Weekend With Greg Amidon

[Big Steve]

Wow! What a weekend! Drove up to Greg Amidon's home this pass weekend. What a kind people he and his beautiful family is. Really don't know where to start. So much training went on forgot somethings am sure.

Started with Thursday afternoon Greg improved his pinch by about 40# with some tips I showed him. He has some mean 45s they feel like 50# or more and don't fit well they are a fight. V bar next he made some out of 1 inch crs 24inches long. Smooth as glass!! Different beast for me. Rested during his sons football game. Oh by the way his son his some freaky big hands. If he trainings them well he will be great. Popped a can and rolled a Faberware pan his mom gave him. It was stout! Then Thursday night Greg put on a freak show. This man is for real! 60ds cake. Grade 5s snack. Grade 8 yawn. Smoked about 3 reds then 5 more grade 8s after the blister. The man has grit. Class A bender.

Then the following morning went to his work (being a boss one must do this). Wow some cool stuff happening in that place. Learned a lot.

Greg had some co-workers come up and I put on a show for them. Some little bar big bar stuff. Tried some new things out in the way of big bar. They liked it.

Went back to Greg home trained Clays sick rolling bar. Wow still feeling it. Great handle Clay. Thanks Dave for the use. Did some more things to get really really hungry then went to a killer steak house and killed some grub. Come home did grippers after some more bending. Greg is a spike bending fool now he is hooked bad. The man is very strong and a fast learner. Got to 12 inchers. Hard to remember all we did so much.

Saturday hit the lake in his sweeeeeet boat. Wow that was a blast!

Came home killed a power nap. Tom Suk came by to get the grip machine and training broke out again. Tom has got a drive and loves to learn. Popping cans and does some sweet kettle belling.

I did a show for Gregs family. They loved it Greg parents are so sweet. Great family Greg. After the show had some steak, hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, and the best sweet potato I ever eat. Was stuffed! (I was stuffed). Paul Gaster came in about this time ate and then did some 60ds and he and Tom tried out the toys. They did some strong farmers hold with close to 300 a side. At a buck 170 thats strong. I was gassed by now but got up and the Good Lord blessed me with some good ripping. got a 1103 book and about 8 decks of cards ripped in many different ways. Tom tried to kill me with his wrapping of duct tape on a deck. A few good trys and it ripped.

Tom and Paul and Greg great time. Nice to meet you Gents.

Greg Amidon thank you for asking me into your home and blessing me with food and laughter. You are a kind man with a beautiful family. I pray God will repay your kindness to me 7 fold. You are a true friend!!!

[FrankyBoy]

Yeah, its always nice to meet other gripper maniacs.

Best time to do PRs.

Well, Clays Rolling Handle is still laughing at me.

Do you remember what the best lifts were on that device?

[Sean Dockery]

Sounds like a blast!

[EricMilfeld]

A gripster's dream weekend!

Thanks, Steve!

Nice bendin', Greg! Yeh, what did ya'll get with Clay's handle (I'm assuming he offers only one size)? I think I did 130 (not including pin or device).

[gamidon]

First of all I would like to thank Steve for taking the time to come up. I had such a great time, we spent 2 and a half days of training almost non-stop. I can't keep up with Steve that’s for sure.

Here are some of the better things that I remember that Steve did:

Pinch - took my 45's in one hand and fully deadlifted them. Then he starts telling me about how to train it. He is going on and on and I think he forgot he was still holding them. I start laughing cause he had them up for a really long time. He gently sets them down and picks them up with the other hand...

Blob - Last night after 2 days of training he was picking up the blob and GordonV's Blob50. He was pretty much identical in holding ability on either one, the Blob50 really is a great blob. Steve then decides to double blob lift after about 10 or 12 full singles. He must have stood up with both of them 6 times. Made it look disturbingly easy.

Bending - The first night he did everything from the 60Ds to G5 and G8 and then a couple of reds. He was underhanding pretty well, even did some double overhanding (he is improving on DO). The strange part is the next day at my work he was destroying short bars, the G5 and G8s he bent were going down faster than I could describe. He was looking at me funny cause it was like something was wrong, even he was surprised how easlily he was killing steel. Steve was on that morning and he was killing things. He did a 5/8" HRS bar at 28" over his knee and crushed it on his chest with absolutely no padding. The bar made that creaking noise and everyone was cringing, hoping that wasn’t his knee cap. He destroyed a 1/2" by 15" bar, adjustable wrench, a bunch of spikes, tore cards like they were individual sheets of paper. Smashed the #3 for a bunch of reps and hit the #4 to about 1/8". He even knocked over a horseshoe or two. I don't talk about bending at work, but everyone is now talking about it. We had a guy with a digital camera taking pics and the whole place is talking about Steve. Everyone grabbed souvenirs and the guy who took the horseshoe probably has not put it down. Someone asked to see it and he made them promise to return it immediatly before he would let it go. We had some mechanical engineers watching and the next day they were still talking about the necessary force to do what Steve did. Very cool time. Steve later duplicated this whole show again on Saturday night and did it with shorter bars and added a 3/4" CRS bar that he fished. Wasn’t till late Saturday night that Steve actually slowed down.

Steve tore the two opposite corners of a deck of cards leaving the middle in tact. This was after a ton of decks went down and was the coolest card rip I have seen him do.

Chain - Steve broke a chain with his bare hands. I can not even begin to describe how sick that was. His thumb blew blood out the cuticle, and his hands were completely demolished with deep chain marks all over them. That was soo painful look it was scary . I cant believe he tried that. His hands looked destroyed. He washed them in my pool, Iced them and then got back to deck tearing and the 1103 page phone book. I don’t know where he gets it from.

I agree with Steve, Paul and Tom were amazing. The double farmers hold with almost 2x body weight was really cool.

Bragging time - My son (15) popped 3 cans of soda and rolled a frying pan (my favorite egg pan but that is a different story ). Tom and Steve taught him how to do it, he had watched Steve DVD so he was ready.

Tom is a really good can buster himself, one of his blew so hard it knocked his hat 5 feet off him.

Thanks for coming up Steve, can't wait to do it again. Tom and Paul your always welcome to come by and train. My hands are torn up, my legs are so black and blue they are changing colors daily. I feel like I have trained hard and it feels good... Think I am going to do a lot of spike and horseshoe bending in the future.

Steve teaches things so well, we got a lot on video for Steve’s next DVD.

Greg

[gamidon]

Franky and Eric - Dont take this as fact but I believe Steve got 150 on Clays handle not counting the implement. This was after a bunch of reps on his killer grip machine (that thing will wear you out) and 2 hand and 1 hand pinch. There was soo much going on that it is really difficult to remember exact weights. I think I got 115 but I am probably wrong.

Clay you ever make any more of them put me and Steve down for 1 each.

[GordonV]

WOW! That is some really cool stuff! You guys must be shelled after a weekend like that. Steve was probably driving home with his chin after all of that hand and arm work!

[gaster]

Oops, I didn't see this thread and started one over in Bending.

Greg, thanks for the hospitality and the invitation in the first place. The food was great, I really appreciate that.

Steve, Greg, and Tom, it was great meeting you guys, thanks for all the help.

I almost forgot about Greg's son taking out the frying pan. He really mangled that thing!

[bballdad]

Wow !!!

I know the people at your work were amazed

Greg...Big Steve puts on a show for sure.

Good job by everybody........

[gamidon]

Greg, thanks for the hospitality and the invitation in the first place. The food was great, I really appreciate that.

Paul thanks for coming by. Sorry you didnt get there an hour or two earlier things were really going crazy then.

[gaster]

Yeah, I'm sorry too. That jet lag really kicked my butt. I wanted to take a short nap that day but ended up out for several hours instead. Later that night I went to bed at about 11 and didn't wake up until 1:30 in the afternoon Sunday!

Hey, thanks for the leather for bending and the bag of nails. That was really generous of you. The leather really does help in terms of pain and the nails seem like a nice strength for me right now.

Are you going to post any pictures to a gallery here? Or did you think that the total combined ugliness of us in some of the pictures would be too much for the rest of the board?