USAWA

This one’s right (write) up my alley Al! I hope to earn one of those handles too because I’ll put it in my training rotation in hopes of beating a gym record at the Dino Gym.

I’ve been training my grip for 11 years now. Over the years I’ve “borrowed” more training ideas – many, many more – than I’ve actually come up with on my own. I know the old saying “there’s nothing new under the sun” has a lot of merit when it comes to training. If I “come up” with an exercise or technique, chances are someone else has already done it before me.

There are a few training ideas or methods that I’ve come up with that I haven’t seen elsewhere, or at least hadn’t seen when I came up with it on my own.

I’d like to write about one training idea I came up with about 5 years ago. I shared it with very few guys. Namely law enforcement officers (LEO) and a few amateur MMA guys that I correspond with. For safety reasons the LEOs aren’t going to speak (to anyone outside the LEO community) about the training I helped them with. But it has drastically improved their hand strength. Same for the MMA guys. It’s a specialized form of training that focuses on the thumb, ring, and pinky fingers – and excludes the others.

These guys also did training that helped their other fingers improve in strength. But the ring and pinky are weak spots on most of the population.

-Think about when someone grabs your wrist (in a hostile situation) and you want to break their grip. There are many ways to go about it, but most people are taught to break the grip by forcefully twisting their wrist outwards and upwards – using a curl-type motion – and focusing that escape attempt on the attacker’s thumb.
-The opposite side of that coin is that by having an unusually strong grip – you can keep hold of someone to defend yourself, etc.

This training also has a big carryover to 1″ and 2″ vertical bar strength by the way. It’s not the aim, but it’s definitely something the guys I’ve helped have reported. At least the few of them who do vertical bar in their training on a regular basis. One of the guys was stalled on his 2″ vertical bar numbers for 3 YEARS before I gave him the workout. 5 weeks later he had put 30 pounds on that lift. And that’s a monstrous increase on a grip lift like that – especially after that much time in a slump.

I’ve rambled a lot I guess. But my point was to ask if I can elucidate further on this in an article, or does it have to be something that I have personally used on myself to get stronger? I do have some experience with it a few years back – but for the most part I’ve just shared it with guys who don’t already have an unusually strong grip.

Ben – that sounds like a great topic, just don’t forget to send it in this time! BTW – a picture is required. All good News Stories need to have a picture to illustrate the message! Al

[b]Quote from dinoman on March 10, 2011, 09:51[/b]
Ben – that sounds like a great topic, just don’t forget to send it in this time! BTW – a picture is required. All good News Stories need to have a picture to illustrate the message! Al

Will do! I will take a few pictures to show the relevant points in detail.

Today I’m taking all the submitted stories to “the judge”. I was totally amazed at the number of submissions – I think it ended up being 21 total. The 6 winners will be announced one per day by their stories being the feature of the Daily News, starting on Monday!! Al

So, do we get one vote with so many stories? Or do we vote for top three, or maybe rank the top ten…..I think we should be able to pick the top three, three votes per voter, because I know it will be hard to pick just one!!!

Big T, If you have read what I have written about this contest, you would know by now that I have an independent judge for this one – someone who is impartial and will not “pick favorites”. So – I am NOT taking votes for this contest! Does anyone even read what I write???? haha Al

Is there an address where I can send fresh baked cookies to the judge?

Haha! Well played Jarrod!

Al, I try to read everything your write…it’s just when I get to the word “rules” my mind goes blank, my eyes glaze over, and I start inserting my own rules……

I believe that Thom!!! You have never been one to “play by the rules”!

Now I’m ready to post the first winner’s story – do you feel the excitement?? Al

I love Dave’s grip article.
ET