I was riding passenger in my friend Steve Moore's car a few days ago. We were chatting about working out, and training in general. Before long we got into talking about our strongman friend Dan Cenidoza. Somewhere in there I said that Dan Cenidoza is a bodybuilder as well since it is practically the same thing as a "strongman". Steve told me if I called Dan a bodybuilder he would slap me.
Okay, let's expand our vocabulary.
It seems that although "bodybuilder" seems to be the term our society grouped anyone with a fitness goal other than cardio. The difference is like a person who plays a good variety of sports versus someone who is pro is one event or sport. In fitness, it would be like someone doing bicep curls everyday, versus someone who does a different set of exercises depending on the day. Someone who does a large number of a exercise, of course would look good curling 200 or 300 pounds, but outside that exercise, they probably lose a lot of that impressive weight.
Although someone can get big doing a few exercises a LOT, there is a good chance they will have many areas where they still are weak, because they have challenged themselves there. This is the difference between a strongman and a bodybuilder. Bodybuilders often are a little weak overall, only excelling in a few exercises which does not improve their fitness level as a whole very much. Strongman are different because they tend to focus more on different speed exercises, different motion ranges, grip strength, sometimes even things like building lung strength.
It is true that most strongman tend to care much less about looks, absolute extremes may not be for everyone. So although it may be a good idea to try to excel at some areas (usually the ones you like working most), it is probably a good idea to have variety so you can do more than look good, you can actually be strong for cases other than "quick, I need someone to lift this 250 pound bicep bar off my friend!".
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