progress to the payment.

However, you can have a printed out registratipon form ready on the morning of the competition for athletes to sign as they arrive.

Your will need the following information from them,

• Name,

• Address, including post code,

• Email address,

• Contact number,

• Name of emergency contact,

• Phone number for emergency contact.

• T shirt size.

It is also important to have a section for informed consent.

This is simply a short paragraph listing the potential risks involved in participating in a competition, and a declaration from the athlete that they understand the risks and participate of their own free will.

It is vital to note that signing the declaration of such risks does not absolve you, the promoter, of liability should an injury occur to a participant and that you are still open to court proceedings should something happen that is perceived to be your fault.

To mitigate any risks as much as possible, you must conduct a risk assessment and take every possible measure to make the lifting surfaces as safe as possible and ensure that all equipment used is in safe, working order.

As far as the data protection law is concerned, you are now classed as a data controller which prohibits you from giving out personal information to any 3rd parties without express written consent from the registered athletes. This includes setting up a Whatsapp group chat where everyone’s numbers are visible to everyone else in the group, so bear that in mind if you need to send out information en masse.

Waiting lists

When you set up your event, you will have people ask you to put their name down, to then pay later, personally I don’t do this, for the simple reason that all my competitions are first come, first served, no one gets their name down if they haven’t paid, so once the spaces are all sold, entries are closed. Keeping my events first come, first served means I don't have spend time chasing people for their entry fee as we get closer to the competition date, only for them to say they can't make it.

If I let people wait until the last minute to pay and they decide not to, it might mean I have to cancel a class or fold it into another one, which makes it unfair on the people who are signed up and committed.

The other reason I don’t have a waiting list is simply, if a number of people no show on the day without notice (which always happens.) There isn’t enough time to let a resrve know that they have a spot to compete.

In regards to no shows without any notification, my policy is a blanket ban on that person entering my competitions in the future, if they can’t do me the courtesy of telling me they aren’t coming, then why would I risk it happening again and losing a spot that someone else would have turned up to fill?

Insurance

This is difficult to obtain as there isn’t a single insurance company that will provide cover for people taking part and they freak out as soon as you mention Strongman. What you will need, should the venue require it is public liability cover in case any damage to the venue occurs or injury to the volunteers helping you on the day (volunteers are classed as staff where insurance is concerned, whether or not they are paid), you will be asked by the insurers a number of questions that you will need to satisfy in order to obtain your insurance. 

Collecting payments, T shirts, Trophies, Staffing and  on the day running of the competition will be covered in part 2 which will be published on Monday 2nd of October.