Foot Stomping Experiment

[jad]

Great post Doc and thanks for all the info! I'm very impressed you cared enough about grippers to waste money destroying one. I do have a couple of questions and comments.

1. Why in the blankety-blank didn't you guys chest crush this thing for X number of reps first and then measure? Surely with all the guys there you could have passed it off and not blown out a pec. I believe in foot seasoning but I've never had a doubt that it makes the gripper weaker. I didn't think there was even anybody that contested this?? I guess I'm partially ignorant in that I thought all grippers "season" in the first 100 or so reps so what difference does it make as to how you do it. I just prefer to know where I stand immediately rather than have the thing season on me three weeks later and falsely think "wow, I'm stronger!". My argument has been all along that chest crushing does the same thing as foot seasoning (the correct way) even though that seems to be "approved" and foot seasoning is fraudulent.

2. When you say that you guys made sure not to move the handles past one another: Does this mean you made sure the gripper didn't roll at all or is this just in the literal sense? It can easily roll and the handles don't have to move past one another. Just curious

3. For integrity purposes the spread is a joke: You can easily pull the spread back out on a narrow gripper (within reason). It does make it a little harder but a 3" gripper and 2.75" that has been pulled out to 3" are vastly different.

Thanks,

Josh

[StalwartSentinel]

thanx for the experiment. i have never foot stomped a gripper, and now i def don't plan on ever doing so.

however, this thread is making me bummed out. no longer will an individual's integrity be assumed as respectable or trustworthy. what's next? someone says they closed the 3 for the first time and everyone exclaims he's a fraud? man, i hope not. but i trust the board to give respect to those individuals who have truly shown determination and perseverance in their training, and to deny the same respect to those individuals which have shown that they deserve none.

If there are doubters, mail your grippers to Greg and Dave to verify. I'll gladly send my #4 right now, if anyone is curious about my fraudulent training. I actually plan on getting a brand spanky new one for Christmas.

[StalwartSentinel]

Great post Doc and thanks for all the info! I'm very impressed you cared enough about grippers to waste money destroying one. I do have a couple of questions and comments.

1. Why in the blankety-blank didn't you guys chest crush this thing for X number of reps first and then measure? Surely with all the guys there you could have passed it off and not blown out a pec. I believe in foot seasoning but I've never had a doubt that it makes the gripper weaker. I didn't think there was even anybody that contested this?? I guess I'm partially ignorant in that I thought all grippers "season" in the first 100 or so reps so what difference does it make as to how you do it. I just prefer to know where I stand immediately rather than have the thing season on me three weeks later and falsely think "wow, I'm stronger!". My argument has been all along that chest crushing does the same thing as foot seasoning (the correct way) even though that seems to be "approved" and foot seasoning is fraudulent.

2. When you say that you guys made sure not to move the handles past one another: Does this mean you made sure the gripper didn't roll at all or is this just in the literal sense? It can easily roll and the handles don't have to move past one another. Just curious

3. For integrity purposes the spread is a joke: You can easily pull the spread back out on a narrow gripper (within reason). It does make it a little harder but a 3" gripper and 2.75" that has been pulled out to 3" are vastly different.

Thanks,

Josh

Agreed. I don't see any difference in slowly compressing a gripper in a chest crush or slowly pressing it with your foot. 100 full closes, is 100 full closes.

[Bob Lipinski]

Nice stuff Sean and Chris!

[thearm95]

It would now be an interesting experiment to get another SM and close it in the conventional way with one hand say, in sets of 3 over maybe a period of two weeks, a month or whatever until a total of 200 reps are reached. The spring wouldn`t have a chance to heat up

.

It would be good to see how much a gripper actually seasons with normal use.

- Duncan

[acorn]

It would now be an interesting experiment to get another SM and close it in the conventional way with one hand say, in sets of 3 over maybe a period of two weeks, a month or whatever until a total of 200 reps are reached. The spring wouldn`t have a chance to heat up

.

It would be good to see how much a gripper actually seasons with normal use.

- Duncan

Greg and Dave are doing some thing similiar in their Blog with a couple of new 3.5s if I remember right. Considerable amount of testing where one gets normal use and the other gets something a little different.

- Aaron

[StalwartSentinel]

What would also be interesting, is to see how the 100 or 200 reps (foot or chest), effect different gripper brands.

COC

HG

BB

I'll bet the GR8 springs are effected the least, followed by the BB.

[chop163]

I agree that near on no-one can close a heavy duty gripper by hand fast and frequently enough to damage the spring, you need foot stomping for that. But many of us can with a sporting goods store gripper, so for a cheap little experiment, go get a sporting goods store gripper (or use one in the store) and give it a squeeze in your non-dominant hand to feel how difficult it is. Now put it in your dominant hand and close it as fast as you can a couple hundred times. Touch the spring, put it in your non-dominant hand and give it another squeeze.

I did this with a pair of identical Everlast grippers. Out of the box both were a little weaker than a CoC Sport. I left one alone for later comparisson and did what I just described to the other. The one with the rapid hard closing (I can close a 2.5 for anyone wondering what kind of force is being applied here) got a warm (not hot) spring and now takes no effort to close. It feels like a kids toy.

Not as scientific as Sean's test ( ), but you can all have a go at it and see for yourself how footstomping destroys a gripper.

[Sean Dockery]

2. When you say that you guys made sure not to move the handles past one another: Does this mean you made sure the gripper didn't roll at all or is this just in the literal sense? It can easily roll and the handles don't have to move past one another. Just curious

3. For integrity purposes the spread is a joke: You can easily pull the spread back out on a narrow gripper (within reason). It does make it a little harder but a 3" gripper and 2.75" that has been pulled out to 3" are vastly different.

We tried to make sure the gripper didn't roll when foot stomping the first time.

The spread opening was very enlightening for me. I was surprised at the loss of strength even once the dogleg had returned and the spread was 2.75" again.

I think Greg and Dave are chest crushing a gripper to see what occurs.

Edited December 5, 2006 by Sean Dockery

[mbcx6pmw]

I don't believe the heat generated is the answer. I work with torsion springs everyday made 4 up today and installed them. Torsion springs work on cycles the spring is designed to be under pressure and realease pressure when the spring is comppressed it elonggates this cuts down on friction. The springs are designed to use the heat(what heat there is) to stretch a person cannot move a gripper fast enough to heat it enough to detemper the spring steel. I'm going to go through the spring books and see if I can find anymore concrete answers. The best I have now is the longer a spring is under pressure it loses tension whether it is moving or not because of the stretch. This cuts back on the cycles I'll see if I can find anymore on it.

I'm with you Stew, to heat the metal to the extent where you permanently change its composition you would have to be getting up to the 400degC range, which I seriously doubt no matter how fast you closed it. I think the answer is that the metal is going through a number of loading cycles, which affect the stress vs. strain behaviour. After a number of cycles, the stress vs. strain behaviour settles down, this effect is known as 'shakedown', and is why once a gripper has been 'seasoned' it should stay at a pretty constant difficulty. There is, as far as I can tell, no reason why footstomping should be any different to normal use in this respect, provided the gripper closes in the normal way and free movement of the spring can take place.

[superfeemiman]

I enjoyed reading this thread Sean Dockery. Very interesting.

[twig]

Exellent post, Sean.

If there are doubters, mail your grippers to Greg and Dave to verify. I'll gladly send my #4 right now, if anyone is curious about my fraudulent training.

Ah, say the doubters, but how do we know that the #4 rated by the Greg and Dave Posse, is the same one that you use in training?

[superfeemiman]

Exellent post, Sean.

If there are doubters, mail your grippers to Greg and Dave to verify. I'll gladly send my #4 right now, if anyone is curious about my fraudulent training.

Ah, say the doubters, but how do we know that the #4 rated by the Greg and Dave Posse, is the same one that you use in training?

Yeah I didn't understand that either.

[denisbeck]

I'll preface this by apologizing to Bill if he feels that this post flys in the face of his post earlier today concerning discussions of how to weaken grippers. This experiment was not intended to be a lesson in how to make weak grippers, but rather a demonstration of what exactly "Foot Stomping" will do to a brand new gripper. This is not a personal attack directed towards anyone. I assumed people used this method because they were ignorant of what was occuring, I hope that they will be educated by the following and make an educated decision.

Here's what went down....

I bought a brand new Supermaster from Warren. I measured the spread at 2.75", the mounting is about 1/16". The coils bound pretty bad. I closed it maybe 5 times in my usual no set style before I took it with me to Chris's on Saturday. We put it in the Redneck Calibrator, it came out to 138 pounds which is the highest rating of a Supermaster that has gone thru the RC (9 Supermaster's have been measured).

We wanted to try the most "legit" manner of foot seasoning we could think of so, we took the gripper and ran a piece of 3/4" CRR thru the spring coil to steady the gripper and gave it 200 foot stomps. These closes were at a medium pace, and each cycle was clicked shut, no cycles were done with the handles "passing each other", and the spring coil at no point bound on the steel rod. We put the gripper back in the RC and it measured 126.35. A loss of 11.65 pounds, making it now the easiest Supermaster measured. The gripper did not lose any spread at this point.

To continue the experiment, we tried foot stomping as above, but we pushed the handles "past each other" for 200 cycles. The gripper lost an additional 1.35 pounds in the RC. Again the spread remained unchanged.

The next experiment was to see what happened when the coil bound against the rod. We inserted a 7/8" steel rod in the coil to steady the gripper and gave it one stomp to get it to shut. The spread was now 1.77", the "dogleg" was gone and the gripper was laughably easy. The RC showed 87.4 pounds. About the rating for a #1.

Now to see what happens if the spread is opened back up....We put the gripper in a vise and using a piece of pipe opened the handles up until the spread once more measured 2.75. In the RC, the mangled Supermaster now showed 115.3 (a stiff #2 range). The dogleg returned and it appears outwardly just as it did fresh from the package.

I came to 4 conclusions as a result of this experiment.

1) Foot stomping artificially increases the "seasoning" effect. Even if you are not trying to weaken the gripper....if you choose to season your grippers in this manner that is your choice, but you've now seen exactly what happens. A gripper that was a good, hard SM was turned into a wimpy SM....before we "tried" to weaken it. I don't feel like spending $$$ to run this experiment several more times, but I'll make a wild guess that this experiment will show repeatable results. Go ahead, try it. You'll be surprised

2) If anyone posts a video of a gripper close, I will doubt their ability until they either climb the MM ladder, cert with IM under the new rules, perform in a competition, close said gripper in front of me after I've inspected the gripper, or has earned my trust.

3) Some of you folks have too much free time. Foot stomping grippers is boring, even more so than training grippers. I can't imagine how boring it would be to "season" every gripper I bought like this.

4) The safest way to maintain the integrity of your grippers and your word is to just train with the darn things, and let the seasoning process take care of itself.

Sean, Thanks for taking the time and money to perform your test. It would seem that the spread could be returned to normal as did the dogleg, what could be determined by inspecting the gripper?

[gamidon]

Great write up Sean!!!

[StalwartSentinel]

Exellent post, Sean.

If there are doubters, mail your grippers to Greg and Dave to verify. I'll gladly send my #4 right now, if anyone is curious about my fraudulent training.

Ah, say the doubters, but how do we know that the #4 rated by the Greg and Dave Posse, is the same one that you use in training?

Fair enough. I guess there will be no such thing as taking anyones word for it, so we might as well quit posting anything (video or otherwise) until we all MM cert or become COC... What does MM0 mean now?

[Bearcat 74]

What does MM0 mean now?

Same thing it has meant for quite some time, you have closed a gripper with a #3 on the bottom, sign up for the MM1 and climb the ladder.

[SShafley]

Very cool. Great info.

And you did it gratis, in service of a community you enjoy being part of.

Awesome job guys.

[apttdwler]

Interesting. I guess bending is also suspect, as the metal could have been heated. Blob? I suppose parts could be drilled out that aren't visible on video. Fake weight plates have long been available, as well as those that are just light (I have 2 45 that weight 40 somewhere in storage). Apples? Well, if you freeze, thaw, and refreze a few times, I'm told they get pretty mushy...

It's kind of amazing, given there is NO money in grip. Recognition outside a small community is non-existent. Frankly, I've yet to meet anyone in person that has even HERD of any of the grippers. (actually I correct that. A friend gave me a 3. He got it from some guy. He had no clue what it was, just it was damn hard) One can only wonder what lengths one would go to if $$ were involved......

Edited December 5, 2006 by apttdwler

[jad]

Interestingly enough, among all this fraud talk; Gripperhell had a section where you could nominate the frauds of grip and out of all the posts on there, there were only two legitimate nominations, with one person nominating himself..as a joke I would guess. So, either we're actually a pretty honest bunch or very few have the balls to call people out.

[climber511]

Maybe a bit of both Josh - I feel in the past a few people have innocently altered their grippers perhaps without even knowing they did, just in doing things that no one truely knew what the effects would be before. I don't have a problem with that but now that we do know and have a pretty simple ability to measure grippers, maybe we can move on. Those who choose to cheat will always find a way of course but those who for whatever reason, just ended up with a very light gripper won't fool themselves or others now.

[joeyg]

i guess this just shows why guys are posting vids or claiming amazing closes, yet don't go near the MM ladder and also explains why it seems to be the same group of people doing contests.

Great job.

[Mlstrass]

Received my 2.5 yesterday and put it in the device I made to hold it and did 50 closes with my foot in groups of 5, so YES I like to season a new gripper. Lost NO spread and didn't feel any easier.

Few questions after reading your test/results:

Why 200 reps as that seems pretty excessive? Like several YEARS worth of FULL closes on a tough gripper.

Don't understand your discrepancy between "foot CLOSING" and "chest crushing"? Or doing 200 closes 1 at a time over 6 months or however long it takes. All "should" have the same effect on the gripper. If NOT then the REAL value of your test would be to determine WHY foot closing has a negative effect and figure out a way around it.

With that being said I'l offer something else to ponder about foot stomping and weakening a gripper. Could it be the friction of it rubbing against the pipe placed through the spring? 100-200 quick reps WILL create a lot of friction/binding and some heat I'm assuming, and also WILL distort how the gripper closes. I tried the pipe version once and quit after 2 reps.

That's why I made a device to hold them perfectly still, aligned, and NO metal contact against the spring. Give it 50 slow and full closes and it's NO different than a chest crush or whatever....Well other than a chest crush is "acceptable" and a foot close is not

[JoeGrip]

Received my 2.5 yesterday and put it in the device I made to hold it and did 50 closes with my foot in groups of 5, so YES I like to season a new gripper. Lost NO spread and didn't feel any easier.

Few questions after reading your test/results:

Why 200 reps as that seems pretty excessive? Like several YEARS worth of FULL closes on a tough gripper.

Don't understand your discrepancy between "foot CLOSING" and "chest crushing"? Or doing 200 closes 1 at a time over 6 months or however long it takes. All "should" have the same effect on the gripper. If NOT then the REAL value of your test would be to determine WHY foot closing has a negative effect and figure out a way around it.

With that being said I'l offer something else to ponder about foot stomping and weakening a gripper. Could it be the friction of it rubbing against the pipe placed through the spring? 100-200 quick reps WILL create a lot of friction/binding and some heat I'm assuming, and also WILL distort how the gripper closes. I tried the pipe version once and quit after 2 reps.

That's why I made a device to hold them perfectly still, aligned, and NO metal contact against the spring. Give it 50 slow and full closes and it's NO different than a chest crush or whatever....Well other than a chest crush is "acceptable" and a foot close is not

O NO.

I wish that 2.5 would have gone to a non abusive home, I guess we cant save them all.

YOU USE WAY MORE FORCE TO CLOSE THE GRIPPER W/ YOUR FREAKIN FOOT THAN YOU WOULD IF YOU USED YOUR HAND. IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO SEE WHATS GOIN TO HAPPEN.

And 200 reps is nothing.

You can not tell me that gripper will be the same as if you would have never "SEASONED" it.

LABLED.

Edited December 6, 2006 by JoeGrip

[JoeGrip]

Received my 2.5 yesterday and put it in the device I made to hold it and did 50 closes with my foot in groups of 5, so YES I like to season a new gripper. Lost NO spread and didn't feel any easier.

Few questions after reading your test/results:

Why 200 reps as that seems pretty excessive? Like several YEARS worth of FULL closes on a tough gripper.

Don't understand your discrepancy between "foot CLOSING" and "chest crushing"? Or doing 200 closes 1 at a time over 6 months or however long it takes. All "should" have the same effect on the gripper. If NOT then the REAL value of your test would be to determine WHY foot closing has a negative effect and figure out a way around it.

With that being said I'l offer something else to ponder about foot stomping and weakening a gripper. Could it be the friction of it rubbing against the pipe placed through the spring? 100-200 quick reps WILL create a lot of friction/binding and some heat I'm assuming, and also WILL distort how the gripper closes. I tried the pipe version once and quit after 2 reps.

That's why I made a device to hold them perfectly still, aligned, and NO metal contact against the spring. Give it 50 slow and full closes and it's NO different than a chest crush or whatever....Well other than a chest crush is "acceptable" and a foot close is not

O NO.

I wish that 2.5 would have gone to a non abusive home, I guess we cant save them all.

YOU USE WAY MORE FORCE TO CLOSE THE GRIPPER W/ YOUR FREAKIN FOOT THAN YOU WOULD IF YOU USED YOUR HAND. IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO SEE WHATS GOIN TO HAPPEN.

And 200 reps is nothing.

You can not tell me that gripper will be the same as if you would have never "SEASONED" it.

LABLED.

Sry Internet went crazy.

Edited December 6, 2006 by JoeGrip