Gripper Newbie

[tbowman]

New member - I'm a 40 year old powerlifter. Never done grip work directly, but have plenty of holding power, but not crushing power..want to change that!! I just ordered and received a CoC#1 AND #2.

i Closed the #1 for a few reps each hand, but fall about 3/8" short on the # 2. How should I incorporate these into PLIFTING training. I do Legs/shoulders on MON, Chest/tris on WED, Back/biceps in Friday

and Strongman training every other Sunday.

[Soilworker]

Do them in between sets when you are warmed up but your hands aren't tired. Worked best for me, especially squat sets.

[sixlitre]

I have had really good luck with pushing the grip stuff to the end of the night (I work out in the evenings) after using my "working"grip. I then usually try to mix up the grip stuff to oppose my training. Example: if I deadlift then I train pinch, if I squat, then I train crush or support (alternate or sometimes both). I also use a rotating heavy grip training. By this I mean that with my schedule: Tues: legs, Thurs: pressing and light legs, Sat: strongman stuff: I will train grip really hard and heavy (too failure on singles) on Saturday at the end of the training. Then I will not train grip directly for 1 week. The next week I will train a little lighter on Sat and Tues (usually pinch stuff, sometimes grippers), and really light on Thursday (usually support if any at all), and then back to hard and heavy on Sat (usually with RT or VBar, Pinchblock or Inch, then to grippers) with a week off to follow.

I am not saying that this is the way to go, but it works really well for me, but I have always had really strong hands from years of turning wrenches, construction work, and working on the farm. Best of luck and hope this helps some.

Edited November 24, 2006 by sixlitre

[sixlitre]

Couple of other things I forgot.

Both ice and stretching are good to use after training, same as with the PLing stuff. I also keep a few postage size rubberbands with me so I can train the extensors and too stretch my fingers and work them one at a time with light resistance to speed the recovery time. This method seems to be working better for me than the structured program I was on this spring.