Virtualmeet.net

All and everything concerning the 13-15 November 2009 Powerlifting meet is warmly welcomed in here.

Click here to sign-up! (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/meet-talk/330/0/)

The meet sign-up has closed. All lifters should have received further instructions per e-mail. If not, please contact me kris@virtualmeet.net ASAP. Again, if anything is unclear, please ask here.

The final line-up can be seen here (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/meet-talk/330/msg2469/#msg2469). Good luck everyone, looking forward to this. :)

Catalyst/Barbell Betty lifters: note that you can apply for an extended upload time if you think you might want longer time than the standard 24 hours post-meet to get the clips uploaded. This is typically a good idea if one person handles the video for all of you. If so, just let me know, preferably before the meet so I can keep everyone updated on how the meet is progressing. :)

The same applies to anyone with a shaky internet connection.

Will it be all right if I lift on friday instead of sunday?  My wife will be my camera woman and she will be out of town sunday.

Technically speaking, you cannot change the meet date this close to the meet (see this post (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/technical-questions/45/msg1896/#msg1896) for the current policy).

Practically speaking, this is one of those thorny questions that keep popping up. On the one hand, this rule is there to force lifters to just do or die come meet day (after all, for official meets you also need to show up when the meet begins or you're out). On the other, it can make life hard for lifters like you who may need to switch the date due to sudden circumstances. As you clearly fall into the latter category, I would hate to make life hard for you.

So yes, you can change the date.  :)

More discussion on this topic is warmly welcomed. Should we just abolish this rule altogether and allow lifters to lift at any time Friday through Sunday for ultimate flexibility? After all, that is one of the benefits the virtual format CAN provide over official meets.

I know a guy who compete in IPF federation in the 110 kg class and he was suppose to lift on sunday but he do the lifts saturday whit 82.5kg class because he was busy sunday, so I don't see why he could not change hes date and I know from an old weight lifter that you can lift before but not after cause after you will know what the others have done and if you lift before they will know what you have done... so not that I care but I think its fair when he has the privilege to do the meet early the others should know his results I think thats fair (but I really don't care).

I want to ask if there is a problem of the video don't have sound  because I have camera 5megamixels whit no sound and cellphone whit 1.3 megapixels whit sound? I can ask a friend for a camera of there is a problem.

I know when you shoot the squat, the face of the lifter must be in focus ... but in the gym its easyer to shoot in the mirror so is it ok to shoot it that  way?

I would be for abolishing this rule - you might tweak something on the Friday but feel fine on the Sunday. As long as they can provide a paper from the meet period it shouldn't matter. I'm not that much stronger today than I was 3 days ago.

Numbers are a little low these days - making the meets as accessible as possible could benefit those with awkward schedules.

As a side note, have you tried contacting dormant lifters who've previously participated, to ask why they no longer compete?

Good example. But my point here is not really about changing lifting days, you can do that under our rules if done no later than Monday meet week.  It's rather about doing so close to the meet. Even if some meet directors may be able to accommodate such a request, in the vast majority of cases lifters will know that, say, Sunday 10am is show time. Even if you got a bad stomach or whatever at that time, you are under the bar or out. Being ready when you need to be is part of the game. In the real world, the schedule also tends to break slightly or severely which also adds its own dimension.

For official meets there must obviously be a time set for each weight class. With judging done after the meet and everyone lifting in their own gyms, we do not require one. For us, this rule serves no other purpose than forcing lifters to adapt to circumstances similar to an official meet (albeit with more wiggling room since you only have to name the day). And from that follows the question whether this rule really is worth it? I used to think so, but I find myself silently cursing this rule every time I see it become an obstacle to an otherwise good meet experience. So frankly, I would tend to go with Warren and just get rid of it. Meet time would be Friday to Sunday your local time, the paper just has to be from one of those days (but doesn't have to be from the same day... great suggestion there Warren!). Agreed?


No problem there. Sound is always nice to have both for those watching the meet and the judges, but it is not required. As the rules put it:

10. Capturing sound is preferable if the equipment supports it, but not required.


No mirror shooting please. While it is perfectly possible that this can work well in some settings, there are potentially many things that can wrong here including light reflections, not being able to properly fill up the majority of the frame with the lifter etc.

One of the biggest challenges is to make sure that the video that comes in from the lifters is actually objectively speaking good enough to judge based on (and the judges do turn down clips that don't make the cut). If we allow shooting mirror reflections instead of the lifter directly we are in for trouble long-term. We want strict judging and for that we need good clips.

Having to squat the other way around than usual due to this rule is actually quite common since most gym racks have the hooks facing the mirror by default. With this also sometimes comes the realization that one has become conditioned to judge depth or form by checking the mirror. That habit is good to get rid of.


That's for sure. But if you're cutting weight for a meet timing is everything. Most don't bother here though since there are no weight classes (I did cut some 4 kilos for one meet though... an interesting but not very pleasant experience).


No, I haven't. But I have thought about doing a poll in the near future to get some broad feedback and sounds like a question along these lines would be a great idea, thanks. :)

But I've come to realize that it's quite hard to define who is dormant in Virtualmeet terms. I've been positively surprised on many occasions to see a lifter whom I haven't heard from in well over a year return to the stage. There is a vast number of different people doing these meets for different reasons. There is a core group who do many a year, but there are also many lifters who do roughly one meet a year or somewhat less (sometimes due to suffering a back or shoulder injury which take some time to heal, sometime because they also compete officially... the reasons are many here too). And from all the private conversations I have with members here I could right now name a few who have their eyes set on a meet more than half a year from now. And there's also a bunch of members who have signed up for the site, but who are yet training for their first meet.

Another way of looking at this issue is how many lifters come back for more. Counting judged meets, 49 lifters have currently "only" done one meet. About 30 of these lifters have competed as part of a school or university sports team involved in sports not related to weightlifting or powerlifting. These are the kind of people who often do a virtualmeet as a one-time common team challenge with their coaches setting this meet as a motivational milestone for a strength training period. Out of these 49, 3 are active judges with at least three judged meets behind them. So a rough estimate is that there's about 15 strength enthusiasts who for one reason or another have not come back for more as a lifter or judge. A few are probably planning to.

20 lifters have done 2 meets, 18 lifters 3-4 meets and 8 lifters 5-7 meets. So roughly half of the lifters have so far come back for more. If we leave out those who likely did a meet as a one-time challenge, the percentage of lifters who have returned to lift or judge is then around a whopping 75%. In terms of recency, 27 of these lifters were on the platform within the last year. 

So my own analysis is that we don't have a problem retaining lifters. Based on stats and feedback, those who compete are quite happy with how things are ran and they tend to stick around. Seeing how Virtualmeet is fueling the fire for so many flesh and blood lifters around the world is basically what keeps me motivated to invest so much of my time into pushing this project forward. The concept definitively works.

Our biggest problem is in attracting new lifters. Part of the reason is that the threshold to compete for the first time is rather high (I'd be rich if I had a penny from everyone who said they loved the concept and might do a meet one day, but who never got that far); but this is how it should be as using real names, requiring clear face shots etc. keeps this real and clean. But it's a most telling stat that after March 2009, there's only been four new first timers over eight meets. This is an historical low, and something I partially blame on having focused so hard on coding the new version over being out here. But as nobody can fail to have noticed by now, I'm back in the driving seat. This weekend's meet is also looking very interesting in terms of the sheer number of first timers (in addition to the ladies from the same gym, there's also 5 other first timers... this effectively takes the 2009 stats out of its tailspin).

To sum up, I think the way forward is to get the next version out the door and to focus more on being out there in the iron community at large versus just squatting in here (pardon the pun). The recent push into Twitter and Facebook is a first step in this direction. I will also be setting up proper feeds and widgets to make it easy to embed meet results, own lifts etc. on third party sites for those who are interested in that. But first things first, I keep saying I wish there were more hours in a day, but as long as Virtualmeet is a one-man team handling everything the turnaround is not always what one would hope. But as long as I have your support I'll keep pushing this forward at whatever pace I can.

Long post. As usual I would value any feedback or counter arguments anyone may have. This is turning into one of the more interesting meet discussion threads so far... ;D

I had a last minute change in my schedule. Can I please lift on Friday November 13th instead of Saturday?

Melissa, yes you can do that as per the discussion above.

Have a great meet! :)

Sorry for the stupid questions but do I have to upload the clips here by using "browse" or some where else

Valentin, I would call that a very good question. :) You should have received an e-mail to the address you registered with here with instructions and passwords on Tuesday. Please check your inbox and junk folder, if it's not there let me know and I'll PM you the details. I would do it right away if I wasn't outside, it takes a bit of gymnastics to do this on the mobile phone.

Hope you had a good meet. :)

 ;D
That was a blast!!

Like the sound of that... can't wait to see the action.  ;D

The meet went better than expected. Judges willing I might be able to top my meet result from the gathering. Although on the deadlifts I was clearly missing the cheering from everybody at Kris' place.

I hope a lot of PRs were set last weekend and am looking forward to the videos.

Update from the server: 17 lifters now seem fully uploaded or are almost done. So far 4 lifters have asked to confirm their upload, but presumably we'll be at that stage with the lot in just a bit. Unless something unexpected turns up, we should have this with the judges very late GMT time Tuesday or Wednesday. The good part is that we will have the show on the road without having to find any outstanding judges.

Stay tuned and thanks a lot already know to everyone who took part. Looks like we're in for an interesting meet in many ways.

<dances from foot to foot, looking nervous> I eagerly await the outcome.

I am still missing the lifter info files for a bunch of lifters so I am as of yet unable to push this to the judges. I've sent off an e-mail to check on the situation, will update as soon as I know more. Sorry for the delay.

Update: the outstanding lifter info files will start dropping in later today. Due to the time zone difference, that means that I can start preparing the meet for the judges about this time tomorrow. Stay tuned. :)

Unfortunately, this meet will be delayed further. I got most of the outstanding lifter info about an hour ago, but am still missing the info for one lifter. As it is now nearly 2am, I am calling it a day and will retry again tomorrow evening GMT time. Thanks for your patience.

Ok, the meet is now with the judges. They are each facing 157 attempts and have the usual seven days from today (Monday November 30th) to finish the judging. You can keep track of progress in the box above the forums. Thanks to the judges in advance. :)

Update: Alberto, who is currently stationed with the Navy in Djibouti, has been set up for offline judging with downloaded video and an Excel sheet after issues with the firewall and network speed made use of the judging interface (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/technical-questions/245/0/) impossible. After he is done, he will e-mail me the spreadsheet and I will insert his calls into the database. This means two things: 1) his judging is not reflected in the progress meter above the forum and 2) if he needs more time to complete this he shall have it. Handling almost 160 video clips manually is a whole different affair than using the web based judging interface, thanks in advance to Alberto for putting in the extra effort. :)

The judging deadline is tomorrow which ideally means the meet could be pushed out the normal Tuesday or Wednesday (only a week behind the original schedule due to earlier mentioned delays in getting all the needed material from all participants). Alberto and Måns have both submitted their calls, so the meet is now 66% done. The counter only says 33% of course since Alberto had to do his judging offline.

I haven't gotten a status update from our third judge yet though. I should know more tomorrow.

The judging was completed some 12 hours ago. I'll start the meet release process today, but as I still need to import Alberto's calls into the database manually I don't expect to finish in one evening. So expect the meet out on Tuesday or Wednesday. Update to follow.

Thanks to all judges!

As seen previously seen on Facebook and Twitter... THE MEET RESULTS ARE OUT! (http://virtualmeet.net/meets/200911pl/)

As you can see if you take a peek at the rankings (http://virtualmeet.net/rankings/), there was some stellar lifting that really made a splash there.

On the flip side, several attempts were turned down because of lacking video (squats filmed from behind are REALLY hard to judge and explicitly advised against in the rules, on the bench we really need to see the feet too...) and some due to bad attire (long pants, gloves, towels behind belts...). As stressed in the upload instructions sent to the lifters and the meet checklist (http://virtualmeet.net/docs/meet_checklist.pdf): please take extra care to get familiar with the recommended videotaping angles in the rules (http://virtualmeet.net/meets/rules/) AND try out the angles before the meet. I realize that we still have work to do to make this info more accessible, but at this stage of the game there is little excuse not to have read the rules before doing a meet. ;)

With all its ups and downs, another good effort by all involved. Extra thanks goes out to judge Alberto Caraballo for not hesitating to take his judging manual with an Excel sheet instead of the judging interface after bumping into both local bandwidth and firewall issues.

Let the discussion begin. :)

Sending out thanks to the judges for their effort in viewing all our videos and a big thanks to the site providers for giving us a convenient venue in which to compete.

Looking forward to February's Deadlift Meet.

I had a question on one of the terms used on the failed lifts for some of the other lifters:

What does "no_judge" mean?  I didn't see it defined in the judgement definitions...

Good observation Wade! I will add it to the explanations tomorrow.

This is the call for the following scenario described in the rules (http://virtualmeet.net/meets/rules):


So besides PASS and FAIL, a judge can also call CANNOT JUDGE if he is of the opinion that he cannot fairly judge the lift (see the judging interface thread (http://virtualmeet.net/community/forum/technical-questions/245/0/) for a screenshot).

This situation typically occurs when

• key bodyparts are not seen in the video (e.g., you cannot tell if the feet stayed put during a bench press if they are not in the clip)
• key bodyparts are visually obstructed (e.g., in some attempts in this meet, the crease of the hip was obstructed by the rack making it really hard to assess depth)
• the video quality is too low to make sense of
• the videotaping angle is so bad that you cannot with reasonable certainty make a call (the squat is especially vulnerable to this, for example filming a squat from a high position makes it very hard to assess depth even if you can see the top of the knee and the hip crease well... hence the recommendation to film from knee level).

Even if the video is bad, the judges do have the option of calling the lift if they are reasonable sure they can make an informed decision. This is most common if the lift is bad. For example, if the lifter had an inadequate pause on the bench it doesn't really matter that we don't know whether he also slid all over the place with his feet or not as we only need to see one fault not all of them.

Of course, the only way to ensure that we can keep judging strict is to be able to judge in the first place, otherwise this will degenerate quickly. I encourage judges to turn down a lift when they think the video does not cut it rather than taking a guess. Lifters who bomb out due to this (which is never fun) tend to learn quickly and come back with stellar clips.

The bottom line is that it pays off to read the videotaping instructions, try out the angles before beginning the meet and to always keep in mind this section from the videotaping section of the rules:


Did this clear it up? Questions are warmly welcome as are thoughts and constructive criticism.

It does indeed.  Thanks for the comprehensive explanation.

Is it a good idea to video the plates on the bar to the confirm the posted weight for the judges?

In general, I like the idea. If you look at old meets, you will see that there are many lifters who do this even though it is not required.

That said, I think it could prove more hassle than it's worth, as it requires moving the camera close to the weights then resetting it to properly film the attempt in the same clip. This is not an issue if you have an assistant, but for those lifting alone it would not be as easy and could lead to bad clips as they don't have much opportunity to ensure that the camera is back at the correct angle. It would also make each attempt much longer, so for those watching a full meet it's probably nicer to cut right into the action instead (tangentially, it would also increase bandwidth and storage costs for the video as I suspect they would nearly double in length from this practice).

Finally, I would also argue that we can do without introducing another way of bombing out, eg. forgetting to film the weights.

So while I really like this practice, I think we're better off not requiring it. There will always be ways of cheating and while making it harder to fake the weight, it wouldn't be terribly hard to put in a pair of fake plates in there that would be really hard to spot on video. Eventually, we will probably see some rotten apple enter the barrel, but that won't spoil the fun for the majority of us pushing our records forward.

That's my .02 cents. What do you think?

Good to see so many female lifters from such a wide age range.

I don't think filming the plates up close is really necessary. The people who sign up to these meets are in it for their own PBs. If someone feels they need to fake weights to cheat virtual meets, they really ought to take a good hard look at themselves.

Nice job everyone! Thanks Kris for providing the platform and so much of your spare time.

I am glad to get a little better average than in the summer. The 500 + raw is still on my new years resolution for next year. Upping the bench and sinking the squat deeper are there too. :-)

It is great to see that we have a lot of female lifters and such a good variety of lifters.

I'd have to agree that it looks like a good idea on the face of it, but that it's just too much hassle on the judges to be worthwhile. 

Hey - what would you think of splitting out the men's and women's lifts?  I like to cut to the competitive action first (that is - folks I'm competing against) and then watch the women compete.  Others might feel similarly?

Just give me some time to roll out version 2 of the site, we can then make the meets filterable so you can watch them mixed up, by gender or even by weight class. The same will go for the rankings so you can drill down. I don't see weight classes as becoming a part of the meets, but this kind of traditional view could be nice eventhough final results are determined by relative strength score.

Right now, the meet results are generated in one go by a series of scripts and altering the output would mean having to regenerate all of them, so splitting them up now is not feasible. But once the data is generated on demand the sky is the limit to how we can present the meets. This kind of flexibility is also needed if we are to be able to scale to really big meets. Most people probably would not like to watch a meet consisting of, say, 2000 attempts but would rather go for something like master's weight class X. The current implementation also gets into trouble with the meet player if the playlist gets too large. This will be fixed in the same swoop.

Just wanted to say thanks again Kris and thanks to the judges for all your hard work.  After reading some of Kris' posts in this discussion, I appreciate even more all the hard work and time and effort you're putting into this.  I love the site.  Thank you!!

Much appreciated Lindy, thanks. Motivated lifters, motivated site administrator. :)

Just took a look at the squats from Chris Fahs. Awesome form and very strong execution. Nice job on the first 600+ kg total, too.

How do you train the squat?