My irritating grip habit

[Sybersnott]

I have a strange habit that I recently noticed about myself, and I wondered if any of you do the same thing.

I'm constantly "flexing" my hands when I find myself not doing any gripwork.  Sometimes I crush an imagery object in my hand, or I'll close my fist and squeeze hard as if I'm trying to crush a grain of sand or something.  Or I'll extend my hand WIDE open and then close it very quickly.  I pop my knuckles and rub my hands together right before I do a grip workout.

I don't have any "recovery" training after I do a grip workout... I just let my hands rest.  I'll massage my hands a bit if I feel I need to, just to take out the soreness.  I can play with my #3 and after I'm done with it, I'll put it down and act like nothing has happened - then go on to something else in my life.

The way I act about my forearms is even stranger!  I'm flexing them constantly too, and if I see a pretty female (like what happened today), who mentions something about them, I'll offer them to give 'em a "feel" - they never refuse.  

Am I weird?   :hehe  ....no, don't answer THAT question!      :hehe  :p

[Roark]

So you do refuse to allow the unattractive ladies

to cop a feel?

[Guest el4n]

Snott,

Was this entire post just a sneaky attempt to bring up how a woman touched you today?? Sounds like it to me.

 :p  :hehe

[OldGuy]

Snott is clearly looking for a rich woman with a forearm fetish, so that he can leave home, get married, and live happily ever after.    :p  

[Tou]

I'm with you on this Snott. I do the same "air crush" exercises instinctively.

For the women, I have more than forearms. They are crazy about my ... CALVES. I have good forearms (over 15") and non-trainers are often amazed by them but my trademark is my calves. When someone sees my calves, they ask : «What is it ?» or «Why does it split in halves ?» or things like that. And they always want to touch. Then I cramp the muscle and let it go after about 10 seconds. This is something to see : you can see a lot of fibers moving, just like if Alien was about to come out of my calf.

[OldGuy]

Tou, have you noticed that people who are blessed with good forearms, or at least find them easy to build, also have good calves? I have 15'' forearms measured with arm straight, and 18'' calves.

[Guest Jeff Roark]

OldGuy,

At 5'5 I have 17 inch calves. My forearms measure about 13 inches arms straight, no wrist bend. My little brother at about 5'8 or so and around 160lbs has calves over 17 inches un-trained. I think if he trained them for a good year he would be a freak in the calf department. He also has developed some strange muscles in his forearms since working on the railroad. His forearms are not huge, but vascular as heck. Here is something strange too, I can shut a BBM at will but he has a hard time with the #1, but in a hand shake he can just wad my hand up like a peice of paper, I don't get it. His hands are only slightly bigger than mine.

[Tou]

My father have normal forearms but have very big calves, like me. I always had calves a lot bigger than other people, even when I didn't train. I had to train my forearms to get size. From 16 to 18 years old, I did wrist curls everyday.

[Drassk]

Just to add to the speculation, I'm in much the same category.  I actually got my calves from my mother and my forearms from my father, though .  I have 12" forearms and 17" calves and I weigh about 175, calves have never really been trained (lifted with them maybe 8 times ever and I can max every calve machine I've ever tried so I have to do one-legged raises with a bar to figure out what my max would be).  My forearms aren't too developed yet but I'm working on it (they can do some decent tricks for a newbie, though.  I still haven't found another person who can come close to levering my 10lb sledge strictly (parallel) or even levering it for reps with the arm parallel).  Maybe it's a balance issue between the arms and legs?  Any correllation between triceps and quads or biceps and calves?

[Nathan Say]

I've got skinny calves but my forearms are decent. I don't do anything for them on purpose but they seem to have gotten bigger from all the crushing I do. I don't want my calves to get too big because then they'll make my thighs look small like I don't do my squats. :p

[OldGuy]

I have been lucky enough to have been born with all of my muscle groups on the large side. All except biceps. My upper arm mass is all triceps and small biceps. The just do not grow.

This does not bother me, as I have long ago dropped the bodybuilder mentality. Mostly these days I am trying to postpone the poor posture, pot belly, chicken legged look that many even much younger than me walk around with. Use it or lose it.

[Guest el4n]

I have a general question about large calfs, other then the asthetic qualitys they may provide, when it comes to functionality, specifically sprinting speed, it is my belief that a large bulky heavy calf muscle will slow down somones sprinting speed just becuase of the leg needing to produce that much more force to move the shin/calf quickly. I personally have done alot of sprint training in my time and the majority of very quick sprinters I've seen have smaller calfs, the ones with large calfs (when I say large, I mean obviously much larger than most) are never quick runners. Since some of you are self proclaimed large calfers, are any of you blazingly fast? Or have you found that when it comes to sprinting you are decent but definitly not the upper 10% or so? Maybe you are running a 4.2 40?

I have seen some guys that looked like they had cannon balls in there calfs, it was really strange actually, but all I can think about when I see somthing like that is that these guys must not be quick on the 40 yard dash.

Any input?

[OldGuy]

Look at the lineup in any world class 100 meter race, apart from all of the sprinters being black, you will notice that some have stick calves, and some huge calves. All have well developed thighs. I am not sure of the benefit in practical terms of large calves. I am happy just to have porportion.

[Guest el4n]

Well that was the thing, most seemed to have "stick" calfs, and most being black, have a calf muscle that seem's to be inserted higher on the shin bone than most. We may be considering the size of "large calfs" to be differnet, but when I think large I think of quite noticibly large. And I havent seen a great deal of sprinters with calfs to that large extent.

[AP]

I have pretty big forearms and have always had good forearms, but my calves suck! i've been training them hard for about 3 1/2 yrs now and they've probly grown less than 3/4 ". my forearms flexed are only a few inches smaller. Next to my calves, my quads are big but nobody can tell - they think my legs are small cause my shorts only reveal small calves. I can build up every other muscle well, just not my "sticks"

i need someone to link me to the calfpage

[Sybersnott]

Look what I started!   :0

I too am blessed with forearms and big calves.  I don't train my calves, but if I did I'm sure they would get big.  Call it "genetics" if you will... I seem to come from a lineage of naturally muscled people; my grandfather originally being from Europe and farm workers on the other side.  He was a lumberjack in his younger days, and was one of the strongest guys in the camp.

I'm glad some of that "strength" rubbed off on me!!   :hehe  :p

[crushjunior]

I also find that I'm opening and closing my hand, but I only do it occasionally.

As for the calves forearms stuff, I have 12 7/8 inch forearms and 15 1/4 inch calves (6 feet, 180 lbs). Those (Tou) who claim to have 15 inch forearms, that is freakin huge, Arnold Schwarzennegger had 14 1/4 inch forearms which were relatively not as big as his upper arms, which were freakin huge for his size, and huge arms period at a bdy wght of 235-240 lbs, all of it muscle (duh!!). I don't do much for the calves, but in order to maintain my current forearm size  I have to do heavy wrist curls and wrist extensions with say 75 lb dumbells in each hand for WC's and 35 lbs for wrist extensions. When I started training I weighed 138 lbs (when I was 14) and I think I had 11 inch forearms.

[Jeff T]

Just a query, Tou you wouldn't be of asian descent would you? Asians seem to have a natural tendency for massive lower legs and arms.

[Guest Tobb]

If you were born with big bones, your calves and forearms are usually thicker than average without any training. When it comes to shaking hands hard, it can be vrey difficult with a person who´s hands are widr than yours.

[Tou]

I don't have any asian decent. I'm a pure french canadian.

[Drassk]

Same here.  Must be a link

Do you mean acadian or quebecois?

[Jeff T]

French Canadian ey, okay I was wrong but I stand by my theory. Perhaps having short limbs has something to do with it, perhaps not.

[Tou]

I'm québecois. My parents are from Québec but I currently work in Montréal.

[Drassk]

My french half is acadian but my best friend is fully acadian and both he and his father also have very naturally large forearms.  I think that over time certain physical traits definitely become more common in certain cultures.  I think the acadians still have a higher proportion of tradesmen and such than average around here so it could be a result of that.