This Month’s Like – Strength Wars

On weekdays I listen to podcasts from professional coaches, like Mike Boyle on my Experts & Motivators page. On weekends, I watch an hour or so of fitness videos from random athletes and professionals. One weekend while watching Kai Green — or some other athlete, among the recommended videos was a battle between a calisthenics athlete and a power-lifter in a series called “Strength Wars”. Well, considering I’ve been backing away from 100% bodybuilding to focus on calisthenics, I had to watch the video.






Strength Wars takes athletes with different training specialties and pits them against each other in a sort of strength obstacle course. What I like is that most of the competitors are not sponsored athletes. They are personal trainers and fitness lovers, although some are professional bodybuilders,  power-lifters . . . what have you.

See the first ‘Strength Wars’ video I watched. Guess who will win:

Did you guess the right winner? I didn’t. You can’t judge an athlete by appearance, prowess in their specialty, or smack talk. This show proves that.

The ‘Strength Wars’ series has taught me that all-around strength: calisthenics, power lifting, bodybuilding . . . builds the best athlete. I realized that focusing too much on one form of training can be detrimental in the competitions that are undertaken on the show. So, in my case, instead of focusing more on calisthenics only, I’m finding a balance to include weight lifting and power moves. This is where cross-training and periodization come in.

Aside from the lessons I learned watching the series, the hosts are funny and the short segments about the athletes help viewers get into the competition, and decide who they want to root for. The varying personalities of these athletes is also nice to see. My only hang up about the show is that there’s no official format. Sometimes the funny hosts do a long announcement segment before the competition begins. Sometimes they don’t. : ( Some videos have a counter at on the screen, showing how many reps the athletes have done, and when a rep doesn’t count. And other times those counters are absent. As I continue to watch, I think they are getting more consistent about these things, especially as the show gets more popular.

Check out the series if you’re into athlete competitions. And I hope Strength Wars gets bigger and maybe one day has a TV series! I’d DVR it!