A gripmaniac's Bending (b)log

[gripmaniac]

Over the years I’ve had several stints of unbraced bending (mostly DO, but a bit of DU as well).

The log/blog chronicles my training efforts from March 2017 onwards.  Bending workouts will be entered (along with victim pics – which I’m quite fond of).  Associated training will get a mention, and perhaps most importantly goals, challenges, and insights will be covered (ie. the bloggy bit).

As I start this I can’t guarantee how long the current  DO “stint” will last – but each time I start a new one I will update this thread.

Happy to take questions specific to my training – but if you have a more general one or would like my humble opinion,  then I ask that you either start a thread in the Bending forum or PM me.

If you’re compelled to offer advice/suggestions then knock yourself out. I’m not a snob . . . . . but I perhaps too rarely ask for advice as I simply prefer to stubbornly work stuff out for myself.

Dave

[gripmaniac]

Time to see where I’m at!  Nothing to strenuous and none of the bends were timed or recorded – although they  each took around 2 minutes.

Pretty happy with this – wrist strength fairly good considering I haven’t bent in ages or even trained with sledgehammers for. . . .18 or so months. The wraps are my thinner leather ones (where are my slightly thicker ones I wonder?).  My 4" * 6" trusty crushed down pads are also pictured.

There appears to be some sort of foundation to build upon !!!

Dave

[gripmaniac]

Felt pretty good during the workout – although my flexibility/mobility could be a little better.  Need to make sure I warm up a bit better next time.

The 3rd bar felt a little off-centre at crush down . . .but I continued on.  K1045 is a sweet battle to crush down really well (I'll discuss this in a future post).

Didn’t bother timing these - probably 1.5 to 3 minutes for each one.

The thinner wraps felt ok . . .but I was too lazy to look for my more comfy ones.

Dave

[gripmaniac]

The third bar signalled the end of the thinner wraps honeymoon – they were just too uncomfortable in a whinging “I’m hurting my hands" kind of way. A frantic search resulted in locating my safely stored thicker wraps (these are around 30mm in diameter).

I see no reason to use thicker wraps than these – they are all I require to protect my hands and still get a good purchase on and feel for the bar.  I’ll post a comparison pic at some stage.

The Euro bar was a spur of the moment thing.  This was from the left over stock from the '06 comp (boy did Mikael and I overstock that !!!).  It's funky stuff for DO bending - if you can kink it the sweep phase feels like the bar is melting (ie. no tensile strength).  My crushdown efforts with these usually result in the ends being closer together than the base - basically a pear shape.  That is the case with this bar (by 2mm).

I was pretty surprised to get the last bar to move (running out of gas) and it must have taken 5 minutes to finish (crushdown took longer than anything).  A 10 degrees pre-kink is quite low – I used to do these at mostly 15-25 degrees at my prime.  Unkinked?  That is a future post subject !!!!

Dave

[gripmaniac]

To put the details of the next bending workout into context it’s probably time for a little background info (hopefully this will serve as a healthy warning for bending addicts who find themselves in a similar situation).

Prior to resuming bending I had a minor issue with my left bicep.  A bit of muscle soreness most probably due to overuse.  Nothing was “wrong” with my bicep tendon and basically I just trained thru it thinking “hey, no big deal – it’ll sort itself out”. This turned out not to be the case as over the next three weeks my whole elbow joint progressively became more unstable and the bicep soreness progressed to a minor tear and some associated tendon inflamation. I don’t think the bending workouts (particularly crushdown of the bars) helped in any way.

On 09 April I was doing a bit of labour in the garden and without going into laborious detail I put a lot of stress on the joint and fell the forearm bones displace. No agony, no explosion of pain – just some weird movement and a bit of discomfort. That night my body rebelled and said “hey stoo-pid! Try this one for size” as I nearly straight arm locked the joint up whilst semi-asleep.  Freaky stuff.

Despite the increasing instability (and a couple more near lockups during the week) I decided to proceed with the below workout. In my experience bending addiction can cause bouts of such extreme stupidity.

The workout itself wasn’t too bad – I was however down 15% on maximum crushdown ability – and had no intention of “really” pushing it.

The 8mm 1214 was initially pre-kinked to 10 degrees – but that proved too optimistic.  8mm plain wire is the best 177mm * 8mm “anything” I can consistently bend without kinking.  It’s fun stuff and a solid battle to crushdown. With the gas running out I opted for a shorter length on the final bar (would liked to have crushed it down a little more – but that simply wasn’t possible).

 Yeah, I completed the workout – but at what cost?  Tune it for aftermath in the next post.

[gripmaniac]

The cost of that last bending workout was to basically trash my whole elbow joint. No tendons were ruptured – but they were universally pretty fried and so were at least a couple of my forearm muscles (in addition to my bicep). Everything was quite unstable, weak, sore, and frankly quite concerning. Above all else I was petrified of locking the joint up (particularly whilst turning in my sleep - ie. the stuff of nightmares)

Any form of upper body training (weights, grip, or anything) was completely out of the question.  A couple of trips to the chiro during the week helped a lot (as did ice packs).  I probably should have seen a physio – but it was pretty obvious a decent break was required as much as anything.

2 weeks on from all this and things are settling down – but at best I'd say I'm only 80% recovered.  Bicep is on the improve, but I still have 1 forearm muscle that refuses to deactivate/release without an ice pack or hard massage.  I’ll give it another week of no upper body or hard grip stuff.  Common sense dictates that resumption of bending will be a little longer.

For probably the first time in 15-20 years I squatted 3 times this week. Nothing nuts mind you – just 2 work sets of 20 reps.  I was actually looking forward to the Friday session and the following post workout 4km walk. Lower back held up really well.

The reasons for finding myself in this predicament are now pretty obvious to me:

• Overtraining/lack of rest with general training (very few “rest days”)
• Lack of conditioning for bending
• Inadequate warmup prior to each bending workout
• Too much/hard bending too early.  Too much appetite – too little common sense
• Elbows were my weakest point (shoulders and wrists both much stronger).
• The bicep injury was the catalyst and shouldn’t have been ignored.

Despite not being able to bend or train I haven’t been idle – I’ll cover this off next post.

Injury can indeed sometimes be a blessing.

[gripmaniac]

Recovery continued along quite well this week.  My Chiro’s verdict was that I was “in a lot better shape than last week”.  Bicep is still noticeable – but not a distraction. Forearm muscle is slowly deactivating and settling down.  Medial elbow tendon is still an issue and needs a bit more time before I go full bore anything. It’s good enough for some light upper body weight training and moderate grip stuff.  Some exercises will be off limits though until I’m confident I can hack them without reinjury. Also, don’t bet on me doing barbell bicep curls for a bit either.

3 more squats sessions this week. No upper body stuff, and just some 2 light grip sessions (3” tiptester, 1.5 Coc, and inverse 4” spring clamp for last 2 fingers). Plenty of walking – including a 4km hike with only moonlight for most of the way.

So, in the absence of bending and most of my normal training what have I been doing?

• Cutting up steel bars. I was critically low on 6.35mm K1045 bars even though I have a stack of it in 12 foot length. I now have over 150 bars in mostly 7 inch lengths.  7mm square S1214 also got a handy top up (I’ll discuss this breed of animal in a future post), as did my 8mm S1214 round. I also finally got around to labelling my “go to” containers which are where I grab the bars during a workout. These are the shorter containers pictured left below and they easily hold over 100 bars.  In case you’re wondering I have only a hacksaw and numerous spare blades. Being a leftie, my elbow joint has been “kept warm” during this endeavour.

   

• Reviewing my bending clips. I taped several workouts from 6-8 years ago and although I haven’t nutted out what bars I was bending or whether they were pre-kinked, I nevertheless gained a few insights.  It was also quite therapeutic to implore myself to “drop the elbows!”, “engage the wrists you. . .”, “Grip the bar tighter/better”, etc,etc . It’s given me a bit to think about – particularly those bars I couldn’t get started or finish.  I also taped my 15 April workout – and that has proven a real eye opener for why I couldn’t budge the 10 degree pre-kink that I had done the week before. I’ll probably summarise my observations in a future post.

 

[gripmaniac]

My elbow continued to improve this week as I resumed “restricted” upper body weight training and tried a couple more grip exercises.  Nothing strenuous on any front and clearly some weight exercises would be just plain stupid to attempt. Bicep is mending well, but the troublesome forearm muscle is lacking behind (several sports massage sessions would probably sort it out – but I’ll stick with my own efforts – and ice packs).

Resumption of bending remains several weeks away I’m afraid – there is no way my elbow or the muscles could take it at this point in time.

[gripmaniac]

As previously mentioned, here’s a pic of my current wraps I use for either DO or breaking.

I’ve always used washers to measure the diameter of my wraps.  My rule is: If the first inch or so of the wrap (ie. The bit up to the rubber band) goes thru then its ok. 8mm bar is used for DO and a 6.35mm bar for breaking.  The item on the right is the base of a tap fitting I used ages ago – until I came to the conclusion that the wraps were just a little too big/loose. In hindsight this was probably more to do with the fact that the leather I used at the time was unfinished on one side.

For me the 26.4mm hole qualifies as a 1” wrap . . . allowing for that 1mm variance. The washer itself would of course fit over a 1” bolt. Out of necessity break wraps need to be a little thinner, and I’ve found that thinner leather works really well (spongy break wraps don’t work!!!) and enables a slightly tighter wrap than DO.

The leather I currently use for DO is awesome – smooth, supple, and thick enough to not easily fatigue and develop holes.  I’m pretty sure I oiled them up last time as was bending – and that has really helped preserve them and kept them for drying out. Dry leather sucks the oil out of hands and has caused me grief in the past – but I’ve had no such issues this time around.

I tend to wrap fairly tight – but it’s never been a real issue for me. Often I’ll bend 4-6 bars without bothering to rewrap.

As far as width goes, I generally use wraps that are between 100-125mm. Any wider proved quite pointless , whilst I’m yet to bother trying anything under 4 inches as I doubt they’d be suitable considering I have my wraps fairly close together. More on this in a future post where I’ll describe/define my technique.