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Gripper advice


Aleksandar Milosevic

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2 hours ago, Paul Savage said:

I wasn't saying you don't have to work hard I was saying you don't have to do a lot of specific gripper training. A lot don't focus enough on full body training and just getting strong overall, and getting the base hand strength is really the key. A lot hammer away at the grippers but don't train much else, where as putting a 3 month plan of solid full body strength training together with a lot pinch and thickbar training (along with overhand deadlifts, bare handed rows and shrugs etc) would build the base up a lot more, and actually you can PB on grippers as soon as you come back but that's a thing a lot of people do is that they always go really heavy with grippers (heavy singles, negatives etc). I've found you really don't need to and it makes no logical sense either when you think it through. If I just do heavy singles on deadlift for a month will my deadlift go up? Yes, I'll definitely put up more weight baring injury, but did I get stronger? Or did I just get better at deadlifting? And would I keep putting bigger numbers up if I did this year round? No, because I'm just getting more practiced, not getting stronger, once im well practiced, I'm unlikely to see further progress, and infact I might get weaker and go backwards. This is no different with grippers, you need rep work with lighter grippers to gain muscle size and strength. Yes of course you need to do heavy singles at times but only when ready to peak, base building is where the real strength is built.

Paul, I have to disagree. As someone who squatted 220 kg, benched 150 kg, and deadlifted 215 kg, it didn't help me one bit with grippers. If I don't train on my TSG gripper, I lose the ability to close it. The deadlift analogy is straight up bizzare. If I can just "get better" at grippers or deadlifting all the way to #3 or 300 kg, than so be it. How can you get better at a strength display, without actually getting stronger, provided that the technique is adequate (and that happens trough specific training). I agree with the base building part, most training done should be at a lower intensity, under 85%.

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4 hours ago, Aleksandar Milosevic said:

Paul, I have to disagree. As someone who squatted 220 kg, benched 150 kg, and deadlifted 215 kg, it didn't help me one bit with grippers. If I don't train on my TSG gripper, I lose the ability to close it. The deadlift analogy is straight up bizzare. If I can just "get better" at grippers or deadlifting all the way to #3 or 300 kg, than so be it. How can you get better at a strength display, without actually getting stronger, provided that the technique is adequate (and that happens trough specific training). I agree with the base building part, most training done should be at a lower intensity, under 85%.

Because you simply get better at maxing, cns gets better adapted etc

I tried guys haha 

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I’m in about the same spot. I was considering getting a GHP 5 and 6, getting them rated, then seeing where the gaps are. 

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Getting better at maxing = getting stronger. It's literally getting better at displaying maximal strength, which you cannot do if you're not getting stronger.

The dilemma is settled, I ordered the 3 gripper bundle + silver bullet from IronMind. I got the 1.5, 2.5 and 3. Now I just need to persevere.

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22 minutes ago, Tommy J. said:

Maxing is not a training tool. Maxing is nothing more than a display of your max strength. You dont get strong by maxing. Lol

however, they do serve as a great way to determine %’s in your programming.

you get strong by time under tension. Im going to assume that instead of max efforts, your actually referring to heavy singles. I only agree with heavy singles if you do a lot of them in a session. Then what does that still translate to? More time under tension. 

I also dont agree with the “it doesnt work for everybody.” Line. Thats bs. We aint talking diet. Time under tension will work for everyone. They just have to do it. 

How many years did you stick with doing reps like Laine did before you gave up?

Time under tension is really just an oversimplified way to talk about volume.  Volume is only one overload variable that can be used to stimulate adaptation.  

Another very important variable is intensity (or load, weight, etc).  You could spend 5:00 of TUT holding a Trainer closed, but that won’t be the most efficient way to become a #3 closer.  At some point, you would need to spend time closing stronger grippers, at the expense of overall TUT.

Volume and intensity, considered together, will be a more powerful way to build strength.

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10 hours ago, Hopefully said:

His point is basically that you are just optimising your current potential without actually increasing it. Claiming you arent getting stronger is of course wrong though. Strength is very movement specific anyway. With that said you wont increase your bench by 40lbs by 'getting better' at it and not see any carry over to other press and push movements. 

Also in regards to grippers there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that heavy singles or maxing out is an extremely effective method for getting stronger with them. I max out 3 times a week currently and I am getting stronger all the time. Maybe I'll hit a massive wall eventually but I havent yet. And if that wall then is beyond the #3 cert, I don't really care. 

Pauls not wrong, youre not really getting stronger by lifting more weight through heavy singles, youre just getting more skilled at that movement and your cns gets better firing for a max. 

His methods and programming do work. Hes not saying you should never do heavy singles, but theres a time and a place for it. 

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27 minutes ago, jchapman said:

Time under tension is really just an oversimplified way to talk about volume.  Volume is only one overload variable that can be used to stimulate adaptation.  

Another very important variable is intensity (or load, weight, etc).  You could spend 5:00 of TUT holding a Trainer closed, but that won’t be the most efficient way to become a #3 closer.  At some point, you would need to spend time closing stronger grippers, at the expense of overall TUT.

Volume and intensity, considered together, will be a more powerful way to build strength.

Yes you would need to close heavier grippers than a trainer, but that doesnt mean that a trainer could not be very useful. 

After my shoulder operation Paul put me on a gripper specific routine and it was a lot of high reps (20+) where i did actually start with the trainer and the heaviest gripper i went to was around a #1.5. This got me to doing 10 no set reps on the coc#2 when my previous best on it was 2 reps and i also ccs'd a hard #2.5 basically on a whim. 

This wouldnt be all that Paul would recommend and programme and he would certainly recommend going heavier and eventually to singles (i ended up doing competitions so couldnt finish the programme, otherwise im sure i would have ccs'd the #3) but it clearly shows that high repetitions on relatively light grippers can get you a lot stronger.

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4 minutes ago, BeccaRoberts said:

Yes you would need to close heavier grippers than a trainer, but that doesnt mean that a trainer could not be very useful. 

After my shoulder operation Paul put me on a gripper specific routine and it was a lot of high reps (20+) where i did actually start with the trainer and the heaviest gripper i went to was around a #1.5. This got me to doing 10 no set reps on the coc#2 when my previous best on it was 2 reps and i also ccs'd a hard #2.5 basically on a whim. 

This wouldnt be all that Paul would recommend and programme and he would certainly recommend going heavier and eventually to singles (i ended up doing competitions so couldnt finish the programme, otherwise im sure i would have ccs'd the #3) but it clearly shows that high repetitions on relatively light grippers can get you a lot stronger.

Woah. that's fascinating. I guess there is really more to be said about hypertrophy for strength when it comes to grip than I thought. Were you also doing a periodization style program along with that, or did you just stick to high volume while also slowly increasing the resistance?

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14 minutes ago, BeccaRoberts said:

Yes you would need to close heavier grippers than a trainer, but that doesnt mean that a trainer could not be very useful. 

After my shoulder operation Paul put me on a gripper specific routine and it was a lot of high reps (20+) where i did actually start with the trainer and the heaviest gripper i went to was around a #1.5. This got me to doing 10 no set reps on the coc#2 when my previous best on it was 2 reps and i also ccs'd a hard #2.5 basically on a whim. 

This wouldnt be all that Paul would recommend and programme and he would certainly recommend going heavier and eventually to singles (i ended up doing competitions so couldnt finish the programme, otherwise im sure i would have ccs'd the #3) but it clearly shows that high repetitions on relatively light grippers can get you a lot stronger.

We agree.  You did exactly what I was talking about, managing volume and intensity together to get stronger.

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9 minutes ago, devinhoo said:

Woah. that's fascinating. I guess there is really more to be said about hypertrophy for strength when it comes to grip than I thought. Were you also doing a periodization style program along with that, or did you just stick to high volume while also slowly increasing the 

Would be best for Paul to answer this, i'll ask him to 

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17 minutes ago, devinhoo said:

Woah. that's fascinating. I guess there is really more to be said about hypertrophy for strength when it comes to grip than I thought. Were you also doing a periodization style program along with that, or did you just stick to high volume while also slowly increasing the resistance?

It's worth noting that there was some seemingly little things in there that make a big difference like working mostly beyond the range, a lot of chalkless training, big emphasis on building up the thumb pad etc That said, it was done in a way that if you can do x amount of reps for x amount of sets then you can move up a gripper (though that doesn't need to happen automatically, no need to rush things, the longer you base build the bigger the peak will be). I actually had her doing a gripper less than a trainer at first and a lot of it was very high reps. In the end she actually ended up doing a gripper harder than coc #2 for 10 no set chalkless so it was very successful especially considering she only got about half way through it (soooo many comps with becca doing both strongwoman and gripsport). 

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2 hours ago, Tommy J. said:

Maxing is not a training tool. Maxing is nothing more than a display of your max strength. You dont get strong by maxing. Lol

however, they do serve as a great way to determine %’s in your programming.

you get strong by time under tension. Im going to assume that instead of max efforts, your actually referring to heavy singles. I only agree with heavy singles if you do a lot of them in a session. Then what does that still translate to? More time under tension. 

I also dont agree with the “it doesnt work for everybody.” Line. Thats bs. We aint talking diet. Time under tension will work for everyone. They just have to do it. 

How many years did you stick with doing reps like Laine did before you gave up?

Who called it a training tool? Are there different types of time under tension? Is time under a 90%+ load still time under tension? Where's the exact border where "maxing" starts and time under tension ends? Can the methods be combined? Can you do max effort followed by lower intensity work? Can the exercises that you max on be changed weekly, so the monthly cycle has 4 different exercises which lead to same goal but use different angles, range of motion etc.? And yes, saying it doesn't work for everyone is bs, because it doesn't work for ANYONE if you don't translate it to maximal effort, which is the only thing that counts, right? I will not discuss Laine's program here, because he gave it to me and told me not to spread it, but it contained both volume work and maximal work. And I'm not going to stick even a week with something that gave me less results than what I'm doing or have done.

I really didn't want to involve myself writing about programming here, because that wasn't the subject, but I'm being provoked by your writing style. As I've said, I don't need help about programming nor any training advice that I don't request and I try not to give any where it isn't requested, despite me being an actual, college educated master's degree strength and conditioning coach.

Every single person deserves an individual approach, and the methods used are determined by that person's morphology, physiological attributes, age, out-of-training habits, time, goals etc. There is no "one size fits all" program that's 95%+ OPTIMAL AND EFFICIENT.

And diet is the most exact thing there is and it boils down to calories in - calories out, nothing more, nothing less, when we're talking about individuals with normal hormone functioning. The way you manipulate the calories is your choice.

CNS adaptations matter less and less the more you're accustomed to the movement, if we're talking about muscle firing patterns, % of activated muscle tissue etc., and you just need to get stronger with adequate programming.

This whole discussion about training to me is like me teaching my car mechanic about cars because I changed my oil a couple of times by myself and know how to change a tire.


 

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28 minutes ago, Aleksandar Milosevic said:

This whole discussion about training to me is like me teaching my car mechanic about cars because I changed my oil a couple of times by myself and know how to change a tire.


 

Holding a degree in strength and conditioning and having an indepth grip knowledge are 2 different things. 

If you want to look at things in this way, Paul is the mechanic here. Its not just that, he might just be the best mechanic in the world.

You said in your original post you can do the #2 for 1-3 reps right hand and not with your left yet. Paul has done the #4 with fairly wide sets with both hands and 3 reps with with right hand. He has also done it from originally not being able to close a #1 which is maybe the best progress any male has ever made on grippers. 

Ontop of this he has coached me to having the strongest female crush grip in the world and has only taken a few years to do it. 

So i dont think its fair that youre insinuating that he knows very little about this subject. It would make a lot more sense if you were to listen and take more note from the likes of him and Laine. (No programme is going to give you results in a week, thats insane). 

 

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16 minutes ago, BeccaRoberts said:

Holding a degree in strength and conditioning and having an indepth grip knowledge are 2 different things. 

If you want to look at things in this way, Paul is the mechanic here. Its not just that, he might just be the best mechanic in the world.

You said in your original post you can do the #2 for 1-3 reps right hand and not with your left yet. Paul has done the #4 with fairly wide sets with both hands and 3 reps with with right hand. He has also done it from originally not being able to close a #1 which is maybe the best progress any male has ever made on grippers. 

Ontop of this he has coached me to having the strongest female crush grip in the world and has only taken a few years to do it. 

So i dont think its fair that youre insinuating that he knows very little about this subject. It would make a lot more sense if you were to listen and take more note from the likes of him and Laine. (No programme is going to give you results in a week, thats insane). 

 

Going from not closing a 1 to repping a 4 is insane. Wow

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We're not on the same page, I was talking to Tommy, who I quoted. We're talking about general principles of strength here, which apply to all body parts. I've seen Paul's videos of you and him training, and he knows his stuff, it's just that his verbal skills don't do him any good in explaining what he wants to say, and I believe it's caused by not knowing the correct training terminology (that's where formal education comes in). 

Now I have to be brutally honest. I don't care about a female sports that have a male counterpart, especially strength sports, and especially grip. And we need to be real here, how many women are competing, and are you an average woman, just by birth? As far as I understand your weight is 175 kilograms, heavier than most guys at WSM, maybe I'm wrong. So you're not really the standard to be measured against. I know this might seam blunt or whatever, but I mean no insult. I honestly think that you can be the strongest woman in the world in any discipline you choose, just based on your God given qualities. How many women are on this forum, and in grip sport in general? 

I listen to and respect everyone's opinion, but I don't like when someone gives me advice that I didn't ask for, and I think that's the case with the majority of people.  

Usain Bolt is the best sprinter that walked the Earth, do you think he's the world's biggest expert on strength and power training for sprinters, or even skill training? Performance =/= training knowledge. I'm not putting Paul in this category,  I'm just making a point.

My gripper performance is the result of my mental and physical effort invested into training them - about 3 hours total in my life, and that's generous. 

And I didn't form my sentence correct about the sticking with something - I did the entire program Laine gave me and advanced 2.5 kilograms on the RT, while raising my rep records considerably. If I do a program and put my full effort into it and not gain satisfactory results, I'm not going to do it again, even for a week. That's why when I was in powerlifting I ran Mr. Boris Sheiko's programs for 52 weeks, because they worked. 

Again, I don't like the way this thread is going, and I made it to get the advice about buying equipment and I've reached my answer, so the thread can be closed.

I wish everyone here all the best in their training and life, and thank you all again!

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6 minutes ago, Aleksandar Milosevic said:

Now I have to be brutally honest. I don't care about a female sports that have a male counterpart, especially strength sports, and especially grip. And we need to be real here, how many women are competing, and are you an average woman, just by birth? As far as I understand your weight is 175 kilograms, heavier than most guys at WSM, maybe I'm wrong. So you're not really the standard to be measured against. I know this might seam blunt or whatever, but I mean no insult. I honestly think that you can be the strongest woman in the world in any discipline you choose, just based on your God given qualities.

It's very easy to think of something as genetic and god given, and I know all about that, I've trained and competed with some absolute freaks, including wsm competitors.

Do genetics play a role in sports? Absolutely, to what degree? To a massive agree. That said, Becca doesn't fall into that super genetic freak category, actually not even close. Yeah she's got height and a huge frame and that gives her the 'potential' to add more muscle than others however being natural this isn't an easy process for a woman but more importantly she's very much a normal human being (just bigger haha). She wasn't 'born strong' like pretty much all the guys at world strongest man, she struggled with 60kg deadlifts and 5kg plate shoulder raises when I first started training her and she couldn't close the #1 either (even being 170kg back then, which by the way, isn't really a good thing).

Theres things she struggles with genetically too but the reality is that she crawls up the stairs every week because her legs don't work etc It comes from graft not genetics, even with the best genetics in the world it still would too as there would always be others in the same boat. 

By the way there's a lot of females that strength train and do strength sports nowadays, it's growing very fast on the women's side, has been for years now.

Sorry I gave advice if it was not wanted, just wanted to help as someone whos been in that position in the past. Good luck with #3.

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32 minutes ago, Aleksandar Milosevic said:



Again, I don't like the way this thread is going, and I made it to get the advice about buying equipment and I've reached my answer, so the thread can be closed.

Thats the gripboard for you

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14 minutes ago, Paul Savage said:

It's very easy to think of something as genetic and god given, and I know all about that, I've trained and competed with some absolute freaks, including wsm competitors.

Do genetics play a role in sports? Absolutely, to what degree? To a massive agree. That said, Becca doesn't fall into that super genetic freak category, actually not even close. Yeah she's got height and a huge frame and that gives her the 'potential' to add more muscle than others however being natural this isn't an easy process for a woman but more importantly she's very much a normal human being (just bigger haha). She wasn't 'born strong' like pretty much all the guys at world strongest man, she struggled with 60kg deadlifts and 5kg plate shoulder raises when I first started training her and she couldn't close the #1 either (even being 170kg back then, which by the way, isn't really a good thing).

Theres things she struggles with genetically too but the reality is that she crawls up the stairs every week because her legs don't work etc It comes from graft not genetics, even with the best genetics in the world it still would too as there would always be others in the same boat. 

By the way there's a lot of females that strength train and do strength sports nowadays, it's growing very fast on the women's side, has been for years now.

Sorry I gave advice if it was not wanted, just wanted to help as someone whos been in that position in the past. Good luck with #3.

Paul, you really seem like a nice guy, and thank your for your advice and help offer, I know you had no ill intent. And I understand what you're saying about Becca and training, and I wish both of you all the best in your training and life. The problem is, when the topic goes to another direction, a lot of others chime in and then we have a mess, everyone has an opinion. I'm very, very open minded about training and it bothers me when someone thinks that only a single method works. I've been fortunate to be in contact with coaches and athletes making millions, in sports like basketball, tennis, soccer... Djokovic, Federer and Nadal all train completely different, and I mean it, and they are the top 3 tennis players of all time. There's a lot of paths to each goal and I think that should be respected. I never assume that what works for me is going to 100% work for someone else. 

 

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3 minutes ago, Aleksandar Milosevic said:

Paul, you really seem like a nice guy, and thank your for your advice and help offer, I know you had no ill intent. And I understand what you're saying about Becca and training, and I wish both of you all the best in your training and life. The problem is, when the topic goes to another direction, a lot of others chime in and then we have a mess, everyone has an opinion. I'm very, very open minded about training and it bothers me when someone thinks that only single method works. I've been fortunate to be in contact with coaches and athletes making millions, in sports like basketball, tennis, soccer... Djokovic, Federer and Nadal all train completely different, and I mean it, and they are the top 3 tennis players of all time. There's a lot of paths to each goal and I think that should be respected. I never assume that what works for me is going to 100% work for someone else. 

 

There's definitely a ton of different ways to get stronger, I still try new things all the time to this day, most likely always will.

People argue, especially on the internet, it happens (why I try to pretty much stick to my log haha)

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Just now, Paul Savage said:

There's definitely a ton of different ways to get stronger, I still try new things all the time to this day, most likely always will.

People argue, especially on the internet, it happens (why I try to pretty much stick to my log haha)

That's the only way to grow. 

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We understand you personally don't want to talk about programs, but there are other people on this website who are looking to learn (myself included). It's probably a step up that you have all this background and knowledge going into grippers, but I'm pretty sure most of us aren't even having the same conversation as the one you started. It's all good dude, nobody is trying to start a fight.

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Haha, are you serious man? Just make a thread about programming, people are glad to help with it. Why do it in a thread that's not meant for it? It's easier for everyone. 

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7 hours ago, Aleksandar Milosevic said:

Now I have to be brutally honest. I don't care about a female sports that have a male counterpart, especially strength sports, and especially grip. And we need to be real here, how many women are competing, and are you an average woman, just by birth?

 

I would like to say, that as a "strength and conditioning coach" with a degree this type of attitide towards female sport is really disappointing.

Its attitudes like yours that holds the female sport back.

Edited by BeccaRoberts
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3 hours ago, Hopefully said:

Lets just not pretend here that Paul has average genetics when it comes to crush strength, and that he somehow got to where he is now purely due to his impeccable programming skills and bottomless knowledge of gripstrength. It comes across as very arrogant in my book. 

Nathan Holle could barely close #2 the first time he tried, a year later he closed the #4 for the first time.

Im not sure if your trolling or just a negative person but id weight trained for a couple years bare handed no mixed grip on deads etc before I tried grippers, I couldn't finish #1 right hand and my left was a good bit weaker, took me 5 months to close #2 both hands, 2 years to close an easy #3 right hand etc I'd also been an angler to national level prior to weight training and started at about 5 and there's s fair bit of hand strength required for that. I nor Becca said programming is impeccable or my knowledge is bottomless, there's always things to work on and I'm always learning but this doesn't make a person better than someone else. I'm certainly useless at a lot of things but this is something I've spent countless hours on over many years (the word obsession comes to mind).

Nathon Holle is a beast!

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