Contest Memories
By Eric Todd
I was inspired by the article Chris Lestan wrote called “The Excitement and Memories of Competition Prep.” Since things have been rather slow of late, I thought I might do a few articles about some of my more memorable contests/contest preps. I have competed many, many times across a number of strength disciplines.
I am going to gloss over my first experience a little. It was the Show-Me State Games powerlifting meet, which was actually a push/pull. Training had gone OK, but a week prior, I badly sprained my ankle by stepping in a hole, so I only did the benchpress, and performed poorly there. So, not a tremendous experience, but though I did not realize it at the time, it is more than likely the first time I was at a meet with Bill Clark. I do remember holding my pause for an inordinate amount of time.
What I was really excited to train and compete in was strongman. While I always did well moving the weights in the weightroom, I always found functional strength to be more of my forte. So, when I decided I wanted to try my hand at it, I found a contest in a small college town in northeast Missouri called Canton. The meet was called Tri-States Strongest Man. I sent in my entry and started training for the events.
The events in this contest were as follows: Farmers walk/sandbag carry medley, truck pull, crucifix, tire flip for reps, and atlas stones. Access to equipment as well as training advice at that time was minimal. I got a tractor time (maybe 300 pounds) from a tire repair place in town. I took the inner tube out of it and used that as a dirty, makeshift harness by which to practice pulling my brothers broken down car up and down the driveway (that car was later converted into my shooting car). Crucifix I was able to simulate in the weightroom with dumbbells. I did make my first atlas stone at that time using the play ball and plaster of paris method for making the mold. Somebody on one of the old forums said you can do farmers walks with ez curl bars. So, one day in the high school when no one was around, I gave that a shot. Needless to say, it was not a suitable substitution.
So, contest day rolled around. We drove out the night before and arrived in town at around 10:00. We pulled in to the contest motel to check in. The office where I checked in was clearly the living room of the older couple who owned the motel. The old man snoozed on the davenport as his wife checked us in. I got a decent night’s sleep, and when I got up, I decided to find the park where the contest was being held since I had never been there before. Since this was the contest motel, most of the competitors stayed there. As I left my room, my attention was drawn to a group of the competitors at the edge of the parking lot. There were some MONSTERS in this group. As this contest only had a lightweight class and a heavyweight class, and anyone 225# or less was a lightweight, I knew I was going to be competing against some of those behemoths. I instantly felt out of place, as though I had made a tragic error. I thought to myself that no one knew me, so no one would notice if I just slipped back into the car and drove home (not unlike Melvin did after a couple of events-but that is another story). I decided against it, and stuck it out. The contest was rather eye opening. I saw competitor after competitor fail on the 800 pound tire. I got 2 flips, which was good for second place. I got third in the crucifix and the atlas stones, being one of only 3 to load all of them. I did find out that day that grip was going to be my Achilles heel and grip events my nemesis. I must have done 20 some deadlifts with 250# farmers walks, only to end up 5 feet short of the finish line. But, in my first contest I took 4th place among the giants, and figured out I belonged. The other thing I found remarkable was what appeared to be fantastic camaraderie among the competitors. They were all cheering for each other, even though they were competing against each other. It is what drew me to the sport initially, and ended up being what kept me around it for so long. Anyhow, that is the story of how I got my start in strongman; however, it was my second meet that pretty much hooked me for good. (to be continued)