I don’t think I would recommend preparing for one sport by preparing for a different sport. The odd lifts in strong man competition are generally different than any other, and the transfer from, say, deadlifting to picking up stones is not direct.
If you are really starting from zero, certainly a general six-eight months of general strength training is a good idea. After that, it would be more efficient to start practicing the actual lifts in whatever strong man event you want to enter.
In general, strong man events involve lifting things that are not only heavy, but awkward. That is, you have to lift something that is further from your center of gravity than a standard barbell. Power cleans are great for developing explosive strength in the legs and lower back, but done properly the bar passes as close to the front of your body as you can manage. And the technique of a clean is rather different from picking up a stone.
So, maybe after a few months of pre-conditioning, pick out the events you actually want to do in competition, and start getting better at those. If you are going to do the farmer walk, set a goal of whatever time you want to achieve and start practicing the farmer walk. If you are going to be pressing logs overhead, get hold of a log and start pressing it.
The primary principles of strength training are specificity, and overload. You get stronger at doing something by doing that something, not something else. And you have to make it harder and harder to do that something over time, so you progress. The Bulgarian Olympic lifting team was famous for only doing three lifts - the squat, the snatch, and the clean and jerk - and working up to a max single in all three five or six days a week. They could get away with it, because they were on more steroids than a Tijuana pharmacy, and because if one of them burned out or got injured, there were a dozen other Bulgarians eager to get away from being a factory worker or a farm hand and making the team. So it may not be a system to emulate, but it demonstrates the principles.
Work a lot on legs - not just back- and front-squats, but heavy, high-rep lunges and split squats and so forth. Lots of grip work. And you will see if your lower back can take the necessary punishment. And forget about looking like a bodybuilder - that’s almost un-related to strongman. Don’t waste a lot of energy on bench pressing and curls, in other words.
Regards,
Shodan
