So if you’ve been following our social media over the past few months then you know I’ve been training for a local Highland Games on March 30
th 2019. I met a lot of awesome people and I had a hell of a time. Before I talk about the games as a whole I’d like to thank Jayson Tisdale before I forget. He put on one hell of a games.
So when we arrived at the venue and figured out where we were supposed to be I found out that we wouldn’t be throwing hammer. This kind of sucked because that was my favorite event to train over the last few months. This was an understandable decision though because there wouldn’t have been enough room to safely throw the hammer in this venue. Oh well maybe next time. After we helped get everything set up and we had the athlete meeting, we broke off into our different groups and began warming up. I also used this time to set up the camera to hopefully get some good footage of our group. Once we started throwing, however, I realized that the rhythm would be much too fast paced to effectively record each throw so instead I set up the camera to record everyone in one shot.
The Different Events in Our Order
The first two events the men’s open threw were the Braemar stone and the Open stone. This was my first time throwing the Braemar (a 22 lbs. stone) so I had a little confusion about what the rules were but all in all I feel like I did fairly well with these two events.
The next event that we threw was the Heavy Hammer for Distance. I’m still very much trying to figure the mechanics of this movement out but I did a hell of a lot better than I was expecting to. Last games I competed in I felt like the weight threw me but this time I threw it even if I didn’t throw it very far. We had a couple of A class throwers on the field with us that day and they made it look so easy. I have a hell of a lot of practice to do.
Our next event was the Weight Over Bar. This one uses the same 56lbs weight that the Heavy Weight for Distance uses but we throw the weight directly overhead similar to a keg toss. I was able to get 9 feet on this event but with a little more practice I think that 11 is well within my reach in the next year.
Next we threw the Caber. If you don’t know what that is basically imagine a 12-15 foot tree with all the branches cut off. The idea behind this throw is to pick the Caber vertically and flip it end over end. If you manage to turn the Caber it is scored on a clock face with 12 o’clock being the highest score. If it doesn’t flip at least 90 degrees then it is scored on the degree that it falls….. I am not good at the caber…. Yeah, I’ll just leave it at that until I get some more practice in.
Click The Picture to Be Taken to the Results Page
Next we through the Light Weight for Distance. If I remember right this weight is 26lbs. I did much better at this event than I thought I would. Even PR’d with a 39 foot throw. Finally we did the Sheaf toss last. Because we were throwing with A class throwers we had to use a 20lbs bag instead of a 16lbs bag and we started the standard height at 16 feet. Pretty sure the whole group (with the exception of the A class guys) zeroed out on this throw. I don’t think anyone was really that upset though because it was pretty late in the day. If you want to view the over all results you can click the link
here. All you have to do is search the database for the Louisiana Highland Games.
After the games were over a few people from our group went to the Tilted Kilt since it was right up the road and we were already dressed for the place. Check out the video below to see how the day went.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yprJ13amRUM&t=1s
So that’s it for this article. If you liked it don’t forget to check back next Monday were we’re continue our assistance exercise series. Don’t forget to follow our
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cameron@atlasstrengthshop.com.
Release the Titan in You,
Cameron Ray
