Standardizing The Hammer Event

[Bob Lipinski]

From everything I have seen, looks like Chris's setup went good at CGC. You guys paused at the bottom? Was that to prevent bounce?

In the future, I am going to either use Chris's setup, or just modify mine to get the ROM the same. To anyone who has it handy, could you get some measurments for me? Specifically-

1. How high the bottom of the hammer head is when at the bottom of the ROM.

2. How far from hand edge of the platform this point is.

At MGC, I believe my ROM was a bit deeper. However, I did not have anyone pause- My depth marker was "soft". Without using both setups, that is the only thing I prefer about mine. Mine was a jury rigged piece of junk compared to Chris's!

[jpmmkrahling]

Bob,

Here is my link to my last sledge attempt at CGC 2010. You can see that the goal was to stop the bounce at the bottom that gives an advantage for the upward momentum. Coming down that slow really made it ALOT harder. It is still a judges call, but there were a couple of people that had attempts that were rejected.

No matter what you will still need someone to judge attempts, but this is as close as i think we can get this event and still keep it safe with the wide rails.

[climber511]

Bob - Brent has my sledge setup from the contest - he will be getting it back to me before long. When he does I will take some good measurements for you and send them along.

[rico300zx]

Bob

For judging Mike was concerned about:

1. not lifting the elbow

2. not bouncing the hammer back. It was also ok to totally stop as well, but im not sure about stopping and resting since nobody did that.

3. It was ok if you touched the rails. For a millisecond was ok, but not in a fashion that you were doing a skateboard grind all the way up or down.

4. NO going backwards like in a bench meet.

Mike who was the head judge deemed the lift ok or not. that to me seemed to be the rules im not sure if i missed anything or not.

oh also for the gals, do a test run because the loadable handle was getting caught up in the frame. This was not counted against the lifter though and they were allowed to redo the lever once height of the table and arm positioning was done.

also the rail system must be over you shoulder or you might get poked in the eye or mouth from the metal portion of the stop. however warm ups will help u position yourself so you get a feel for it.

oh and remember to tighten up the weights......or be ready to have some ice on hand

rico

[barbe705]

I wonder if it would be possible to mount the extra weight from the top front edge of the hammer instead of the middle of the front face. that would solve the weights catching on the rails issue. It would change the center of gravity slightly BUT, since it would be on top we could use 10# plates and minimize the change.

I think that the turn around point was about the same on both setups. you could have really rested at the bottom of chris's but, that would only hurt you. like rico said, no one really let up at the bottom. the only difference is that some bounce was possible with chris's setup, zero chance of that with the mgc setup. again though, if the judge is watching and calling it there's a pretty slim chance of getting away with much in the way of a bounce.

[jpmmkrahling]

I wonder if it would be possible to mount the extra weight from the top front edge of the hammer instead of the middle of the front face. that would solve the weights catching on the rails issue. It would change the center of gravity slightly BUT, since it would be on top we could use 10# plates and minimize the change.

I think that the turn around point was about the same on both setups. you could have really rested at the bottom of chris's but, that would only hurt you. like rico said, no one really let up at the bottom. the only difference is that some bounce was possible with chris's setup, zero chance of that with the mgc setup. again though, if the judge is watching and calling it there's a pretty slim chance of getting away with much in the way of a bounce.

That would also make it a more realistic weight(adding to the top). Personally i like that idea for the realistic part, and also the part where it does not ride the rails. I think i was able to do more weight because it was all in the front compared to my practice at home where i put it on the sides & front.

[Bob Lipinski]

Looking at that video, I think Chris's setup would be better with a "soft" stop at the bottom. The measuring stick at the MGC was a protractor, so there was next to zero resistance.

[rico300zx]

I really think the only way to truly keep the weight from changing the length of the handle and further displace it one way or another is to only add to either side. But that might make it jam up again. Brents idea would solve that prob. MikeK's hammer does top and sides (see his avatar) honestly all are hard when you are near your max. I'm sure we all agree about that. Perhaps just pick what is safest in the end. I just wish we had someone really good in physics to help out though. Ill see if I can't find someone at the college to give me any ideas about weight placement on the hammer.

Rico

[Guest Bullitt]

oh and remember to tighten up the weights......or be ready to have some ice on hand

rico

I still have two nice lumps on my mellon. I so wish someone would have caught that on video.

[Bob Lipinski]

Here is the full MGC hammer video-

http://www.youtube.com/user/blobertobloberto#p/a/u/0/_OqlJ_okYIE

We did not judge strict on raising the arm- Platform height takes care of that for the most part. If people don't think that is strict enough, this would be easy to change, you can just set the platform so that no arm movement is possible- That is what I did at gripmas, and will do again at the next one. Only two attempts I would have red lighted for raising the arm- One of double jointed Zach, and one where Jeff Flynn hopped up on his toes a little.

Again, any comments/criticism welcome.

[Bob Lipinski]

The one problem I saw with the CGC setup was that since Chris's platform did not fit the rack, the ROM was not standardized between competitors. If the box position changed, you could easily gain or lose a few inches of ROM.

I think after ironing out a few wrinkles, we can come up with a very consistent event across different contests, regardless of access to Chris's device. So, what I think is needed to standardize the hammer event-

1. Fixed ROM. The measuring device cannot move in relation to the platform.

2. A "soft" bottom, eliminating any judging of bounce.

3. A fixed raised arm standard. Realistically, if you have a fixed platform, raising the arm will not affect ROM. However, with an adjustable platform you can also raise the height so that arm raising is almost impossible.

Also, a criticism about my event- I allowed bottom loading. I did not do this for myself because I know it helps.