Old Modified Du Bend 3.5" Bastard

[bencrush]

I found this nearly 8 year old kinked 3.5" Bastard in a fish tank out in my garage. Why it was in the fish tank I don't know. But I was dusting off the fish tank to set it up for my daughter's room. I found two other kinked bars in the fish tank. It's been out in my garage for about 10 years. I didn't discover these bars before today because I had a blanket covering the entire fish tank to keep the chalk and dust out.

The only thing notable about this bend is the length of the bar. It is at 41 degrees and took me 21 seconds.i used double pads, like I did for most of my Modified DU bends. I never sent the video of the bend to FBBC because I thought that I was going to rest up and submit another video of the 3.5" Bastard where I bent it more than the bare minimum.

The other bars were also Modified DU trophies. A Mag Hex at 77 degrees. And a Mag Shiny at 62 degrees. I was greedy and knew I could soon do shorter bends with Hex and Shiny...but anyone familiar with me knows how this story ended, haha.

My advice to everyone currently bending. Smash those certs right now if you're able. Because you don't know what lurks around the corner.

[Billy Jack]

I agree 100% Ben. I was easily bending 7" and 6.5" Reds in IM pads in November-December 2014 and decided I was going to put off the cert until January 2015 due to the holiday season. I then injured my shoulder doing something unrelated to bending and had to take a long time off. I just started back recently and I lost a lot of strength and mobility. It can be disheartening knowing that your max bend used to be a warm-up.

I used to not be a "cert-minded" individual, but this has changed my mind somewhat.

[Andrew P]

Incredible bend. Those 3.5" bars are super rare. I wish you had it on video.

[anwnate]

Crazy! I doubt I'll ever figure out how you bent those short bars!

[Anthony C.]

Oh man! I wish I were around when you were in your bending prime,Ben. That is simply unreal

[diesel]

this is absolutely ridiculous. I don't even know you begin to handle something this short. Not only is this a tough bend in terms of strength required, but that short size..that extreme short size...has to make this crazy hard to even handle. You must have Thor hands. Do you think a crush down on this bar is possible?

[Mike Sharkey]

Incredible bend. Those 3.5" bars are super rare. I wish you had it on video.

Ben has some insane bends. DU and DO. Golden age of bending, never to return.

[Anthony C.]

Incredible bend. Those 3.5" bars are super rare. I wish you had it on video.

Ben has some insane bends. DU and DO. Golden age of bending, never to return.

you never know when THE FORCE AWAKENS.

[bencrush]

Incredible bend. Those 3.5" bars are super rare. I wish you had it on video.

Thanks, Andrew! Yeah those bars are very rare. I have it on video somewhere. Wife and I bought a new (at the time) computer in 2010. The old computer went to a friend who had his stolen. Same computer that had my best DO attempt on the 3.5" Bastard.

Crazy! I doubt I'll ever figure out how you bent those short bars!

Thanks! I just pushed into the ends of the bar as hard as I could and tried to "bend" the bar in the middle to "guide" it where I wanted it to start bending. To a bender, this will make sense. To everyone who is not a bender, this will sound borderline crazy.

I agree 100% Ben. I was easily bending 7" and 6.5" Reds in IM pads in November-December 2014 and decided I was going to put off the cert until January 2015 due to the holiday season. I then injured my shoulder doing something unrelated to bending and had to take a long time off. I just started back recently and I lost a lot of strength and mobility. It can be disheartening knowing that your max bend used to be a warm-up.

I used to not be a "cert-minded" individual, but this has changed my mind somewhat.

I feel your pain, man! Hope you get back to the point where you can mangle the same bars (and harder) that you were back then.

Oh man! I wish I were around when you were in your bending prime,Ben. That is simply unreal

Thanks! I wish you were too. That was such a fun time! So many benders (average to elite) having a great time pushing each other to harder and harder bends.

[bencrush]

this is absolutely ridiculous. I don't even know you begin to handle something this short. Not only is this a tough bend in terms of strength required, but that short size..that extreme short size...has to make this crazy hard to even handle. You must have Thor hands. Do you think a crush down on this bar is possible?

Haha, "Thor hands!" I liked to think so, at the time. I don't have small hands (7 and 7/8" length), so this made the super short bars even harder to handle. But my not small hands definitely helped when it came time to crush the bars down to 2". I never crushed down a 3.5" Bastard from straight. But I'm positive it would've been possible for me (and many others) if I had stayed injury-free another 6 months to a year. I was able to interlock my fingers pretty well on a bar that length even well before 90 degrees. I bent several 3.5" G8s (1/4" diameter, of course) and figured out pretty quickly that it sucked doing the crushdown even more if I waited to get the bar to 90 degrees before really putting the pressure on. So I'd just interlock my fingers as early as possible (probably around 60-70 degrees) and do the crushdown from there.

Travis Mickelberry might remember better than me, but I think I bent a 1/4"x3.5" Square-FBBC at his house in 2008 when I visited him. I believe he kept the resulting "trophy" - it suuuuuuuuuuuucked. Double pads and it bent on the flat. Much less than 5 minutes, although I don't remember the time. It chewed up my crush pads.

[bencrush]

Incredible bend. Those 3.5" bars are super rare. I wish you had it on video.

Ben has some insane bends. DU and DO. Golden age of bending, never to return.

Thanks, Mike! You guys took the golden age of bending into the platinum age of bending. Really wish I was still "around" and able to bend the elite bars. Mainly that would mean my shoulders were functional for so much more than bending, haha.

[bencrush]

Oh man! I wish I were around when you were in your bending prime,Ben. That is simply unreal

Incredible bend. Those 3.5" bars are super rare. I wish you had it on video.

Ben has some insane bends. DU and DO. Golden age of bending, never to return.

Agreed. I remember thinking the exact same thing when i was bending heavily. Even though i could have never bent that short, it would have been cool to have a back and forth bend thing going with Ben, Booyah, Aaron, Paul, Greg A., Pat P., Eric, David W., Gazza, etc. all at the same time. and it would have been even cooler if EJ, Hannes, JT, and the big russian were all in the same era.

Right back at you, Tommy! Short bars aren't necessarily the most impressive. The HUGE bends you've done are more impressive than any of my best bends. Any of them. And I'm not being modest. That being said, the short bends were pretty special to me I think because I seemed to be better at them than my relatively modest longer (unbraced) bends would hint at. I think if all those bending greats you listed were active in the same era we probably all would've ended up in full body casts from trying to better each other, lol! Booyah was super, super impressive. So were some of the others, of course. But Mike Hadland always seemed (in my opinion) to be the best all around bender of "my" active era. I am only referring to guys that attended comps. Pat P. might've been more impressive, but I never saw him at any comps. The same for Gazza. I think he was at a few over the years, but his level of bending was not what it was at his zenith.

Incredible bend. Those 3.5" bars are super rare. I wish you had it on video.

Ben has some insane bends. DU and DO. Golden age of bending, never to return.

you never know when THE FORCE AWAKENS.

You're right! Maybe one day Mike Hadland will decide to start bending again and that is something I would definitely watch with a lot of interest. Or any of the other past elites that retired or took a long hiatus.

[bencrush]

I also wanted to say that it's pleasant that nobody came on here and pointed out that my simple photo of a bent bar is not proof of a past bend. I absolutely would not have been offended if anyone had done that. I'm pretty comfortable with my past bending ability so naysayers usually don't bother me in the slightest.

[Mike Sharkey]

Incredible bend. Those 3.5" bars are super rare. I wish you had it on video.

Ben has some insane bends. DU and DO. Golden age of bending, never to return.

Thanks, Mike! You guys took the golden age of bending into the platinum age of bending. Really wish I was still "around" and able to bend the elite bars. Mainly that would mean my shoulders were functional for so much more than bending, haha.

Ben its a difficult discipline to sustain for that long. Hard on the body (why I gave it up), and difficult to train anything else at all while you're doing it. There was just a good recipe of many talented benders pushing each other. I can't imagine we will ever see a shoe race like the one we did between Wiggy and Bergmann and Mike R.

[CaptainCrush]

I remember this bend like it was yesterday.  I was training for my insane bastard cert at the time.  We were both hooked on the short steel then.  I went through so many pieces of 4.5 x 5/16 O-1 drill rod to get ready for it.  Miss these days!!

[bencrush]

Great to see you on the board again! Those were the days.

[CaptainCrush]

Great to be back!  Time to show these youngsters some awesome bends again!

[robertmiller67]

Crazy short steel bend brother!  I would've loved to seen that bend back in the day!  

Agreed with Mike... bending takes a lot out of you, esp. at a high level & even more difficult to maintain for long lengths of time.  

I usually take breaks every year from bending & focus on other sports such as SM or Highland games.  It seemed to serve me well over the last few year's & allows for better recovery imho. 

Cheers sir!  

[bencrush]

Kind of a bittersweet find in my closet yesterday before coming to work.  It hurt my heart because it was a letter to my close friend Chad that died a few years back.  He was getting interested in bending and was mega strong.  So I put a few bars in a padded envelope and told him to use them as inspirational pieces.  Before I sent the packet out, he passed away due to a complication from a shoulder surgery he had.  In agony, I threw the envelope in the closet and forgot about it.  It has accumulated items of clothing thrown or fallen on top of it over the past few years.  I probably wouldn't have found it but we have a new goofy young cat and he was playing in the closet and ended up dragging the envelope out to chew on.  I debated posting another "look at what I used to be able to do" type update, but in the end a few guys might be interested to know what the bars were. 

• 5" Edgin bent to 77 degrees.  Note says "fat pads, DO, 5 minutes."  Obviously a failure, but I had hopes of finishing off a 5" Edgin.
• 5.5" Edgin bent to under 2".  Note says "fat pads, DO, 1 minute 13 seconds."  This was my fastest 5.5" Edgin, lol.  I knew a few guys who were doing them in under half that time.  As I mentioned before, I was a pretty slow bender.
• 6" Edgin bent to 47 degrees.  Note says "fat pads, Modified DU, 30 seconds, OUCH!"  To be honest, I don't remember getting a 6" Edgin Modified DU, but it isn't a huge surprise since it was around the time I did a 3.5" Bastard Modified DU. 

And the crushdown training pieces...

• 5.5" KOAB from (cheatkinked) 90 degrees to 1 and 7/8".  No time limit listed, which means it was probably done as a multi-part crushdown workout.
• 6" KOAB from (cheatkinked) 90 degrees to 1 and 3/4" in 22 seconds.  I do remember that being pretty fast on the crushdown portion for me. 
• .343"x6" DR-O1 (not cheatkinked) from 3.5" to 2".  No time limit listed, and it was done from a straight bar over a series of workouts.  This particular bar was harder than ANY 6" Edgin I bent.

 

 

 

 

 

[Donc101]

2 hours ago, bencrush said:

Kind of a bittersweet find in my closet yesterday before coming to work.  It hurt my heart because it was a letter to my close friend Chad that died a few years back.  He was getting interested in bending and was mega strong.  So I put a few bars in a padded envelope and told him to use them as inspirational pieces.  Before I sent the packet out, he passed away due to a complication from a shoulder surgery he had.  In agony, I threw the envelope in the closet and forgot about it.  It has accumulated items of clothing thrown or fallen on top of it over the past few years.  I probably wouldn't have found it but we have a new goofy young cat and he was playing in the closet and ended up dragging the envelope out to chew on.  I debated posting another "look at what I used to be able to do" type update, but in the end a few guys might be interested to know what the bars were. 

• 5" Edgin bent to 77 degrees.  Note says "fat pads, DO, 5 minutes."  Obviously a failure, but I had hopes of finishing off a 5" Edgin.
• 5.5" Edgin bent to under 2".  Note says "fat pads, DO, 1 minute 13 seconds."  This was my fastest 5.5" Edgin, lol.  I knew a few guys who were doing them in under half that time.  As I mentioned before, I was a pretty slow bender.
• 6" Edgin bent to 47 degrees.  Note says "fat pads, Modified DU, 30 seconds, OUCH!"  To be honest, I don't remember getting a 6" Edgin Modified DU, but it isn't a huge surprise since it was around the time I did a 3.5" Bastard Modified DU. 

And the crushdown training pieces...

• 5.5" KOAB from (cheatkinked) 90 degrees to 1 and 7/8".  No time limit listed, which means it was probably done as a multi-part crushdown workout.
• 6" KOAB from (cheatkinked) 90 degrees to 1 and 3/4" in 22 seconds.  I do remember that being pretty fast on the crushdown portion for me. 
• .343"x6" DR-O1 (not cheatkinked) from 3.5" to 2".  No time limit listed, and it was done from a straight bar over a series of workouts.  This particular bar was harder than ANY 6" Edgin I bent.

 

 

 

 

 

Those are big bends Ben!

[bencrush]

17 hours ago, Donc101 said:

Those are big bends Ben!

Thanks!  They were decent back then.  Not so much now with the latest batch of monster benders.