2021 Michigan Steel Bending and Breaking Championships: The Extra Innings Edition

[Tom Flesher]

There are two important events that occur in early- to mid-May every year: @Donc101's annual bending competition and my wedding anniversary on May 19. In one of them, I get to celebrate one of the most important ongoing influences of my life, praising the flexibility and strength required to continue making progress over all these years.

In the other I celebrate my wife still putting up with my crap.

Training: I've been doing a lot of direct strongman work and competed on April 24. As we approached that comp, I was primarily training the event movements (car deadlift, Atlas stones, keg and sandbag carries, farmer's walk, and overhead). I tried to make sure to get one or two solid bending sessions in to keep the groove greased.

It was very helpful that Don made it clear early on that the double overhand and double underhand events would use double wraps, so I switched to training those styles only in doubles. Reverse is my worst bending style, but I got some good DU advice from @KapMan and saw some pretty good jumps on it with a few key pointers. @acromegamanprovided me with some IronGrip bars to train on (including several he'd very kindly pre-kinked well off center). Going in, I focused on making sure that my shoulders were flexible, since in the past I've had occasional trouble getting open to kink. Don's double wraps allowed one set of IMPs and one set of leathers, so I got comfortable using IMPs and @Horrido wraps as my combination. Crush pads were allowed but I didn't train them despite having a nice set that I made using Jan's water-forming method. I just never got to the point where it felt they'd make a difference. Going in, I crushed a 160kg Iron Grip bar DO (prekinked), but it took a lot out of me; I'd done a grade 5 bolt (from my hardware store) DU to about 25 degrees; and I'd wobbled a grade 5 reverse. All of these bars would be chosen at the contest.

With braced bending, we'd choose ahead of time. My training sessions have primarily been triplets of 3/4-5/8-1/2 stock. In the past I've bent 3/4x40 but I stayed around 44 for these sessions. I was concerned because I'd had trouble recently at 5/8x24, but I'd gotten down to missing 1/2x13 by only a hair. The events would be long bar, mid bar, and short bar - I chose the hardest bar available at every level (3/4x40, 5/8x25, and 3/8x9). I'd never gone quite that short at 3/8 so I ordered some HRS and got comfortable bending at 10" and then 9".

The medley was going to be a good spot to score a few key points - there was a braced bend of a short bar, a horseshoe, a standing snap, a one IMP bend, a scroll, and four of the evil oval nail snaps. When Don asked for our ideas as to what we'd choose, I selected a gold nail for the braced bend, a Kerckheart SX7 #2, blue nail in one IMP, and a red nail for the snap. I spent a lot of time training the oval nails because they really slowed me down in the previous contest; loosely, I had a strategy that I'd do one event and then an oval nail so I'd stay a little bit fresh. In the weeks before the contest I'd gotten an SX7 #2 to about 120 degrees, and I was assuming that comp adrenaline would get me over the edge.

Travel: I got into Detroit Friday midday and immediately headed out to the highly recommended Griffin Claw Brewery, and then had dinner at the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery. Don was very helpful in suggesting spots to eat and his family was endlessly hospitable all weekend. My Airbnb was walkable from several fun places including an excellent coffee house and an awesome seafood bar where there were some really fantastic West Coast oysters.

Contest: I arrived and met all of the competitors, many I'd known from before and some for the first time. Chris Stillwell, one of the Michigan benders, allowed me to use his "mace" (a gas pipe with a shot put welded on) to open up my shoulders since I hadn't been able to pack my loadable mace.

DO: Always a crapshoot for me, so I opened at a 130k bar. The Russian ratings are a bit off, but as a rule of thumb Don suggested that the normal Krahling system rating would be around 3x the Russian system, plus a little. This was 5/16 cold rolled and went quickly. The jump options were 140 (9/32 square), 145 (5/16 round), and 150 (5/16 hex). I might have gotten the hex, but this early in the contest I was concerned about damaging my skin too badly so I went to the friendly round bar and smashed it good.

The other events all include only one attempt, with two mulligans available to drop to a lower bar.

Reverse: Single wraps on this. I grabbed a 166kg (David Horne) grade 5 bolt and surprisingly bent it to the full 40 degrees with the allotted time. Feeling pretty good, I made a split second decision on my DU bar. (PR)

DU: I've never bent a grade 8 DU, but I did today. I took it to about 25 degrees in the allotted time. (PR)

After the unbraced round, Don was in first with 3 points, with @PITTisKING 2nd with 9, @Buccos1 3rd with 13, and me 4th with 14. @Rogo was back at 8th with 21 points, but becomes highly relevant later on. At this point I texted my wife to let her know I had a good comp so far and was 4th but probably wouldn't factor into the podium.

Long bar: Don finished in 30 seconds, and Michael Rogowski finished just shy of a minute and a half. I got this one in 3/4x40 in 2:43, 10 seconds ahead of Carl.

Mid bar: The same crew (Don, Mike, Carl, me) all did 5/8x25, which was finished in 14 seconds by Don, 21 by Mike, and 33 by me. As the last guy in the flight, Carl dropped his partial bend, since this is a very tough length and he had nothing to gain by finishing it but would risk injury and lose energy.

Short bar: Six people signed up for the 3/8x9 HRS bend, so the flights were a bit different here. Don warned us that when he was testing the steel this was "a bit rowdy," so he allowed double wraps and changed the rules to score partial bends. This one took Don 27 seconds, which is a true testament to the difficulty of the bar; Chris Stillwell, who is an experienced ju-jitsu player with a lot of odd angle strength, really shined on this and finished in 31 seconds for 2nd place points in this event. Carl essentially finished the bar (it was 2 1/16", a finished bend was 2"), Mike and I tied at getting the bar to 25 degrees, and Gary got it to 6.

After this round, Don was in first with 6 points, Carl and I were tied for 2nd with 24, and Chris and Mike tied with 29 (I think this is correct but I'm a bit fuzzy and I apologize if I missed something).

Medley: The final flight for the medley was Don, me, Carl, Mike, and Chris. Since none of us had used our mulligans, Don extended the rules to allow us to use (only) one this round if we started a piece and couldn't finish it. I adjusted my attempts: instead of the gold nail for the double pad braced bend, I decided to bend a Red instead, and I stepped my snap down to a grade 5 bolt. I left my shoe at the SX7 #2 (without the mulligan rule I'd have dropped this down to an Ultra Lite #2, and in fact I had Don pull this shoe for me since I knew it was going to be what I would use any mulligan on) and my 1 IMP bend at the blue nail. I was playing this very conservatively based on the 25 minute time limit.

Carl chose the hardest shoe (a Lite Rim #2), a Gold for the braced bend (which I think he mulliganed to a Red), a blue for 1 IMP (same as me), and a grade 5 for the snap (again, same as me). Adding this up, I said to myself at this point that I'd conceded the medley and would not factor into the podium.

During the medley, I came up with a strategy to win that involved shouting "Carl, look! It's Bruno Sammartino!" This didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.

I started my medley run with the braced snap of a grade 5 bolt, which is an event I've done a million times for Steel Shredder contests. I could do it lying on my back. (Pause for laughter from other benders.) That snapped quickly and I promptly forgot my oval nail strategy and went straight to the scroll. Like all the male competitors, I double fish scrolled this 1/2x48", although I got special brownie points for having the ugliest scroll of the day (mine was more three dimensional than most). I went to the double pad braced bend next, again completely losing track of the oval nails. I tried to knee kink the Red and then just threw caution to the wind and kinked it DO before quickly thigh crushing it. I started the SX-7 and felt my right oblique start to cramp to I quickly grabbed my mulligan shoe and it bent like a paper clip. I don't remember when I did the blue nail, but it went very quickly because I'd trained for the pain tolerance. With a few minutes left, I went into the one thing I didn't want to do: all four oval nails in a row. I ended up getting 3 and was working on the 4th as time ran out. I started the 4th nail with about 2 minutes left, which would have been enough if I were fresh but I couldn't manage it.

Without remembering the point totals, I looked over and mentally added up Carl's total as more than mine, then went over to grab a beer from the cooler. Much better finish than the previous year.

When Don added the points up, though, Carl and I had scored exactly the same on the medley.

We were tied, and according to the rules, the tiebreaker was .... the medley.

Since there was only one third place trophy, Don asked if we wanted to sudden death it. I said yes, as long as Carl and I weren't the ones to choose the event (since he was better at unbraced and I edged him on braced). Someone suggested a lying snap of a blue nail, and it was on. (This was a great decision because Carl and I had both snapped the same thing in the medley and lying snaps weren't otherwise contested.) Here's the video:

 

I was extremely fortunate and pleased to take home the third place trophy here. Carl is an incredible bender and if you'd suggested on the way to the comp that I would get be close to his score I'd have rolled my eyes.

Afterward, Don fed us some incredible bbq pork, homemade mac and cheese, and the largest bowl of coleslaw I've ever seen. The food was uniformly excellent.

This competition was a ton of fun and I'm very proud of the improvement I've made over the past two years. To balance out the self-promotion, here's a photo Chris Stillwell sent me as I was writing.

 

[Tom Flesher]

6 minutes ago, Tom Flesher said:

There are two important events that occur in early- to mid-May every year: @Donc101's annual bending competition and my wedding anniversary on May 19. In one of them, I get to celebrate one of the most important ongoing influences of my life, praising the flexibility and strength required to continue making progress over all these years.

In the other I celebrate my wife still putting up with my crap.

Training: I've been doing a lot of direct strongman work and competed on April 24. As we approached that comp, I was primarily training the event movements (car deadlift, Atlas stones, keg and sandbag carries, farmer's walk, and overhead). I tried to make sure to get one or two solid bending sessions in to keep the groove greased.

It was very helpful that Don made it clear early on that the double overhand and double underhand events would use double wraps, so I switched to training those styles only in doubles. Reverse is my worst bending style, but I got some good DU advice from @KapMan and saw some pretty good jumps on it with a few key pointers. @acromegamanprovided me with some IronGrip bars to train on (including several he'd very kindly pre-kinked well off center). Going in, I focused on making sure that my shoulders were flexible, since in the past I've had occasional trouble getting open to kink. Don's double wraps allowed one set of IMPs and one set of leathers, so I got comfortable using IMPs and @Horrido wraps as my combination. Crush pads were allowed but I didn't train them despite having a nice set that I made using Jan's water-forming method. I just never got to the point where it felt they'd make a difference. Going in, I crushed a 160kg Iron Grip bar DO (prekinked), but it took a lot out of me; I'd done a grade 5 bolt (from my hardware store) DU to about 25 degrees; and I'd wobbled a grade 5 reverse. All of these bars would be chosen at the contest.

With braced bending, we'd choose ahead of time. My training sessions have primarily been triplets of 3/4-5/8-1/2 stock. In the past I've bent 3/4x40 but I stayed around 44 for these sessions. I was concerned because I'd had trouble recently at 5/8x24, but I'd gotten down to missing 1/2x13 by only a hair. The events would be long bar, mid bar, and short bar - I chose the hardest bar available at every level (3/4x40, 5/8x25, and 3/8x9). I'd never gone quite that short at 3/8 so I ordered some HRS and got comfortable bending at 10" and then 9".

The medley was going to be a good spot to score a few key points - there was a braced bend of a short bar, a horseshoe, a standing snap, a one IMP bend, a scroll, and four of the evil oval nail snaps. When Don asked for our ideas as to what we'd choose, I selected a gold nail for the braced bend, a Kerckheart SX7 #2, blue nail in one IMP, and a red nail for the snap. I spent a lot of time training the oval nails because they really slowed me down in the previous contest; loosely, I had a strategy that I'd do one event and then an oval nail so I'd stay a little bit fresh. In the weeks before the contest I'd gotten an SX7 #2 to about 120 degrees, and I was assuming that comp adrenaline would get me over the edge.

Travel: I got into Detroit Friday midday and immediately headed out to the highly recommended Griffin Claw Brewery, and then had dinner at the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery. Don was very helpful in suggesting spots to eat and his family was endlessly hospitable all weekend. My Airbnb was walkable from several fun places including an excellent coffee house and an awesome seafood bar where there were some really fantastic West Coast oysters.

Contest: I arrived and met all of the competitors, many I'd known from before and some for the first time. Chris Stillwell, one of the Michigan benders, allowed me to use his "mace" (a gas pipe with a shot put welded on) to open up my shoulders since I hadn't been able to pack my loadable mace.

DO: Always a crapshoot for me, so I opened at a 130k bar. The Russian ratings are a bit off, but as a rule of thumb Don suggested that the normal Krahling system rating would be around 3x the Russian system, plus a little. This was 5/16 cold rolled and went quickly. The jump options were 140 (9/32 square), 145 (5/16 round), and 150 (5/16 hex). I might have gotten the hex, but this early in the contest I was concerned about damaging my skin too badly so I went to the friendly round bar and smashed it good.

The other events all include only one attempt, with two mulligans available to drop to a lower bar.

Reverse: Single wraps on this. I grabbed a 166kg (David Horne) grade 5 bolt and surprisingly bent it to the full 40 degrees with the allotted time. Feeling pretty good, I made a split second decision on my DU bar. (PR)

DU: I've never bent a grade 8 DU, but I did today. I took it to about 25 degrees in the allotted time. (PR)

After the unbraced round, Don was in first with 3 points, with @PITTisKING 2nd with 9, @Buccos1 3rd with 13, and me 4th with 14. @Rogo was back at 8th with 21 points, but becomes highly relevant later on. At this point I texted my wife to let her know I had a good comp so far and was 4th but probably wouldn't factor into the podium.

Long bar: Don finished in 30 seconds, and Michael Rogowski finished just shy of a minute and a half. I got this one in 3/4x40 in 2:43, 10 seconds ahead of Carl.

Mid bar: The same crew (Don, Mike, Carl, me) all did 5/8x25, which was finished in 14 seconds by Don, 21 by Mike, and 33 by me. As the last guy in the flight, Carl dropped his partial bend, since this is a very tough length and he had nothing to gain by finishing it but would risk injury and lose energy.

Short bar: Six people signed up for the 3/8x9 HRS bend, so the flights were a bit different here. Don warned us that when he was testing the steel this was "a bit rowdy," so he allowed double wraps and changed the rules to score partial bends. This one took Don 27 seconds, which is a true testament to the difficulty of the bar; Chris Stillwell, who is an experienced ju-jitsu player with a lot of odd angle strength, really shined on this and finished in 31 seconds for 2nd place points in this event. Carl essentially finished the bar (it was 2 1/16", a finished bend was 2"), Mike and I tied at getting the bar to 25 degrees, and Gary got it to 6.

After this round, Don was in first with 6 points, Carl and I were tied for 2nd with 24, and Chris and Mike tied with 29 (I think this is correct but I'm a bit fuzzy and I apologize if I missed something).

Medley: The final flight for the medley was Don, me, Carl, Mike, and Chris. Since none of us had used our mulligans, Don extended the rules to allow us to use (only) one this round if we started a piece and couldn't finish it. I adjusted my attempts: instead of the gold nail for the double pad braced bend, I decided to bend a Red instead, and I stepped my snap down to a grade 5 bolt. I left my shoe at the SX7 #2 (without the mulligan rule I'd have dropped this down to an Ultra Lite #2, and in fact I had Don pull this shoe for me since I knew it was going to be what I would use any mulligan on) and my 1 IMP bend at the blue nail. I was playing this very conservatively based on the 25 minute time limit.

Carl chose the hardest shoe (a Lite Rim #2), a Gold for the braced bend (which I think he mulliganed to a Red), a blue for 1 IMP (same as me), and a grade 5 for the snap (again, same as me). Adding this up, I said to myself at this point that I'd conceded the medley and would not factor into the podium.

During the medley, I came up with a strategy to win that involved shouting "Carl, look! It's Bruno Sammartino!" This didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.

I started my medley run with the braced snap of a grade 5 bolt, which is an event I've done a million times for Steel Shredder contests. I could do it lying on my back. (Pause for laughter from other benders.) That snapped quickly and I promptly forgot my oval nail strategy and went straight to the scroll. Like all the male competitors, I double fish scrolled this 1/2x48", although I got special brownie points for having the ugliest scroll of the day (mine was more three dimensional than most). I went to the double pad braced bend next, again completely losing track of the oval nails. I tried to knee kink the Red and then just threw caution to the wind and kinked it DO before quickly thigh crushing it. I started the SX-7 and felt my right oblique start to cramp to I quickly grabbed my mulligan shoe and it bent like a paper clip. I don't remember when I did the blue nail, but it went very quickly because I'd trained for the pain tolerance. With a few minutes left, I went into the one thing I didn't want to do: all four oval nails in a row. I ended up getting 3 and was working on the 4th as time ran out. I started the 4th nail with about 2 minutes left, which would have been enough if I were fresh but I couldn't manage it.

Without remembering the point totals, I looked over and mentally added up Carl's total as more than mine, then went over to grab a beer from the cooler. Much better finish than the previous year.

When Don added the points up, though, Carl and I had scored exactly the same on the medley.

We were tied, and according to the rules, the tiebreaker was .... the medley.

Since there was only one third place trophy, Don asked if we wanted to sudden death it. I said yes, as long as Carl and I weren't the ones to choose the event (since he was better at unbraced and I edged him on braced). Someone suggested a lying snap of a blue nail, and it was on. (This was a great decision because Carl and I had both snapped the same thing in the medley and lying snaps weren't otherwise contested.) Here's the video:

 

I was extremely fortunate and pleased to take home the third place trophy here. Carl is an incredible bender and if you'd suggested on the way to the comp that I would get be close to his score I'd have rolled my eyes.

Afterward, Don fed us some incredible bbq pork, homemade mac and cheese, and the largest bowl of coleslaw I've ever seen. The food was uniformly excellent.

This competition was a ton of fun and I'm very proud of the improvement I've made over the past two years. To balance out the self-promotion, here's a photo Chris Stillwell sent me as I was writing.

 

 

[Donc101]

Great write up Tom! You bent awesome all day. Congrats!

[Horrido]

Great write up and congrats to your effort, Tom!

[Buccos1]

Excellent write-up Tom and all-around fantastic effort at the comp!