Contest Memories Part III
By Eric Todd
After competing in Tri-States Strongest Man in Canton, and then the JWC Strongman meet a month later, I was hooked. I could not wait to compete in another; however, at the time, there were not nearly as many opportunities to compete locally as there are now. The next meet I could find strongman wise was the next May, over half a year away. When you are chomping at the bit to compete like I was at the time, that was just too far.
In the meantime, I kept perusing the strongman sites and training. Back then we had Worldsstrongestman.com forum, Samson power forum, and two forums for the North American Strongman Society. I might be missing a couple, but these are the ones I frequented early on in my career. It is while looking over these that I somehow found my way to the USAWA website. While looking at the contest selection, I saw a meet close to me in March: The Deanna Springs Memorial at Clarks Gym in Columbia. While I was certainly not familiar with all-round, or all of the lifts contested in this meet, I did notice the crucifix was in this meet. Since I recognized this lift as a strongman event, I thought “why not?” I called Bill Clark and told him I was coming.
Back in the day, when planning to travel to a contest, I would look up the directions on Mapquest.com and print off directions. Though not as old school as reading a map or using a sextant, it was a far cry from the GPS that many of us use today. So, that particular day, I grabbed my printed directions and start to drive. When I arrived at my destination as defined by these directions, I was clearly at a residence and not a commercial gym, like what I was expecting. Turns out I had entered the address for Clark’s house and not the gym. Not good, as the cell phones in those days were not advanced like what we have today, and I could not look up the correct directions on the fly. I needed to find my way from Grace Ellen Drive to Grace Lane. I was in the neighborhood of giving up, as the weigh in time was coming and going, but then stopped at a gas station where they helped me find my way.
I found the gym a few minutes after the competition was supposed to be starting, but I gathered my bag and walked through the door. You can imagine my surprise when I walked through the door to see only two other individuals sitting there. Welcome to the world of all-round. And I thought Strongman was fringe! As I entered the gym, I was impressed by the dusty display of trophies, the York globe dumbbell set, and the assortment of equipment that resembled a torture chamber. The two gentlemen were Bill Clark and Joe Garcia. They accepted me into the meet, albeit late, and we proceeded to compete.
Bill served as the official, and Joe and I the competitors. Though the crucifix was not the same as what is contested in strongman, I was still decent at it and lifted 120 pounds (or 60 pounds a dumbbell) on this discipline. My cheat curl was also decent. It was when we got to the other three lifts that I needed help. The last three were the Deanna Lift, the Hand and Thigh, and Hip Lift. The Deanna was comparatively decent, as I am not sure anyone knew what they were doing with the lift at the time. I did over 200 pounds more at a later date. It was with the hand and thigh that I really got to witness the lengths of Joe and Bill’s expertise. They worked tirelessly with me to help perfect my technique for that day. With it only being two lifters, they took their time to show me the ropes. I ended with a 1475 pound effort, and I have not done a boat load more than this over almost 20 years and much training. The last lift was the hip lift. Though Bill and Joe gave me the same attention that they gave me in the hand and thigh, it was not to be. I only lifted 200 more pounds in this discipline than I did the hand and thigh, which is unacceptable. Bill said that some people who excel in the hand and thigh are sometime poor in the hip lift. I assumed that this was me, as I always fell in this same neighborhood. That is, until I got my own hip belt and was able to spend some time playing with the belt placement to figure out what works for me. I have since gone well above the 1675 I did that day.
This was my introduction to all-round and the USAWA. Bill gave me a few of the recent newsletters, and signed me up to receive the new editions. I read through the newsletters and ordered a record book. From this point, I started competing in all-round on top of strongman. For quite a spell, I did not compete terribly regularly in all-round, as I was heavily focused on my strongman career. I would occasionally compete at Clark’s or at the Dino gym, but it certainly took a backseat to strongman. It was not until my strongman career came to an end that I became much more focused on all-round lifting, and it has been the sole focus ever since. I sometimes wonder what success I could have had in it if I would have focused on it more during my prime, but I reckon I have no regrets.