When grip guys and strength aficionados get started in steel bending, they want to progress as quickly as possible up the various levels of steel as fast as possible. They often try many different training techniques in order to strengthen their wrists and lower arms for the many steel bending techniques that exist.

One of the time-honored traditions of steel benders is Levering Sledge Hammers, and I’m often asked by steel benders if Sledge Levering is a good option for building better bending strength.

In today’s video, I address this topic: Will Sledge Hammer Levering Help Me Bend Bigger Steel:

Does Hammer Levering Help Build Bending Strength?

This is honestly a pretty big change in my line of thinking. In fact, in both my Nail Bending eBook and Nail Bending DVD, I suggest Sledge Hammer Levering to bring up their bending.

However, I always try to learn and develop, both as a lifter and a coach. Since working with dozens of benders over the last few years, I’m convinced that Sledge Hammer Levering isn’t as necessary as I once thought.

Also, in talking with many big benders over the years, the consensus, by far is that BENDING is what you should focus on in order to get good at bending.

I still stand by the fact that Sledge Levering will help you in conditioning your wrists for bending. In fact, I suggest a minimum 4-week ramp-up period where the various wrist movement patterns are trained with gradually increasing intensity, prior to doing any bending.

I recommend Sledge Levering for beginners because it allows you to work so many beneficial ranges of motion and movement patterns that are needed with steel bending, including both non-braced and braced bending methods.

However, once you start actually bending full time, or at least making steel bending one of your primary goals in your training, I think it’s most important to focus on purposeful bending, working your way up the ladder, and continually working on perfecting your technique and force production on actual nails and bars. At that point, Sledge Work can take a back seat, and be used mainly as a recovery method between bending sessions, and for keeping things like Tennis Elbow and Golfers Elbow as far away as possible.

I hope today’s post has been helpful toward directing you down as straight and as short a path as possible to your ultimate bending goals.

If you’re interested in more Steel Bending information, please check out the resources that countless other steel slayers have tapped into. The links are below.

Nail Bending eBook: Since 2005, this digital manual has helped more people start out on the right track with their bending than any other resource on the planet. It includes pictorials of how to properly execute all the major and minor bending techniques, dozens of different exercises for building lower arm strength and preventing injuries, as well as a full 9-week lower arm conditioning program for beginner benders.

Nail Bending DVD: Released in 2011, this video picks up where the ebook left off, walking you through the process of becoming a great bender. It shows you the proper way to wrap your steel for powerful bending, and you can see bars bent right on your computer screen or TV. Grab you steel, get your wraps, and let’s do a couple bends together as you play this DVD right in your own living room or home gym.

All the best in your training.

Jedd

Training to Bend the Red Nail?
Get the Go-to Resource for Nail Bending: The Nail Bending Ebook

One of the coolest feats of strength, in my opinion, is bending an adjustable steel wrench.

Nothing says “strong hands” and “brute strength,” like bending a perfectly good tool that someone could have easily used to work on their car, their house, or an appliance.

I got a wild hair to bend something the other day, so I grabbed a wrench and gave it a whirl, and was successful.

I thought I would share 5 things you might not know about bending steel wrenches.

1. Wearing Pants Makes a HUGE Difference

As demanding as wrench bending is, it may seem like you’d want to wear loose, non-restrictive clothing so you can get the most out of your body as possible, but not with braced-style bending. The denim material of your jeans gives you a much better grip than, say, mesh shorts or sweat pants. This is important for both safety reasons, and for the sake of efficiency, because with jeans, the wrench doesn’t slide all over the place, and jeans don’t shift on you or stretch like shorts and sweats do. Heavy twilled cargo shorts are also a nice option for bending wrenches and other braced feats.

2. Braced Bending is FULL BODY Bending

Bending a wrench over your thigh, like I do it, is called Braced Bending. This bracing is done on purpose. Other forms of bending, of the non-braced varieties, disallow or limit the amount of contact the object can have with the body. But not Braced Bending. With this form of bending, you kink the steel or wrench over your thigh, sweep it down as far as possible between your legs and then crush it down like a champ with chest strength. Because of this bracing, you end up in many different positions that non-braced bending does not put you in, so you actually have to be a bit more athletic and mobile for braced-style bending feats.

3. Be Prepared for Some Pain

Braced Bending is HARD. It hurts to press something like a wrench into your thigh. You have to break through mental barriers, just as much as physical barriers when you are bending wrenches. If your mental governor is on, then you won’t be successful with braced-style bending feats. You have to be able to shut that thing off and drive into the bar or wrench without hesitation or distraction. The reward is worth it though, because once you feel the steel buckle under your strength, you get hit with extra adrenaline to take the bend even further.

4. Get Your Wraps Tight

The biggest mistake people make, aside from trying to bend wrenches without knowing proper technique, is not having your wraps tight. It doesn’t matter whether you are using towels, cordura, or suede/leather, you’ve got to get them tight. If they are loose, the will move around when bending the wrench, and you will lose a degree of strength. You need all the strength you can generate, and don’t want to waste ANY effort. Get your wraps tight as possible, so you can drive into it MUCH harder and with more ferocity.

5. You BETTER HAVE a Strong Core

Believe it or not, even though bending wrenches is considered a feat of grip strength, there’s much more involved that just that. Above all, is you need to have a strong core. You don’t necessarily need a rock-hard set of washboard abs, but rather you need to be able to execute some powerful pressure into the wrench in order to get the bend started and keep it going for that matter.

How to Bend a Wrench

Here is the video of my wrench bend. I kink it over the thigh, which is a very common method for getting the kink started, I sweep it between the legs, and then finish the crush-down up high, like when bending a nail or bolt.

It feels great to bend a wrench. Definitely a cool feat to be able to do.

They also make cool pen holders, which is what this one is going to be used for!

If you would like to learn how to bend wrenches, as well as perform many other braced bending feats of strength, then you need to pick up the Braced Bending DVD.

For this weekend, the Braced Bending DVD is $10 off, so don’t delay in picking it up.

Braced Bending Hard Copy

You’re gonna love braced bending,

Jedd

In November, Bud Jeffries and I met up for about 6 hours of some of the most intense training I have ever done.

We started a little after 11 AM and by 6PM, we had shot several hours of footage on one of the most challenging, and yet still most addicting forms of steel bending there is – Steel Scrolling.

As I got the gym ready to film and bend, I played some Pandora Radio on one of my favorite channels – Guns n’ Roses.

For once, a steady stream of songs from the band I actually wanted to listen to got played, and right before Bud arrived, Pandora kicked out the absolute classic Guns n’ Roses hit, “Welcome to the Jungle.”

And while Bud Jeffries was here, the one thing that kept going through my head was…

“Welcome to the Jungle, We’ve Got Fun and Games,” the first two lines in the song.

At first thought, that’s a strange comparison – a Jungle and Fun & Games…

If you think of the literal words, you have to wonder how a deep, dark jungle could ever be considered fun and games at all…

Of course, figuratively, the song is describing the vices you can be exposed to, which can be so thrilling while you experience them, yet they also pose the risk of all-out addiction, some of them, you are hooked for life, the first time you try them.

Ironic, how that describes Steel Bending perfectly as well.

Now, obviously there’s very little risk of being bitten by a poisonous spider or snake, when bending steel like there is in a jungle…

But getting “bitten” by the bending bug and feeling the cold hard steel bar buckling from your strength…

That can be as intoxicating as any drug or drink you can possibly be given.

The pump you feel in your arms and shoulders as you craft a straight bar into a crazy design with no tools and no heat – just your strength.

And the glory you feel when your battle with the bar ends and you stand victorious.

Bending nails into U’s.

Twisting Horseshoes into S’s.

These kinds of “Fun and Games” make you tougher both mentally and physically.

But they leave you wanting more.

And for people like you, me, and Bud, the only sensible next step is Scrolling.

Scrolling Steel is the ULTIMATE form of Bending.

The ultimate Feat of Strength.

And if you want to find out why, then grab this free video:

Why Scrolling Steel is the ULTIMATE Form of Bending.

Welcome to the Jungle – Click the Link Above

Jedd Johnson & Bud Jeffries

Adjustable Crescent Wrench Bent by Hand,
Braced on Thigh (Pittsburgh Brand)

For more than a year, I have been trying off and on to bend a wrench. I must have tried about 10 different wrenches! I was beginning to wonder if I would ever be able to pull off this feat. I was getting pretty frustrated!!!

My constant efforts to bend a Wrench and then looking at it and seeing it was straighter than before I tried bending it reminded me that when we put together our Braced Bending DVD, I made sure that my partner, Mike Rinderle, covered the sections showing how to bend the wrenches, because I couldn’t even wobble them, let alone bend them into a U shape like he could.

This past week, I decided I was going to give it another shot. It had been several months since I tried, but I was feeling good and decided to give it a whirl.

I was pumped when i gave it the initial effort and felt it give a bit. I continued to give it all I had and little by little I was progressing in the bend.

Unfortunately, I only had 6 minutes left on my camera, and at one point, probably abut 8 minutes into the bend, I noticed the little red light was off.

So, I went through and deleted a couple minutes of other stuff off the camera and finished the bend.

Since the “officialness” of the video was gone once the camera went off, I went ahead and did some editing of the video to make it a bit shorter.

Also, the first thing you’re going to see is me showing the bent wrench. Something pretty cool happened that I wasn’t aware of, although it is possible that it happens every time you bend a wrench like this.

You’ll see what I mean when you start the video.

Lessons Learned from Wrench bending

I learned a few things from bending this wrench that I want to pass on to all of you in case wrench bending is something you are going to try.

1) Get Your Wraps Tight

I should have already known this from my years of nail bending, but I failed to remember it. All I did was wrap the suede around the ends of the wrench and go. As a result, they were shifting on me during the bend. Had I tightened them like a “Motorcycle Throttle” like Mike Rinderle says, and if I’d put some rubber bands on there, I think it would have been easier.

2) Keep the Steel Hot

When you bend something, the steel heats up and it gets a bit easier to bend. But if you mess around and take too much time between shots on the wrench or if you take too much time catching your breath, the steel cools down and it makes your job tougher. The problem with the poor wrap-job contributed to my slowness in working through the wrench.

3) This Stuff is Hard

Sometimes, I think that I should just be able to blow through every feat just because I have been doing this stuff so long. Seeing other people blow through wrenches, makes me think I should just be able to easily dominate them even more. However, those other guys who make short work of braced feats can do that because they have worked their asses off to be that good. Neither you, nor I, should expect to dominate feats like this if we aren’t honing our skills. I want to get better at it, which means I need to do it more.

And if I am going to do it more, I need to get me some more Wrenches!!!

If you want to try your hand at Wrench bending or other braced strongman feats, check out our DVD on Braced Bending.

All the best in your training.

Jedd

When Will You Die: Host, Jake Porway and Jedd after doing some Frying Pan work

Set your DVR’s and VCR’s to record Nat Geo at 10 PM tomorrow night – Monday April 22.

That’s right, I am asking you to tear yourself away from the final hour of Monday Night Raw tomorrow night.

Maybe you’re wondering why…

Many of you remember from last September the Top Secret Grip Trip that I took to California.

This show is what that trip (and my second trip in December) were both for.

The Show is called “The Numbers Game” and the episode is called “When Will You Die.”

I have not seen the show, so I am not sure how it was edited all together. All I know is that I took two separate trips out there last Fall and Winter and bent about two dozen horseshoes, frying pans, nails and other pieces of steel.

Plus I ripped a whole pile of phone books and decks of cards, so they have plenty of footage to go through – HA HA!

It was a great time, I had a lot of fun, and I hope it carries over well to the show.

Also, feel free to post something on Facebook or another social network. Sometimes, with a “crazy” sport like Grip or doing Feats of Strength, it is good to get it in front of your friends’ and family’s eyes when it is on mainstream media like this, to show them that you are not the only “crazy” one out there.

Thanks everyone, for all the support, and all the best in your training.

Jedd

Horseshoe Bending may sound crazy, but indeed, people all over the world are doing it. From shoes made to outfit small ponies to shoes designed for larger animals such as draft shoes, tough dudes around the globe are mangling them – twisting them from their characteristic U-shape and into a flattened S, or even completely around on themselves until they resemble a heart!

Bending Horseshoes may just be one of the most beneficial types of bending. Many of the benefits are listed below.

Why Bend Horseshoes?

Now, you may be wondering why the hell someone would want to bend a horseshoe. Well, if you are a student of the art of feats of strength, then it is a natural progression from regular steel bending such as bending nails and bolts.

However, if you have a more traditional strength training or muscle building background, then you may need some more reasons to try horseshoe bending. So here’s a few right now:

Benefits of Horseshoe Bending

Conquering the Impossible:
Horseshoes are made to be durable and resist wear, so to be able to straighten them and tie them into a knot, it’s as if you are defeating the undefeatable enemy! Nothing gives you a bigger rush than finally taking down the next level of shoe, especially if you’ve missed it a couple of times already!

Excellent Core Strength Builder:
While the hands, and arms are extremely important for horseshoe bending, the level of core strength needed to bend horseshoes is unparalleled by other strength feats. You must be able to send shock-waves into the shoe with explosive core power in order to make the shoe start moving in the sweep and crush and you have to be able to maintain longer durations of straining in order to keep the legs moving. NO other feat of strength matches this level of intensity.

Horseshoes Build Horseshoes on Your Arms:
The straining and dynamic effort associated with horseshoe bending can’t be beat, even by the most rigorous of conventional bench pressing programs or the most demanding bodybuilding routines. Your triceps blow up seriously blow up from this kind of work.

Builds Character and Mental Toughness:
Horseshoe Bending takes hard work, dedication, a strong will, and a remarkable heart. You have to be able to deal with struggle and with failure, but the feeling you get when you bend that next level of shoe for the first time is indescribable. This kind of tenacity carries over to other training as well, and bending horseshoes can revolutionize the way you approach the iron in the weight room.

Incredible Grip and Wrist Strength:
It was once an accepted belief that Bending would take away from your Grip Strength, but with the increase in benders participating in horseshoe bending, we are seeing more and more often that this is untrue. Your hands and wrist have to be strong in order to bend shoes and with the force required to excel, you end up building hand strength that carries over into many other types of Grip Training. And it goes without saying that stronger hands and wrists will be mean bigger lifts in the gym.

Chicks Dig It:
Just imagine how impressive it will be to the girls in your class or the ladies in the office when you wrap up a horseshoe and bend it right before their eyes. Horseshoes bent into a heart shape are second only to chocolate as a gift on Valentine’s Day! Screw tearing a deck of cards or a phone book! Who’s impressed with ripping paper? The ladies want to see you mess up the hard stuff, brother!

Tendon Strength:
Horseshoe bending requires high tension throughout the body, and with this comes tendon strength, the kind of strength that will set you apart from others at the gym and will keep you injury-resistant in your workouts. This kind of strength can’t be produced with conventional lifting means. This is something that only comes about from battles with horseshoes.

Technique over Force Production:
This is actually reason number eight, and it is the most important reason of all. Horseshoe bending is heavily dependent on technique. In fact, some of the best horseshoe benders in the world are under 200-lbs and can’t lift much more than 300-lbs on the bench press. This is because while full body strength is important, technique is what sets the biggest horseshoe benders in the world apart from the rest of the pack. This is why horseshoe bending is one of the most skill-dependent feats that there is.

For more information on horseshoe bending, check out our DVD, Hammering Horseshoes. I worked on this with Mike “Rindo” Rinderle, the first ever US Steel Bending Champion, and crazed steel bender.

Hammering Horseshoes is by far the most detailed resource on horseshoe bending that exists today and we will show you everything you need to know to get started kinking, sweeping, crushing and hearting big horseshoes.

Get the Hammering Horseshoes DVD and get started bending horseshoes. Right away.

All the best in your training.

Jedd

Happy Hammering Horseshoes Customers:

“I bought the hammering horseshoes dvd before I even had a shoe to bend,they give everything you need to know to get going no question about that. Well worth the money.”
David Mitti
Recreation Horseshoe Dominator

“The DVD is well worth it! I tried to bend some easy shoes before watching the DVD and didn’t do anything but bruise my leg up. After watching the DVD about halfway through, I tried the same shoe and finished it off with a lot less effort than the first try.”
Jason Bergmann
Professional Strongman Competitor

“If you are really interested in progressing on shoes, use the money you would spend to buy some easier shoes to buy Hammering Horseshoes….watch that a couple times and you will bend your DC0. All bending is technique, but it’s almost impossible to just muscle a decent shoe, you HAVE to have some technique and strength too. Don’t waste a bunch of time like I did. The info wasn’t readily available when I started bending shoes but anyone wanting to start out today should watch Hammering Horseshoes. I am in no way associated with the DVD, and I paid full price for it. It will teach you an efficient way to bend shoes for sure.”
Andy Thomas
Competitive Steel Bender

I was thinking about my training back in June and I realized that I have been bending nails for nearly 10 years. However, in all that time, I had never successfully done any nail breaking.

Nail breaking involves bending a nail back and forth over and over until it breaks. This is much harder than simply bending the nail into a U-shape, mainly because it takes so much longer to do it, requiring much more grip strength endurance and mental toughness and determination than simply bending it over. I’d tried several times in the past to break 60D nails, but after flipping it around and having it slip in my grip, I’d generally get frustrated and say, “Screw it,” and move on to the next thing.

This time, I really wanted to give it a solid effort and see if I could do it.

When I decided to take on the challenge of nail breaking, I immediately set my sites on the 60D nail, also often referred to as a spike.

If you are not entirely familiar with nails, I will explain. The term, 60D, means 60-penny, coming from England in the 15th Century.

From Wikipedia.org: “Penny sizes originally referred to the price for a hundred nails in England in the 15th century: the larger the nail, the higher the cost per hundred. The system remained in use in England into the 20th century, but is obsolete there today. The d is an abbreviation for denarius, a Roman coin similar to a penny; this was the abbreviation for a penny in the UK before decimalisation.”

Benchmark Nail

The 60D Nail is also kind of a benchmark nail of Strongmanism, the practice of being a performing Strongman. So if you successfully bend a 60D nail, you can consider it a comparable feat to what most performing Strongmen of the past and present have done as well.

My first attempt at breaking a nail was long and tedious. It took me upwards of 20 minutes because my bracing technique was very poor and my wraps kept slipping over and over. To top it all off, my conditioning was lacking and between running out of breathe, my hands were also cramping up on me big time.

I continued to do my nail breaking training one or two days a week. I didn’t want to go overboard with it and end up with some kind of forearm or elbow pain, so I spaced my nail breaking days out pretty far.

Each time I bent I was able to whittle away more time, with my ultimate goal to finish the nail break in less than three minutes. On the second session, I was able to cut my time by more than half, going from nearly 20 to less than 10 minutes. I actually did two nails that session.

Finally, earlier this week, I was able to reach my goal of under 3 minutes.

In fact, it was around 30 seconds.

But there was something about that break that just didn’t seem right. I talk about it the following video.

60D Nail Break Under 60 Seconds

I could tell right away on the initial kink double overhand that this nail, although it looked similar was no doubt a much weaker nail. In addition, the subsequent efforts to open the nail back up felt like I was twisting jello.

Below is the second 60D I broke in the workout. This one is one of two types of 60D’s that I was given in the past:

• Zavaco 60D – That may be miss-spelled, so I apologize if it is. Strongman Chris Rider, who penned this awesome article on Chain Breaking last year, gave me a stack of these in 2009. I had never heard of the Zavaco brand of nails/spikes before but he said they were much more difficult than regular 60D’s, and he is right.
• Canadian 60D – The other possibility is that these are some of the Canadian 60D that I got from Canadian Grip Competitor, Jonathan McMillan. He gave them to me in 2008. It is entirely possible that Zavaco nails are a Canadian brand, or that McMillan go this hands on some Zavaco’s up there and then brought them across the border, or just simply that 60D nails produced in Canada are the “real deal.”

Here is the second, more difficult 60D nail broken in under 3 minutes.

60D Nail Break Under 3 Minutes

You can see right away that this nail is just plain stronger than the other one as I had more difficulty with the initial kink, as well as the opening and the re-kink on every single effort. Plus, the lighter 60D never got to the same temperature as the harder one. With the harder one, I could feel the heat going through my pant-leg when I was bracing it on my thigh to open it up.

Comparing the Two Nails

Obvious Differences:

• Coloring – The Zavacos are lighter and duller in color. The easier 60’s are much brighter, but that does not serve much meaning as to their difficulty in this case.
• Hatches – The Zavacos come with a much deeper series of hatch marks that are etched into the side of them near the head. My assumptions is that it helps keep the nail from working its way back out of wood, once pounded into the project.
• Size – Both nails are roughly the same length, but the Zavacos may be slightly thicker. I don’t own a micrometer, so I can’t get a perfect measurement, but by eyeball, they look a bit heftier.

In closing, I will say that the coolest thing about breaking nails is the way the steel heats up as you work it back and forth. Like I pointed out above, the heat was so intense it felt like it was going through my pants and burning my leg. I have also had my finger get off the wraps and get in contact with the nail and gotten a noticeable burning sensation.

Next, I plan on working on some longer nails/spikes but continue down the path of breaking, as I like the endurance factor that it trains as well as the mental toughness.

The Big Take-Away

The thing to learn from all of this is that nails will vary. Some are made to withstand more punishment than others.

How do you know if what you are bending is tough or not compared to other suppliers stock? You don’t. In fact, you will never know until you try other stock that is available. That is just part of the game that is Steel Bending. For more insight into the variation that can be seen between various nails, bolts, and bar stock, check out this post: Variation of Steel and Nail Strength.

More videos to come of Nail Breaking. Until then, all the best in your training.

Jedd

DIESELS, this kind of thing gets me PUMPED UP!

When an expert performing strongman like Mike Gillette takes a look at a product and not only gives it such a glowing review but also puts some of the instruction into action and improves his performance in some of the feats, I just want to spike a football.

When it comes down to it, Mike Rinderle and I put our DVD’s together so that you can enjoy these feats as much as we have. PERIOD.

And we like producing the kind of products that give you EVERYTHING you need to know.

Check out the kind words from Mike “Savage Strength” Gillette:

Again guys, another experienced strength athlete and coach relates how important it is to have the right information and technique when it comes to being a successful featist.

If you want to ROLL FRYING PANS, BEND STEEL BARS, BEND SPIKES, and DESTROY WRENCHES, then Braced Bending is for you.

We’ll show you how to prepare for a showdown with steel, the technique for vanquishing it, and the way to stay in tip-top battle form for years to come.

Pick up Braced bending today = > Braced Bending: How to Destroy Everything in Your Path.

All the best in your training,

Jedd