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Home Made Strength II – Grip Strength Edition

Jedd Johnson — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:25:30 +0000

Get your copy of Home Made Strength here = > Improve Your Grip Strength.

It’s Time to Build Your Own Grip Strength Equipment

You guys know how much I love Grip Strength. I write about it all the time here on this site and on many others around the internet.

Today, I released a product called Home Made Strength II – Grip Strength Edition.

This is the second installment of the Home Made Strength Series. The first one covered full body strength training, and I released it in 2009 with Joe Hashey.

Just like the first video, this is an On-line DVD, which is a video that you download to your PC. That way, you always have it right there on your laptop or desktop, and you’re able to watch it any time you want.

What’s in the DVD?

In HMS2, I show you how to build 10 different Grip Tools as well as a Loading pin. In the DVD, I show a few drills with the gear, but in the accompanying manual, the Quick Start Blue Print, I also show you 3 different specific drills for each piece of equipment.

So, with HMS2, you learn how to assemble the ten pieces of Grip Gear, plus you get a total of 30 Different Drills you can plug into your training program.

Is there a Hard Copy of the DVD?

Yes, there is. After making the initial purchase, you can upgrade to a hard copy for $9.99 plus Shipping (depending on where you live).

When you add this DVD to your collection, it is going to stand out, because I think this is a one-of-a-kind DVD cover. Check it out below…

Compressed image of the DVD cover

You Need to Address Your Weaknesses

With all the different strength training programs and methodologies that are out there, it is hard to decide what exactly you should add into your program in order to improve.

However, one thing that will always work is strengthening each individual link in the chain.

If your lower back is weak, it’s going to hinder your Deadlift, Swing, and more.

If your triceps are weak, they’re going to hinder your Bench Press, Log Press and more.

If your glutes are weak, they’re going to hinder your Squat, Vertical Leap, and more.

But if your Grip is weak, it’s going to hold back everything…

Your Grip doesn’t have to be the weak link in your Chain of Strength anymore. With Home Made Strength II, you’ll be able to strengthen everything from the elbow to the finger tips which means you’ll gradually erase that weakness and turn it into an asset that you can rely on.

Now, HMS2 isn’t something that will help everybody who lifts.

If you are a Kettlebell Lifter, this will help you with your grip endurance for the various Kettlebell Endurance Challenges that are out there – Russian Kettlebell Challenge, Secret Service Snatch Test, Girevoy Sport, etc.

If you are a Strongman competitor, Grip is extremely important and these tools will help you lay the foundation for excellent performance with the Farmers, Stones, Axle, Log and more.

And if you just plain enjoy the idea of getting as strong as possible, these tools will help you on your journey.

Bonuses

I am making sure that you are able to get your Grip Strength to the level it needs to be and as always, I am trying to over-deliver on your investment, so I included two Fresh Bonuses to go along with Home Made Strength II.

Developing a Stronger Grip for Faster Kettlebell Results:

These are tactics I developed while I was training for the RKC Certification in order to increase my Grip specifically for Kettlebells. Believe me, there was NO WAY, I was going to that Certification and have my Grip fail me. I’ve continued doing these drills since and they have proven to be great for carryover into various thick bar lifts, including my work with the Axle and Inch Replica Dumbbell.

Bonus 2: Quick Wins for Improving Grip Strength:

In my opinion, these 8 things should be in the arsenal of every person who trains for strength if they want to be as brutally strong and Physically Prepared as Possible. I consider these items to be staples of my training, meaning I use them week in and week out in one form or another. These are Quick Wins because not only can you implement them quickly into your routine, but they also of a reasonable price and you can use them in many ways to get your lower arms strong and keep them healthy.

Bonus 3: 8 Weeks of Grip Workouts:

This is a Bonus I have offered for quite some time now, but everybody who has picked it up has loved it. Over the course of two months, I will walk you through a series of 24 Grip Training Movements and offer suggestion set and rep schemes that you can use. There is a new workout each week featuring a new trio of Grip movements, lifts, and challenges. Feel free, of course, to do more or less, skip movements, or repeat stuff you find really fun and challenging. I won’t be mad atcha. I keep saying I am going to start selling this one day, but it’s been pretty fun giving it away for free.

So, as you can see, this is a pretty damn impressive package and the initial price is only $27.

You are getting a TON of SOLID INFORMATION that you can put to use right away. Plus, you can have it downloaded to your machine and using it the same day you buy it. If you upgrade to the DVD, I am sending in those orders to Vervante as they come to me. Vervante usually delivers within the US within a week of the order – works out pretty well!

So, jump on this right now, because by Friday I will finally come to my senses and move the price up.

All the best in your training.

Jedd

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Home Made Strength II – Coming Soon

Jedd Johnson — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:10:24 +0000

In 2009, Joe Hashey and I created the Home Made Strength On-line DVD.

This was a downloadable, full-length DVD with the option to buy a hard copy, that showed you how to put together your own Mace, Axle, Glute Hame Raise, and many other pieces of equipment that you could use to build strength.

Here’s a review of the original Home Made Strength On-line DVD by a true brute in the strength game, Rob Russell. This dude is a freakin’ monster – he BUP’s kettlebells that are over 100-lbs. Check it out:

Home Made Strength Review from Rob Russell

”A while back Jedd Johnson and Joe Hashey brought out the Homemade Strength equipment video.

I bought it at the time and have made a couple of the items. Since it’s a great resource brought to us by some very knowledgeable guys who are pretty much leaders in Homemade Strength Equipment Niche, I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on this great product.

Although there are some great free resources on the net for DIY Strength gear/Homemade Gym Equipment I think the Homemade Strength Video is well worth the low cost of $27 for the amount that it will save you once you’ve made all the low cost strength equipment from it.

Without revealing too much of what’s demonstrated in the video’s I’ll say is that the Home Made Strength equipment online DVD will allow you to train all areas of your body and develop grip, explosive power, posterior chain and upper body strength for a fraction of the cost of buying branded equipment.

The equipment I have built have allowed me to blast my glutes, hams and lower back to new levels of strength and power and the other has really assisted my grip strength and forearm power (any clues!)”

Rob Russell

Rob is a kettlebell, grip strength, strongman and throwing enthusiast based in Scarborough UK. He has been training with kettlebells for 7 years and strength training for 22. While being competitive in these disciplines he is also always challenging myself with feats of strength.

Thanks Rob for that awesome feedback! That is a killer review, especially coming from someone as strong as you.

I am putting up this post because I am currently in the process of completed a brand new DVD in the Home Made Strength Series, Home Made Strength II – Grip Strength Edition.

While the original HMS included both Full Body and Grip Strength Training Equipment to help anyone from Strength Coaches and Personal Trainers, to individual trainees, athletes, and strength enthusiasts to add to their arsenal of training equipment without having to take on a second mortgage, this one is dedicated entirely to Grip Strength Training Equipment.

What This Video is NOT

This equipment is not just garbage that you put together on Monday and end up breaking on Friday. This stuff is built to last.

Also, this is not a bunch of knock-off equipment. I have a very good working relationship with many manufacturers of top quality equipment and I would never betray them like that. Instead, this equipment is either one-of-a-kind type of equipment, enhancements to current pieces that are available, and things that simply don’t exist on the market.

Is This Video For You?

Not interested in building Grip Strength to perform feats of strength? No problem, that is not what this product is designed for.

The purpose of building this equipment is to give you more options for increasing your hand and lower arm strength in order to apply it to the rest of your training. The numbers in any lift can be enhanced by stronger hands. So if you are looking to do any of the following, this Video is going to be for you:

Improve Your Bench Press
Squat More Weight
Better Grip on the Deadlift
Get a Bigger Overhead Press
Play Better on the Court
Hit for More Power on the Field
Control Your Opponent Better on the Mat
Perform More Reps before Your Hands Tire Out
Stronger Hands for Doing Your Job

If any of the above items are something that you need to enhance, then this video is for you.

To stay up to date on developments of this project, make sure to sign-up for my new Home Made Strength Newsletter. I am working toward moving all of my email communications to a new system, so this will be very important for us to stay in touch on the release.

So you can click on this Home Made Equipment Link or click on the banners in this post.

Thanks and all the best in your training.

Jedd

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World’s Strongest Hands Series

Jedd Johnson — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:19:14 +0000

As you all know, I compete in as many Grip Strength Competitions as my schedule allows.

I am a competitor and I love testing myself.

David Horne, a Grip Legend and Pioneer, from Stafford, England, is promoting the World’s Strongest Hands Series, which is a series of four legs of competition. There is a winner each leg and there will be an overall winner as well.

With this post, I am hoping to put some information out there to increase awareness of this competition, and hopefully to bring in new competitors.

This series is an EXCELLENT way for you to break into Grip competition. I would like nothing more than to have a dozen new Grip Competitors come to my facility for the next leg and see how this stuff works.

This past weekend, I had two new Grip Competitors sign up and compete at Leg 2, EJ Livesey and Mike Pachulski. Both of these guys are from The Grip Authority and loved the competition. Both off them wrote me emails immediately upon getting home after the event about how much they enjoyed themselves.

I know so many more people would love to try a Grip Comp, and with only 3 events to train and a minimal entry fee of $15, there is very little time or monetary risk involved. So, what I would like to do is go over some information about the WSH Series, and extend an invite for all to come try it out.

Here are the events:

Two Hands Pinch

World Record, BABY!

You’ve all seen my videos of both training for the pinch, and my World Record lift last December. I have loved this lift since I first tried it back in 2003. Pinching is my favorite Grip Discipline and thus I train it the most. Those two factors are probably why I have been near the top of the Pinch list for the last 5 years…

Wrist Developer

Wrist Developer

The Wrist Developer is a steel apparatus that is used to test wrist and forearm strength. Although it does not isolate those two aspects, they are the limiting factors. The spring can be moved up and down the bars using the variety of notches, making it very good for gradually increasing the difficulty. Wrist Strength has held me back for years, so I am taking this one very seriously. After all, you can’t maximize your hand strength without a solid, stable and strong wrist.

Vulcan Gripper

Vulcan Gripper

The Vulcan Gripper was designed to replicate the sweep of the old Iron Man Grippers which came out in the 1950′s I believe. The Vulcan also has the two bars with notches so that the spring can be moved around in order to modify the resistance. Crush is also something that holds me back in my placings at Grip contests. What I love about the Vulcan is that there is no knurling, so I can train it almost every day without my skin being in agony. This has always been the thing that has kept me from really ramping up the volume – sore skin.

I don’t feel that irritating skin pain with this Gripper, and what’s great is that the design of this Gripper is close enough to the Captains of Crush and Beef Builder Grippers, that one can train on the Vulcan and still ahve good carryover and results on the torsion spring counterparts. For instance, My best Gripper close in the last two years with a parallel set has been a 179-lb rated gripper. At GGC after working with the Vulcan consistently for 4 or 5 weeks, I closed a 182-lb rated gripper!

Now, to buy all of this equipment from David Horne is going to cost you, especially since it is coming from Europe. So what I am going to do below is offer up suggestions on how you can train for the competition without having the equipment and still be prepared for the platform on “game day.”

Training for the Two Hands Pinch

Two Hands Pinch Apparatus

The easiest way to prepare for this event is with a pair of 35′s or 45-lb plates placed together smooth-sides-out with a pipe run through the center hole. Plates are then added to the pipe to increase the weight.

You will probably want to put spin collars or some other type of spacer between the pinching plates and the loading plates, because otherwise your fingers will hit the loading plates and disturb your grip on the apparatus.

The actual Two Hands Pinch set-up is adjustable for different hand sizes. The outside gripping plates are made of steel and the internal plates are made out of rubber. This is not a complex set-up at all to replicate. You simply need to get two pieces of steel plating cut into the shape of a circle and get a center hole put directly into the center of the plates. This is where you will run the pipe through in order to add more weight.

For the rubber inserts, you can go to WalMart or KMart and get rubber anti-fatigue matting and cut them up into the circle shape with the holes cut out of the center.

You would not believe how much difference a few millimeters makes on this lift. Too thin and you put too much stress on your fingers, causing them to bend when you lift. Too thick, and the thing wants to pop out of your hand on every pull. Just right and it feels like your hands are suction cups, ready to defy gravity, brother!

Training for the Wrist Developer

The purpose of the Wrist Developer is to test wrist and forearm strength. When hitting an attempt on this device, you actually involve the entire upper body and I even feel it in the glutes on a max attempt.

Reverse Style Bending

Because of the large amount of muscles and joints involved in this movement, I can’t just point to one individual movement in order to prepare for this event. I think reverse style bending is one way to start. This way you get that extended effort feeling of the near-isometric action that accompanies an attempt on the WD. The WD’s handles are a bit longer than most short bends however, so that has to be taken into consideration.

Pulling the Mace Down

Another movement that is somewhat similar to the WD is Mace Swinging, especially the pull back to the order position. The short-coming there is that Mace Swinging is done rapidly with a great deal of concentric movement and the WD is a high-tension, short movement. The feeling can probably be better replicated by using a lighter mace, a sledgehammer, or other leverage tool, covering the same distance with similar joint angles.

The bottom line is the WD is a tough one to replicate without the actual equipment. Going in without touching the apparatus in training, I would suggest to prepare for the contest using a variety of different forearm, wrist and elbow strengthening movements, varying the load in order to increase the tension, while also working isometrics and near-isometrics, because that is essentially what you are doing with the Wrist Developer.

Training for the Vulcan Gripper

If you’ve got skills as a welder, you can probably design a mock-up of the device. I do not have those skills, so I have never been able to go that route. However, like I said before, the C.O.C. grippers and other options for torsion spring grippers are nearly identical.

Vulcan Block Set

The important detail to keep in mind for Gripper training, especially for the WSH Series is the set. For these competitions, in order to make sure everyone closes the handles together from a legal position, a 20-mm block has to be slid between the handles prior to closing. This prevents a deep cheat set from counting as a legal close. If you don’t have a Vulcan, just train the block set with your COC’s or whatever types of Grippers you own.

COC Block Set

However, using a block set of this nature requires more energy and coordination in order to close the gripper. You’ve got to train this set in your workouts in order to be ready for it on competition day. Just setting it to parallel and then pausing before closing it is not good enough. You’ve got to feel what it’s like to fumble around with your off-hand while holding the gripper at parallel or greater isometrically. It’s quite different.

Vulcan Death Gripper

Incidentally, Death Grip has come out with a version of the Vulcan Gripper made by Death Grip Brand Hand and Wrist Strengtheners that I can put you in contact with. Just hit me with an email and I will send you the information. There is no website at this point.

Upcoming Contests

As I said earlier on, my purpose of this post is to increase the awareness of Grip Sport itself and encourage people to try out a competition. If you are in the New England, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia area (is there a word for all these states???), you are in driving range for the competition here at my place. When I have people coming in from the outer reaches of this territory, I start the contests an hour later to give people a better chance of getting here safely. However, if you are nowhere near any of these places, Legs for the WSH Series are taking place all over the nation.

Here are the names of the promoters and the cities they are holding contests, in case you would like to try out a competition.

Eric Milfeld – DFW, Texas
Aaron Corcorran – Tucson, Arizona
Adam Glass – Minneapolis, Minnesota
Dave Thornton – Three Rivers, Michigan
Chris Rice – Crooksville, Ohio
Andrew Durniat – Wooster Ohio

If these areas are closer to you than my place, I can put you in contact with them in order to get signed up for an event or possibly to even arrange a training session with the equipment. Getting this equipment in your hands so you know how it feels and compares with your work-around equipment is half the battle.

The Dates of the next two legs are:

Leg 3 – Saturday 16 October, 2010
Leg 4 – Saturday 13 November, 2010

I hope to continue to bring you even more information that you can use to your advantage. I love the sport and hope to help it grow. Any help you can give me is appreciated.

Jedd

P.S. If you’d like to see these events in action, I loaded them all to my YouTube Channel. Just go to my channel and the first one will play, then it will give you a link to follow at the end to get the next video. There are 6 videos and they are all about 3 minutes apiece or so => Grip Contest Footage

Demolition Club Update

Jedd Johnson — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:02:20 +0000

DEMOLITION CLUB

A couple of weeks back, I put up a post introducing the Demolition Club. If you missed it, it’s right here = = >>What is the Demolition Club?

I have been experimenting with club and mace swinging for quite some time and recently I got the idea to have a buddy of mine put a handle on the giant artillery shell I had collecting dust for years.

READ THE REST OF THIS KILLER POST AFTER THE JUMP

The Demolition Club is an artillery shell with a 14-inch handle on it. Now it is 89.5 lbs of PURE EVIL.

My goal was to be able to swing this thing within 6 weeks. The first time I tried, I was beat and just couldn’t complete the swing.

But the second time I was feeling much better and was able to swing it a few times.

The Demolition Club is no joke!

It’s got this friggin’ sharp ridge on it where I suppose the powder load is housed and if you scrape that thing against your back, you’re going to know about it – let me tell you that much!

I still want to smooth out my technique, because the ones in the video were still pretty tough to complete and looked rough. I also want to be able to go in different directions while changing top hands.

Another feat that has caught my eye is the LEVER, in which you hold it with two hands above your head with the club parallel to the ground.

The LEVER seems tough – haven’t tried it yet. I have seen clips on the NET of dudes doing the level with true clubbells and the heaviest I’ve seen done is 80 lbs by Kevin Wikse on YouTube. He did it easy, but it looks pretty tough.

It should be a good journey…

All the best in your training.

-Jedd-

Some of My Products…

Home Made Strength On-line DVD – Build Strength Without Breaking the Bank

When you buy Home Made Strength, you’ll see

The Ultimate Sled Dragging Manual – Innovative Ways to Train with Out of One of the Most bBasic Implements

When you purchase Sled Dragging, you’ll see

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The Demolition Club

Jedd Johnson — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:19:53 +0000

I’ve just got to show you this piece that I recently added to my training equipment collection.

The Demolition Club

CHECK OUT THIS POST AFTER THE JUMP
This piece of rugged home made equipment is made out of an artillery shell and a steel handle. I got it made by a friend at work and my goal is to be able to swing it around in two-handed fashion like a mace or giant club.

I called it the Demolition Club because that was my favorite WWE/WWF tag team back in the day.

Source: http://www.accelerator3359.com

Plus, if I swing this thing incorrectly or let go at just the wrong time, it might take out a wall of my garage gym…

Check out this video and see just how big this friggin’ thing is.

So, here’s a few questions for you guys…

What equipment have you built recently?

Have you had someone else build you anything?

Do you have any projects planned?

I know a lot of you guys build your own heavy duty equipment for your training, so let’s hear about it. Leave a comment below.

In the next few days, I will be posting another guest article from Christopher Smith showing you all how to make some pretty cool rotating thick grips that you can use for pull-ups, rows, and many other exercises.

Here’s Chris’s other two guest posts:

How to Start Nail Bending

Explosive Conditioning for Martial Arts