Jump to content

Grip Article


MalachiMcMullen

Recommended Posts

This is a primer article on grip I wrote for another website as a possible forum sticky. Lots of questions on grip and grippers specifically get asked there and they are all the same questions so I decided to write this one very bored evening. It's aimed specifically at grippers I know but I figured that telling people who only care about grippers all about blockweights, pinching, bending would be a waste of my time as they would be directed to the gripboard and learn more on their own if interested.

I figured the best place to re-proofread it would be here. If you guys think it needs anything just say so, if it doesn't need something then say so as well. It's kind of long but it answers the questions asked alot and gives enough info and directions to find answers to questions I did not address. I believe in high volume for beginners as that is what worked VERY well for me but if you guys have other ideas please share!

Here goes:

First off I have to say that the absolute #1 source for grip info and the only place you can talk to over 70 certified captains of crush, all the mash monsters, elite benders, strongmen, and all around kings of grip is www.gripboard.com, (you must have an account to view or post). Read up and ask questions there that this article doesn’t answer.

Hand grippers:

First things first, you need to know what a good hand gripper is and no it’s not something with plastic handles and a tiny 3/16” spring. These are what I’m talking about:

Ironmind Captains of Crush(COC) grippers- http://www6.mailordercentral.com/ironmind/...ucts.asp?dept=8

Beef Builder grippers- http://www.wwfitness.com/handgrippers.html

Robert Baraban(RB) grippers- http://www.fatbastardbarbellco.com/RBGRIPPERS.html

Heavy grips(HG) grippers- http://www.heavygrips.com

True heavy duty grippers designed and built to increase crushing hand strength. These are not your $5 sporting goods special’s, they average around 20 US$ plus shipping. The CoC’s are considered the gold standard of grippers and are made to strict standards. If you visit gripboard you may see someone rate a gripper as 2.6 or 3.2, these depend on the person but they are referring to the specific gripper being a little more than half again as hard as a COC #2 or abit harder than a COC#3. The Beef Builders and RB’s are hand made and are of very good quality. You can also contact Warren Tetting(of Beef Builder grippers) and he can make you a custom model to your specifications, knurling, handle spread, toughness. HG grippers are the bottom of the barrel but are useful training tools. HG’s vary a lot hence their price. In fact, when you look at the big picture the HG’s don’t get very difficult until the HG250 and HG300.

How to train:

I'm not going to bother saying "don't overtrain" because when you first get the grippers you will overtrain, everyone does, and your hands will be very sore, a deep soreness in the knuckles, wrist, palm and fingers. This will go away with more frequent training on the lighter grippers.

When it comes to frequency no one general rule applies, some guys can train balls to the wall 7 days a week and get good results while some can only do so 1 or 2 times a week, find what works for you. Once the initial soreness in your hands goes away you can easily gauge how long it takes your hands to recover and base your training around that.

HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME!!! Beginners should use HIGH VOLUME, take a tougher gripper you can close (if you can close a #1 then take the Trainer, if you can only close the HG200 then take the HG150) with you everywhere you go and just do closes. Take the gripper with you where ever you go and do over 500-1000 closes throughout the day, everyday for a week or two then take 2 days off or as long as it takes for your hands to heal and you'll find that your grip strength has grown by leaps and bounds, then redo it with a higher strength gripper. As a beginner the #1 goal isn't to find your max and work with it, it's to increase the strength and durability of the tendons in your hand then work from there.

A little realized fact about hand strength is thumb strength. Thumb strength is vital to all forms of hand strength, even when closing grippers. If you’re going to have strong hands then you’ll need strong thumbs and the way to get strong thumbs is to work with blockweights and pinching. Blockweight training is where you take something as simple as a brick and tie weights to it and lift, the thumb is forced to push the brick into the fingers. Pinching is where you take two smooth, metal plates and “pinch” them together and try to lift them. You could use varying widths and surfaces to add or subtract difficulty. The pinnacle in blockweights is to lift “the blob”. “The blob”, made popular by Richard Sorin, is ½ of a vintage 100lb York dumbbell, the sides are rounded and smooth and it weighs 50lbs. The pinnacle of pinching is to pinch two 45lb plates together and fully deadlift them. You can exceed these “feats” but these are considered the benchmark for the elite.

Gripper training techniques:

www.gripfaq.com/Hand_Grippers describes gripper exercises but here are some not mentioned.

Two finger closes, try closing the T with two fingers, then work towards the #1. Especially work like this with your pinky and ring fingers, these fingers are perhaps 99% of most people's weakness when they first start out with grip so the more strength you gain in these two fingers the faster a higher gripper will fall.

One finger closes, I don't recommend doing these with a heavy gripper because if you’re not warmed up properly you could pull a tendon or hurt yourself some other way but I do them with the G and S and they have really helped my closing strength.

Inverted, you can Invert the gripper and do closes that way, you'll probably be stronger this way with your left hand because of how the spring is wound.

Extensors:

Extensors are the muscles on the back of the forearm involved in opening the hand and are extremely important to hand health and strength. While training grippers, pinches and anything involving closing the hand you may develop a strength imbalance between the two sides of your forearm and you will feel pain or soreness in the back of your hands and your progress on you grip training will halt. To cure this you must train the extensors, you should train them all the time! Some ways to train the extensors are Reverse Barbell curls, you could wrap rubber bands around the ends of your fingers and open your hand(open pretty much means your pinky and pointer fingertips are farther from the tip of your thumb than you middle finger is long, my middle finger is 3 ¼” long so my pinky and pointer should be more than 3 ¼” from my thumb) and fingertip pushups.

Rest and Recuperation:

Rest is the most important thing in weightlifting of any kind. If you feel deep pain in your hands (and you’re more than a complete beginner) then stop gripping for a few days. Contrast baths are good for recouping faster, you fill to buckets or sinks with very hot water in one and ice water in the other and just switch your hands from one to the other every 2-5 minutes. You could dip your arms up to your elbows in ice water for 2 minutes then take them out for 2 minutes and repeat until you feel better. Dexterity balls, play with some dexterity balls, Chinese balls to get the hands loosened up. Anything that gets blood flowing to your hands is a good thing so there are some weird ones, like wearing mittens to bed, it sounds stupid but it does work. I’ve actually found that playing Fight Night Round 3 on the PS3 gets my hands pumped, in fact I’ve used it as a warm-up before though I’m pretty sure playing the Wii wouldn’t have the same effect.

Well this is just a primer for those who are interested in grip so good luck to all of you future gripmonsters! Keep in mind I’m leaving out card tearing, phonebook ripping, steel bending and all sorts of other fun feats of strength!

For further reading look into:

www.dieselcrew.com

www.grippermania.com

www.gripfaq.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great article. I can't think of much to add. Maybe John Eaton's video showing how to set a gripper would be a good addition?

Nice article.I've been thinking about trying the high vol. gripper thing.

It worked very well for me. Just take care of your hands.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very nice article. I think you've covered most things and given good links to more sources of info.

very useful, and a worthy read for all beginners! :rock

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice article. I'm not sure I would recommend high volume for a beginner though. It's pretty tough on the skin when your hands aren't used to grippers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice article. I'm not sure I would recommend high volume for a beginner though. It's pretty tough on the skin when your hands aren't used to grippers.

Good point. The numbers you gave for high volume seemed very high! This may need a note of caution for complete beginners?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice article. I'm not sure I would recommend high volume for a beginner though. It's pretty tough on the skin when your hands aren't used to grippers.
Good point. The numbers you gave for high volume seemed very high! This may need a note of caution for complete beginners?

Yeah, I thought about that when I was writing it but its the only way I personally know that works for sure. I've heard others say that it works and it really sped up my progress. Those are the #'s I started using when I worked with the Trainer and they fell sharply with every gripper up but I think your right and perhaps a simple drop in #'s of reps is in order, maybe to 100-200 a day and say to work from there?

Edited by MalachiMcMullen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME!!! Beginners should use HIGH VOLUME, take a tougher gripper you can close (if you can close a #1 then take the Trainer, if you can only close the HG200 then take the HG150) with you everywhere you go and just do closes. Take the gripper with you where ever you go and do over 500-1000 closes throughout the day, everyday for a week or two then take 2 days off or as long as it takes for your hands to heal and you'll find that your grip strength has grown by leaps and bounds, then redo it with a higher strength gripper. As a beginner the #1 goal isn't to find your max and work with it, it's to increase the strength and durability of the tendons in your hand then work from there.

I think you meant "weaker"?

Good article.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suspect that if you were to say to most beginners "do 500-1000 closes a day", their initial response would be "Sod that!" and rightly so. Your second suggestion sounds much better for the beginner.

Other than that it is pretty good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

I did a simple version of this post 2 weeks ago called "new to grippers? read this." You've added many good points that i missed out, nice one :tongue

keep up the good work mate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you meant "weaker"?

No I ment tougher, as in one you can close for maybe 10 reps at most per hand but I can see how the wording is alittle confusing.

Hi,

I did a simple version of this post 2 weeks ago called "new to grippers? read this." You've added many good points that i missed out, nice one :tongue

keep up the good work mate.

I remember that post, that looked pretty good too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For further reading look into:

www.dieselcrew.com

www.grippermania.com

www.gripfaq.com

Possibly I missed the reference, but you might want to include...THE GRIPBOARD!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy policies.