If you personally know anyone who does strongman non professionally do these people also perform pretty much the same exercises as non-professionals?

I haven't had the privilege of meeting any strongmen personally, whether professional or otherwise, so I cannot really comment. All I can tell you is that, based on what the pros do, the Big 3 lifts are at the core of their workouts, and the other two from the Big 5 are used as accessory lifts.

Contrary to most lifters, I don't have leg day, because I do isolation exercises for parts of my legs in between my upper body exercises. Also, because I never had chicken legs I always thought it was ok to skip the squat rack and as a result only did it once under supervision just out of curiosity. Once I regain lower body strength I will go for it. I hope that my misaligned feet are not too big of a problem.

I don't really consider squat/deadlift days to be "leg days". Most lifters tend to think of them as "full-body total pain" days, because that is pretty much what they are.

If you are looking to regain strength overall in a hurry, then squatting will do this quickly. If you have knee or leg injuries that are stopping you from doing too much by way of squats, then consider doing leg presses instead, as these will help you get hamstring and quad strength back a bit faster.

Haven't thought of it that way. If you personally know anyone who does strongman non professionally do these people also perform pretty much the same exercises as non-professionals?

I used to go to the gym for years and then foolishly stopped for 3 years, mostly because of laziness and lots of poor excuses. I started again 2 months ago and I'm only just regaining my strength.

Contrary to most lifters, I don't have leg day, because I do isolation exercises for parts of my legs in between my upper body exercises. Also, because I never had chicken legs I always thought it was ok to skip the squat rack and as a result only did it once under supervision just out of curiosity. Once I regain lower body strength I will go for it. I hope that my misaligned feet are not too big of a problem.

The part that you are missing is that strongmen do powerlifting exercises as their core workout.

If you look at the World's Strongest Man competition, for instance, two events that almost always feature in them are the squat and the deadlift, in various forms. The WSM always makes both exercises much harder than they are in the gym – by using a bar where the weights DO NOT freely move, for instance, which does make the lift much more challenging – but the competitors do need to be able to squat and deadlift well.

I argue that you are falling into a bit of a logical trap here. You are thinking the way that CrossFitters do, about "functional strength". The thing is that functional strength is just a catchphrase without much by way of meaning. The virtue of doing squats and deadlifts lies in the fact that they simply make you stronger overall, which is what you need in order to get good at doing any form of athletic activity.

I'll give you an example from my own experience. I was in Dubai about 6 months ago and was invited by my host for a "cross training" class. He is fat and out of shape but goes once a week to what is, basically, a CrossShit class. I went along in order to be a good guest.

Now, the workout at that place was all kinds of stupid – lots and lots of reps of squats without the coach ever really bothering to explain to anyone the technical details of how to squat, followed by lots of deadlifts and dumbbell lifts and chin-ups. No explanation of form whatsoever at any point.

Because of my background in powerlifting, I was able to do everything that was required, I was lifting much heavier weight than everyone else, and I was pretty much the last man standing.

Why was that? It wasn't because I was really strong. It was because years of powerlifting had made me strong OVERALL, not just at powerlifting exercises. Meanwhile, the clowns who focused entirely on "functional fitness" couldn't lift the weights that I could, and couldn't lift what they managed with anything approaching good form.

As far as strongmen vs squat/deadlift, etc., if you think of it in terms of every day practical strength and having good stamina and concentration it makes a bit more sense to go strongman. Thing is I don't want to hold myself up to olympic level standards for either strongman or squats and deadlifters. Im not talking about the amount of weights, but the benefits of the exercises on the rest of my activities throughout the day. If you think about it, you don't want to pull any muscle while lifting heavy objects around your house. You would use the squat position, but its going to be far more imperfect. Yes the bar allows for much greater freedom of movement compared to machines, but in terms of lifting objects and carrying them around strongman seems to be superior because you get much greater freedom of movement.

Perhaps there needs to be a strongman lite for the folks who don't dope themselves and eat like bears to get into competition. Unlike debates about marshal arts, you can probably get some doctors, chiropractors, etc., to determine what is doable by the average fitness guys like us.