I guess you people in Finland must be busy rounding up all the reindeer and getting them trained and ready for the big event on Dec. 24. That's why the judging is taking so long.

TNT

All Finn, Swedish, Norsk and etc. "northern men" get drafted in the Army of Santas Sanctuary(ASS). 

Here's how it works: when you turn 18, you get drafted and undergo2 years of Santa and/or Elf training depending on their height(if h>=180cm,then consc:=santa,else consc:=elf). In the Santa's Unbelivebale Center of Kupioo(SUCK) they learn how to grow a beard, how to grow a belly, how to give orders to the elves, and generally - whatever you learn in officer school. The Elf Academies of Tundrisg, Manehole and Espoo train men how to become shorter, have more pointy ears, assemble toys and package gifts. In case of an elf shortage, the Emperor of The Northern Countries - Primal Santa - declares war state and women are also drafted. Women are only drafted to Elf School, but since they are quite tall(sometimes more than 3 meters!) they usually have to cut their legs at the knees. Mind the previouse sentance! Women cut their legs themselves, because serving the ASS is a privilege, and all those who fail to enter(due to asthma, flat feet or having a BMI lower than 35 for SUCK) are deprived of all their christmas gifts for the rest of their lives, and usually commit suicide in no more than 2 christmases.

What did I drink last night?

Judging has been completed on schedule. We are set for a weekend release of the meet results. As usual, I will send out an e-mail when the results are out. Thanks to Matt and Ryan for your bit!

Thomas and Tsvetan: some of the details in your accounts are slightly off, but you have no idea how right you are...

All Finn, Swedish, Norsk and etc. "northern men" get drafted in the Army of Santas Sanctuary(ASS). 

Here's how it works: when you turn 18, you get drafted and undergo2 years of Santa and/or Elf training depending on their height(if h>=180cm,then consc:=santa,else consc:=elf). In the Santa's Unbelivebale Center of Kupioo(SUCK) they learn how to grow a beard, how to grow a belly, how to give orders to the elves, and generally - whatever you learn in officer school. The Elf Academies of Tundrisg, Manehole and Espoo train men how to become shorter, have more pointy ears, assemble toys and package gifts. In case of an elf shortage, the Emperor of The Northern Countries - Primal Santa - declares war state and women are also drafted. Women are only drafted to Elf School, but since they are quite tall(sometimes more than 3 meters!) they usually have to cut their legs at the knees. Mind the previouse sentance! Women cut their legs themselves, because serving the ASS is a privilege, and all those who fail to enter(due to asthma, flat feet or having a BMI lower than 35 for SUCK) are deprived of all their christmas gifts for the rest of their lives, and usually commit suicide in no more than 2 christmases.

What did I drink last night?

Whatever you drank last night......can you send me a couple of bottles to sample?
I would like to get the sole distribution rights for Canada. That stuff sounds like just the thing to gets us through our long winters and our Federal elections, at the same time maintaining a sense of humour.

TNT

Water here is like 50% alchochocholochol...Sorry 'bout that: just drank a glass.

I can excange Bulgarian rakia(a strong alchochocholic beaverage...sorry - dran another cup of tap water...) for moose meat(a strong anabolic compound) any time!



P.S. one of these days(or years) I'll go to Canada to check out Charles Poliquin and do an anabolic cycle of moose meat and lard.

PPS. Did you know that Canada is the new Mexico? With the new low-carb trend, Mexico's steroid fame is declining. People from the USA used to go to Mexico, take a few shots of tequila, take a few shots of test, eat a burrito and a dish of mexican rice and go back to their homes. Now...They go to Canada, eat moose and polar bear and get the same anabolic advantage, without the extra fat and drug test danger. On the drug test you just state "I went to canada, and they must have slipped something in my food...like moose in my hot-dog!" The jury states "Inadvertent use" and you are free to enter any competition and win.

[Make sure the whole lifter is visible for the duration of the lift:]

The meet results have been released. This meet truly had its up and downs.

On the downside, 9 out of the 17 lifters bombed out of the meet. Many of the submitted clips were not shot in a way that would have allowed the judges to give a fair call (or a call at all in cases where large parts of the lifter was out of picture). I keep reminding lifters to use the checklist and to especially read the section of the rules related to how to video the lifts. It's not hard, but it does require a bit of thought and a test video clip or two (especially on the squat to make sure that the depth is not blocked by the rack). See the rules for the details, but basically:

- Make sure the whole lifter is visible for the duration of the lift: for example, on the squat, depth is just one part of the ruling; we also need to see the feet, the bar etc. to make sure the lift is clean. We also had a few bench presses where the video cut off at the knee which makes it hard to tell whether the feet stayed put or not.

 - Keep the camera steady: Clips where both the lifter and the camera moves are really hard to judge. Ideally, put the camera on a steady surface or use a tripod. If shooting on free-hand, do your best to keep the camera as steady as possible during the lift.

 - Don't use baggy and/or long shorts: A couple of lifters wore very borderline shorts that could have been grounds for disqualification altogether. Baggy and long shorts are especially problematic when trying to gauge depth on the squat.

 - Ensure adequate light: although not disqualified, there very a few clips where we could have really used some more light.

 - Pay close attention to the recommended video angles, especially on the squat. These can be found in the rules.

On the positive side, many of the lifters who bombed out still got in a lift or two for the rankings. For example, Anthony Bevilacqua annihilated the squat record (with his opener at that!) and Anna Cappelli posted a huge deadlift  that put her in second slot on the women's rankings. Personally, I was also very impressed by the strength and form of the UOIT Varsity Rowing team. If you lift like that, you must row like machines. Brian Long also keeps coming back stronger and stronger; he also posted the biggest total of the day. The Bulgarians also seemed to have a ball with an attitude! Good job everyone!! For the details, see the meet results.

The passed lifts are of course only the tip of an iceberg. If those who had a bad camera day get their angles together for the next one, we will see some more lids blowing off. 

Almost forgot: very cool T-shirt Anthony! 

[nojudge]

Hi guys,

Thanks evetyone for the meet, judging, etc ...
I'm just looking at the results, I have a question regarding rulings given by each judge for a given lift. On some lifts I can see something looking like this:

1:good 2:failed(insufficient_pause) 3: nojudge

What does "nojudge" stands for?

Thanks,
Alex

Folks; thanks to the judges.  I apologize to my lifters; the camera work was done in an attempt to help the judges with joint angles, and I missed the section about keeping the camera steady.  Completely my fault.  I'm kicking myself!

[probably]

What does "nojudge" stands for?

No judge is the call used when the judge is of the opinion that (s)he can't give a fair ruling based on the video (i.e. for the clause in the rules that says it is at the judges discretion to turn down a lift when the video details are too lacking to allow for an accurate and fair ruling). Obviously, judging based on a single video angle has its limitations and the judges should do their best to judge a lift even if it doesn't comply with the recommendations given in the rules. But if the lighting is so bad that you can't tell what's what, you can't see essential body parts, there is something obstructing the hip joint on the squat or such, it is obvious that calling a lift like that white or red is just a wild guess.

Thinking that a lift is probably good doesn't cut it if people are to take us seriously (being official or unofficial has nothing to do with this kind of credibility), so I'm all for being strict in terms of what we accept. That said, it would probably be a good idea to post some photo or video examples of what's good and what's not to help both the lifters and the judges keep a consistent line although I do think that the rules are quite clear on this point. I actually shot plenty of video footage for this purpose, but editing it will take plenty of time.

Folks; thanks to the judges.  I apologize to my lifters; the camera work was done in an attempt to help the judges with joint angles, and I missed the section about keeping the camera steady.  Completely my fault.  I'm kicking myself!

Chris, I appreciate the effort, it was a good thought. Indeed most of the time, the depth is what people are looking at in the squat (and the most usual case for why a lift is red lighted next to failing a lift), but we've also had cases of bar rolls, stepping etc. So we need to see the full monty. Otherwise it would be unfair to all those who've had their lifts called for such things that we cannot reasonable call because we can't see them.

But there's always more meets and your lifters sure got some strong stuff...

As a quick addendum, I should also add that if there is a clear fault in a video that otherwise is lacking (for example, no pause on a bench attempt on a video that only shows the upper body), a judge can call the fault instead of passing no judge. Either way is correct as a bad lift is always a bad lift even if you can't see all of it. Not sure if we should favor either way, both have their merits.

Also, a blank light should be shown for no judge calls as they do not take a stance on whether the lift actually was good or not.

Any thoughts or ideas on this is more than welcome.

Thanks Kris; we'll be back again.  I appreciate the need for consistency.  In fact, the following weekend, I participated in a meet (sanctioned) where, because of time considerations, none of the 198s got to take their third squat attempts!  Unbelievable.  Anyway, thanks again for all your work, and I'll get better by next time.

One more thing regarding the nojudge call: I noticed some fairly odd nojudge calls for lifts which couldn't get much better from a video standpoint (like Alexander's deadlifts). I ran a query on the database and noticed that we have 24 nojudge calls from judge 1 (Matt), 18 from judge 2 (me) and 72 from judge 3 (Ryan). I called lifts I would have passed as nojudge with a fault if it was very clear, so the numbers for Matt and me stack up quite closely. With this large a discrepancy, I think there may be some misunderstanding or possibly technical glitch with the video streaming going on here.

Having thought about this for a bit, I think I should add a checkbox to the judging interface that the judges can use if there are technical issues (like the video not showing or jamming). Up until now, I've always verified that each video is working before passing the meet to the judges, but since this is run with Flash and JavaScript there may be browser specific and/or version issues that we need to know about if they happen. Then, if lifts like this are present, I would fix them and the judges could go back to judge them separately. As the meets grow and we work harder on getting the meets out faster, I won't be able to review all clips before releasing them anyway so we need a mechanism like this.

In the same vain, there could also be a checkbox and comment field that can be used if the judge thinks there may be something fishy with the lift (fake plates, wrong uploaded clip...). Stuff like this should be resolved by the meet director in direct contact with the lifter (eg. by me until such a time that other's step into this role too).

Again, as of yet, I don't know if the nojudge calls are due to technical issues or something else, but anomalies such as these are very valuable in making our service more robust and predictable.

Ok, looking at the specifics, I noticed that all of the judge 3 calls went to the same eight lifters who had ALL their attempts called with this. Looking closer at the lifts, I can see a case for passing this call for many of them if we consider the videotaping recommendation that "the camera should be placed so that the lifter fills up most of the screen without violating rule 5." (rule 5 being "The lifter AND the barbell must be fully visible for the whole duration of the lift (unracking to racking)"). Obviously, many of the lifts fail rule 5, others are shot at quite far away (the Bulgarian crew's squats). Personally, I find the video quality quite good on the far away ones, but it would indeed be much better to get a bit closer (but not too close...).

But enough speculation, Ryan or I will get back with the lowdown. In the end, this is why powerlifting has three judges. Each of us is human and our interpretation of the same lift will vary. Ryan also has extensive real world judging experience and is an elite lifter, but obviously this call does not exist as such outside virtual powerlifting so this has little to do with judging skills and more with praxis. Having a discussion about this will benefit us all in helping make the interpretation of the judging criteria clearer. It may seem clear on paper, but once faced with a tricky video clip there is no objective way of saying where the border between an acceptable clip and an unacceptable clip goes.

I was able to watch all clips.

For the most part if I couldn't see the feet, or the barbell was not in full view, or the lifter was not in full view, I put it down as a no-judge.

Everyone did an outstanding job though, regardless of the outcome.