This may reflect the importance of these physical fitness characteristics in many facets of our lives from pre-history to today: hunting and gathering, the construction of large buildings and monuments, war, and more recently, sport.
Potentially, the current peak of human strength and power is demonstrated in the sport of strongman.
What is strongman?
Strongman is becoming more common, with competitions now available at regional, national and international levels for men and women of different ages and sizes.
Strongman training and competitions typically involve a host of traditional barbell-based exercises including squats, deadlifts and presses but also specific strongman events.
The specific strongman events – such as the vehicle pull, farmer’s walk, sandbag/keg toss or stones lift – often require competitors to move a range of awkward, heavy implements either higher, faster or with more repetitions in a given time period than their competitors.
Researching one of the greats
Strongman has enjoyed substantial growth and development since the introduction of the World’s Strongest Man competition in the late 1970s.
However, from a scientific perspective, there are few published studies focusing on athletes at the elite level.
In particular, very little is currently known about the overall amount of muscle mass these athletes possess, how their mass is distributed across individual muscles and to what extent their tendon characteristics differ to people who are not training.
However a recent study sought to shed some light on these extreme athletes. It examined the muscle and tendon morphology (structure) of one of the world’s strongest ever men – England’s Eddie Hall.
Measuring an exceptionally strong person such as Hall – who produced a 500kg world record deadlift and won the “World’s Strongest Man” competition in 2017 – provided the opportunity to understand what specific muscle and tendon characteristics may have contributed to his incredible strength.
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For the full article by Loughborough University's Dr Tom Balshaw, visit: Scientists recently studied the body of one of the world’s strongest men. This is what they found (theconversation.com)