Proud to say I am the first female to complete a virtual powerlifting meet.Virtualmeet.net is a grassroots project founded by Kristoffer Lindqvist in Finland warmly welcoming lifters at any powerlifting level. The vision is online meets in a global community. Participants have been in Iceland, Austria, Finland, Puerto Rico, Canada, the U.S. and more, and the list continues to grow.
Here's how it works: you register for a meet, say you accept the rules and are drug-free. (Both full and single lift events are scheduled). You perform the scheduled meet wherever you are, film it, produce the morning newspaper to prove when you performed the lift, and submit it for judging. There are rules on lifts, clothing, gear, etc., like in any other powerlifting meet. The project relies heavily on the honor system and thrives on good sportsmanship.
The individual lift attempts are edited together, three judges weigh in, the pass/no pass lights are represented to show validity of attempts. (This is strict - currently the failure rate is 56.7%!) There are no weight classes. Scoring is based on relative strength formulas - Schwartz for men, Malone for women - so competition is truly with oneself.
Sound serious? Well, it's not. No one will claim that our results are "official" or "true meet results". This is all done for the fun of it, for the fire of a clear goal to shoot for, for the novel challenge. (Virtualmeet.net)What a wonderful concept! Although I'm not a powerlifter (that's for my world champion sister), this scratches me right where I itch. I used it for incentive and as a fun diversion, to keep me on track with my Olympic-style weightlifting training and personal development.
I loved it. Kris is great, the quality of everything involved is first-rate, it was low-stress and just plain fun.
The hardest part was waiting for the judging results.
- Here's the entire July meet.
- Here are my best lifts from virtual meet.
I'm thrilled to see there's a virtual Olympic-style weighlifting meet scheduled for October. Kris tells me he wants to run powerlifting and weightlifting meets parallel eventually.
Meanwhile, there are more fun events scheduled for the remainder of 2008 - a BP, DL, military BP, and another full powerlifting meet.
Related articles
Introduction to powerlifting competition by Gary F. Zeolla
No comments:
Post a Comment