If you had to trust one person to rank the best exercises to test your strength, there’s no one more qualified than the reigning Strongest Man on Earth.
In addition to being an elite performer, Mitchell Hooper is a well-educated athlete with a kinesiology degree and plenty of practical experience pushing, pulling, and moving ridiculously heavy objects. So, when it comes to evaluating strength-based movements, the accomplished strongman is not just a voice of reason — he’s perhaps the top expert in his field.
On Nov. 20, 2024, Hooper published a YouTube video breaking down four categories of exercises for measuring pure strength.
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Before we dive into which exercises earned Hooper’s stamp of approval, let’s take a look at how he determined the best from the rest. Here’s an overview of the criteria the Ontario native used to evaluate which exercise should determine the strongest human:
- Leverages can’t play a major role
- Must be a full-body test of strength
- Must be on easily standardized pieces of equipment
- Must be for 1-rep max
- Must test strength, not power
- It cannot be manipulated to gain an advantage
Based on those qualifications, Hooper excluded a few familiar movements, including the bench press, which can be manipulated with an excessive back arch. Ultimately, he ranked exercises across four categories: nonsense, bronze, silver, and gold.
Nonsense
The aptly-named “nonsense” category includes a few movements that should be familiar to strongman fans:
- Front Hold
- Wrecking Ball Hold
- Dinnie Stone Carry
- Isolation Exercises
While Hooper highlighted how easily you can cheat on the front hold, he had more critical comments about the wrecking ball hold, noting that despite being a former world record holder in this exercise, he has a “personal vendetta” against it.
- “We’re basically just testing pain tolerance,” Hooper explained. “It is not a strength exercise at all, in my opinion.”
Ditto for the Dinnie Stone carry, which Hooper also believes is a test of your pain threshold rather than actual strength. And to no surprise, isolation exercises like biceps curls, leg extensions, and calf raises landed on the “nonsense” list.
Bronze
Better but certainly not the best, the bronze category features the following four exercises:
- Throw for Height
- Push Press/Jerk/Split Jerk
- Sandbag Carry
- Hercules Hold
Why didn’t throws for height earn silver or gold status? Hooper highlighted how taller athletes have a “calculated advantage” due to their build.
“For example, me vs. Thor — he has five inches of height on me and probably four inches of arm length,” Hooper explained. “We’re talking eight to nine inches, nearly a foot advantage when it leaves his hand. That means I have to be a foot more powerful just to tie him.”
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Similar to throws, the push press got knocked down a peg because it’s a test of power more so than strength. Meanwhile, the sandbag carry tests muscular endurance — an important component of aerobic and overall fitness but not one that carries much weight when you’re measuring pure strength.
While Hooper has no qualms with the Hercules Hold as an exercise, he pointed out two drawbacks of using it as a determinant of pure strength.
- Grip is just one component of strength and does not reflect full-body strength.
- It can be easily manipulated depending on the length of the chains or angle of the pillar.
Silver
Unsurprisingly, the runner-up category consists of three exercises Hooper and his fellow strongmen routinely perform in training and competitions:
- Frame/Farmer’s Carry
- Atlas Stone
- Axle Clean and Press
“It’s testing your ability to move, it’s testing your grip, it’s testing your core strength,” Hooper said in praise of the farmer’s carry. “I think the Arnold setup, with a very heavy frame up a short ramp, is a great way to test this element of strength.”
Atlas Stones also earned a spot in the silver category, and when you hear Hooper break down the elements involved, it’s easy to see why.
- “You have to pick it off the ground as a deadlift, you have to squeeze with your chest, you have to front squat, you have to hip thrust,” he explained. “There’s no muscle in your body that isn’t going to be worked to a reasonable degree during Atlas Stones.”
However, Hooper wouldn’t put it in the gold category due to leverage discrepancies among competitors.
“If you have long arms and you can wrap around the Atlas Stone, it is worlds apart to if you can only get halfway around,” he explained.
Hooper proposed that regulating the diameter relative to arm length and the platform height relative to total body height could elevate this exercise directly to the top.
“If we did that, I believe this could be the absolute best test of strength,” he said. “I would actually be comfortable to say whoever could do that has a 95% chance of being the strongest person in the world.”
Gold
Now, onto the cream of the strength-testing crop. Hooper’s golden trio consists of:
The 2023 World’s Strongest Man put the log press third in this category, noting that it combines a deadlift and squat while also challenging your upper-body strength. Most importantly, at least for sticking to his criteria, it does not provide any major advantages based on leverage.
In the runner-up spot, Hooper specifically chose a deadlift with straps, as he doesn’t believe grip should be a limiting factor when testing total body strength. As any semi-experienced lifter knows, the deadlift will immediately expose any weak links.
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According to Hooper, the best exercise for testing pure strength is the good ol’ squat.
“It’s very heavy, it uses your full body, and leverages aren’t as important,” Hooper explained.
What is important, however, is staying as pain-free and safe as possible, which is why the Canadian-born strongman supports the use of knee wraps for this exercise.
“A wrapped, raw squat, to me, that determines the strongest person of all time,” Hooper stated.
Well, it couldn’t be more clear than that.
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Featured Image: @mitchellhooper / Instagram
