Does size really matter in the Scottish Heavy Athletics?
Revision: During review of the data and findings an error was discovered. The correlation process has been conducted, again, and peer reviewed by Dr. Kevin Becker using both Excel and SPSS.
If you spend any time around Scottish Highland Games Heavy Athletes, sooner or later you will hear sayings such as, “mass moves mass”, or “big launches come from big haunches”, and discussions of release points, countering, ballast, and so on. The basic premise is that the greater the size of the athlete, the farther and higher they should be able to throw the implements. This expectation is, of course, dependent on the ability of the athlete to move their height/weight and put it into the correct positions to generate force and transfer it to the implements. The purpose of this quasi-scientific inquiry is to determine if there is any correlation between an athlete’s height/weight and their performance in the nine events of the Scottish Heavy Athletics.
Methodology: The height and weight of the top twenty professional Scottish Heavy Events athletes in North America were compared to their best throws in the following nine events: Braemar Stone, Open Stone, Heavy Weight for Distance, Light Weight for Distance, Heavy Hammer, Light Hammer, Sheaf, and Weight Over Bar.
The designation of the athletes as the top 20 in North America was based on their best performances in each of these events for the 2014 season as of October 30, 2014 per the rankings as established by the North American Scottish Games and Athletics (NASGA). The data reflecting the athlete’s best performances was also collected from the NASGA website’s rankings database.
Athletes’ height and weight were “self-reported”. This method of data collection could lead to slight inaccuracies. However, general trends should be reasonably accurate once individual measurements have been aggregated.
The top twenty professionals in North America were selected for this study to minimize the influence of technical proficiency on the marks used for data; any disparity of technical proficiency should be less between members of this pool than a top pro and a second tier Amateur. The various statistical calculations were derived using the data described above and the statistics functions in Microsoft Excel. This is a small sample and all findings are necessarily limited to this data set.
Note on correlation and validity values: Correlation between the athletes’ characteristic (variable) and the event being compared is expressed in a numerical value between -1.0 and 1.0. The higher the number the stronger the correlation. A negative value suggests an inverse relationship between the characteristic and the event. The generally accepted threshold for a variable to be considered as having a correlation to the phenomenon being measured is 0.30. A value of 0.30 is considered to represent a relatively weak correlation.
p values are a measure of statistical significance that determine the validity of applying the findings to a broader population. The generally accepted p value that indicates an accepted level of validity is 0.05 or less.
Findings: The findings are presented in the table below. Height and weight are listed in pounds, while marks are listed in feet with inches as decimals to simplify calculations. The average height of the top 20 HG Pro’s at the time of this study was 6’3”, and the average weight was 287 pounds.
Height: There was a moderate negative correlation of Athlete Height to the Heavy Weight for Distance with a negative value of -0.50, and a p value of 0.03. There appears to be no significant relationship between height and performance in the other events.
Weight: There was a moderate negative correlation of Athlete Weight to performance in the Light Weight for Distance and the Heavy Hammer with a value of -0.49 for both, and a p value of 0.03 for both. There appears to be no significant relationship between athlete weight and performance in the other events.
What does this mean: With regards to this dataset, it appears that there is a moderate negative relationship between athlete height and the heavy weight for distance. This suggests that taller athletes tend to have shorter throws in this event. An athlete’s height does not appear to have a significant influence on performance in the other events.
Similarly for athlete weight, there is a moderate negative relationship between how heavy an athlete is and their performance in the light weight for distance and the heavy hammer. This suggests that weighing more tends to be associated with shorter throws in these two events. An athlete’s weight does not appear to have a significant influence on performance in the other events.
Note: The correlations presented here are from a small sample and taking only the athletes’ best throws which limits interpretation for a broader population. . A larger sample size and averaging a larger number of throws will likely provide greater confidence and insight into the correlation between a Scottish Highland Games Heavy Athlete’s size and performance in each event. However, this initial data provides some interesting insights.
The SGL would like to extend a HUGE THANK YOU to the Athletes who provided data for this study.
DATA:
| Rank | Name | Height (inches) | Weight (pounds) | Braemar | OS | HWFD | LWFD | HH | LH | Sheaf | WOB |
| 1 | Daniel McKim | 77.00 | 290.00 | 43.19 | 56.58 | 47.42 | 94.77 | 132.23 | 157.60 | 31.00 | 17.00 |
| 2 | Matt Vincent | 72.00 | 275.00 | 43.71 | 61.73 | 45.29 | 89.13 | 111.17 | 142.33 | 32.00 | 17.00 |
| 3 | Spencer Tyler | 76.00 | 315.00 | 44.67 | 57.10 | 45.25 | 86.92 | 106.38 | 130.00 | 33.50 | 18.00 |
| 4 | Jason Johnston | 75.00 | 265.00 | 43.54 | 51.83 | 45.83 | 84.98 | 110.83 | 140.00 | 34.25 | 17.58 |
| 5 | Matthew Doherty | 73.00 | 230.00 | 42.79 | 57.17 | 44.54 | 89.25 | 116.94 | 145.38 | 30.00 | 17.00 |
| 6 | Jake Sullivan | 72.00 | 280.00 | 40.58 | 52.15 | 48.71 | 89.85 | 116.79 | 145.50 | 30.00 | 16.00 |
| 7 | Dan Williams | 73.00 | 300.00 | 42.50 | 52.08 | 46.17 | 80.73 | 105.17 | 130.35 | 33.00 | 20.33 |
| 8 | Mike Zolkiewicz | 76.00 | 285.00 | 44.50 | 56.96 | 45.98 | 89.50 | 102.42 | 126.96 | 27.00 | 18.50 |
| 9 | Eric Frasure | 75.00 | 280.00 | 39.25 | 50.38 | 46.75 | 84.71 | 112.00 | 131.17 | 34.00 | 17.00 |
| 10 | John Pilling | 74.00 | 264.00 | 43.75 | 56.83 | 41.29 | 82.21 | 104.50 | 128.00 | 30.33 | 16.00 |
| 11 | Nathan Burchett | 75.00 | 240.00 | 38.50 | 49.73 | 41.21 | 83.75 | 115.46 | 138.04 | 34.00 | 15.00 |
| 12 | Andy Vincent | 76.00 | 315.00 | 44.42 | 54.00 | 42.79 | 79.46 | 100.50 | 129.50 | 30.00 | 17.00 |
| 13 | Sean Betz | 77.00 | 295.00 | 41.08 | 50.79 | 39.83 | 86.42 | 110.58 | 135.79 | 30.00 | 16.50 |
| 14 | Charles Kasson | 75.00 | 275.00 | 41.50 | 47.92 | 41.25 | 83.63 | 109.42 | 125.71 | 32.00 | 16.00 |
| 15 | Jeremy Gillingham | 75.00 | 335.00 | 42.33 | 53.44 | 40.42 | 78.00 | 100.50 | 123.75 | 33.00 | 16.00 |
| 16 | Craig Smith | 73.00 | 295.00 | 43.79 | 52.71 | 43.50 | 82.38 | 101.75 | 122.75 | 28.00 | 16.00 |
| 17 | Ryan Stewart | 75.00 | 285.00 | 36.42 | 45.38 | 44.33 | 83.90 | 104.17 | 130.27 | 32.00 | 16.00 |
| 18 | Jeff Kaste | 78.00 | 310.00 | 40.21 | 49.83 | 42.00 | 81.77 | 103.50 | 129.21 | 30.00 | 15.00 |
| 19 | Wes Kiser | 74.00 | 270.00 | 41.08 | 51.25 | 40.08 | 85.50 | 101.00 | 113.83 | 32.00 | 16.00 |
| 20 | Jon O’Neil | 80.00 | 330.00 | 44.38 | 52.27 | 36.23 | 76.08 | 97.42 | 122.79 | 30.00 | 17.00 |
| Mean | 75.05 | 286.70 | 42.11 | 53.01 | 43.44 | 84.65 | 108.14 | 132.45 | 31.30 | 16.75 | |
| Mode | 75.00 | 275.00 | 41.08 | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | 100.50 | #N/A | 30.00 | 16.00 | |
| STD | 2.01 | 26.86 | 2.26 | 3.82 | 3.12 | 4.50 | 8.09 | 10.02 | 2.01 | 1.23 | |
| Braemar | OS | HWFD | LWFD | HH | LH | Sheaf | WOB | ||||
| height correlations ( r ) | 0.08 | -0.23 | –0.50 | -0.29 | -0.17 | -0.16 | -0.12 | -0.08 | |||
| height p values | 0.75 | 0.34 | 0.03 | 0.21 | 0.47 | 0.51 | 0.62 | 0.73 | |||
| weight correlations ( r ) | 0.28 | -0.05 | -0.25 | –0.49 | –0.49 | -0.37 | -0.12 | 0.16 | |||
| weight p values | 0.24 | 0.85 | 0.28 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.10 | 0.62 | 0.49 |
