Mark Rippetoe in the US popularized what is known as the Crossfit Total.  It's a competition using the squat, the standing press and the deadlift.  A lot of folks who can't bench can still overhead press.  I'd like to see that combination of lifts as a virtual meet possibility.

There been a lot of controversy about judging the press but I personally believe it to be very simple: Do NOT permit bending of the knees under any circumstances.  They must be locked at the beginning of the  lift and remain so throughout the lift.  Anything else goes.

I like the idea of the overhead press from the shoulders as a single lift competition as well.  In this case, the bar should be cleaned to the shoulders beforehand.

Opinions?

[what if, say, you would put together that meet yourself?]

Wade, I couldn't agree more on all counts. A request for adding the Crossfit Total as an event was also suggested here back in 2007 and this is an option I've gently tossed around since.

The main reason this hasn't yet felt like the way to go is the similarity to regular powerlifting events. This only becomes an issue because the number of meets we can run in a year is limited by the number of active participants, the idea of having a solid offering of the staple meets (powerlifting, weightlifting and the bench press) and also my time. So I've preferred introducing weightlifting and the challenge meet idea to diversify a bit. Against that background, the overhead press as a single lift event would be my first choice would I have to choose. The overhead press is without doubt a staple in strength training (also from a historical point of view) and a lift the bench press in many ways cannot compete with. As a single event, the lift could be truly enjoyed by the most people, including those with knee or lower back pain.

In sum, the dilemma is one of balancing finite resources against the extremely appealing idea of being able to offer a real smorgasbord of events that would better represent the richness of iron culture out there. At the end of the day it would not only be a lot of fun, but also very motivating to be able to chalk up for a lot more than the usual. I also have a lot of respect for what the Crossfit community is doing and I would love to supplement the max lift events with balls-to-the-walls physical challenges. Bring on the kettlebells, the burpees, the old-school lifts... and for years I've dreamt of one day hosting a shotput event to shuffle the pack a bit. But back on mother Earth I always bump into the already mentioned limitations while still seeing the community wanting to do so much more than this.

Recently, prompted by an intriguing e-mail I got, a new path that could make this a reality has opened up. Namely: what if, say, you would put together that meet yourself? I give you the platform with your own page where you can set up the meet rules and discuss the event, video uploading, a judging interface customized to your requirements, automatic generation of final results... in return, you handle spreading the word, accepting lifters and arrange the judges. Under this vision, Virtualmeet could become a generic platform for the iron community where anyone could set up shop to stage their own events under their own rules and see if they can gather a following. That way nothing would stop the Crossfit community from using this platform to serve their needs or for the kettlebell community to start up their thing. With a central hub in place that would ultimately connect everything under on big umbrella, it would hopefully continue the trend of cross-pollination where people mingle and compete outside their own niche. Add to that support for communities in different languages and I think we would be looking at quite an interesting project that would definitively start a life of its own.

But frankly, this would also mean that you would see some fees enter the picture. I've said this many times before, but if Virtualmeet is to keep growing there is a point where I would no longer be willing to both put all of my free time into this and also pay for all the hosting, bandwidth and backup needs (which grow considerably due to video being such a central part of this). I see the current meets as a community service that will always be free. It shall never cost a dime to become a member and it shall never cost a dime to enter one of our standard meets. But if someone wants to do their own thing on this platform utilizing its bandwidth, storage, processing power and so on, they should also be willing to do their part in supporting it (barring of course the event that there are sponsors out there willing to take their place). I haven't done any math yet, but we're not talking about big sums here given a reasonable number of lifters (obviously, the more lifters, the more resources are consumed). It's also not a secret that I would love to be able to financially justify taking some leaves off my regular job to work on Virtualmeet (one full day a week would be pretty sweet). Obviously, that scenario already spells mild profit which while an ugly word at times is still how you best can continue to muster the needed resources year after year.

I won't go off further on a tangent, but against this backdrop my own answer would be something like: let's wait and see. Let me first deliver the new baby (Virtualmeet version 2) and we'll get back to the different alternatives of how we could go beyond what we're doing now. Meanwhile, I would be happy to hear any thoughts on the grand vision I presented here. The new platform will give a good headstart towards realizing it, but obviously there is still a LOT of work to be done if we're to go there and early feedback will help when it is decision time. One step at a time, but no harm looking at the beautiful rainbow at the horizon I say.

It's easy to forget that it's just you and maybe a few other folks working on the site code, the site being so awesome and full-featured.  I understand completely the resource restrictions and the need to earn a living and the limitations that imposes on the release cycle.  I just got excited about the possibilities for this venue. 

I don't think charging a fee for an expanded  comp list is unreasonable at all.  And it's likely such fees would still be more reasonable than what is charged for attending real-time meets.  And server space and power does eat up dough, however minimal.

I have no problem at all considering the idea of running a meet under the guidelines you propose.  It's definitely worth discussing.

I'm on a number of forums and already have a few people interested in attending the standard meets.  I'll ask around there and see what interest there is in further single lift and Xfit-type meets.  In one forum (power and bulk forum) there are a lot of people training the overhead press exclusively as their upper body push movement, and frequently lament the lack of competitions using that movement.  There may be some interest there for a medium such as this.   It's not too much of a stretch for them since many already video their lifts.

Additionally, I have some programming and web programming experience and exposure to PHP, java, javascript etc.  I'd be pleased if there was a use to which it could be put on the site.  I could do  maybe 8-10 hours a week.  I know it's not much, but my situation is much as yours: earning a living, family etc, etc.  Let me know if you think I could be of any use to you.

Exciting response.

First: if there turns out to be strong interest in an overhead press meet, then I would be more than willing to insert one in the meet schedule as a trial run. If so, late spring (May?) or whenever after that could work as I generally like to give people plenty of heads-up for any meet to give them time to plan their training around it. I'm also guessing that there would not be a problem finding people from the power and bulk forum interesting in looking over the rules and perhaps help out with the judging. If so, it would likely be a formula meet using Siff's bench press formula unless someone has a better idea. I'll sit back then and await feedback on arranging such a meet.

Secondly: 8-10 hours a week of coding help is a generous offer. After all, it equates to a regular work week a month when summed up. That is definitively help I could use. Not just in a technical "more hands" sense, but having someone else also get down and dirty thinking over how the site should/could work would be most fruitful. From a technical perspective, everything is also set for a team effort. There's a separation between development, staging and production environments, version control (both for the code and database changeset versioning), an internal project management environment... and a pretty clean and well-documented code base. The new site also has a decent set of developer tools that help make sense of what's going on under the hood in addition to having a clean separation between the model and web layers to allow the model layer to be independently testable with unit tests. Everything is 95% own code so we're basically talking about a custom framework. Hence there is also a lot of different opportunities there according to interest and time.

There's some practicalities etc. to consider, but here's a rough proposal. As getting you up to speed and getting us coordinated would take a decent amount of time, getting you onboard now would realistically speaking slow down development for version 2. As a general rule, adding people to a project leads to an initial significant extra workload before that person can get individually productive. Hence I suggest that I continue focusing fully on the version 2 milestone to finally make it happen. Once I'm ready for pre-release testing I would include you. This would mean that you would be able to first hammer the new site from the outside and get an idea of what it does. Then, if it still sounds like a great idea, you could hop aboard for the release and join me in the ensuing bug fixing and polishing phase. Bug fixing is generally speaking a great way to get acquainted with a system as you need to dive in and learn its dynamics while the code changes themselves will mostly be small (compare that to jumping in on a pre-release framework that is still seeing sweeping architectural refactorings...). If that works out then it would be small step to continue with actually planning and building new stuff and to see where that will eventually lead.

How does that sound? I regret that I am not able to give an accurate deadline on when the pre-release testing will begin but I'm pushing as hard as I can to make it happen soon(ish).

Agreed.  An extra set of hands close to release is not going to help and will - more likely than not - hinder you.  Let me know when or if you'd like me to jump aboard.