Plate cleaning

[underdawg]

i imagine many of you have read brookfield's latest grip gem in Milo, the plate clean and press.  i tried this for the first time tonite, and i must say it totally thrashed me.  i think it's a great way to work the pinch, and it hits areas of the hand nothing else has touched before.  have any of you guys out there tried this and had similar results?

[Tom Black]

I have fooled around with this, but it's impractical while pinching 25's unless your Mr. Brookfield!  Also very dangerous, as he mentions over and over again in the article (with good reason).  I have not tried one 35 yet, but one 25 proved to be too easy and I think 45 too hard.

[Tou]

I never tried this exercise but here's an other one I like to do at the end of my grip workouts. Everyone knows the farmer's walk. Do it with a 100 pounds plate in each hand. Simply put your fingers under the flange of the plates and your thumb on the top. It is a killer for the fingers. It hurts a lot but we don't care about pain. I don't count the callouses that my grippers gave me, the teared thumb skin on a heavy pinch or the palm soreness in a heavy deadlift lockouts.

Try farmer's walk with plates and tell me about it !

[underdawg]

tou,

i tried that just last week, and i agree it's killer for the fingers.  i also agree it's brutally painful, but hey no pain no gain.

tom,

i performed it with one 25 for multiple reps.  after 10 my hands were fried

[Guest Askalas]

I haven't tried cleans with plates yet, seems too dangerous for me to try at this stage.  I plan to incorporate cleans with block weights though once I can scrap together some money to buy a set.  Thanks for the tip about farmer walks with 100# plates, I'm gonna try those tomorrow.

[Guest Askalas]

I haven't tried cleans with plates yet, seems too dangerous for me to try at this stage.  I plan to incorporate cleans with block weights though once I can scrap together some money to buy a set.  Thanks for the tip about farmer walks with 100# plates, I'm gonna try those tomorrow.

[Guest 86-1005097353]

A clean and press is something you get when you send clothes to the dry cleaners! It's obvious plate cleaning when referring to grip events is the process of spraying Windex on the plate surfaces and then cleaning it off with a soft, dry towel. It's amazing how much that helps the grip.

[Tom Black]

Vince,  Glad to see you have a sense of humor regarding previous posts.  I don't think anyone above described the actual exercise.  You basically pick up a plate in the pinch grip fashion and then clean it to the shoulder.  At the shoulder the plate is held vertically.   From there is it simply pressed.  Brookfield is shown in the article cleaning a single 50-pound plate, but describes cleaning two plates while pinching (very dangerous).

[Tyrannosaurus Dave]

I have tried cleaning a pair of 25 pound plates and when they do make it to the shoulder, they tend to fall in different directions, one rolls forward and the other backward.  I think its dangerous because now you have two chunks of iron falling on your toes.  Very comical, actually.  If anyone figures out the best way to catch these at the top, please post.

Jack Fritsch of Texas was known to clean a pair of 35's with either hand, according to Terry Todd.

[Guest Luke Reimer]

I'm not sure whether this would defeat your purpose or not, but what about mechanically connecting the plates so that you can practice your catch at the shoulder without the added danger of them coming apart? Once you were to get the balance right and dominate the connected plates, you could think about taking your chances with them free again.  

I've made myself a bar for connecting my Olympic plates during my routine pinches, and I think it would work for the pinch cleans too. It's a 1 15/16 outside-diameter plastic pipe cut long enough to fit 2 Olympic 25', with just enough overhang for micro-loading. I've wrapped hocky tape in bands over the whole length of it, and made the bands thick enough where the 25s go that they require some considerable twisting and jamming to go in place.  I think if I had enough pinch strength to swing them to my shoulder it would be easy to learn the balance of the catch.  However, I'm struggling to get 50-55# even to deadlift height. Wish I had your pinch strength.

[Tom Black]

I cleaned and pressed a 45-pound plate last night in the gym.  It was actually easier than I expected, in fact I psyched myself up for it unnecessarily.   Didn't do reps on it, of course.  It was a lot harder to do a 35-pound plate curl than a 45-pound plate clean and I think a lot of guys on the board could do it if they tried.  Anyway, after doing it I wondered why John Brookfield showed doing only a 50-pound plate instead of pinch gripping two 25 or 35 pound plates and cleaning them.  I think the answer is in the safety of doing the pinching of the two plates and the clean.  I like Luke's idea of locking the plates together, there is no point in cracking one self in the head and looking like this :p afterwards.  Plue the exercise would still be effective.  After my 45-pound clean I had the same idea of adding weight, but to the single 45-pound plate rather than 2x25.