Good Hit vs Early Start?

[Brent Norris]

Damn... Girls can tell the difference and refs can't.

[Dan Willis]

Im a novice and this is a topic of interest for me. Both from the early start aspect as well as how to develop a good hit. ive seen people talk about having a fairly loose grip and how it will help your quickness on the hit. Voevoda(sp?) talks about jumping out of bed in the middle of the night and sprinting out of your house or busting out a bunch of push ups and putting your body into a state of confusion to train for this. Ive been broke open before because I did not hear the ref's ready go and wonder if I should look at him before the start? what say you?

[Brent Norris]

Reading the refs lips can help but if his own ears can't read his lips it may not. I'm not a fan if the loose grip unless you're weaker than your opponent in which case you're still not gonna go far in a strength sport. I've felt stronger and in control before then gotten slammed making me wonder how much of an early start my opponent got away with or if my timing was off. I think there is a big grey area here.

[Brent Norris]

Talk of elbow pads with pressure/touch sensors with signal lights have been mentioned before for elbow fouls. Pair that with motion sensors for early starts and our refs can have an easier and more accurate day. Crowd will have a more entertaining day unless the drama of a millimeter "looked like it could have been" that may or may not have happened before a pin elbow foul that ends the match between 2 world class pullers that traveled across the globe for while cutting weight, paying entry fees (which pay the refs) paying for hotel rooms and hookers (no, not the pulling hookers, well maybe) etc. is better.

[Jake Smith]

Can't we just keep the sport simple. We don't need crazy tables. All sports have judges of some sort. We don't need sensors

[Brent Norris]

Sensors are simple to some of us . Cheaters won't like them I guess
Some competitions need judges to judge a performance (ie dance, gymnastics) some are more obvious who the winner is (ie car races, horse races, swim meets, track) these sports are not decided by deciders, the evidence is clear. And, these sports use modern tech, cameras, sensors, etc.

[Jake Smith]

Baseball, football, basketball all use refs to make important decisions.

[John Wilson]

There is no simpler sport to ref than armwrestling. We have two refs, with their noses inches from the action. The one and only REAL challenge to reffing is the speed in which some things happen. Human error will always play a part in any sport. The typical regional event has hundreds of matches. How many blatant errors do you see? Unless the reffing is exceptionally bad (yes, we've all seen it) the blatant errors are obvious because there aren't many of them.

I say the only "REAL" challenge to reffing because there are several challenges, but other than the speed of matches all the other challenges are self-inflicted by the rules of the sport.

What complicates our sport is that the rules work against the nature of the sport. The crowd wants to see somebody get pinned. The rules are written to interrupt that at every turn.

Good elbow pads and running fouls would eliminate the vast majority of BS that the sport is suffering from and would also speed up tournaments by probably 30%.

Having refs with the mental capacity to pause between Ready and GO would eliminate all but a tiny fraction of early starts. My own opinion from reffing? 80% of "fast" people are leaving early. How often are false starts called? Very rarely- because the refs don't pause and they aren't even sure themselves when they said READY vs GO, so they give the early hitter the benefit of the doubt.

This isn't rocket science. It really isn't.

[Brad Cook]

Should the cadence of the "ready-go" be varied then? It seems like people learn the cadence of each organization and learn when to jump. If it's varied, would that change anything?

[John Wilson]

Yes, the cadence is supposed to change constantly to trip someone up from timing the ref.

The challenge for a ref is to pause to see if someone jumps, but not pause so long that you are causing guys to burn out in the setup. A full 1-second pause is a lifetime to someone who has a purple vein sticking out of their forehead. If the ref pauses even long enough to pronouce Ready and GO as two separate words, you will catch the vast majority of false starts.

[John Wilson]

And I'm not saying the false starts are intentional. Everyone knows hitting first is going to give them a gigantic advantage. So it would be crazy not to try to hit first.

Until the ref proves he / she is going to pause, you're crazy if you don't hit between Ready and Go. I'm saying that as a ref!

After a few matches it will be clear if the ref is pausing or not. If he / she is not calling false starts, he's not pausing.

[John Wilson]

I'm already rambling, so I might as well add more:

The purpose of the pause isn't to punish the guy who false starts. It's to give the guy who didn't a fair shake at winning the match.

We constantly harp on elbow fouls, but getting jumped by half a second on the start will cost you the match waaaay more often than the other guy's elbow micro-popping.

[Brad Cook]

I don't think you're rambling. You're making good points, John. Thanks.

[Brent Norris]

Jake,
These sports you mention do have replays, refs are not paid by the competitors, we may have 2 big tournaments a year while they can have 20-100ish games a year(emphasis on one call is heavier on our success) and they are not sacrificing as much per travel as arm wrestlers. Maybe you don't know this because you're retired?
Good points John,
But, about the pausing before "go" especially in a refs grip, I think it is causing early starts and fouls. If you wait long enough anyone/everyone is gonna move. Kinda like the staring game.

[Brad Cook]

I think a mixture of the two (technology and a good ref) are both needed.

Nemiroff is the closest thing I can think of. Having dedicated cameras fixed on each opponents elbow pads to catch any daylight between the elbow and pad and a ref on the monitor will call the foul and tell the judge in stage to stop the match. Brilliant. But I also agree that you still need a good judgement from a referee to call things like slipping in a losing position, fair grip, etc.

I think the cost is too high for a table with sensors everywhere, and with as much aggression is shown on the table with guys like Fisher shaking the table or Mac slamming the table all the time... they just wouldn't hold up.

Just my .02