2016 December - Montreal Open Grip Sport Championships - Eric Roussin

[Eric Roussin]

This past weekend I organized and competed in the Montreal Open Grip Sport Championships. My goal in traveling two hours to run this event was to hopefully attract some of the many talented armwrestlers who live in Quebec. I figured if travel distance was minimized, it may entice more people to try out grip sport. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful with this objective. Of the five competitors, only Dan Fleming was from Quebec (and I was 100% certain he would be there). I think there could have been a few more Quebec entries, but in the days leading up the contest, I was contacted by a few people who were interested in attending, but could not due to injury or school/work commitments. Though turnout was a bit of a letdown, those who attended did have fun.

 

Here’s who took part:

Me

Dan Fleming – quite possibly grip sport’s fastest rising star

Sylvain Desjarlais – a climber and second place finisher in the 74kg class in this year’s King Kong event

Gustav Bush – a 67-year old armwrestler from the Toronto area. He may be among the older grip sport competitors, but he’s quickly become addicted. He’s training to win the masters (50+) division of the Canadian Nationals and King Kong in 2017!

Morgan Eadie – I was particularly excited that Morgan entered the competition, as she’s the first female to compete in any of the grip sport contests that I’ve organized in the past five years. She’s a small but strong athlete who has dabbled in powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, among many other pursuits. She decided to give grip sport a try. I knew she had potential when she registered 99 lbs on my dynamometer (second narrowest setting). The previous record for women who have tried my device was 79 lbs!

 

Here’s a summary of what went down during the contest:

Event 1: Gold Bar

Both Dan and I had trained for this event. We also both realized how unpredictable the device could be. Luckily, I felt the device to be particularly “grippy” on this day, and I managed a PR. Dan did not hit a PR, but still managed to win the event.

Event 2: 3” Crusher

Sylvain and Dan hit better than expected numbers on this event. Once I secured the win I did not continue to failure. I think I might have been able to lift 159 lbs, but it would have been close. I chose to conserve energy for the remaining events.

Event 3: MoonTop

Gustav impressed me the most on this event. Though he had never tried it before, he had been doing some hub training, which I feel has carry-over to the event. He managed to lift just under 37 lbs. I think he will reach 40 lbs before long.

Event 4: Double Barreled Bastard Blaster

I was the only competitor to have trained with this device. It’s a bit of a peculiar lift. The one thing I felt was bit difficult to judge had to do with “intentional tilting”. It’s hard to determine how much tilt should be considered acceptable, and whether is in intentional. A bit of tilt naturally occurs when the weight comes off the ground. I’m also not really sure that tilt really increases the weight that can be lifted. I need to do a bit more testing. But I was very happy with my performance, lifting 99.5 lbs, which was a big PR for me. I think I could have probably lifted more, but at this point I was lifting alone for few rounds and I decided to just move onto the next event.

Event 5: Half Penny

Morgan impressed me the most in this event. She lifted 17.5 lbs, and got air with 20 lbs. Considering she only weighs about 125 lbs, I thought this was really good. I’ve seen many men fail to lift 20 lbs on this device. Though not a PR, I was satisfied with my lift of 37.5 lbs.

Event 6: Silver Bullet

I expected this event to be a fight between Dan and I. He has more top end crush strength than I do, but I’ve done a fair bit of silver bullet training over the past couple of years. He managed to hold the Silver Bullet for 22 seconds, while I managed a hold of 30 seconds. Neither of us was close to hitting our PRs, but considering this was the last of six events, we didn’t feel too bad.

 

The contest was held in the weight room of a climbing gym. The gym was packed with climbers, and though there was a regular flow of people who stopped by to watch the contest, none decided to officially take part. Some tried lifting some of the various implements, and were surprised to feel them glued to the floor. To be fair, though, many made their attempts once considerable weight had already been added. We did our best to assure them that the weight they were attempting to lift was considerable, and failure did not mean that they didn’t have strong hands! Nevertheless, the look that they gave us when they saw we could lift the devices was pretty cool.

 

Morgan plans on attending the Canadian National Grip Sport Championships at the end of February. I think this will really help attract other women. A few have come very close to attending some of my contests. Hopefully the fact that there will be at least one other person in the women’s division will be an incentive to attend.

[Jedd Johnson]

I figured if travel distance was minimized, it may entice more people to try out grip sport. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful with this objective.

Sorry to hear that.  Unfortunately, I've seen the same thing, twice traveling to Spokane Washington.  The first time no one signed up and the second time, only 2.  It definitely gets disheartening, but I commend you for being willing to do it, Eric.

[anwnate]

Thanks for the write up Eric.  Traveling in an effort to increase attendance is great idea.  It may not have paid off on this one, but it's definitely forward thinking.

Those looks people give...are definitely very cool.