March 13, 2027. Sussex, Wisconsin. War at the Warehouse IV — my fifteenth competition, a Strongman Corporation National Qualifier, and the day this entire build points at. The event list is out (weights preliminary — finals lock in December). Here’s all five, event by event: where I take points, and where the fight is.
Where I take points: the deadlift ladder
The Deadlift Ladder runs 335 → 385 → 435 → 475 in 60 seconds, across four different bars. This is my event. My raw PR is 530 — 540 suited — which means the top bar of the ladder sits 55 pounds under my best pull. The test isn’t strength, it’s speed: four clean lifts, no wasted breaths, no missed grips. Run it like a machine and this is where I bank points early.
The moving events back that up. Farmers at 200 per hand into a 550 yoke, and the sandbag work — a 176 run into an arm-over-arm pull up to 350, plus sandbags of 176, 220, and 265 over a 52-inch bar. Carries and loading are work capacity, and work capacity is the one thing overnight warehouse shifts build for free. Grip, lungs, and legs that don’t quit in the last event — that’s my base.
The honest gap: the overhead medley
Now the part most athletes won’t put in writing. The Overhead Medley is an axle at 140, a log at 170, and a heavy axle at 200 — and the log is my mountain. My best log right now is a double at 120. The comp wants 170.
That’s a 50-pound gap, and I’m not going to pretend it closes with hope. The log is a skill lift — clean, rack position, leg drive — and skills close gaps that raw strength can’t. The pressing power is in the building; what’s missing is purely log-specific. The work between now and March is turning that power into log technique, one Saturday at a time.
And I’m building that work in public on purpose. The log gap is written down on this site for anybody to read — no hiding it, no talking around it. Every Saturday session between now and Sussex either shrinks that 50 pounds or it doesn’t, and the training log will say which.
The grind between now and March
Twenty-one weeks. Saturdays heavy, Sundays light, deadlifts heavy every two weeks so my back survives both the platform and the warehouse floor. Bodyweight climbs to the top of the 80kg class — 176 pounds — because a bigger frame presses a bigger log.
Come March, the ladder pays me, the carries hold, and the log gets whatever I’ve earned by then. That’s the breakdown. No secrets, no excuses — just the work, in public, until Sussex.