The IronMind #3 Gripper.
I first received my IronMind Grippers, Trainer, #1 and #2, around April or May of 2002 when I was stationed in South Korea. I bought them to strengthen my hands for Jiu-Jitsu and rock climbing, and was addicted instantly. At first, I closed the Trainer, and then tried the #1. I squeezed harder than I had anything in my life, and barely got the handles to touch. After that, I wasn't able to close the #1 for nearly 2 weeks. After that, I started knocking out reps with the Trainer and attempts at the #1. At the time, negatives with even the #2 hurt my hands far too much for them to be a real training aid. My work outs started as just doing a few reps after I was done lifting or running. Nothing major. Nothing serious.
A month later, I ordered a #3 gripper, and WOW that thing was amazing. "There's no way I could close that". In the same order I also received the #4, but I won't even talk about that thing now.
My grip training didn't pick up until July of 2002 when I got back state-side at Ft. Benning, GA. There, I started to put a good percentage of each pay check into IronMind, buying and testing which of their items would really work my hands. I trained in the evenings, and brought the Trainer and #1 to work, but there was no real training plan. I couldn't yet close my #2 gripper. I was actually still a good centimeter away. At this time, my grip training was based off of "playing" every night with any of my new grip toys. Maxing on the Titans Telegraph Key, the hub pinch, grippers, ect.
September of 2002, when I joined the GripBoard and bought "The Bag of Nails" from IronMind. Bending took over my existance. I fell so hard for bending, that it literally changed my life. It got me back into power lifting, and I started to have a real grip plan. It was in this time that I also bought my first block weights, a 40lb and 50lb hex dumbbells that turned into 20lb and 25lb block weights. Then, the 20 was easy, but the 25 really took an effort to move.
Soon after, I bought another #2 gripper. This one, I could close for two reps! This made no sense, as my first #2 was still un-closable. It would take me to do four solid reps on the easy #2 before I could barely close the hard one. At this time, my training was based off of reps, and I would say this is the first mistake in gripper training. For my training, I was bending every day, all day, and then "playing" again at night with whatever item I felt like training on. Grippers were done nearly every day, but with very little intensity.
By February 2003, I could close the hard #2 for 12 reps. My other training was mostly bending stuff, but I also bought a 70lb hex head to make 35lb blobs. This was much harder, but do able, so I started training with more intensity. In January I received a bending injury to my right and and a phone-book tearing injury to my left hand, so I focused on grippers. Around this time I started my first (and last) KTA cycle and started to have great results, only three weeks into KTA I was doing dead lifts and destroyed my KTA-weakened forearm. Just demolished it. The muscular pain of my right forearm was deep and unbearable. It took my two weeks before I could even close the #1 without pain.
NOTE: When the KTA program says "Don't do any other grip work at all!", it means it! This includes double-over-hand grips on dead lifts. Trust me...
With my gripping muscles destroyed, I changed my focus back to bending, and bought an 80 and 90 pound hex head to make a 40 and 45 pound block weights. Now these were tough! After training with these monsters (with my average sized hands) I started to notice something about my hands. They were "feeling" strong. Something about my hand just felt more solid, more strong, something that grippers never gave me. From here until July, I trained with just bending and block weights, and grippers once and a while. Also during this time, I bought all the Tetting grippers, and even placed an order for the RB grippers. I also bought the Lemely gripper to add to the collection.
My training was now based off of bending nearly every day, with the occasional two-day break. I worked the sledge hammer very hard at this time too. Then, in the afternoons, I would play with the block weights. There is no real plan, but it was pretty much bend-every-day, block weights when I feel like it, and grippers for fun. With this bending work out, I moved on to bend a number of Grade-5 bolts.
THE PLAN BEGINS:
This bending-centric plan went on until July when I bought "THE BLOB" from a grip board member. If you haven't seen this beast yet, let me tell you: "If you can lift this thing, you are Superman, You Have Strong Hands!". It is unbelievable. Simply ridiculous. Just amazing. I struggled with TWO hands to lift it my first time. I was so in awe of this thing that I changed up my training to focus on it. The first thing I did was make some add-on weights with cord and standard plates to drape across the smaller block weights.
This training was based off of maxing out to about a 99% effort. I never took it "too the limit" as that in the past had led to over-training. Each time I played with my block weights I would do one of two things. 1). Just warm my hands up by picking up each weight a few times, and then taking the biggest one I could hold for time, and do laps around the inner halls of our office. 2). Max out on a certain block weight. Most of the time, I maxed. I would max on the 35, 40, or 45 by adding increments of 2.5lbs with weights attached by cord. One one day, I'd use the 35, then the next day the 40, with the 45 the day after. Most of the time, I stuck with the 40, as it fits my hand perfectly.
My style of training was to line up my weights on a low table, chalk up, and the pull the weight high enough to "know I lifted it". Then, I would record the hight, so if I couldn't pull more weight, I'd know if I pulled it higher. In this manner I kept a journal for the 6 weeks (which ended due to illness and a tasking that took me away from my toys), and every week, I would set new PR's in every lift.
This training led to a HUGE jump in my total hand strength.
My thumb's muscles nearly doubled in size, and the muscles of my hand just under the pinky finger grew so large that they would cramp up during the day. The biggest difference was the feeling of real strength in my hands. They felt solid. They felt strong.
Also during this time I picked up my RB grippers, the beefbuilder Super Master gripper, and the PDA 280 gripper. The RB 210 was a great gripper as the final crush was so hard, and the PDA 280 was just under a #3.
Now understand my gripper training had dwindled. I could barely close a #2 for three repetitions, but my max effort attempts at the bigger grippers were surprisingly easy. I used to be able to knock out 12 solid reps, but now I couldn't do 3 reps, but I can close the PDA 280???
About mid July, I started to play with the grippers a bit more. Still, there was a massive amount of bock-weight work, a lot of bending, but I started to make attempts on bigger grippers to include a filed down #3. Then, one day in early August, I closed my #3 down to 2mm. Days later, I was doing negatives with the #3, let it open and then closed it again!
And then, finally, on 20 August 2003, I just finished a bench work out, played with my block weights and looked at my #3. I picked it up, looked at SFC Wilson, and said "Watch This". I set it and closed it. The next day I closed it twice.
What Happened?
1). I stopped training the specific motion of a gripper crush, and started training hard on the exercise that stresses the tendon strength of the entire hand. My entire hand was being stessed as a whole, increasing my tendon strength, muscular strength, and awareness.
2). I greatly increaed the strength and size of my thumb muscle, the base that supports the crush. Now, when squeezing big grippers, it stayed in one place as my thumb was strong enough to thrust forward against the force of the crush.
3). I learned how to apply a much greater force with my ring finger. Usually grippers felt like it was a middle finger and index finger crush, but when I started to close the #3, I was actually feeling a great ammount of force comming from my ring finger, something that never happened when I trained grippers alone.
The result was a much stronger hand that made all grip activites easier. Another notable occurance of training hard on block weights was that my old 3" thickbar PR was 65lbs, but after the block weights, I was able to pull 90lbs with only two weeks of training.
Today (3 months after the first #3 close) I can close my #3, cold, nearly every time I try it. More so, I can keep it closed for a solid 15 seconds, and I am able to close my medium #3. Sadly, in the tradition of gripper variation, I'm still about 2mm from crushing my hard #3, and am waiting to certify with IronMind when I can close that one. Maybe I should train more with block weights?...
"Block Weights = Hand Strength"
I advise every grip trainer out there who owns TMoHS to go back and look at chapter 5, or the chapter Brookfield dedicates to block weights. Pay attention to how strongly he believes in block weights. Observe how strong his word usage is for describing block weights. John Brookfield, "Mr. Hands", the strongest hands on the planet believes that Block Weights are the BEST way to get stronger hands capable of anything. He also believes grippers aren't that great for getting stronger hands. Mix the two, and what I stumbled upon is very true: block weights just may improve gripper strength better than grippers do. Of course, the best mix is to do both. Learn how to close grippers, develop your strength with block weights, close grippers with your new strength. Too easy.
The second piece to hard training, is hard recovery! I believe this piece of my training is almost more important than the actual techniques, because with out this recovery, I couldn't train.
1). Squat! As Steve Jeck, stone lifter extraodinaire, said "A lifting routine without squats is flawed at best". This is too true. Heavy, serious, squatting will cause a spike in growth hormone that lasts for days after squatting. This is because the body recognizes the extreme stress of squatting, and forces itself to adapt. The way to do this is by increasing your resting hormone levels so you can recover before you experience the stress again.
The fun part about this, is the entire body grows stronger. Combine this with the hands already great ability to recover fast, and you have the key to hand strength recovery. Even Joe Kinney, the guy to first close the #4, swore by squatting to help his hands recover. Think about it.
2). Nutrition. Perhaps not a key point in hand strength training, but important. I've been taking plenty of Joint meds to keep my joints healthy. I've also been taking a protein supplement before bed. With out an anabolic environment, muscle simply does not grow.
3). Mittens? The hands have poor circulation. They are thin, mostly bone, and far from the heart. This classically means they don't get very much blood. If healthy circulation is key to health recovery, why can't we improve the circulation to a poorly circulated area and expect results? That was my argument, so I tried to find out if it worked.
What I found I will swear by for the rest of my life. I started to wear arctic mittens to bed at night. Though hot at first, the warmth was unbelievable, and the "good" sensation that followed was even better. Then, when I woke up, my hands would feel a bit puffy, but healthy. By the time I got to work, did some PT, and started my day, my hands were at 100% and I could attack the block weights and steel again.
Sometimes in the evenings my hands would be throbbing. Not with pain, yet, but instead with the solid feeling of "I have trained my hands to 100%". Then I would start to get worried that I may not be able to train for a few days as they recovered. I'd pop some joint pills, have a protein shake, (squatted the day before), slip on the mittens, and go to sleep. EIGHT hours latter, (always get 8 or more hours of sleep!!!) I would wake up, and my hands would feel tender, but in 99% perfect condition. I would feel so good that I would train my hands into the ground again, to the point of going home in the evening thinking I may have hurt my self... Only to put on the mittens... This cycle would usually last 4 days.(Monday night was never that bad) FOUR consecutive days of hard-core super-intense work outs. Every day I woke up feeling fine, ready to do it again. Then, I'd take Saturday and Sunday off, and come back on Monday with a new found strength that I didn't have the week before! Every Monday for 6 weeks, I set new PR's with my 40lb block weight plus added weights, and on that 6th week, I closed the #3.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Right now, I can honestly say that at the beginning of this 6-week intense block-weight and recovery program I was still at 1cm left on my #3, and at the end of this program, I closed the #3. During this time, I have done a total of about 30 attempts with any type of gripper. I shouldn't have to say it, (or quote it) but... BLOCK WEIGHTS = HAND STRENGTH !!!
Below is a link to the day I closed the #3 infront of my official witness as Auburn College. A few months before this day, I was still nowhere near closing the #3. The rest speaks for itself.
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