First off I have to say that the absolute #1 source for grip info and the only place you can talk to over 70 certified captains of crush, all the mash monsters, elite benders, strongmen, and all around kings of grip is www.gripboard.com, (you must have an account to view or post). Read up and ask questions there that this article doesn"t answer.
Hand grippers:
First things first, you need to know what a good hand gripper is and no it's not something with plastic handles and a tiny 3/16" spring. These are what I'm talking about:
Ironmind Captains of Crush(COC) grippers- http://www6.mailordercentral.com/iro...cts.asp?dept=8
Beef Builder grippers(BB)- http://www.wwfitness.com/handgrippers.html
Robert Baraban(RB) grippers- http://www.fatbastardbarbellco.com/RBGRIPPERS.html
Heavy grips(HG) grippers- http://www.heavygrips.com
True heavy duty grippers designed and built to increase crushing hand strength. These are not your $5 sporting goods specials, they average around 20 US$ plus shipping. The CoC's are considered the gold standard of grippers and are made to strict standards. If you visit gripboard you may see someone rate a gripper as 2.6 or 3.2, these depend on the person but they are referring to the specific gripper being a little more than half again as hard as a COC #2 or abit harder than a COC#3. The Beef Builders and RB's are hand made and are of very good quality. You can also contact Warren Tetting(of Beef Builder grippers) and he can make you a custom model to your specifications, knurling, handle spread, toughness. HG grippers are the bottom of the barrel but are useful training tools. HG's vary a lot hence their price. In fact, when you look at the big picture the HG's don't get very difficult until the HG250 and HG300.
How to train:
I'm not going to bother saying "don't overtrain" because when you first get the grippers you will overtrain, everyone does, and your hands will be very sore, a deep soreness in the knuckles, wrist, palm and fingers. This will go away with more frequent training on the lighter grippers.
When it comes to frequency no one general rule applies, some guys can train balls to the wall 7 days a week and get good results while some can only do so 1 or 2 times a week, find what works for you. Once the initial soreness in your hands goes away you can easily gauge how long it takes your hands to recover and base your training around that.
HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME HIGH VOLUME!!! Beginners should use HIGH VOLUME, take a gripper you can close (if you can close a #1 then take the Trainer, if you can only close the HG200 then take the HG150) with you everywhere you go and just do closes. Take the gripper with you where ever you go and do over 100-200 closes throughout the day, everyday for a week or two then take 2 days off or as long as it takes for your hands to heal and you'll find that your grip strength has grown by leaps and bounds, then redo it with a higher strength gripper. As a beginner the #1 goal isn't to find your max and work with it, it's to increase the strength and durability of the tendons in your hand then work from there.
A little realized fact about hand strength is thumb strength. Thumb strength is vital to all forms of hand strength, even when closing grippers. If you're going to have strong hands then you'll need strong thumbs and the way to get strong thumbs is to work with blockweights and pinching. Blockweight training is where you take something as simple as a brick and tie weights to it and lift, the thumb is forced to push the brick into the fingers. Pinching is where you take two smooth, metal plates and "pinch" them together and try to lift them. You could use varying widths and surfaces to add or subtract difficulty. The pinnacle in blockweights is to lift "the blob". "The blob", made popular by Richard Sorin, is 1/2 of a vintage 100lb York dumbbell, the sides are rounded and smooth and it weighs 50lbs. The pinnacle of pinching is to pinch two 45lb plates together and fully deadlift them. You can exceed these "feats" but these are considered the benchmark for the elite. There is one more area that is extremely benificial, thickbar work. You simply use barbells and dumbells with thick handles, starting at 2" and on up to 3". This is very effective because it engages the whole of the hand at one time, kind of like a squat for your hands. The benchmark for the elite thick bar guys is lifting the "Thomas Inch Dumbell", a 172lb globe ended dumbell with a 2.47" handle, there is also what is called the Millenium Dumbell that weighs in at 225lbs with a 2.38" handle, only a handfull of men worldwide have even deadlifted the "MDB". You can also read more on thumb strength on gripboard.
Gripper training techniques:
www.gripfaq.com/Hand_Grippers describes gripper exercises but here are some not mentioned.
Two finger closes, try closing the T with two fingers, then work towards the #1. Especially work like this with your pinky and ring fingers, these fingers are perhaps 99% of most people's weakness when they first start out with grip so the more strength you gain in these two fingers the faster a higher gripper will fall.
One finger closes, I don't recommend doing these with a heavy gripper because if you're not warmed up properly you could pull a tendon or hurt yourself some other way but I do them with the G and S and they have really helped my closing strength.
Inverted, you can Invert the gripper and do closes that way, you'll probably be stronger this way with your left hand because of how the spring is wound.
Extensors:
Extensors are the muscles on the back of the forearm involved in opening the hand and are extremely important to hand health and strength. While training grippers, pinches and anything involving closing the hand you may develop a strength imbalance between the two sides of your forearm and you will feel pain or soreness in the back of your hands and your progress on you grip training will halt. To cure this you must train the extensors, you should train them all the time! Some ways to train the extensors are Reverse Barbell curls, you could wrap rubber bands around the ends of your fingers and open your hand(open pretty much means your pinky and pointer fingertips are farther from the tip of your thumb than you middle finger is long, my middle finger is 3 1/4" long so my pinky and pointer should be more than 3 1/4" from my thumb) and fingertip pushups.
Rest and Recuperation:
Rest is the most important thing in weightlifting of any kind. If you feel deep pain in your hands (and you"re more than a complete beginner) then stop gripping for a few days. Contrast baths are good for recouping faster, you fill two buckets or sinks with very hot water in one and ice water in the other and just switch your hands from one to the other every 2-5 minutes. You could dip your arms up to your elbows in ice water for 2 minutes then take them out for 2 minutes and repeat until you feel better. Dexterity balls, play with some dexterity balls, Chinese balls to get the hands loosened up. Anything that gets blood flowing to your hands is a good thing so there are some weird ones, like wearing mittens to bed, it sounds stupid but it does work. I've actually found that playing Fight Night Round 3 on the PS3 gets my hands pumped, in fact I've used it as a warm-up before though I'm pretty sure playing the Wii wouldn't have the same effect.
Well this is just a primer for those who are interested in grip so good luck to all of you future gripmonsters! Keep in mind I'm leaving out card tearing, phonebook ripping, steel bending and all sorts of other fun feats of strength!
For further reading look into:
www.dieselcrew.com
www.grippermania.com
www.gripfaq.com
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05-17-2007, 11:52 AM #1
Grip Training, what you should know
Last edited by 75kg; 05-17-2007 at 06:27 PM. Reason: tweaks
aKa MalachiMcMullen elsewhere
Oldtime Strongman Exaordinare
SQUAT MORE AND OIL YOUR GRIPPERS!
www.dieselcrew.com
www.gripboard.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/MalachiMcMullen
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05-17-2007, 12:12 PM #2
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05-17-2007, 01:48 PM #3
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05-17-2007, 03:31 PM #4
I've never personally used thick bars mainly due to lack of access. I hear from tons of people on gripboard and elswhere that it works great for crushing grip! I didn't add it in because I do not know much about thick bar training, I didn't want to talk about something I don't know about and it's not what most beginner's hear about first while grippers are. Grippers are also what most people here ask about. The article was written to proactively answer questions about mainly grippers. Besides, as the article says I left out quite a large amount of info but those interested can read on at the gripboard n' such. BTW GoJu, Titania is recommending this as a sticky
aKa MalachiMcMullen elsewhere
Oldtime Strongman Exaordinare
SQUAT MORE AND OIL YOUR GRIPPERS!
www.dieselcrew.com
www.gripboard.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/MalachiMcMullen
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05-17-2007, 03:39 PM #5
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05-17-2007, 04:50 PM #6
Great post and very helpful info. This should definitely be stickied. Although I have a question, isn't the millenium DB 2.38" handle not 2.5"?
I also want to add that if you want to learn about grip training with little to no equipment or just grip training in general read John Brookfield's books. That guy's a genius when it comes to this stuff.
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05-17-2007, 06:00 PM #7
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05-17-2007, 06:28 PM #8
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05-18-2007, 07:16 AM #9
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05-18-2007, 09:03 AM #10
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05-18-2007, 09:22 AM #11
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05-18-2007, 09:35 AM #12
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05-18-2007, 12:33 PM #13
there are a number of great articles on dieselcrew
http://www.dieselcrew.com/articles/js-grip%20nation.pdf
http://www.dieselcrew.com/articles/j...20deadlift.pdf
http://www.dieselcrew.com/articles/r...20Training.pdf
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05-18-2007, 05:56 PM #14
Thanks for the great information that you have collected and passed on to use. I?ve been working on the grip for some time now, with little improvement. I?ll pass the information on to my friends at the Sheriff office, its important that we have a great grip with all the fighting that we have to do and holding on to subjects.
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05-18-2007, 06:13 PM #15
Thickbar work would be better for you then. I can't name an "Inch" deadlifter who can't close a #3. Closing grippers does two things, strengthen the tendons in your hands and help you close bigger grippers, end of story. Thickbar would be more beneficial job-wise as it gets you more accustomed to holding round objects, like suspects arms or legs if need be, securely.
aKa MalachiMcMullen elsewhere
Oldtime Strongman Exaordinare
SQUAT MORE AND OIL YOUR GRIPPERS!
www.dieselcrew.com
www.gripboard.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/MalachiMcMullen
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05-18-2007, 06:45 PM #16
Thick bar is a good way to strengthen up the entire lower arm and hand. Agreed here.
www.beyondstrong.com - this is some very interesting grip stuff written by certified captain of crush Nick McKinless
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05-21-2007, 10:07 PM #17
- Join Date: Feb 2005
- Location: United States
- Age: 37
- Posts: 2,975
- Rep Power: 6155
how do you balance grip training with everything else u're doing
for ex. i do back/bi on monday and i use my grip a lot, but it's not exactly dead.
then i do sets of farmers on saturday and they get murdered, but usually only 3 sets - heavy sets for shorter distance or lighter sets for longer distances
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05-22-2007, 08:10 AM #18
- Join Date: Aug 2003
- Location: Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Age: 52
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- Rep Power: 100707
This is how I personally work my grip training into my schedule. This scheme always includes heavy compounds and sometimes other strength related stuff (ie, sled drags, lifting odd objects etc). The heavy and light alternations allow for joint and tendon recovery -
1 - Back Heavy
2 - Chest Light
3 - Off
4 - Grip / Biceps Heavy
5 - Legs Light
6 - Off
7 - Shoulders Heavy
8 - Triceps Light
9 - Off
10 - Back Light
11 - Chest Heavy
12 - Off
13 - Grip / Biceps Light
14 - Legs Heavy
15 - Off
16 - Triceps Heavy
17 - Shoulders Light
18 - OffRetired strongwoman and powerlifter. Now living for God!
www.ausdisciples.com
* My posts prior to Nov 2008 do not reflect my new-found faith in Christ. I became Christian in Nov 2008.
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05-22-2007, 09:40 AM #19
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05-22-2007, 09:51 AM #20
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05-22-2007, 12:28 PM #21
Your not an inch deadlifter though, it doesn't go both ways. Closing a #3 takes massive strength but picking up the inch takes all around arm strength not just crushing. If you have the strength to fully deadlift the Inch there's a darn good chance your strong enough to close a #3 if not for sure.
Thanks!aKa MalachiMcMullen elsewhere
Oldtime Strongman Exaordinare
SQUAT MORE AND OIL YOUR GRIPPERS!
www.dieselcrew.com
www.gripboard.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/MalachiMcMullen
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05-22-2007, 02:37 PM #22
- Join Date: Feb 2005
- Location: United States
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i was planning to buy a trainer and just squeeze that all day like it said above. then go and get a rubber ball or something really light and squeeze that the next day. take a day off and get back at it again.
my crushing strength has actually regressed. i can't even close the #1 with my left hand for more than 2 now.
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05-22-2007, 03:59 PM #23
Absolutely nothing is as good a warmup for grip as heavy or high rep squats! They're the best way to get blood and testosterone flowing throughout the body without tiring the hands out.
Stress balls, the IM snowball or something to that effect are good for active recovery. As the article states you want to get blood flowing to the hands to help recover faster and stress balls are a great way to do so.
To your earlier post, and this is my opinion, I think the best thing to do is what Uk does. Do gripwork after everything else on a squat day or bench day or however your routine works just so long as your not using your hands very much before the gripwork.aKa MalachiMcMullen elsewhere
Oldtime Strongman Exaordinare
SQUAT MORE AND OIL YOUR GRIPPERS!
www.dieselcrew.com
www.gripboard.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/MalachiMcMullen
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05-22-2007, 05:37 PM #24
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05-22-2007, 06:27 PM #25
High volume is ok but don't let a beginner who is closing the trainer smash out a bunch of negs on a #2 with no conditioning!
This is what i do for my mum who is a beginner to grip, closing the trainer but about 1/8'' off the #1.
She does:
warmup - extensors, stationary bike, light weights
grippers
trainerx1,1,1
#1 attempts - 3-5 attempts depending on how strong she is. After that she does a few more and then forces it in an does a few negs.
no set trainer attempts - she is usually very close about 2mm off
and does this about 3 times a week! i'm confident she will close the #1 in less than a month.
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05-22-2007, 07:40 PM #26
Exactly, which is why I advocate taking the gripper with you and just doing closes all day. You don't focus on maximal effort and trying to get 30 reps at a time, you just do a set of 10 here and there every so often so your not tearing your hands apart right from the start and your not working out of your range (ie, Negatives). It gives you a chance to work on your technique, doesn't grind your skin off all at once, and doesn't overload your tendons fast so tendonitis is not nearly as much a worry. I've also heard stories of overzealous guys who give themselves tendonitis for a few weeks after trying heavy negs or super high rep sets without warming up or "getting into the groove" of grip training first. Which leads me to something that should probably be mentioned:
Warming up:
You'll want to warm up your hands really well before going into a big grip training session be it pinches, blockweights, grippers etc. What some people do, and what works for me and many others, is go about their normal lifting routine and after all the regular exercises are done go into gripwork. You'll want to pick a day that doesn't really involve the hands to lift things, so steer away from deadlift day! Bench and Squat days are the best. Squats are the trump card though as they warm up the entire body and release testosterone and since your hands aren't involved more than pushing the bar into your shoulders they aren't fatigued by the time your done.aKa MalachiMcMullen elsewhere
Oldtime Strongman Exaordinare
SQUAT MORE AND OIL YOUR GRIPPERS!
www.dieselcrew.com
www.gripboard.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/MalachiMcMullen
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05-23-2007, 08:28 AM #27
- Join Date: Aug 2003
- Location: Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Age: 52
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That sounds like something worth trying. My only reservation with that would be the effort squat days require and the amount of total fatigue after completing squats. The last thing I usually feel like doing after an intense squat day is more training!!!
However, what you say makes sense and clearly something you have discovered from experience.Retired strongwoman and powerlifter. Now living for God!
www.ausdisciples.com
* My posts prior to Nov 2008 do not reflect my new-found faith in Christ. I became Christian in Nov 2008.
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05-24-2007, 08:11 PM #28
I hear that!!! Heavy squats do make everything feel fatigued even if its not, like hard sprinting. Thing is, though I felt really fatigued after sprints I managed to repeat a personal best bench right after; same thing with heavy or high rep squats, after a set of those I did a one handed static hold of 270lbs with both hands which blew my old PR away by 45lbs. I think it's more mental, the weights felt heavy but went up nonetheless!!!
Something to add, grip tips from the one and only grip guru John Brookfield
http://www.ironmind.com/ironcms/expo...s/griptip.html
I want to see some new folks on these lists!
http://www.ironmind.com/ironcms/expo...nswhosnew.htmlaKa MalachiMcMullen elsewhere
Oldtime Strongman Exaordinare
SQUAT MORE AND OIL YOUR GRIPPERS!
www.dieselcrew.com
www.gripboard.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/MalachiMcMullen
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05-25-2007, 03:58 AM #29
- Join Date: Aug 2003
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05-26-2007, 09:59 PM #30
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