Virtualmeet.net

On 18-20 September 2009, Virtualmeet.net will hold it's first challenge meet. What is it you may ask? It's something out of the ordinary. It's playful. It's a meet like no other meet. And that's all we know about it at this stage. 

In a nutshell: we will organize a meet consisting of 3-6 lifts that are not part of our ordinary fare. No squats, no bench presses, no deadlifts, no snatches, no clean and jerks. Which lifts will be contested is up for you to choose. It can be any happy mixture of assistance exercises that are safe to go heavy on, any of the "odd lifts" (http://weightlifting.moonfruit.com/), grip work, bodyweight exercises... you name it. It doesn't necessarily need to be for singles either, it can be for reps, for... And it doesn't have to be the exercises you know you excel at... think CHALLENGE.

The only limitations are:

• The lifts must not require any specialty equipment beyond what you can reasonably expect to find in most gyms: While Rolling Thunders, log presses or kettlebell swings would be cool, we want to give everyone a chance to experience this meet.
• The lifts must be safe in a common-sense sort of way: Lifting heavy iron is never 1000% safe, but let's forget maxing out on good mornings, old-school leg presses (barbell resting on the feet), overhead plate throwing...
• The lifts must be judgeable and video tapeable: For example, it could be quite hard to judge an all-out wrist curl.

So please go ahead and suggest lifts below. Suggesting lifts does not imply that you must also compete. The final verdict on which lifts get selected will be based on popularity, balance between lifts (ideally the meet is a happy mix of max work, dynamic work, rep work... the meet should not favor powerlifters over weightlifters for example), safety and suitability for video based judging.

The deadline to suggest lifts is June 11th, one month from now. If needed, a short vote round will then be arranged to determine final lifts. After that a basic set of rules for the meet will be drawn up.

Questions? Also welcome below.

Very much looking forward to seeing where this will go. Will this become a Virtualmeet.net tradition? Or is it a total flop? You decide.

How intriguing! Hmmm, how about push-up variations - one-armed, perhaps? And/or pull-ups?

It's still early days, but yeah... we could do stuff like pull-ups or push-ups... but rest assured that we would then put in another exercise that put the heavier folk at an advantage to balance things out. :)

... very easy to do:

one-hand-deadlift ( n o   hookgrip) with the regular-bar.

rules: lifting to the knees. no lock out or hold needed. this is a grip-strength-discipline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmWotKCc1LI&feature=channel_page

A Turkish Get Up max is one of the hardest 1-rep max lifts ever.  We use it as a challenge lift around these parts fairly often. DB, BB, KB, sandbag, whatever ya got. 

I vote strict curl and overhead press.

One-arm-push-ups could be done in so many different ways, not easy to judge/compare. Don't like that.

Even normal push-ups are not easy to compare.

But why not a pull-up variation? For example one-rep max or repetition maximum with bodyweight, deadhanging and chin over the bar.

I like Walters idea of the one-arm deadlift.

Turkish get up is also a nice and challenging idea.

Strict curls are easy to cheat, overhead press is fine.


In my opinion we should find a good mixture of maximum strength exercises and metabolic work.

How about one-arm-snatch!? ;D

Second what Ramon stated. We would have to agree on how the pull ups are done e.g. from complete stop at bottom and maybe paused at the top (chin over the bar).
I'd throw in Front Squats (e.g. BW for reps or max) and/or hack squats as an idea. Maybe not overhead squats since those could be dangerous going for max weight or reps.
What about DB exercises: DB Bench Press, military press, Front Squat with DB, ...? Or walk for time with heavy DBs?

Yeah, one handed deadlifting sounds fun.

I still think that the strict curl is worth considering, as long as it is judged correctly. Indeed, many people routinely cheat when curling, so it would be interesting and challenging to the ego if nothing else.

A bit on on judging it here, plus a load more ideas.....:

http://www.oddlifts.com/lifts.html

Excellent suggestions so far everyone!

As a quick comment to the strict curl: there are indeed solid rules (http://www.apa-wpa.com/CurlRules.html) available for it as it is a competitive sport in its own right and judging should not be a problem if we roll with it. We actually had a strict curl meet scheduled for next week in the 2009 meet schedule proposal (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/meet-talk/253/0/) but it was removed in favor of this week's deadlift affair.

While not a good idea for the curl, we don't necessarily need to go for the strict version of all lifts. For example, we could go for all-you-can-eat push presses where you are allowed to use as much legs as you want to get the bar overhead instead of, say, a heels together ultra-strict press.

If it weren't both an equipment and space problem, I would personally love to put in a shot put or some kind of throwing event in here. More realistically, I also love Walter's idea of the one handed deadlift and I think Christian's idea of getting some dumbell work in there is a great one too. But it may be a bad idea to go for exercises that require really heavy dumbells as that would make it a no-go for many of our home gym participants, or what do you think?

And a suggestion of my own: the Jefferson lift (http://weightlifting.moonfruit.com/#/jeffersonlift/4511452295). Never tried it, but it's sort of been in the back of my mind for some time. If we go with front squats, I suggest ass to the grass style (eg. rock bottom)... perhaps for reps?

Keep it coming! :)

Just bumped into a German rule set for the cheating curl (http://www.rb-germany.com/CheatingCurlRules.html) by accident (English Google translate translation (http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rb-germany.com%2FCheatingCurlRules.html&sl=de&tl=en)). While I don't advocate that we add it, it was interesting to see that it is a contested lift.

Loved the google translation ;-)

I see that DBs would be a problem. I use a set of DBs that can hold anywhere from 5 to 50 kg a piece but obviously not everybody has these.
Front Squats ATG of course.
Once we settle on the lifts we should have a rule thread for each.

How about handstand press ups for reps?

More here: http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2009/05/tiger-bends-em-orlick.html

... strict curls are hard to fake, when you use this rules:

http://www.rb-germany.com/StrictCurlRules.html

there is an "internet-competition", hosted by thorsten moser (rb germany).

I like the idea of having something for reps in there.  I also like the turkish get up, I've been meaning to learn that one for a while and this would give some motivation.

The other one I thought would be fun would be a box jump for height, although I'm not sure if most people would have equipment for it.

http://weightlifting.moonfruit.com/#/teethlift/4511806489

Let's go

DB exercises are good. How's about DB clean and press? Obviosly it would depend on what equipment people have. One hand DL sounds good. Hows about somthing like the classic pull-over-and-push (slightly different to the pull-over-and-press):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akl5OnFkORI

Although this is a hard one for fatties like me.

Straddle lift?
One arm clean and jerk but using a 7' barbell?

Why not a floor-to-overhead lockout anyhow?
...load/unload?  Bodyweight BP for reps?

Reminder: The deadline to suggest lifts is this week's Thursday (June 11th). :)

After that I will make a proposition for what the meet could look like based on the suggestions.

Update: I will present a suggestion for how the meet could look on Wednesday for feedback. If anyone still has any last minute suggestion, feel free to enter them below.

A BIG THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO POSTED A SUGGESTION!

Here is my proposal for what the Challenge meet will look like.

For this meet, I want to put the focus on willpower and pure effort. To that end, I have selected fairly non-technical lifts where you either get the bar from start to finish, or you don't. This will be a clear departure from the usual fare where there is often, especially for the powerlifts, many aspects of the lift that need to be done correctly to get it accepted.

To take this line of thought further, I suggest that:

 - you can take as many attempts as you want on each lift (this shifts the focus from meet strategy to giving what you got and also allows you to come into the meet without carefully gauging maxes beforehand if you like). But the lifts have to be done in the stated order and you cannot go back for more attempts once you started the next lift. The maximum time for the meet is 3 hours.
 
 - the two best clips for each lift are sent in (since the rules are simple, you should be able to tell whether a lift was good or not easily, but a second clip gives us some margin here)
 
 - we will not put a big effort into scoring this meet. First, it is hard to do it in a fair way when bodyweights are involved. Second, the focus on this meet will be beating yourself and going all the way and beyond. Which of the lifts are impressive will be self-evident even without us attaching a precise score for each lift. Those lifts will definitively be highlighted.

I have erred on the side of being conservative in terms of equipment: all you need is a barbell and something to hang from. I would love to have some dumbell exercise in here (a clean would have been especially cool in my book), but since many of our participants lift at home, they may not have enough dumbell weight for this kind of stuff. I also erred on the side of not including lifts which require a lot of practice to learn (for example, while a Turkish get-up is a very good whole body challenge lift, it does take some practice to learn how to get up). I have also focused on mixing rep work with max weight work and have tried to focus on lifts that would not particularly favor weightlifters over powerlifters or vice versa. Here are my suggestions:   

1) full range front-squats for max reps (bodyweight for men, 2/3 for women?): hold the bar any way you like, as long as it is between chest level and chin level (however, no towels or aids like a Sting Ray are accepted). You need to go all the way down for each rep.

2) kneeling clean and press for max weight: I liked Tim's pullover and push suggestion, but in the end I think that particular lift is pretty technical in terms of learning the timing and could even be a bit dangerous if attempted for max weight without previous experience. But based on Tim's YouTube link, I found the kneeling clean and press which I found to be an interesting combination of an explosive movement and a very strict press. It will also give your legs a bit of rest after the squats, and your knees should be pretty well warmed up by then too... Alternatively, I would suggest going with Chris's suggestion of a floor-to-overhead lockout; how you get it there does not matter; you can drag, support, press etc. as much as you want.

: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKAHn-O0lMs

3) bodyweight chins for max reps (another popular suggestion): use any grip (wide, narrow, reversed, mixed... however, you cannot change grips in the middle of an attempt), but the chin needs to clear the bar for a repetition to be accepted. You can use momentum, but the feet need to be crossed and touching each other at all times and you need to return to a full hang (elbows not bent) between reps (I think this could be a good compromise between making this hard to judge and allowing unlimited momentum).
 
4) one-handed deadlift for max weight: this got much support and we definitively want one grip exercise in here; also easy to understand and judge.
 
So now it's feedback time! Do you think the general idea behind this meet is a good one? What about the lifts?

Feedback is welcome until Monday June 29th. Depending on your thoughts I will either present a new suggestion or make the final decision on what the meet will look like after that.

In my opinion great ideas, I'll be in for that one! For sure!

Sounds very good. And very challenging indeed.

This should be re-phrased as: a maximum of two clips can be sent in for each lift. On some lifts, at least the front squat max reps, many lifters will probably only do one hard set and sending in the two best attempts make little sense then. So: you can send in one or two attempts of your choosing.

This looks like a brilliant meet Chris. One question, what will the timeframe in which the lifts must be tried look like? All within 2 hours, 24 hours, a long weekend?

Well, I suggested 3 hours in my proposal, but I'm open to all suggestions. One part of me wants to cut it down to 2 hours to take some slacking time out of it, the other part of me thinks it's fine to have a nap in between and come back to push some more... Nothing says a long weekend couldn't work either, but I have a feeling most people would not, say, try a max front squat for reps two days in a row.

Cutting the meet time down is a challenge in the sense that it'll keep your sweat running, keeping it at three hours or more is a challenge in the sense that you can load up a bit and push harder on each exercise.

What do you folks think?

I would support either arrangement (a couple hours vs a couple days). Is there a fixed lift order? It seems like that could have an enormous on outcomes and safety. What counts as full range of motion on the front squat and how does a missed rep count, does it end your set or just come out of your totale, eg I do 30 reps but don't go deep enough on rep 17, do I get 16 or 29 or something else?

Yes, the suggestion is to do the lifts in the order given in the proposal. So front squat, kneeling clean and press, chins and one-handed deadlift. I figured that we would put the most demanding one first and to save the grip dependent one for last as to not affect the other lifts, notably the chin. I then put the kneeling clean and press after the squat with the rationale that your knees should be nice and warm by then. Do you think this order would work or would you prefer another order?


I suspect that most of us have a pretty good intuition of what a full rep looks like. I am not talking about maximum depth, eg. basically touching your calves to your buttocks, but about a rep that is way below parallel and one that looks like you couldn't go much deeper without blowing your knee caps off. To keep the judging in line with the relaxed rule set, I would basically leave it at that while providing some example video to make sure everyone is on the same page. But as a rule of thumb, the depth will not be gauged with a magnifying glass: if it's clearly way beyond parallel it ought to be enough. Anyway, video to follow.

I think the only fair way is to disqualify reps on a rep-by-rep basis. Using your example, that would mean that you would clock in at 29 reps if rep 17 is too high. This is also how the military bench for reps meet in August (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/technical-questions/308/0/) will be scored.

Good questions, we are again a few steps closer to clarifying what this meet will look like. Keep 'em coming folks. :)

The suggestion got good feedback, so it is now final. The challenge meet thus consists of the following lifts:

1) full range front-squats for max reps
2) kneeling clean and press for max weight
3) bodyweight chins for max reps
4) one-handed deadlift for max weight

See this thread above for some more detail. The rules and video example of proper depth on the front squat will come in July after the smoke has cleared from the gathering. :)

All and any questions welcome. And no, it's not too early to start working on these lifts...

Just to double check for the rules on the one hand deadlift: Concerning judging we will go with the rules that Walter stated and is used in the Grip championships. Is this the common understanding? I think these rules make sense and are used in grip competitions so I would favor these.
I am only bringing it up because there is more than 1 way to do 1 hand deadlift (suitcase DL, ...).

I found I have 1 issue with the chin ups. I do not have a chin up bar available so I place the bar on the highest position in the rack. In order to avoid touching the floor on going down I cannot have the legs together at bottom position but have to have them apart. Would that constitute a problem?

Sorry for not spelling it out clearer before, but this is definitively intended to be a grip challenge. So that's the way we do it. Thanks for double checking. :)


I just re-read the rules for the chin. They do not require you to keep your legs straight down, only that you cross them. Are you able to cross the legs bent (eg. knee joint at about 90 degrees with one leg over the other behind you)?

Regarding chins: it will be a close call. I will to think of something to raise the bar higher.

Is the rack bolted to the floor? Otherwise you could perhaps put some plates underneath it if feasible?

If you can't come up with a working solution we can probably let you go with your current set up: as long as you don't use the floor to your advantage and go all the way down for each rep you should be good. If anything, having to mind your feet all the time will probably make the chin harder rather than easier anyway... After all, the point of this meet is to have a good sweaty time and not worrying about complex rules.

Anyone else having trouble setting up their chin?

The sign-up is now open! (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/meet-talk/321/0/)  :)

Any suggested camera angle for the chin-ups?  does it matter which side we shoot from?

Good question! The judges need to see the whole body (to see that the feet stay together and that nobody is jumping off the floor :D) AND that the chin clears the bar. In principle, even shooting from behind would probably work, but in the interest of seeing the chin better a side or front angle that looks reasonably clear is probably better. We haven't had any meets with chins yet so it remains to be seen what an ideal angle is. But for this meet, whatever allows the judges to see what they need will work.

Good luck in the meet! Not many participants, but this is going to be quite an interesting experience nonetheless. Hats off for those brave and healthy enough to give this a shot. :)

Everything should now be uploaded.

It was a beautiful day in Elkford, It was raining over night but cleared up in the morning and was a super fall day by the afternoon.  It'll probably be the last chance I have to get outside to lift this summer.

-I cut weight for the meet.  First weigh in was 85.2 and I wanted to to get it down to 85 for the squats.  Started moving stuff into the truck and came back to weigh in again once I was loaded.  Made it!
-I was a little lazy hauling out the weights, I left behind my squat stand and the collars and the 25kg plates.  Turns out the collars and 25kg plates would have been useful for the one handed lift.  I lifted everything I took out then had to call it a day.
-Had some tape in the truck that I used to make some makeshift collars with the newspaper taped to the bar.
-Forgot to take off my sweats for the front squats so had to do them a second time.

Overall, was a great day and lots of fun!

Hey Jeff, thanks for the meta info! For the rest of you, you're going to love seeing the clips for this meet...

I will try to get the meet to the judges tomorrow Wednesday. We are still one judge short provided I again hop in, if nobody volunteers I will be knocking on some doors again. :)

The meet is now with the judges. Måns Rinne (http://virtualmeet.net/mansrinne/) graciously stepped in as the third judge so we are all set. As usual, the judges have one week to complete the judging.

Stay tuned!

The meet has been judged. Meet release scheduled for late tomorrow Wednesday. :)

Sorry for the delay. For both technical and presentation reasons, this is taking a bit longer than my original estimate. New push tomorrow Friday, let's see if we can sail this puppy to shore. A meet like this is really an eye opener in terms of meeting the challenges of organizing meets that neither fit neatly into my scripts and database schemas nor into the relative strength formulas.

Jeff, love the new avatar. :)

Ok, the meet has been released! (http://virtualmeet.net/meets/200909cm/)

As you will see, the meet lifts have been left to stand on their own merits as there is no clear-cut way of scoring the lifts in a fair manner. Both guys did an excellent job, especially as they pioneered the event and had no idea what kind of lifts the other guy was going for... it doesn't take an elite lifter to see that many of these lifts were pretty impressive. Great stuff, good job both of you!

Please note that the meet statistics will be updated during the weekend. As this meet is completely unconventional, the stats will need to be updated by hand.

Warm thanks to Christian Burger (http://virtualmeet.net/burgerc/) and Måns Rinne (http://virtualmeet.net/mansrinne/) for helping me judge this meet.

Jeff and Ramon: what did you think of this meet? Something you would do again?

Wow, nice Chins Ramon!  I really need to work on my kipping technique to get a nice smooth rhythm like yours.

I enjoyed the meet, it was fun to try something different.  The exercises selected were chosen well, the two that I hadn't tried before weren't that difficult to pick up with an attempt or two.

I can see how this sort of meet creates a whole lot of work for yourself Kris as everything needs to be done by hand.  Would it have taken you all weekend if there were a dozen lifters in this thing?

Done manually all the way, definitively. For this meet, as for the military bench for reps meet, the judging was done old-school (e-mail) as opposed to using the web interface. So I need to do everything by hand beginning with converting and resizing the source video, manually inputting the three judging calls for each lift into the database, handcoding each lift into the results page and add it to the video playlist. Obviously, this does not scale well...

If there had been many more lifters signing up, I would instead have spent a few nights letting my scripts (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/technical-questions/245/0/) know about lifts that are judged for reps and where each rep receives its own call from the judges, about lifts where there are no external weights that need to be validated and converted between kilograms and pounds (eg. the chins), about how to generate filenames for unknown lifts etc. With the scripts in place, things scale. Since the judging calls land in the database immediately and all video conversion, image generation etc. is fully automated, the tasks needed to roll out a meet are the same whether the meet has one or a thousand lifters. Copy a few files there, update a page here, create a meet image for the video player... So for any of our standard meets, it is of no consequence how many lifters enroll (unless a lot of video comes in with a video codec that my scripts can't handle in case of which I need to download the raw video, convert it to Flash video and upload it back up).

A web based meet system that will take the last pains away is on the horizon, but at the moment I am putting all the extra time I have into creating the new version 2 site to get solid ground to build the new meet system on top of; the current site is pretty much a heavily customized version of a third party forum software that has been forcefully integrated with lifter home pages etc. whereas the new system has been coded from scratch with this project in mind.

In the long run, having a truly fully automated system is obviously the only way to go. After organizing a meet a month for most of 2009, I notice that I am starting to less and less look forward to doing all the gymnastics and I am more prone to splitting the process up over two nights rather than the classic "release at 5am" model I've usually followed (which is pretty much a necessity having two young kids deserving their share of daddy time). Do a bunch of these and it will start to feel more and more like work and less like an exciting journey. But I am dead serious about getting the site up to the next level, so that's where we are going one coding night at a time. In the meantime, I appreciate your patience.  :)

Sorry for the long post, I guess I could talk about the technical side of Virtualmeet for a few more pages but enough is enough.  ;)

I certainly appreciate the efforts, I've done a little web scripting and can imagine the complexity of getting this whole thing working.

So, if you've got everything pretty much automated for the regular meets then I'm not creating headaches for you if I go out and do promoting on some other forums I frequent?

On the contrary, any help in spreading the word is more than welcome. :)

I see it as my business to ensure that we can handle whatever number of lifters sign up. For regular meets the limit is basically what the current server can handle (which is a lot). The current record to date is 24 lifters for the March 2009 powerlifting meet (http://virtualmeet.net/meets/200903pl), let's see when that breaks.

Congrats to the lifters on getting the job done. I found the pull ups on the baskeball court remarkable. Ramon on the other hand looked like he would go on forever with pull ups and front squats. I hope that I won't catch the flu again right before the next challenge meet. It looked like both competitors had a great time.