DUH Specific

[KapMan]

I was wondering what exercises if any I can do to strengthen the require stuff to better handle DUH. Aside from doing it of course, is there any tips? Ive read some posts/blogs about it but it was more how to set up and really melt the metal. I'm looking for exercise specifics. I was able to DUH grade two bolts and put a slight dent in a 5/16 bar. but I stop because I thought I hurt myself.

[anwnate]

Maybe @Buccos1 will be kind enough to drop a DU knowledge bomb on yah.

 

[Buccos1]

3 hours ago, KapMan said:

I was wondering what exercises if any I can do to strengthen the require stuff to better handle DUH. Aside from doing it of course, is there any tips? Ive read some posts/blogs about it but it was more how to set up and really melt the metal. I'm looking for exercise specifics. I was able to DUH grade two bolts and put a slight dent in a 5/16 bar. but I stop because I thought I hurt myself.

Are you bending modified DU or wraps-close?  Regardless of that, with DU, you will have to strengthen your pinky fingers.  No matter how much DU bending I've done (both styles and combination hybrid), my pinkys tend to become destroyed!  The only thing, in my experience, that has helped with this, is volume, which will condition them.  But any conditioning is usually short-term; consistency will improve this over time though.

I never focused on DU exclusively, and was always doing some form of double-overhand at the same time.  I think the DO work carried over to DU ... especially modified DU.  

The two biggest things that helped me progress with DU was: a proper selection of warm-up and craziness.  I found a routine that let me work-up to my top one-or-two bends, while priming the CNS and peaking at exactly the right moment in the session, so that 100% effort could go into the bend.  And with the craziness ... it's just about flipping a switch for a few seconds.  Getting over the fear of injury or passing out (which seems to be more a risk with hard DU bends).  I used to clear out the area around me just-in-case.  

One last thing:  At least in my experience ... I stuck with CRS with DU-stuff.  (For DO, I bent a lot of drill-rod.)  But, when I worked in drill-rod DU on occasion, old injuries started to pop up.  A lot more with this than it's counterpart.

And there is a fine-line between getting a good kink and hitting 40 deg. + with double-underhand.  For awhile, I was taking Reds to 10-15 degrees and getting really frustrated, but kept with the plan and they started to fall.  (This was with thinner wraps.)  Double-wraps will be a lot more position/leverage-specific, but with BBW or IMPs, it might just be a matter of holding the hit for a few seconds longer or getting past that last mental hurdle.  

[KapMan]

1 hour ago, Buccos1 said:

Are you bending modified DU or wraps-close?  Regardless of that, with DU, you will have to strengthen your pinky fingers.  No matter how much DU bending I've done (both styles and combination hybrid), my pinkys tend to become destroyed!  The only thing, in my experience, that has helped with this, is volume, which will condition them.  But any conditioning is usually short-term; consistency will improve this over time though.

I never focused on DU exclusively, and was always doing some form of double-overhand at the same time.  I think the DO work carried over to DU ... especially modified DU.  

The two biggest things that helped me progress with DU was: a proper selection of warm-up and craziness.  I found a routine that let me work-up to my top one-or-two bends, while priming the CNS and peaking at exactly the right moment in the session, so that 100% effort could go into the bend.  And with the craziness ... it's just about flipping a switch for a few seconds.  Getting over the fear of injury or passing out (which seems to be more a risk with hard DU bends).  I used to clear out the area around me just-in-case.  

One last thing:  At least in my experience ... I stuck with CRS with DU-stuff.  (For DO, I bent a lot of drill-rod.)  But, when I worked in drill-rod DU on occasion, old injuries started to pop up.  A lot more with this than it's counterpart.

And there is a fine-line between getting a good kink and hitting 40 deg. + with double-underhand.  For awhile, I was taking Reds to 10-15 degrees and getting really frustrated, but kept with the plan and they started to fall.  (This was with thinner wraps.)  Double-wraps will be a lot more position/leverage-specific, but with BBW or IMPs, it might just be a matter of holding the hit for a few seconds longer or getting past that last mental hurdle.  

With DO I do not have enough mobility to get a good set and it's more then just getting the bar under the chin. I also experience pain my upper body, which I do not get with DU. I just wrapped the bars as laid out in Naplams Ebook. I really haven't tried it any other way. I did notice in one article that the wraps were moved out farther then normal is that the modified you are referring too?

I thank you for your advice. I will work on getting more bars and getting more volume in.

[David_wigren]

Excellent post from Carl Donati A.K.A. Buccos1 the double underhanded beast! 

[bencrush]

On ‎5‎/‎21‎/‎2016 at 0:10 PM, KapMan said:

I was wondering what exercises if any I can do to strengthen the require stuff to better handle DUH. Aside from doing it of course, is there any tips? Ive read some posts/blogs about it but it was more how to set up and really melt the metal. I'm looking for exercise specifics. I was able to DUH grade two bolts and put a slight dent in a 5/16 bar. but I stop because I thought I hurt myself.

@KapManHey man, I know you said "aside from doing it"...but I did want to chime in with a few thoughts on this.  I went from a very mediocre DU bender to a pretty strong DU (Modified and Traditional DU) bender with thin and fat pads almost by "accident." 

My DU bending really took off after I made a concerted effort to focus almost exclusively on high DO bending.  It might've been just as simple as my body was over the months adjusting to much, much harder bends than what it was used to - and that had carryover to DU bending. 

I was not one of those elite benders who immediately "got it" in terms of being a strong bender right off the bat.  It took me months to even bend a 60D Nail high DO after I decided to start focusing on it.  At that time I was able to easily DU one.  But I knew that if I wanted to move up the list and kill the Red and Bastard, I'd have to join the high DO brigade.  And it paid off.  It was about 8 months after I started high DO bending (had already been DU bending for years by that point) that I bent a Bastard. 

My high DO bending work made my Modified DU bending success (Fantastic) possible.  Getting stronger on these also helped my Traditional DU quite a bit. 

If money spent on buying bars and working on volume bends is your biggest obstacle, then do "cutdown" bends.  Here is an example of a cutdown bend with a theoretical DU max bend of a 5/16"x7" CRS. 

• DU bend a 5/16"x7.5" CRS to about 20-30 degrees.  It doesn't have to be exact.  But don't go so far beyond this that you are in an awkward position for the next hits. 
• Rest a few minutes and then cut 1/4" off each side of the bar.  Now it is a 7" bar.  Wrap it up with the same pads you used for the initial kink.  Then hit it again.  Try to move it to around 40-45 degrees.  Not in addition to the 20-30 degrees you got on the first kink though. 
• Rest a few minutes and then cut 1/4" off each side of the bar.  Now it is a 6.5" bar.  Better than your max.  Time to give it hell and try to move it beyond the 40-45 degrees that it's resting at. 
• Keep attacking this bar for the rest of your workout.  See how far you can take it.  Rest a few minutes between attempts.  Wherever the bar freezes at - set the bar aside and use it for a crushdown workout another day.  I LOVED crushdown cutdowns. 

You've no doubt heard the next bit of advice, but it's worth mentioning again.

HOLD YOUR DU HITS FOR ABOUT TWICE AS LONG AS YOUR MIND TELLS YOU IS ADEQUATE.  I can't remember which one of the Gripboard's elite benders gave me this gem.  I want to say Eric Milfeld.  But it could've been several guys that all said the same thing.  I finally took their advice and started holding the hits longer and longer.  It is brutal.  And undoubtedly not good for your vascular health, lol.  But it works for bending harder bars! 

Experiment with different wraps.  Especially thin (from a pair of IronMind pads cut in half to a full set of IronMind pads) to the other extreme - fat pads.  Which I consider 1.25" and beyond.  My fattest pads were about 1.5" thick when wrapped around a Bastard.  That is pretty fat.  But the fat pads allowed me to build horsepower to bend much bigger bars than what I would've otherwise achieved without them.  The thin pads kept my pain tolerance high enough to still bend big bars with them.  It's worth pointing out that Traditional DU (for me) was not affected positively by a fatter set of pads past IronMind pads.  Modified DU and high DO were the ones that I could bend quite a bit harder bars with much fatter pads.  But even with most of my pads being on the fatter side for the last part of my year of bending (2008), I still bent some Insanes in IronMind pads and many 5" Reds and 5" Bastards in IronMind pads with no problem. 

[KapMan]

1 hour ago, bencrush said:

@KapManHey man, I know you said "aside from doing it"...but I did want to chime in with a few thoughts on this.  I went from a very mediocre DU bender to a pretty strong DU (Modified and Traditional DU) bender with thin and fat pads almost by "accident." 

My DU bending really took off after I made a concerted effort to focus almost exclusively on high DO bending.  It might've been just as simple as my body was over the months adjusting to much, much harder bends than what it was used to - and that had carryover to DU bending. 

I was not one of those elite benders who immediately "got it" in terms of being a strong bender right off the bat.  It took me months to even bend a 60D Nail high DO after I decided to start focusing on it.  At that time I was able to easily DU one.  But I knew that if I wanted to move up the list and kill the Red and Bastard, I'd have to join the high DO brigade.  And it paid off.  It was about 8 months after I started high DO bending (had already been DU bending for years by that point) that I bent a Bastard. 

My high DO bending work made my Modified DU bending success (Fantastic) possible.  Getting stronger on these also helped my Traditional DU quite a bit. 

If money spent on buying bars and working on volume bends is your biggest obstacle, then do "cutdown" bends.  Here is an example of a cutdown bend with a theoretical DU max bend of a 5/16"x7" CRS. 

• DU bend a 5/16"x7.5" CRS to about 20-30 degrees.  It doesn't have to be exact.  But don't go so far beyond this that you are in an awkward position for the next hits. 
• Rest a few minutes and then cut 1/4" off each side of the bar.  Now it is a 7" bar.  Wrap it up with the same pads you used for the initial kink.  Then hit it again.  Try to move it to around 40-45 degrees.  Not in addition to the 20-30 degrees you got on the first kink though. 
• Rest a few minutes and then cut 1/4" off each side of the bar.  Now it is a 6.5" bar.  Better than your max.  Time to give it hell and try to move it beyond the 40-45 degrees that it's resting at. 
• Keep attacking this bar for the rest of your workout.  See how far you can take it.  Rest a few minutes between attempts.  Wherever the bar freezes at - set the bar aside and use it for a crushdown workout another day.  I LOVED crushdown cutdowns. 

You've no doubt heard the next bit of advice, but it's worth mentioning again.

HOLD YOUR DU HITS FOR ABOUT TWICE AS LONG AS YOUR MIND TELLS YOU IS ADEQUATE.  I can't remember which one of the Gripboard's elite benders gave me this gem.  I want to say Eric Milfeld.  But it could've been several guys that all said the same thing.  I finally took their advice and started holding the hits longer and longer.  It is brutal.  And undoubtedly not good for your vascular health, lol.  But it works for bending harder bars! 

Experiment with different wraps.  Especially thin (from a pair of IronMind pads cut in half to a full set of IronMind pads) to the other extreme - fat pads.  Which I consider 1.25" and beyond.  My fattest pads were about 1.5" thick when wrapped around a Bastard.  That is pretty fat.  But the fat pads allowed me to build horsepower to bend much bigger bars than what I would've otherwise achieved without them.  The thin pads kept my pain tolerance high enough to still bend big bars with them.  It's worth pointing out that Traditional DU (for me) was not affected positively by a fatter set of pads past IronMind pads.  Modified DU and high DO were the ones that I could bend quite a bit harder bars with much fatter pads.  But even with most of my pads being on the fatter side for the last part of my year of bending (2008), I still bent some Insanes in IronMind pads and many 5" Reds and 5" Bastards in IronMind pads with no problem. 

Mobility is my issue which I'm working on. I can't get good HP in the position DO puts me, DU I can get a great postion. But everything is a work in progress. Thank you for your post man.