Went On My First Bender!

[BigTone]

After toying with some grip toys and saying I was going to start bending for over 2 years now, I quit procastinating, and with the help of my wife got a "bending starter kit" (bolt cutters and lowe's gift card)

Cut up some suede from the craft store, and chopped up a 6' 3/16" bar. After reading some suggestions started at 6.5" and melted them DU and DO. Ended up going down to 5" without any problems both DU and DO. Looks like I'll work with that length for a bit, don't want to get over zealous.

The bender bug definately bit me, I know it sounds dumb but you guys can probably appreciate it, after my first couple bends my heart was racing Definately stoked about getting started, skys the limit from here.

One quick question, do you benders stick with a style (say double under) or do you bend both ways when training?

[bencrush]

After toying with some grip toys and saying I was going to start bending for over 2 years now, I quit procastinating, and with the help of my wife got a "bending starter kit" (bolt cutters and lowe's gift card)

Cut up some suede from the craft store, and chopped up a 6' 3/16" bar. After reading some suggestions started at 6.5" and melted them DU and DO. Ended up going down to 5" without any problems both DU and DO. Looks like I'll work with that length for a bit, don't want to get over zealous.

The bender bug definately bit me, I know it sounds dumb but you guys can probably appreciate it, after my first couple bends my heart was racing Definately stoked about getting started, skys the limit from here.

One quick question, do you benders stick with a style (say double under) or do you bend both ways when training?

Congrats on your first bending session and welcome to the addiction!

A lot of benders use a few different styles and rotate between them for various reasons. You can rotate between (for example) DU, DO, and reverse. All 3 hit the muscles and wrists differently so you'll have a little bit of "recovery" time if you do one style and then wait a few days and then do another style and repeat that way, compared to if you just tried to bend with one style the same frequency but without the style switching.

There's a lot more to bending than pretty much anything else grip-related I can think of. I amassed thousands of pages of research (printed pages, PM notes, training ideas, etc) in my quest for the Red Nail. I'm still learning about bending. Pay attention to the details and write every workout down. Read through the top 20 bender's logs if you can find them. In all 3 styles. There are also other styles. Research it all man.