2017 International King Kong Grip Challenge - October 28th

[riccardomagni]

Mikael,

A couple of things...I have been involved in strength sports for 22 years.  I am sure that what other people desire doesn't matter.  I have seen so many talented people come and go.  It all comes down to what they want to do with their time.

Regarding bodyweight,  I am a good example of this regarding grips.  I am 6'3" with 8" hands.  In 2015, I was 271# to get 3rd place at the LA FIT EXPO in the grip contest.   This year, I plan to weigh in at 220# (I am 230.0# this morning).   Guess what?  I'm stronger now!  Same events - Axle and Rolling Thunder.   This shouldn't happen, if I understand you correctly.  

I have met lots of the top grip guys in person.  Guess what?  They all have HUGE hands.  Odd Haugen refers to my hands as "baby hands."

Alexey is probably the only exception to this ( in my experience) of the elite thick bar lifters.  

I'm not sure that bodyweight matters a lot.

[Guest]

57 minutes ago, riccardomagni said:

Mikael,

A couple of things...I have been involved in strength sports for 22 years.  I am sure that what other people desire doesn't matter.  I have seen so many talented people come and go.  It all comes down to what they want to do with their time.

Regarding bodyweight,  I am a good example of this regarding grips.  I am 6'3" with 8" hands.  In 2015, I was 271# to get 3rd place at the LA FIT EXPO in the grip contest.   This year, I plan to weigh in at 220# (I am 230.0# this morning).   Guess what?  I'm stronger now!  Same events - Axle and Rolling Thunder.   This shouldn't happen, if I understand you correctly.  

I have met lots of the top grip guys in person.  Guess what?  They all have HUGE hands.  Odd Haugen refers to my hands as "baby hands."

Alexey is probably the only exception to this ( in my experience) of the elite thick bar lifters.  

I'm not sure that bodyweight matters a lot.

My hands are the same about 8 inches maybe 8.1 Riccardo at a little over 6 foot 3.... pretty average for our size!

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, Tommy J. said:

while i agree with your points, i think this post flew over a lot of heads.. essentially what you have said here is total BW doesnt matter. I.E., its the same thing as saying that lighter guys do not have an excuse for having a weaker axle pull than super heavy guys. not sure if that was your intent or not, but its exactly the same logic. i bet those that liked this post didnt quite catch that. lol

You’re right! I did not catch that! But also true. There’s so many variables as to why someone is good at one lift and not another whether it be height, weight or hand size. I always say at the end of the day if someone’s got a higher lift than me for any reason.... it is up to me to work harder to match it.

[Andrew P]

10 hours ago, Kluv#0 said:

The organizers of King Kong do a great job of selecting the 4 lifts to balance out hand size!! Exactly how grip should be contested

We don't hear that often. Thank you. 

[wobbler]

Kinda off the rails here already, I sketched this up as a joke, so I'm not saying, but I'm just saying...

[Bryan Hunsaker]

@Tommy J. I am exactly saying body weight doesn’t matter and hope that did not go over heads. I clearly said that the axle would be one case where it plays in but body weight won’t compensate for inadequate grip. There are people with the hand strength and not the back strength to pull big axle weights but body weight on grippers, pinch, rolling handles and absolutely the hub/stub has no bearing. Tanner showed that. Eric and Kody and many others consistently show that. I think you and most people draw an incorrect correlation with low body weight being a handicap when in fact it is more likely that lighter people are just smaller and thus also have smaller hands which I would concede puts someone at a deficit. The hands are the issue in almost every case, period. You can always find an exception but I’m done with the perpetuation of the fallacious idea of body weight being an across-the-board advantage. Frankly, powerlifting has it wrong too, incorrectly assuming linear progressions with body weight when what really exist are asymptotic relationships towards the upper limits of possible lifts - and we’ve derived the grip format from that.

Bottom line - if I lose I’m going to get stronger so I don’t lose next time, and that should be how people approach the sport rather than handicapping others.

[Bryan Hunsaker]

@Tommy J. While I personally feel weight classes don’t make sense, I’m ok to leave them if they increase participation in an amateur setting. But the winner is the winner regardless of BW.

Wilks, Allometry, etc are skewed methodologies as you leave the first standard deviations of the bell curve so they should not be used.

If Eric can pull a 190kg axle at 90kg body weight, there are no legitimate body weight excuses. If people have the grip strength and can’t pull an axle, then they need to get stronger. If they don’t have the grip strength, sorry. I shattered my thumb 7 years ago so I’ll never be great at the hub or any contortion lifts - unfortunate for me and I bomb that every time - that’s life.

We do clearly agree for the most part - I hoped to illustrate that the smaller guys who happen to be light, likely also have smaller hands, and that’s the problem...and that’s why I think BW is irrelevant.

I’m working to create a pro/elite category of grip athletes where all the complaints and handicaps are thrown out the window. In the Open or Amateur category where participation medals are required we can have weight classes so people come out. If Grip wants to stand alone and be a real sport it can’t have an asterisk next to a lift with an Allometry rating!

[Mikael Siversson]

Thickbar lifting is always going to favor people with large hands, I don't think anyone is disputing that. 

A quick look at the NAGS top 25 list in grippers, axle and the 2HP (collectively referred to as the 'big three' because of their popularity, historically at least) reveal a strong correlation overall between bodyweight and grip strength up to about the 93-105k class depending on the event. Large really athletic people do others things than grip sport, I hope you understand that.

His huge hands do not help Mr Tanner in the Euro pinch lift where hand size does not matter. Until he actually does produce outstanding results on this implement it is nothing more than pure speculation implying he would do this or that in the 2HP with more training. Some of the strongest pinch lifters on the Euro of all time do not have particularly large hands (David Horne, Martin Arildsson) but they are certainly no feather weights. There are not many of you who have dropped two weight classes to compete at a lean bodyweight but those who did experienced significant drops in the 2HP in competition results (Jedd and Eric).

The strongest pinch lifter on the Euro atm is probably Chad Woodall and the one thing that stands out about him is his overall size but I am sure you knew that already. Tanner is never going to reach Chad's level on the adjustable Euro set because , and I know you hate me mentioning it, overall size matters at elite level. This is particularly true in hand size neutral events. Hub lifts etc on the other hand tend to favour a certain hand size to a larger degree which makes them less useful as a measure of hand strength (same with wide thickbar handles).

 

Edited November 2, 2017 by Mikael Siversson

[Mikael Siversson]

23 hours ago, Bryan Hunsaker said:

@Boulderbrew@Mikael Siversson @riccardomagni @Jedd Johnson @WestSlope @rsmdon

Mikael, I'm putting the bodyweight thing to bed.  I have big hands - I'm 6'8.  Tanner and I are about equal wrist-to-middle-finger.  Tanner might be 2.5 inches bigger on hand span!  I've never seen a hand-span like that!  Tanner is impressive across the board - he won every event at our venue with some really strong guys present, and did so at his ultra-light bodyweight, relative to me.  I'm about 300 lbs, and while I can surely out lift Tanner in almost any weightlifting/strongman discipline, Tanner could probably beat me at almost anything in grip.  300+ on the VBAR - not his bodyweight, his grip which is correlated to his hand size and his training (by the way, he can lift more than the 313 or whatever he got).  World Record on the Crusher - clearly not his bodyweight, but his grip.  Pinching and open-hand are very different and require specific training.  His pinch will get there, believe me.

I'll concede something weight-related on the axle, but if the hands aren't there, I don't care if you weight 500 lbs, you aren't pulling 400, end of story.  All good axle lifters have the hands to back it up, period.  Show me one guy that can pull a big axle and has no other grip skills - you can't. 

The weight argument is a crutch, and it is unfounded.  Tanner is walking proof of what is possible if the grip is there.  Yes, he's playing with a different deck than most people - I am a massive human and he makes me look like I have a child's hands.  But end of the day, bigger and stronger hands are a much better indicator of performance in grip sport than bodyweight.

Go up to the discussion of my buddy Uili.  Yeah, he overhead pressed 315 (a light weight for him) in between events.  He took 4th at America's Strongest Man last week.  He outweighed everyone at our venue and is a huge guy!  Did he win a single event?  No.  His grip is good, not great, and I believe he took 4th, at our venue, and on an event basis, was behind Tanner, Steve and me on every discipline.  Go figure...weight doesn't matter.  By the way, if not for Static Monsters, we'd of had 4 pro strongmen, all massive guys, and everyone would have lost to Uili.  Follow the logic?

This long-standing myth of bodyweight is a joke.  Earlier this year, I did seated Rolling Thunder for reps at 200+, and closed a GHP 7 laying on the ground to illustrate it.  My 300lbs can't help me in either scenario - I can do it because of my grip.

Tanner's performance proves that the correlation of weight to grip performance is tenuous at best, perhaps rearing it's head on a rare occasion.  And if you go back to last year, I conclusively correlated the same thing on the basis of 2016 King Kong results.  Go look it up.

Aside, Tanner is an incredibly nice guy, humble and fun to lift with.  I hope we can cross paths, again, soon.  He can be a great diplomat for the sport and has massive potential going forward.  Tanner, congrats on an epic performance and all the best to you, brother!!

Several of you in this debate are repeatedly equaling outliers with the median/mean of a given lighter weight class. Tanner is an outlier in the thickbar whereas Kody is an outlier in the pinch. Both are strong in all grip areas for their weight class but exceptionally strong in one area. I personally regard Kody as the superior grip athlete pound for pound as he is  the WR holder in a handsize neutral event. Needless to say both are exceptional grip athlets. I do find it frustrating that you can't have a factual debate on the GB without facing an avalanche of emotional discharge. Its incredibly simple to demonstrate that absolute size matters in grip. If you took Tanner and scaled him up by a factor of 1.1 (i.e. 10% increase in all threedimensions) his grip strength would increase by 1.1x1.1=1.21 (i.e 21%) in a handsize neutral event such as the Euro pinch as strength increases by the square (and bodyweight by the cube).

Edited November 2, 2017 by Mikael Siversson

[Royz]

2 hours ago, Mikael Siversson said:

Euro pinch lift where hand size does not matter.

Huh? More flesh on the pinch block = more friction = more weight lifted imo.

 

Obviously other factor come in to play too, like thumb size, handspan, wrist strength etc.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Royz

[John McCarter]

Guys, I asked before to keep the thread on the topic of King kong. It's gone off that topic. 

Hand size, bodyweight, weight classes, etc. those topics are great and shows concepts that should/must be addressed, they are/should be discussed in another thread else where on the board.