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2017 September - Cross-Canada Grip Sport Challenge - Eric Roussin


Eric Roussin

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The first Cross-Canada Grip Sport Challenge is in the books. With three venues taking part, by entries it was the biggest Canadian grip sport contest to date. 23 people competed: 7 in Ottawa, 11 in Waterloo, and 5 in Edmonton. Both Jason Steeves and I had lower than expected turnouts, but luckily Rob McMurren’s turnout was better than expected.

My write-up focusses mostly on my lifts – I hope to read about how others felt about their own performances.

The first event was the Gold Bar. I managed a lift of just under 64 lbs. It wasn’t my best result in this event, but I was satisfied.

Next up was the 2.5” Crusher. I lifted 190, but could have done more. I’d been doing much more training with the Rolling Thunder over the past few months in preparation for the Anaheim Fit Expo and the APL World Championships, and have become quite good at mastering my ideal amount of chalk to use for that lift. But more chalk is required for the Crusher. I didn’t notice the difference for my lighter attempts, but once I got to 190 on my third attempt, the device slipped out of my hand. I chalked up much more for my fourth attempt and it came up easily. My mistake – I wasn’t thinking.

I was most surprised and pleased with my result on the Hub. I lifted just under 64 lbs. This wasn’t quite a PR for me, but it was my best result ever on the Hub I own, which I consider to be of average difficulty.

In the Silver Bullet, I was a bit disappointed with my result. I held the bullet for 22 seconds. I typically hold it for a bit longer. Two weeks ago in Anaheim I slightly injured my right middle finger (I think a sprain of some sort) and while it hasn’t affected many of my lifts, it has affected my ability to close grippers. So holding the Silver Bullet was a bit of a painful experience for me.

Once we were done with the multi-venue comp, we took a break for lunch and then we went into the 50-item Monster Medley. Five minutes to complete as many of the 50 feats as possible. 59-year-old Rick Blanchard was the first to accomplish the majority of the challenges – 35 of them to be precise. Not long after, Justin Major raised the mark to beat to 37. Next up was Dan, and he managed to complete 39 of the feats. It required considerable effort, but I was able to rack up a score of 43. I enjoy the long medleys, as they require endurance – something that isn’t often tested in grip contests. Five minutes seemed to be good amount of time to attempt 50 challenges. You had to move, but you had enough time to at least able to try everything you wanted to try. Only a few items were not lifted by anyone: the 45-lb plate by the hub, the 45-lb Blob, the 172-lb anvil by the horn, the Stacker with 35-lbs, the CoC #3, and the 100-lb plate using a key pinch. None of these feats are extremely difficult, but when part of a medley, you sometimes aren’t able to do all of the things you might normally be able to do.

After handing out the trophies for the medley, several of us hung out to try different challenges and do a bit of armwrestling. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the action at the other venues to wrap up and for the results to come in.

Once the scores were tabulated, the class winners were Dan in the 83 kg class, me in the 105 kg class, and Rob McMurren in the 105+ kg class. The 105+ was by far the most competitive – many of the placings were separated by a single point or less. Rick Blanchard won the masters division (50+ years) on tie-break (he was lighter than Gus Bush).

I was impressed by several competitors for different reasons:

Mike Murray, fresh off his CoC #3 certification, competed in his first grip sport contest and took second in the heavyweight class and fourth overall!

Rick Heidebrecht, a 6’7” almost 375+ lb armwrestler competed in his first grip sport contest and broke the Canadian record for the 2.5” Crusher with a lift of over 205 lbs!

69-year old Gus bush lifted 66+ lbs on the IronMind Hub! After the contest, he managed to lift 70 lbs!

I want to thank Jason and Rob for putting on this contest with me as well as all the competitors who took part!

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 Gus and his '5th attempt' with 70 pounds at 68 years of age!!

 

Edited by diomedes
Video fix
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