Indeed. Looks like a good way to put a lot of emphasis on the rear delts while hitting the back in a very dynamic way. I’m planning on getting a pair of blast straps for the summer, definitively going to give it a go… definitively have been neglecting the rear delts of late. Could perhaps try the pulley version before then though. Thanks for bringing this potential gem to our attention!

How’s your lifts coming for the virtual meet?

Posted by: Kris | January 28, 2007 4:45 AM

The virtual meet project has already evolved into something I see as a permanent affair, so it’s definitively going to be at least biannual.

Ultimately, the frequency of meets will depend a lot on how easy it will be to find judges and people other than myself to volunteer as video editors and such. If there is the people for it, I would not object to offering a meet every two months or so regardless of whether I will lift in them myself or not. I will put up a poll after the first meet, but tentatively I see something like a deadlift only, perhaps also a parallel bench meet, scheduled for late May. The next full meet would be in August/September or so.

Posted by: Kris | January 28, 2007 9:22 AM

For this meet, we will need two more judges in addition to Stinn. These would preferably be people with experience from both attending and competing in meets, i.e. people used to assessing lifts. They would also not be lifting in this meet. Once the rule draft is out in the next few days, I will get the word circulated a bit more. If nobody heeds the call, then I will ask whether three people enrolled in the meet could do it (one extra is needed so that nobody judges their own lifts). If anyone out there reads this and is interested, please drop me an e-mail at kris@tsampa.org. The project website is at virtualmeet.net.

So far we are looking at 99 video clips produced by eleven lifters taking three attempts in three lifts. It is easy to see that as this thing continues to grow, the workload to deal with a meet will increase exponentially, especially in regards to judging and video editing (scripts will take care of much of the practical matters of updating rankings and such). My hope is that the lifters interested in doing more than an odd meet would also be willing to chime in to help, like helping out with the judging in meets they don’t lift at themselves. There are other options (all bad) of course, including starting to charge for attendance, limiting the number of participants and meets to one or two a year, cutting down the judges from three to one, or forcing every attendant to edit their own videos before submitting them. Thus far, I have great faith in that enough people (like yourself, hats off) will see this thing as valuable enough to contribute according to their capacity.

I plan to take care of all the video stuff myself for this inaugural meet, but if I get bogged down with all those clips I will not hesitate to get in touch, thanks!! After the meet, it is time to bring more people on board beginning with forum moderators and such. If this thing indeed kicks off, there will also be room for people willing to translate at least the rulebook into their native language to lower the threshold for truly international participation. To say that I am excited about all of this would be the understatement of a century.

Posted by: Kris | January 29, 2007 8:16 AM