Hanging from pull up bar game, County/state fair

I went to the great Fresno fair a couple of years ago and there was a $100 prize if you could hang from a bar (it spins) for 90 seconds. I'm your standard 5.10 trad climber, and got to 87 seconds. I was so damn close and drew a crowd of like 50 -75 onlookers. It could have been the greatest moment of my life, alas, i just slipped off at the last moment. After a bunch of muscled heads tried and all slipped off around 30 seconds.

Any of these valley dirtbag crushers ever go do this game? Seems like easy money to me!

So close to glory! 

If you grip the bar with thumb underneath your other fingers it minimizes the rotation of the bar. Damn carnies. 

Grayson Dozier wrote:

So close to glory! 

If you grip the bar with thumb underneath your other fingers it minimizes the rotation of the bar. Damn carnies. 

Claw grip is definitely the beta for these games. $100 is huge, at six flags you get some giant stuffy for 2 minutes!

Bar challenge winner here!  

My experience with it was about the same as yours, drawing in a crowd of people and getting pumped as hell.

The rules were that you couldn’t do a chin up grip, split grip or whatever. The bar did spin and I had to use a normal pull up grip to hang for 110 seconds. At the time I was around a 5.11 climber on lead beginning to project 12s but with very little success on them  . I also had just started hangboard training. At the end of the time I definitely could not go for another second and that challenge literally took everything in me to complete.

I used the money to help pay for my slack line. So maybe that was the determination along with the fact I don’t like to fail in front of 30+ people.

I won this at my school, all about wrapping your thumbs under the bar then the rest of the fingers pinching down on the thumb when its wrapped. ezpz

Jacob Gorman wrote:

I won this at my school, all about wrapping your thumbs under the bar then the rest of the fingers pinching down on the thumb when its wrapped. ezpz

The hook grip, popular in powerlifting/strongman competitions for heavy deadlifts and farmers carry.

Chris, you see just a little sport climbing could add those 3 seconds! Should trained more at Rocky Butte...

I believe I saw a Magnus mitdbo YouTube video of him doing this and hanging for something like five minutes one he understood the technique. 

If it’s the same video I watched. Magnus didn’t understand that the bar was supposed to “rotate” in the video he hangs on a normal pull up bar if I remember correctly. 

this sounds easy idk maybe I'm just built different?

Say that after you do the challenge :)

See also: the top rope climbing wall hustle at fairs/amusement parks. 

At the State Fair it was $100 for 100 seconds.

After a summer of very little climbing, and mostly riding bikes, I got into the high 80’s or low 90’s. Drew a crowd, had people cheering, and was 30 seconds or more closer than others.

This was after eating a slopper and was probably 2 beers in.

A couple years later my wife tried. She’s a much better climber than me but has smaller hands. She hung on similarly and swore that she felt the bar rotate under power near the end. I’m not sure.

I think most fit climbers don’t practice hanging onto a single grip for a long time with no movement. I’m curious how I would have done if I’d taken the challenge while I was regularly ice climbing and dry tooling.

Pretty sure that most of us could do it with a modest amount of practice for the hang.

Depends on the bar. Typically the bar will rotate freely - this makes it a lot harder/ nearly impossible.

On a fixed bar even a fat ass like myself can get to 90 seconds. One hundred seconds is difficult. 

Man lots of excuses around here  . I completed the challenge hanging for 110 seconds after a full day at the state fair, eating 1-2 funnel cakes, turkey leg, and a whole bunch of soda/ water to drink for the day. The bar felt pretty normal to me and I don’t consider myself to have very large hands compared to most other guys.

I think the challenge was more of a mental strength thing to me than a physical strength. Not saying you can be weak and do it, but it was extremely hard at the last 30 seconds for me.  

I think what helped me do it was that I really really wanted that $   

Diego B wrote:

Man lots of excuses around here  . I completed the challenge hanging for 110 seconds after a full day at the state fair, eating 1-2 funnel cakes, turkey leg, and a whole bunch of soda/ water to drink for the day. The bar felt pretty normal to me and I don’t consider myself to have very large hands compared to most other guys.

I think the challenge was more of a mental strength thing to me than a physical strength. Not saying you can be weak and do it, but it was extremely hard at the last 30 seconds for me.  

I think what helped me do it was that I really really wanted that $   

I’ll take things that didn’t happen for $100 Alex. 

Chad Miller wrote:

I’ll take things that didn’t happen for $100 Alex. 

true that. no ones goes to the fair and only eats 1-2 funnel cakes....

i'm 3 in before the dude stamps my ticket

curt86iroc wrote:

true that. no ones goes to the fair and only eats 1-2 funnel cakes....

i'm 3 in before the dude stamps my ticket

Lol. That’s more impressive than the challenge itself.