Grippers as an Official USAWA Event

[Ben Edwards]

Al, I thought about sending this topic to you as a private e-mail. But I don’t think you would mind if I air it here on the forum instead.

I know plenty of guys (both online and “in the real world”) who train their grip strength. They are usually guys that are training their grip for very specific reasons. Like corrections officers training to be able to hold onto clothing or limbs. Strongman competitors who are training to be able to hang onto the implements they use in contests, etc. Or guys who train specifically for grip strength contests.

My first grip training implement was a gripper. Same thing for a lot of guys I work with. They may graduate to other grip training implements. But the humble gripper is often the beginning of catching the “grip bug.”

My first grip contest was actually a USAWA contest. Kevin Fulton’s Super Grip Challenge in 2002. Grippers were pretty much the only thing I trained with any real focus back then. The lure of trying to close a harder gripper the next year brought me back to the 2003 Super Grip. Grippers continued to bring me to grip contests since those first two Super Grips.

And they do the same for many guys. Which is what I have heard often as a reason why guys that I know aren’t interested in attending a USAWA grip contest. Because grippers aren’t an official event. It might sound petty to forego a contest solely because it doesn’t have grippers in it. But when you take into account the money that most guys spend to attend even a grip contest that’s fairly close to them…it makes sense that they want to make sure it has as many of the “things” that they’re interested in as possible to maximize their time and money spent.

I understand that grippers are not an official USAWA event. I think it would benefit the USAWA membership (and coffers) if grippers were made an official event. They are measurable. Al has measured the pounds to close his that hang on the wall in the Dino Gym.

Maybe they could be made an official event if Al made the same measuring devices available for purchase to fellow USAWA members and promoters. Measurable poundage and replicatable measuring is most important. There is something called the “Redneck Gripper Calibrator” (RGC) that a lot of U.S. grip contests use to measure the poundage required to shut a gripper. It is probably very similar to what Al used to measure his.

The “poundage” of the gripper could then be plugged into the contest event results just like any other event.

This would draw a surprising number of new grip contest competitors to the USAWA contests. Seriously. As odd as that may strike some of you hearing that. I believe it to be true.

https://goalorientedtraining.wordpress.com/

[Al Myers]

Ben,
You know I love my grippers! I have well over 20 grippers from various makers in the gym and I train them often.

I do see a few problems having grippers as an official lift of the USAWA.

First of all each one is different in regards to difficulty – thus no consistency. As you mentioned in your post we could come up with a “measuring device” that could measure closing strengths. But even that poses problems. Differences in grippers such as spread, length, and type of spring make closing harder even with the same closing force. I have noticed this in the measuring of my grippers (my old #3COC measured very close to my newer #3, but is much harder to close, especially thru the mid range) Another problem is that there is no way to make incremental increases like all the other USAWA lifts. You can’t add a pound or kilo. You are reliant on the gripper in question.

I know having grippers as a official lift of the USAWA might help memberships and revenue to the organization. But then again, I don’t think the goal of the USAWA has ever been to try to increase memberships. It’s more about preserving the history of the old time lifters and the all round lifts they practiced. This is pretty obvious by the fact that the most common and popular lifts (snatch, C&J, squat, bench, and DL) are forbidden in our rules to be official lifts of the USAWA.

Thank you Ben for bringing this subject up. And again – I LOVE CLOSING GRIPPERS!!!
Al

[RJ]

I really like that USAWA does not contest Olympic lifts and Powerlifting lifts because there are other Federations that offer these. I feel the same about grippers, hub lifts, penny lifts, sledgehammer, etc.

Just my opinion.

[Author]

Posts