Fuel Crusher Posted December 30, 2001 Share Posted December 30, 2001 A thought that’s been going around my small mind for the last couple of days, regarding closing an as yet un-closable gripper. If say you’ve reached your peak or sticking point in a regular exercise, say bench or squat, most people don’t hammer away week in week out putting forth maximum effort. The common method of progression is to use ‘cycling’, drop the weight back and then build back up in weight and intensity until you surpass your previous best. Generally this works, you may only get a few kilos more but you’ve progressed! Now regarding closing a gripper. Say you can close the No2 Coc to within half an inch. Unlike weights you can’t easily alter the weight it takes to close your gripper but you can alter how far you close it. Going with our example of closing to within half an inch how about instead of forced reps, negatives and other intense methods you back off a while. I thought of maybe taking a couple of packs of cards and getting about an inch’s worth, hold them between the ends of your gripper and crush the handles onto them, making sure you’ve definitely ‘grabbed’ them. Now this should be quite easy compared to what you’ve recently been doing by going to within half inch, and that’s the point, a few singles and short holds and leave it at that. Next workout remove one or maybe two of the cards and repeat the same exercises, again it should be quite easy and you probably won’t notice much difference. If you continue on with this until it starts to get hard and you’re removing only one card every other workout say, you should be able to pass your previous best. A couple of these cycles and it may get you there. This is of course going along the same lines of micro-loading with very small weights towards the end of a squat, bench or whatever cycle. I am new to the world of grip so please forgive me if this has been suggested/used before or if it has been proven not to work, I also do not wish to sound like a newbie telling you old hands how to train. I’m only training on the No1 myself so I’ve a fair way to go before I would try a technique such as this, like I say it’s just been thoughts these last few days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Luke Reimer Posted December 30, 2001 Share Posted December 30, 2001 Fuel Crusher, Interesting idea. It just occured to me that I don't understand cycling. Are there any good pages on the web where I could read about cycling? Can anyone summarize the underlying idea for me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kINGPIN Posted December 30, 2001 Share Posted December 30, 2001 Off the top of my head I think that the Hardgainer FAQ touches nicely on this one. Have a look for it but if you can't find it give me a shout. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuel Crusher Posted December 30, 2001 Author Share Posted December 30, 2001 Here's my take on cycling your workouts Luke. Lets use one exercise as an example, Bench press. Say your current best is 100kg for 10 reps, nice round numbers. You've peaked and the gains have stopped, if you increase the weight you can't get the reps and you can't get any more reps with the 100. What to do, negatives, partials, forced reps? These can help but when you truly feel you've given your all and maybe you've even started to go backward it's time to start cycling. Take a break, couple of weeks, get rested. First workout back start at around 80% of your best, here's how your workouts may look. W/O 1 80kg X 10 reps, 3 sets. It'll feel easy, it should. W/O 2 82.5kg X 10 reps, 3 sets. Still easy W/O 3 85 kg X 10 reps, 3 sets. Start to feel it on that last set W/O 4 87 Kg X 10 reps, 3 sets. Last set not difficult but definately getting harder W/O 5 89 kg X 10 reps, 3 sets. Not failure on the last set, but not far off. Time to drop a set. W/O 6 90 Kg X 10 reps, 2 sets. Feels great, one less set will aid recovery. W/O 7 92 kg X 10 reps, 2 sets. No problem W/O 8 94 kg X 10 reps, 2 sets. Feeling it in the second set now, go to smaller increases. W/O 9 95 kg X 10 reps, 2 sets. Still going very smmothly not approaching failure on that second set yet. W/O 10 96 kg X 10 reps, 2 sets. Hard second set, still a couple reps short of failure but time to drop it. W/O 11 97 kg X 10 reps, 1 set. One set only feels great, not that hard. W/O 12 98 kg X 10 reps, 1 set. Still comfortable W/O 13 99 kg X 10 reps, 1 set. Went up hard but very smooth W/O 14 100 kg X 10 reps. Matched your best, hard but felt great. W/O 15 101 kg X 10 reps. New personal best, went up hard but smooth again. W/O 16 102 kg X 10 reps. Yes, you show the bar who's boss, hard set. W/O 17 103 kg X 10 reps. Have to get really psyched now but it goes up. W/O 18 104 kg X 10 reps. Very hard set. W/O 19 105 kg X 10 reps. Almost failed on that last rep, but got it! W/O 20 106 kg X 10 reps. You know in your own mind that even though you got the reps you're at your absolute limit. So in 20 workouts, maybe 10 weeks you've upped your bench 6%, fantastic, take a rest back off to about 80% of 106kg and do it all again. The whole point is that you don't just cycle the weight but also the intensity. It'll be hard to walk out of the gym after those early workouts when you don't feel like you've done much but you have to. Build the momentum to pass your old records. There would be no point in dropping the weight only to do 8 sets and burn out early. Also the above is only a rough example, generally the longer the cycle and the smaller the weight increases the better the gains. If you haven't read Brawn I strongly advise you to do so, McRobert explains it superbly IMO. Oops, very sorry, I've gone into much more detail than I'd planned and a bit off topic on the gripboard. It's got me keener than ever for my next cycle though, start wednesday night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest james Posted December 31, 2001 Share Posted December 31, 2001 Luke Reimer - Have a look at this page and click on 'Little Gems' http://www.hardgainer.com/articles.html There's also another article on cycling by Jeff Pitts. I'll post you the link when I can find it. James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest james Posted December 31, 2001 Share Posted December 31, 2001 Cycling by Jeff Pitts http://www.chdh.ca/hgbc/articles/cycling.htm Train Smart James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kINGPIN Posted December 31, 2001 Share Posted December 31, 2001 The hardgainer FAQ is here along with quite a few other matters of interest. http://bodybuilding.about.com/cs/faqs/ Hope these help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuel Crusher Posted January 1, 2002 Author Share Posted January 1, 2002 (see's thread going slightly off topic) Anyone else any opinions on my gripper theory? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kINGPIN Posted January 1, 2002 Share Posted January 1, 2002 hahaha. :p Appologies fuel crusher. Personally I think it is a good idea. Whether it will work or not, it has to be tried. Anything related to microloading gets my attention. I have a feeling that the only thing that will hold you back is your effort on this. There is a chance that you could remove the cards and still be stuck where you are. In order for a muscle to be strong you throughout its full range of motion it has to be trained that way. That is why isometrics are not very good because they only train the muscle in the position in which it is flexed. This is why when pinching you should use different width plates, blocks etc. So in order to close it you must train within that range of motion. The easiest way to do this is negatives. But they are my no means easy. When you can reliably close the one, give it a shot on the 2 and see what happens. The proof is in the pudding....whatever that means. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuel Crusher Posted January 1, 2002 Author Share Posted January 1, 2002 You're right of course regarding whether microloading would work in this way (increasing range rather than weight), I certainly wouldn't try to improve my bench press by loading up with a weight far in excess of what I was capable of and then gradually increasing ROM from a partial to a full rep. I guess I can just visualise the fact that is you can close a gripper with say 50 cards inbetween then on the next workout SURELY you can close it with 49. Dunno. To be honest I'd like to try it to close the 2 (I can rep the 1 for a few sets of 5) but a pain in my knuckles is putting me off buying the 2 at the moment. Hmmm 'The proof is in the pudding..' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Luke Reimer Posted January 3, 2002 Share Posted January 3, 2002 Kingpin, Fuel Crusher, James, Thanks, guys, for the advice and links. Cycling makes sense to me now (no wonder I've been having the troubles that I have). I'm going to have to revise my routines accordingly, including my grip ones. I've also read up on periodization, and may implement that into my grip routines along with cylcling, and see how that goes. Should be easy to do on my Supergripper's, but a little harder on my COC style. Might have to buy a few more increments... Thanks again, Luke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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