Formula Blog

[Al Myers]

Formula Blog

[Chad Ullom]

I did read it and thought it was interesting.

[Travis Willingham]

I read it and have been since digesting it as my initial thinking is I hate formulas and most weight wins. I had heard of the formulas but did not know much about them so I thought it was interesting. But even though I am a most weight wins kind of guy, I understand the thinking behind it.

[Al Myers]

Travis – As I said earlier, formulas do have their drawbacks in that the strongest man doesn’t always win. All-Round weightlifting has always been about pound per pound strength. But I really do think that a mixture of rewarding athletes for both aspects should be done. When I started competing in the All-Rounds I lost close to 50 pounds bodyweight to be more competitive with the formulas. I lost lots of strength but overall I am more well-rounded strength-wise now and definitely much healthier. Al

[Travis Willingham]

Oh, I understand they have a place but at 300 pounds, they don’t favor me so I’m against them. HAHA

I’m actually currently losing quite a bit of weight and it has played havoc with my lift numbers so I understand it. I’ve dropped 50 pounds in the last 9 months. I was bulking up last summer and just got huge and felt huge so I decided to slim down.

[Al Myers]

Travis, I do understand how you feel, and I agree at 300 pounds the Lynch Formula will kill you with the adjustments. I am still part old school powerlifter. It didn’t take me long going to power meets to realize that the only lifters who really got noticed were the big guys putting up the big lifts. So I ate alot, lifted hard, ate some more, and lifted harder. Soon I was pushing 300 pounds and squatting and deadlifting over 700, and being one of the last guys on the platform at the end of the meet. I still “fight the urge” to eat my way out of a lifting slump. All-Round lifting has been the best thing for me in fighting that terrible disease I had of reverse anorexia (ok – THAT comment may not be politically correct!!haha). Al

[Travis Willingham]

[b]Quote from dinoman on July 15, 2010, 16:12[/b]I still “fight the urge” to eat my way out of a lifting slump.

I know exactly what you are talking about. Those days when I feel tired and worn out while lifting and seeing the weights I’m lifting, I just want to throw in the towel and start bulking back up. Looking at my logs from this time last year is the worst, probably 200-250 pound difference on the 3 powerlifts total. I figure I’ll just have to build back up. I’m heading down to 270-275. The day I left for Scotland in early september I was 333 (in the morning, before breakfast, wearing only shorts …). The one lift that hasn’t gone down is I’ll still lift my loading pins I used to practice for the Dinnie stones and can still pull 750 on those.

[Thom Van Vleck]

My problem is that it keeps working (eating my way out of a slump). Last winter I dropped from 310 down to 288 and was on my way to my 280 goal….when my training slumped. So, the diet went out the window and I’m back to 306…..and setting PR’s left and right.

Years ago I was weighing 238 and dropped down to 185 (yeah, I was about 22 years old). I just did cardio, mostly bike riding (even did a 100 mile ride).

Then I went back to weigh training, was weak as a cat, and bulked back up. It’s easy for me to lose weight when I try, my problem is that I don’t want to try that hard! haha

Thom Van Vleck
Jackson Weightlifting Club
Highland Games athlete and sometimes All-Rounder

[Tom Ryan]

Since Thom has got us thinking about the formula issue again with his interesting article today, I’ll chime in with my thoughts on the subject.

I have a lot of experience in this area, starting from 1993. The World Masters (Olympic lifting) was held in Newnan, GA in 1993 and there was a preliminary meeting to discuss the fact that the Malone-Meltzer formula had been been put forth by David Meltzer as a competitor to the Sinclair Formula.

I was invited to participate in that meeting. I don’t recall everyone in attendance, but in addition to me, Sinclair, and Meltzer, Gary Glass was there and I recall that Roger Sadecki sat in on the meeting.

There was some dissatisfaction with the Sinclair Formula because when it declared “Lifter X” to be the best lifter, experienced lifters would say “Now I know that Lifter X is not better than Lifter Y”.

Eventually a committee was appointed by Walter Imahara to study the issue and to report to him. The committee was chaired by Donald Buchanan of Canada. I was on that committee and I believe that Gary Glass, PhD, and David Pursley, MD, were also on the committee, in addition to perhaps one or two other people.

The committee received correspondence from Meltzer and Sinclair, each giving their “sales pitch”, in addition to Jack Lano (strongly) stating that such formulas cannot be used to rank athletes! Jack sent us an article or two in support of his position. (Jack is a trip. I believe his business card says something like “Talks a lot; doesn’t say much”. LOL But he is a CPA and a graduate of Ohio State, so he is no dummy!)

I had some long correspondence with Meltzer, which he indicated caused him to think deeper about the Malone-Meltzer formula. (Meltzer, btw, is a bright guy, a college professor who can sing the national anthem of dozens of countries. Quite a feat!)

We completed our committee work in 1996 or 1997 and admittedly I don’t recall what we decided. I’m not sure if we came to any definitive conclusion.

I don’t recall exactly when I did so, but I put together a formula that I sent to Bill Clark, for possible use in the USAWA/IAWA. This was many years ago. He presented it to the British at an IAWA meeting on their soil, and Bill told me that they didn’t understand it. So that was the end of that.

It has been so long that I don’t recall what I did, but I believe it was similar in spirit to what Adrian Blindt devised. (Incidentally, Adrian was, pound for pound, an outstanding lifter, a contender for best lifter honors in virtually any competition that he entered. I believe he is also a rather bright guy.)

As an admittedly extreme example, let’s say we have a competition with two lifts, rectangular fix and back lift, and two lifters. One of the competitors is world class in the rectangular fix and the other lifter is Steve Schmidt. Assume that Steve Schmidt makes one of his typical back lifts and the other guy does a 140 rectangular fix — a world class lift. If we just add the two lifts together, the other guy is probably going to get killed. I’ve never seen Steve do a rectangular fix but I’ve heard him say what he can do. I’ll let that remain a secret — to protect the innocent, etc. LOL If the other guy is at least average in the back lift, the competition should be close with a statistically justifiable scoring scheme, and there is a good chance that he would win.

Without trying to get too technical, one logical scoring system would be to compute a “z-score” for each lifter in each lift that is contested in a competition, and then add the z-scores together over the lifts for each lifter. The lifter with the highest sum of z-scores could be declared the winner of the competition, and/or with age and bodyweight coefficients then applied to determine the best lifter. (A z-score measures the difference in standard deviation units that a lift is above or below the average.) Since there probably wouldn’t be enough data within each (age class, bodyweight class) combination, it could be necessary to merge the data for age and bodyweight so as to obtain an overall average and standard deviation, then apply the age and bodyweight coefficients after the z-scores have been computed.

Might work. There is obviously not a simple way to do it.

Of course if we wanted to get really sophisticated, we would recognize that age and bodyweight do not affect each lift the same way (Weaver stick and rectangular fix versus push press, for example), but then things would become extremely complicated!

Regarding bodyweight coefficients for lifters well over 300 pounds, there isn’t an obvious way to do that, either. Certain assumptions would have to be made and it would be difficult to test the assumptions without sufficient data.

[Al Myers]

Tom, Thank you for this history lesson on the use of formulas. I greatly appreciated it since I have been recently “studying” the different formulas. Your knowledge of formulas and their use is EXACTLY why I am going to keep after you to help me expand the Lynch Factor Chart to higher bodyweights. This problem needs resolved. We will need the cooperation of the IAWA(UK) on this. My feeling since the “original” Lynch Formula can not be located is to extrapolate the numbers on the current chart to higher bodyweights. The lynch factors now go to 150 Kgs (and I suspect that from 140 on they HAVE BEEN extrapolated). I could see going to around 175 kgs and then anyone weighing above that just receives the highest factor on the chart. I also would like to see the factors from 150 kg on to “level out” significantly, as they should. Let me know if this is possible. Al

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