Hub and V-bar type of lifts

[Aleksandar Milosevic]

I own a hub, which I almost never use, since my focus is on improving my crush, thick bar and pinch, which I consider the "big three" types worth training. 

I'm in a group on facebook, called "Grip strength" and I see a lot of videos of people training hub, shallow hub, key pinch on the hub etc. so I'm curious about it.

If there are guys here who train their hub and hub variations frequently, do you feel they benefit you in a different way than training pinch, thick bar and grippers, and have you noticed improvements on those three by training your hub? I'm interested in the correlation. For example, training on the wrist wrench immensely helped my thick bar, since my thumb got a lot stronger in a short amount of time.

Same thing about V-bar type lifts, like anvil etc. To me both the hub and v-bar seem like lifts that go up even if you don't train them, if your big three strength goes up, but I'm probably wrong.

So the conclusion is: does training your hub and vbar lifts help your pinch, crush or thick bar, and how? Some examples would be nice too.

Thanks!

[Climber028]

I don't have a lot of experience with the hub, but can tell you the recent shallow hub explosion is because that will be contested at King Kong this fall. 

[Aleksandar Milosevic]

That makes a lot of sense. But I've seen people that train it constantly, with a lot of different grips, so I'm curious. 

[Fist of Fury]

I personally think it's a waste of time to train the hub unless you want to be good at the hub. I have trained it and I never saw any gains from it. Training regular pinch, different widths made my hub numbers go up though.

V-bar I don't know, never trained it.

[devinhoo]

2 hours ago, Climber028 said:

I don't have a lot of experience with the hub, but can tell you the recent shallow hub explosion is because that will be contested at King Kong this fall. 

I agree with your assessment of "the big three", but I would argue that as far as competitions go, hub would be the fourth. 
IM made the loadable hub, and IM is one of the first big names that got into grip gear (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Therefore they kind of set the stage and general outline of competitions. From what I know of comps, most lifts are some variation of the gear the IM makes.
King Kong this year is a variant on their blockbuster (The flask), their hub (the shallow DubHub), their Rolling Thunder (FBBC crusher), and their LBH (last year it was the FBBC jug, which is similar).

I train hub just out of a desire for variety. I'd rather progress slowly at a variety of things than focus all my effort on one thing and neglect others. That being said, I only started training with a hub a few months ago. A strong background of working pinch and thick bar managed to get me a 50 lb lift on the IM hub first time I tried it. I wouldn't say that hub necessarily helps the other lifts directly, but it's not going to hurt it.

[Climber028]

17 minutes ago, devinhoo said:

I agree with your assessment of "the big three", but I would argue that as far as competitions go, hub would be the fourth. 
IM made the loadable hub, and IM is one of the first big names that got into grip gear (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Therefore they kind of set the stage and general outline of competitions. From what I know of comps, most lifts are some variation of the gear the IM makes.
King Kong this year is a variant on their blockbuster (The flask), their hub (the shallow DubHub), their Rolling Thunder (FBBC crusher), and their LBH (last year it was the FBBC jug, which is similar).

I train hub just out of a desire for variety. I'd rather progress slowly at a variety of things than focus all my effort on one thing and neglect others. That being said, I only started training with a hub a few months ago. A strong background of working pinch and thick bar managed to get me a 50 lb lift on the IM hub first time I tried it. I wouldn't say that hub necessarily helps the other lifts directly, but it's not going to hurt it.

The flask is a tool for training to lift two 45lb plates, that's where the size and shape came from. Not a copy of the blockbuster.

[JHenze646]

Some people really like to train hub, plain and simple. Lifting a weight plate by the Hub was a classic feat of strength before any of the hub devices were created.

some people like vbar lifting as well.

if you already own the equipment and are looking for a good way to utilize it, think of them as accessory lifts. I had excellent results training hub at the end of a pinch workout. It allowed me to continue training a pinch style movement after skin or fatigue issues prevented further 1 or 2 hand pinch movements.

i used vbar as an accessory or deload lift for regular Thickbar training.

Both the hub and vbar are different/similar enough to the other lift to offer significant benefit. 

But if you don’t own them, buying them wouldn’t be necessary unless you wanted the implements. 

I can get into specifics of each if you like.

[Anthony C.]

11 minutes ago, JHenze646 said:

if you already own the equipment and are looking for a good way to utilize it, think of them as accessory lifts.

^^^^^^

Do you do 15 sets of flat bench press on chest day, or do you start with that and then branch off into some of the other gimmicky stuff (pecdec, flies, etc).

Same deal.

[Aleksandar Milosevic]

Thank you all for the contributions. I have gotten a lot stronger on the hub without training it, just focusing on my wrist, thick bar and grippers. 

I was looking for an unique property of the hub or Vbar that would help the "big three", like when I started training on my Wrist wrench I had no idea that it's gonna train my thumb very, very hard and specific for thick bar. Hub seemed like it can maybe carryover to the pinch, but it seems it's just better to stick to the "big three".

I'm naturally strong on the Vbar, using an IronMind loading pin in 2015. before I even trained grip seriously, I did 100 kg.

Competition wise, I don't care, I honestly think I'm the only person in my country that even trains grip, and I got a long way to go to be competitive in any kind of competition.

So it basically comes to training it if I enjoy it, but I honestly don't care about the hub nor the Vbar that much, that IronMind anvil trainer looks very fun, but it's too expensive, at least for me.

Thank you all again!

 

[Andrew Dube]

I focus most of my training on grippers, 2HP, thick bar and lots of wrist work. I have improved significantly on these things but have found zero carry over to the hub which I am terrible at. In the fall I was doing lots of arm over arm sled pulls and found my LBH went up 20+lbs without ever training it. Not sure if it was the rope pulls or from improvements in my thick bar work though. 

[Colin Ramsey]

I train all of them, so it's hard to distinguish whether training the hub helps the other lifts increase any more than simply just training those lifts. In my estimation, it might, but I doubt very much if at all. Personally, I only train hub because I'm good at it and I think it's a unique implement that's cool to train. If you strengthen your thumb through pinch or a wrist wrench, it may have some carryover to the hub.

[Colin Ramsey]

4 hours ago, devinhoo said:

I agree with your assessment of "the big three", but I would argue that as far as competitions go, hub would be the fourth. 
IM made the loadable hub, and IM is one of the first big names that got into grip gear (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Therefore they kind of set the stage and general outline of competitions. From what I know of comps, most lifts are some variation of the gear the IM makes.
King Kong this year is a variant on their blockbuster (The flask), their hub (the shallow DubHub), their Rolling Thunder (FBBC crusher), and their LBH (last year it was the FBBC jug, which is similar).

I train hub just out of a desire for variety. I'd rather progress slowly at a variety of things than focus all my effort on one thing and neglect others. That being said, I only started training with a hub a few months ago. A strong background of working pinch and thick bar managed to get me a 50 lb lift on the IM hub first time I tried it. I wouldn't say that hub necessarily helps the other lifts directly, but it's not going to hurt it.

BSS made the flask as a one or two-hand pinch device designed to simulate pinching two 45 lb plates. It is not a variant of a pinch block such as the blockbuster

[devinhoo]

10 hours ago, Climber028 said:

The flask is a tool for training to lift two 45lb plates, that's where the size and shape came from. Not a copy of the blockbuster.

 

6 hours ago, Colin Ramsey said:

BSS made the flask as a one or two-hand pinch device designed to simulate pinching two 45 lb plates. It is not a variant of a pinch block such as the blockbuster

 

You're both completely right, I described it sub-optimally. I just meant that they are in the same category (pinch).

Likewise the FBBC jug is a very different lift from the LBH and clearly not a copy, but they are both similar and fit into the same general category. 

[Mike Rinderle]

The one thing that training the hub with a traditional claw grip will do for you is make you better at lifting the hub. Other than that, I have never seen any carryover to anything else.  So I personally wouldn't train it unless it was going to be an event at a contest I was going to enter, and then probably only a few times to try and figure out best technique. 

I do find that I get some caryyover to vertical lifts if I train the hub with a door knob style grip.  Not sure I get any more out of that than just training a Jug, Cannon, or LBH though. 

Edited April 12, 2019 by Mike Rinderle

[Mike Rinderle]

As for the LBH, rumor is that the numbers are climbing too high, so they are soon to change the design.  The leaders in the clubhouse for the new design are below.  All leaderboards and records will remain the same.  

 

 

[Aaron Jacobs]

Hub done alone has some carry over to pinch in my experience.  I trained my bro Zach Jacobs to a world record hub lift back in 2013. 
http://ironmind.com/certification/ironmind-hub/rules-and-world-records/

He went from pinching 2 35s to 2 45s while not training pinch directly when increasing his hub from around 65lb. to 95lb.+ in training.  His hub lift was done freestyle; this was before anyone even distinguished between 'claw' and 'freestyle'.

[Aleksandar Milosevic]

3 hours ago, Aaron Jacobs said:

Hub done alone has some carry over to pinch in my experience.  I trained my bro Zach Jacobs to a world record hub lift back in 2013. 
http://ironmind.com/certification/ironmind-hub/rules-and-world-records/

He went from pinching 2 35s to 2 45s while not training pinch directly when increasing his hub from around 65lb. to 95lb.+ in training.  His hub lift was done freestyle; this was before anyone even distinguished between 'claw' and 'freestyle'.

That's very useful information, thank you Aaron! I think 2h key pinch with the hub would be a solid thumb builder, I really dislike the freestyle or doorknob grip for the hub, and my wrists don't like it.

[Guest]

On 4/11/2019 at 10:58 AM, Fist of Fury said:

I personally think it's a waste of time to train the hub unless you want to be good at the hub. I have trained it and I never saw any gains from it. Training regular pinch, different widths made my hub numbers go up though.

V-bar I don't know, never trained it.

Agree! Hub is a waste of time IMO.  It’s like grippers. Get good at grippers and you are good at grippers, same for hub. Some may disagree, but, to each their own. It’s a boring lift.

[Mywor]

Most of the grip strength is quite spesific, so train for the contests and what you like. 

Most of the guys in Finland train hub all the time since it's in most of our contests. I have some type of thickbar, pinch and hub in my training schedule at all times, and add something like silver bullet/vertical bar if it's in the up coming contest. 

The reasoning for keeping gripper/silver bullet/v-bar lifts out of my normal training schedule is that I find them affecting everything else too much. Also V-bar lifts seem to impinge my ulnar nerve a lot no matter how I lift it. This is an issue I know few gripsers have been dealing with as well.