British Results

[Bill Piche]

PS: all arguments aside - do you like the photos??

I'd like to move these photos to an appropriate IG gallery in Contests. Not to go off topic...

[mobsterone]

Please do. Can I add more in the same way or do I send them to you. I took 90 on Saturday.

[gazza]

Steve

Very nice photos.

You have to be carefull that you dont encroach on the strongman scene asa that is already well covered.

A sunny beach,but would that not mean moveing the Brits to June,July,Aug to gaurantee the weather wich would then mean a rethink of the Europeans date.

I bet more average joe public would rather go and see people bending nails and bars thanlifting as this is already covered in weight lifting and strongman contests.

In a grip comp you are always going to have to have crush that means grippers or dyno,there aint really anything else to test it properly or a grip machine.

You also have to think what the athletes are going to want in there comp,not joe public,this would definately mean,grippers,pinch,i bet most would include bendind as well.

If you start changing the lifts too much,you will have more strongman type events and strongman types entering and ailienate the true grip people.

If the weather pisses down,at least at davids we could have carried on in his basement,the british weather is not gauranteed,also do a lot of people want to stand around on a hot beach waiting for there tern,this could sap alot of strength like in the worlds strongest man comp.

Once you start to include media coverage etc,they then start to want to take control of the event,not good,just look at the worlds strongest man comp.

Good idea,but i think weare trying to run before we walk.

I also think that trying to change the formula/events that david,mikael etc have already agreed which obviously took alot of time and effort ,plus the implements are now standardised is also inviting problems.

You moght say that i have no case for argument or critisism as i do not compete,which is fair enough,but if and when i do,i wil/would like to compete on a level playing field,not whats good for the media and sponsors,also i would like to get the,v-bar,pinch setup etc,then i could train equally and see how i measure up to people in europe etc,this we can already do to a certain extent with grippers and the challenge.ironmind bars etc.

just my 2 pennies worth.

[mobsterone]

All good. I did discuss with DH that we might see year one as a trial run and change ideas in year 2. I too do not want a typical strongman comp but that doesn't mean we cannot learn.

I hope Mikeal will be up for a chat come August and see if we can better discuss some more ideas ready for a sit down and get things rolling session come September/October this year in readiness for next years season.

[Mikael Siversson]

As I have said before, a lot of effort was put into getting the European Championship happening. What we have seen are steps towards standardised competitions in Europe and the US. There are an increasing number of similarities in the choice of events, the number of events and rules. Bending has is pretty much become a standard event and is here to stay. The kind of competitions you are aiming for are not what interests me and perhaps a majority of grip guys competing. I will organize grip competitions in Western Australia starting probably next year and they will include the five events used in the last Brittish and Swedish competitions and I believe Arthur and Nick want the Australian Championship to include these events as well. I can't see how you can be part of European championships in the future if you don't have the support of the competitors. You are up against some pretty stubborn individuals.

[mobsterone]

Mikeal - I'm not organizing the European - just the British. I hope u are about come August.

[3Crusher]

Was a hook grip allowed on the one hand lift?

[Mikael Siversson]

No, no hook grip allowed.

[Arne]

Mikeal - I'm not organizing the European - just the British. I hope u are about come August.

You mobsterone and all the other competitor are very very wellcome!!!!

[mobsterone]

No, no hook grip allowed.

Nor on the V bar either.

[mobsterone]

Mikeal - I'm not organizing the European - just the British. I hope u are about come August.

You mobsterone and all the other competitor are very very wellcome!!!!

The guys over at www.mickhart.com are putting together some funds to enable me to either come to Sweden or buy 2 pieces of equipment so that I can do my best. Right now it's at £120.00 (about $240.00)

[Mikael Siversson]

Congrats to young Jason by the way for a very impressive v-bar performance!

[AP]

Ok let me get into this one.

I think Steve is on to something with trying to draw larger crowds. Grip, like strongman, has a different feel than powerlifting (where essentially all lifts look the same to the observer) and a history that should be used to benefit the sport. I think standardizing and specializing too much can take away from the overall spirit of the sport which is to develop hand strength for any type of endeavor. Just like powerlifting no longer demonstrates the strongest (where is the overhead press, the curl, the clean?) having grip contests that are too specialized pushes competitors to work only those events.

Anyway, rotating events from year-to-year and contest-to-contest seems much more exciting. After all if you know what a competitor did on 5 events at the British, and you know what the competitors in the Europe can do why even have a contest, you can just place everyone based on past performance.

I don't really buy the 'small bar' argument either though. Grip needs to stay differentiated from strongman, if we have contests that are filled with too much of farmers walks and crucifix holds and axle presses then not only will grip not be unique anymore but it won't be testing enough of the variety that the human hand can accomplish like bending or tearing or grippers.

Besides, I think the nails bent in competition that are passed around the audience could give people the feel for how tough the events are.

And what other strength sport out there can offer souvenirs to the spectators?

Congrats to all! Dean Bolt is a great name for a grip competitor!

[Mikael Siversson]

After all if you know what a competitor did on 5 events at the British, and you know what the competitors in the Europe can do why even have a contest, you can just place everyone based on past performance.

Strange argument. Why is a large number of countries sending athlets to Athens only to compete in sports with fixed standards? Why not just look at the PR's of the various competitors and rank them accordingly. Competitors form vary significantly from one competition to another. One of the competitors in the LGC pulled a total of 285k in the v-bar only to come up with 245k five months later.

[mobsterone]

Athens is a poor example. I'll tell you why. It used to be the case that you had to qualify and for many athletes and countries it still is. However, they also sometimes select or allow a special choice based not on the qualifying time or event but on many other events preceding that one ie: that he/she may have had a bad day when trying to qualify but give an awesome performance at an event a week later for example. The Mr. Olympia has also had, for many years, at least one invite (Gunter didn't qualify 2 years ago and came 5th).

However, lets look at the v-bar performance of the aforementioned athlete. Anything over 200 kilos, as combined total of two hands and without a hook grip, is a good lift total. 220-kilos would make a nice qualifying total.

I do agree that most Strongman events, while now having a degree of standardization, are looking stale as they all seem to use the same events. But the very top level athletes do pull, carry etc huge numbers, they can easily qualify using such events and then still give a good performance when doing so-called tele-visual events at WSM. I will add, before Mikeal picks me up on it, that I do not want any events in grip to be WSM style events - we must stay different but can learn from them.

I'll concede the challenge bars as I like the idea of handing out the bent bars to the crowd (I did this at Seni by handing them over to kids and know that those here who can tear telephone directories have done the same - even been asked to sign them).

[Bill Piche]

Please do. Can I add more in the same way or do I send them to you. I took 90 on Saturday.

You should be able to add them at will.

Are the ones currently on your gallery?

I will set it up under contests.

[AP]

Strange argument. Why is a large number of countries sending athlets to Athens only to compete in sports with fixed standards? Why not just look at the PR's of the various competitors and rank them accordingly. Competitors form vary significantly from one competition to another. One of the competitors in the LGC pulled a total of 285k in the v-bar only to come up with 245k five months later.

No doubt that people in the US find the Olympic weightlifting championships to be boring because they will probably be set to air at 3 in the morning* despite the fact that we have, what, 20 chanels of sports programming now? In the meantime, WSM and WSM reruns are shown on an almost weekly basis and sometimes in quite decent time slots. Perhaps Olympic Lifting (and soon grip) is king in Europe due to its meticulous adherence to standardized rules but that does nothing to raise awareness of the sport here.

As for the wide varience of that one competitor, usually my pr weights in a particular lift stay fairly constant unless I have a long layoff. Perhaps this competitor foolishly wasted time training for non-event feats?

*And probably not aired in-full. Last time I think I was able to watch maybe 45minutes of weightlifting. I did catch almost an hour of wrestling though! I'm sure that olympics was an outlier, however, since Rulon Gardner won gold that year.

[mobsterone]

Please do. Can I add more in the same way or do I send them to you. I took 90 on Saturday.

You should be able to add them at will.

Are the ones currently on your gallery?

I will set it up under contests.

Ta. I've just added a few more inc the old ones. My v nice Fuji is great for these kind of shots. I have a bunch more to add but it takes a while to shrink 90 shots down and so will add only the v best.

[scottessery]

any more pics?

[Vince Basile]

Interesting comments regarding the direction of grip and hand strength contests.

First of all, congratulations to those who did well in the contest. I was interested in the results in the 2-hand pinch. I was wondering what widths various people used or did the apparatus remain around 2inches wide? Were the winners happy with 100 kg?

I think one issue that has been overlooked in grip contests would be to make each event a separate contest. Much like in the Olympic lifting where the two lifts are separate events but the total also counts. In this way various lifts could be important and not just the overall. I know this means more awards but I am sure just a ribbon would suffice so long as it meant something. Just something to consider so far as rewarding competitors and attracting more to compete. There is nothing wrong with specializing and this is one way to advance records. Those who do not want to do the quasi-strongman events can avoid those and concentrate on the events that are enjoyable to do.

There are ways to make this sport more visible. However, unless contests are promoted properly audiences will never show up. Somehow the events have to mean something to people. We used to have pinch grip or other contests during open days at the gym and we always had a lot of spectators. If events are novelty events a lot of people enter just for fun. This is, of course, vastly different from having specific contests for grip enthusiasts. Once everyone knows what some people are capable of in particular events they lose interest and do not compete. We have been running various strength events at the gym in Australia over the year. A couple of weeks ago this included the cone lift on the machine. Everyone had a go at that but at a time that suited them. So grip events can be successful and people will have a go. It just has to be fun to do so. Results were posted and everyone could see how they did compared to everyone else.

The two things that won't go away are the lack of any organization and standardised events and rules. It seems to me the organization has to come first. The sooner some organization is formed the better. Otherwise, it all comes down to one person's opinion vs another and no progress is possible. Saying this does not discount the progress made in Europe through the efforts of David and Mikael re the European championships. All I am adding is that I would not like to see many of those events as standards. I have my reasons and most of you know part of that.

I believe there are two sports being mixed when referring to grip sport. To me grip sport has to do with using the hand which involves using fingers and thumb together in various ways. Examples are grippers, pinch, hub, thick bar, cone, vertical bar. Other lifts require hand and forearm and general body strength. Examples are farmers hold, one-hand lifts, plate curls, reverse curl, wrist curl, various deadlifts. I see no need to mix these two areas but I know many feel just the opposite. I really can't see an easy solution here. It surely makes a big difference just exactly what is considered the events in grip contests.

Maybe the time is right to form an international grip organization? Good people we have been putting this off for way too long.

[Bill Piche]

I watched some of the feats with hands -- the grippers. It was worse than a power meet. Slow, boring, and using the gripper example to most people the way the grippers are done they look "easy" even though we know they are not at the upper levels.

At least in powerlifting, the spectators can relate to the amount of weight. They often relate it wrong, but close enough. Like "Wow, 700lbs is a lot to lift".

Compare to this: "Hey, he pinched 190lbs." To 99.999% of the people, they say...is that all? Ho hum.

If anyone thinks that grip is going to be some great spectator sport, don't hold your breath.

[CMunger]

I'll ditto Vince's comment about individual events... I've heard people say more than once "Yeah, I'm thinking about entering, but my bending/grippers/pinch isn't very good," or substitute whatever event it is that they feel they are lagging in. I would think that the appeal to competitors would broaden if the events were individual. Make it kind of like gymnastics or rodeo where there are Overall/All-Around Champions, but it's perfectly fine for someone to come in and compete in their specialty. And as Vince said, all it would take is a ribbon and recognition. Save the big prizes for the all-around if you want to, but I think generally we should focus more on event winners.

[Clay Edgin]

Ribbons and trophys don't mean anything.

[Vince Basile]

Whether prizes, medals, etc., are awarded for individual events isn't important. What is important is to have separate contests and winners for each event. Oh, we can look at the results and see who won what but that isn't the same as having individual winners.

Another advantage of having individual events is that results can be compared even if some years that event isn't in a championship. This would counter, to some extent, the various interests of those who put grip contests together regarding what events to include and exclude, equipment, rules, etc. I am not suggesting that some rig contests by putting in events that they are good at. However, few omit their pet events either!

I think the idea of having different events indicates that there is a lot of leeway regarding just what this sport is. Eventually we will have a direction and hopefully the sport will be purer than it is today. Purer is the sense of rewarding grip strength. I doubt whether bending is a pure grip event, impressive though it is.

Pinching on a pinch grip machine where the audience can see what is lifted and when a success happens does make it a good spectator event. Especially when people can come up and try the machine afterwards. It would be possible to build other machines that would test the various grip strengths such as squeezing. I believe then it would be a great event to watch. Especially if we can have a go on the machine and see what we can do.

[mobsterone]

I love Vince and his passion for our sport, I really do but if he mentions Pinch one more time I swear I'll...

We already get recognition for being specialist, even if it's only here. I have been mentioned 2 x recently in the last 2 issues of Iron Grip for my ability at thick bar but will now back up something David Horne told me a long time ago.

Basically I trained only on those lifts which I enjoyed - grippers and thick bar (dumbbells). I could do the CoC 3 and both the Inch and Millennium dumbbells. That was pretty much my training. I did a little work for the first IG I entered getting third (out of three mind) with only the plate curl of 20-kilos and weaver stick worth mentioning from that year. The following year I placed much lower with only the thick handled 3.5 inch dumbbell deadlift outstanding.

Last year with a special effort to get to world class levels across the board I managed 2nd winning 2 of the 5 events and getting nice numbers on 2 of the 3 remaining events (dyno was piss poor inspite of some work on the RB machine).

David Horne correctly told me a few years ago that in order to win grip competitions you need to work hard at getting to a decent level of all round grip strength. Look at what he can do, or now that he has almost retired, could do - other than his outstanding Pinch - one or two handed - he is not a world record holder in the rest of the events. He is, however, world class across the board.

It would not be my intention to use any of the so-called strength athletics type lifts but to use lifts that have appeared many times in grip strength competitions (see http://www.travellersjournal.com/applications/ukgrip/ for info - it does need updating and other competitions for references). If Andrew Christie and I run the event next year we will, I am sure, stick with the same five lifts as they are - for the time being. However, I will see if it is possible to have some of the 'bigger' lifts as exhibition lifts and I am willing to bet that the more visual the lift is the better it is understood 'that's damn heavy' while knowing that bent nails and torn telephone directories handed to the crowd will always be popular.