Many of the most common types of Forearm and Elbow Pain are preventable, but in the case that you do end up developing a Forearm or Elbow Injury such as Medial Epicondylitis (Golfer’s Elbow), Lateral Epicondylitis (Tennis Elbow), or any other type of injury to the soft tissue of the forearm near the elbow, like tendonitis or tendonosis, there are ways to get rid of the pain without having to spend hundreds of dollars on expensive therapy, take a bunch of pills with side effects or go under the knife for some kind of surgery.

I shot the following video to tell you about a project I have been working on with Rick Kaselj, called Fixing Elbow Pain. In this video I will tell you how the project came about, why I wanted to get Rick’s input regarding forearm and elbow injuries, and also I show you just one of the many things I have done over the years to get rid of injuries to the elbow and forearm and keep them from coming back with such training-effecting intensity over the last couple of years.

I hope this little video helps you out. If you have had injuries like the ones I mention in the video, then you know how bad they hurt and how much they can affect your training. You also know how tough it can be to get rid of them.

It is so much easier to prevent these injuries with simple exercises and other preventive strategies that add almost zero time to your training, that I hope you check this project out when it is ready to roll, next week.

Many of the methods that I cover in my section serve double duty as ways to not only keep Tennis Elbow and Golfer’s Elbow types of injuries from taking place, but they can also help put you on the road to recovery as well.

For instance, last month, I met Scott Mezzano at McHenry Community College and he told me about some issues his father was having. His dad plays a lot of guitar and the forearm pain he was experiencing was making it hard for him to do so. I know what it’s like to have a dad who lives with pain, so I wanted to share some techniques with him for his dad.

I told him about a quick battery of exercises I do after each training session and he passed it on to his pops, and I received this email shortly after:

“I would like to thank you again for coming to McHenry County College for the strength clinic last month. Everyone who attended your session had great things to say… Also, my dad has been doing the rubber band exercises and has had some relief with his tendonitis.“

I have had to deal with injuries like this many times over the years, almost always due to lack of guidance, my own rookie inexperience, and poor judgment. Since implementing preventive strategies, I have seen better results, continued strength progress, and I have been able to enjoy my training more.

I know that these techniques will be able to help out a lot more individuals as well.

If you want to make sure you get early notification of when this product is ready, make sure you are signed up for my newsletters, either in the upper right hand corner of this page, or by using the form below.

When you sign up using the above form, you’ll receive the cool interview I did with AJ Roberts, World Record Holding Powerlifter and one of the strongest dudes in the world.

All the best in your training,

Jedd

For a few months now, my friend Sean Dockery and I have been doing weekly to bi-weekly episodes of Grip Strength Radio, where we run down interesting happenings in the sport of Grip, as well as talk about effective ways we have found to train for Grip Strength, and many other cool topics.

GSR Episode 15

Our most recent interview was with The Iron Tamer Dave Whitley. Dave is a Senior RKC, meaning he is one of the top ranking instructors in all of the Dragondoor/Russian Kettlebell echelon. He also is enamored with the olde-time strongman legacy, performs the classic feats of strength, and is also a very entertaining guy.

I first learned about Dave back in 2007, but never got the chance to meet him until 2009. I was at a conference and I looked to my right and there he was. I introduced myself and we instantly went out into the lobby to chat.

We shot this video:

As it turns out, on top of holding jobs in the past as a massage therapist, a rock star, and now as a top performer of strongman feats and instructor in the area of kettlebells, Dave was also, for a time, a professional wrestler.

As you will be able to tell, the content for the interview wrote itself, and I finally got my revenge on the Iron Tamer.

Check out the show here: Grip Strength Radio with the Iron Tamer Dave Whitley

Also, make sure you give a good listen to the song played during the second break. It’s called “Water” by the band Hands. Doc added it in and it’s awesome. He has reached out to many record companies and almost all of them have allowed us to use their music, so stay tuned to future shows because you may just hear a future hall of famer like Guns n’ Roses or someone who will try to deny entry to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, like Axel Rose.

Other Recent Grip Strength Radio Shows

In addition to the interview with Dave, Sean and I also have a bunch of other shows we have recorded in the last few weeks:

Interview with Paul Knight
Mighty Mitts Re-cap
GSR – Back on the Air
Interview with Paul Knight

If you are familiar with iTunes, you can sign up for subscription updates for Grip Strength Radio through the iTunes store.

All the best in your training.

Jedd

Bored? Need a Jump-Start? Maybe you need some variety…

Today I am going to tell you how I incorporate variety in order to keep my training positive and to keep seeing progress. Maybe this will help you out in your training as well.

For me, my training is heavily based around momentum. What I mean by that is when I have a good day in the gym, I can generally pick up some momentum and have several good workout days ina row.

Momentum, baby!

Sometimes, when the PR Train is running full steam, it can even lead to back-to-back weeks of good workouts in the gym, seeing lots of progress toward where I want to be and I log a lot of PR’s.

If you are not familiar with that term, PR stands for Personal Record. Some people refer to PB’s or Personal Bests. Either way, it means you hit a lift, a feat, or a goal that you never were able to accomplish before.

It might not be the best performance in the world or in your weight class, but it does mean that you out-performed anything you’ve done in the past – and that means it is something you can be proud of.

When you incorporate variety in your training, you are giving yourself the opportunity to set more PR’s.

The way I do this in my training is I constantly find new things to train for, in order to push myself, set new PR’s and keep momentum going in my training.

I did this recently with something called a 56-lb Highland Games Throwing Weight. If you are not familiar with the highland Games, then check out this article by world-class Highland Games competitor, Adriane Blewitt – Introduction to the Highland Games.

In my opinion, one of the coolest events in Highland Games is the 56-lb Throw for Height, and recently one of my friends in Grip Strength, Ben Edwards, put up his 56-lb Weight up for sale. This summer, when the weather is better, I fully plan on going out and practicing some throws for height, but while the ground is still soggy from all of the Spring Rain, I decided I would train to lift it like a Block Weight first.

Add another chapter to Block Weight Lifting: Highland Games Throwing Weights with Handles Attached.

If you’re curious about the measurements of this griplement, it is roughly 6 inches across the flat portion at the top (kind of tough to measure) and about 6.5 inches across the flat base (much easier to measure).

My training success is driven by PR’s. I love setting them. I love lifting new things I never could before. When I am setting new PR’s, it keeps me energized for workouts and can help me get out of ruts when my training is stagnant.

Take note – this is not just something that only I do and it’s not something that works for just Grip Guys. Even AJ Roberts, one of the strongest men in the world and owner of several bench press records does the same thing in his training from time to time. He told me about it in the interview I did with him around this time last year. Put your email address in the box below and you’ll get an email to download it so you can listen to it yourself.

When we interviewed Paul Knight, one of the guys with the best crushing grips in the world, on a recent episode of Grip Strength Radio he said this is one of the concepts that has helped him to build his amazing crushing grip strength, by regularly posing new challenges for himself to try to attain.

Bottom line -this concept works.

In encourage you too look for ways you can implement variety in your training. By adding some slight variety to your training, you can accomplish more individual PR’s which can keep you excited about training and keep the results coming.

To lots of PR’s coming our way,

Jedd

Richard Sorin, Pinching Two York 45′s

Plate Pinching is one of the main forms of testing Pinch Grip Strength. Plate Pinching involves placing two or more plates together so that the outside plates are facing smooth-sides-out, and then lifting them in a Pinch Grip.

I’ve always wanted to be able to Pinch Two 45-lb York Plates. I’ve pinched several sets of 45-lb plates over the years, but pinching two old-school York 45′s is a feat altogether different.

I only know of two Grip Monsters who have ever pinched two old-style York 45-lb plates with one. One is Richard Sorin, shown to the right. I can only imagine how many times he had to pull the feat off so the camera man could get the shot right.

Richard Sorin is probably the only man with a great enough love for strength exploration and pushing ones own limits to even try this feat. If you’ll remember, he is also the originator of the feat of strength and definitive test of open hand strength, pinch grip lifting the Blob, which is a half of a 100-lb Old School York Dumbbell. I have tons of information on that feat of strength here on the site as well if you are a newcomer: What is the Blob?

Aside from Richard, I only know of Chad Woodall as someone who has accomplished this feat.

Slide this video to the 3:00 minute mark and watch Chad stomp a mud hole in two York 45′s:

I watched him do that again at the Sorinex Summer Strong 2011, and almost got it with a pair in each hand on one attempt. He would have been the first person any of us know of to have accomplished that feat, and he was seriously close that day:

So the way I figure it, it is time for someone else to accomplish this feat, so I have put aside all of my other personal grip feat goals and am going to be focusing on this one.

To me, this is a good goal to focus on for many reasons:

1. It is a Pinching Goal, so it will support my other goals within Grip Sport, including the Euro Two Hands Pinch, Grip Medley Demands, etc

2. It is a lofty goal, meaning I feel I am nowhere close to it right now, so it will force me to think, work, and try new things, i.e. Further Challenge My Paradigms.

3. It is Wide Pinch and Open Hand Dependent, which means it involves the same qualities as Block Weight Training, and the same benefits for general hand strength as well.

The long and the short of it is that this feat is world class and I want to do it. Grip Feats are cool, especially when almost no one else in the world can do them.

So, in order to keep myself going on this, I wanted to involve someone else. Daniel Reinard, one of the most impressive newcomers to Grip Sport in the last 5 years in my estimation, is a superstar when it comes to accomplishing feats. For his bodyweight, he just may have the best all-around Pinching ability in the world, so I did what anyone else would have done in my position.

I called him out…politely of course, after all I am a Pennsylvania Gentleman.

Aside from knowing that I want to Pinch Two 45′s so bad I can taste the rust on the old ass plates, I also know that Daniel has his eyes set on pinching two 45′s as well, so I reached out to him to see if he would be interested in an on-line challenge. His goal would be to Pinch Two Regular 45′s – mine would be to Pinch Two Old School York 45′s.

Daniel has accepted, so I went ahead and made this video to show where I am at with this challenge.

As you can see, these Two OSY (Old School York) 45′s barely even stir when I hit them, so this is sure to be an interesting ride. These are so hard to lift because they are very wide and their edges are rounded so any tilting, which would generally make pinching two 45′s easier, makes OSY 45′s slide apart.

Incidentally, in the video above, I have a small section of pipe running through the plates, to keep them from sliding around. I will focus on lifting them like this first, and then graduate to a completely loose pinch of them.

Wish me luck and make sure to subscribe to my channel to see how the training goes.

All the best in your training,

Jedd

Hello DIESELS!

As I have said many times in the past, despite my huge hands, for whatever reason, Thick Bar, the type of grip training done on round bars in an open hand position, are one of my nemeses in Grip.

Because Thick Bar was a weakness for me, over the years I began training it less and less, which really just becomes a vicious cycle because when you suck at something, and you don’t work on it, it is only going to make you suck at it worse.

You need to train on it more in order to figure out what is the best way for you, yourself to train on it. Through experimentation, trial and error, and tracking your progress, you can then hope to find tactics that work best for you.

For a long time, I wasn’t doing any of that. I was just training Thick Bar when I had to – when it was coming up in the next contest, and then after that contest I wouldn’t do any of it. Bad idea if you’re looking for progress.

This isn’t just about Grip Training – the same can be said for any other lift, or style of training, really. For instance, if your Squat sucks, and you hate it, then chances are you are going to be tempted to bag it. Maybe you put your squat day on Friday and then invent reasons to miss your Friday workouts so you don’t have to deal with the struggle.

Or maybe the thing that you suck at is Overhead Press. Maybe you’ve never been a good presser because of poor shoulder mobility, or your thoracic area is tight, or your triceps lack lockout strength. Whatever the “reason” you have in your head, they really only amount to excuses if you don’t address them. Eh, I’ll just work bench today and skip overhead…

I came to realize several months ago that if I didn’t start shifting some of my emphasis and efforts to Thick Bar, I was going to continue to be blown away on these events. I first came to this realization in doing one of my Coaching Call Recordings for my guys and gals at TheGripAuthority.com, and with that I began looking at my program.

I soon realized that I was doing a whole lot of things I was good at and not nearly enough of the things I was not good at. My weeks were very heavy with Pinch and very light on Thick Bar, with a healthy sprinkle of everything else thrown in.

So, one day I decided it was time to Change My Paradigm. For years, my main emphasis had been Pinch, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it has a great deal of benefit to other aspects of hand strength, but I was doing Pinch at the expense of all my other training.

A Paradigm Shift is essentially a change in your way of thinking, or in this case, a change in the way I was approaching my training. It was time to make some HUGE CHANGES in my training.

What I would like to do right now is invite you to challenge your own paradigms, especially around any particular goals you might have but have been (up until now) incapable of attaining. Set up something that is totally different from what you have been doing — I mean totally different – and go after it.

For me, for years, I chased 400-lbs on an IronMind Axle, and did nothing but get worse because what I continually did over and over and over just wasn’t working. After I had a paradigm shift, I was finally able to deadlift 400+ on the axle.

My First 400-lb Axle Deadlift

However, what I would also like to mention is that there is another part to this. Although I am telling you to make a BIG CHANGE in your training, once you set up a new approach to your training, don’t keep modifying it all the time. Set something up and go for it for at least 4 to 6 six weeks.

When you set a track for a goal, you can’t just keep bouncing back and forth and switching stuff up all the time. You need to decide what you are going to try and then stick to it. That is the only way to know whether what you designed in the first place worked or not. How can you lay out a program and know if it worked if you keep switching every two weeks, continually moving away from the program? You can’t.

In February, I finally hit over 400 on the Axle and it could have been just as easy to stop the program that I laid out for myself and do something different, or go back to just maxing out all the time, but I didn’t. I kept going with it, the only changes I made being to dial back on the volume of thick bar per session when my hands were feeling over-worked.

Sticking with the movements that I decided would be beneficial over the course of the first three months this year has been awesome, as I have continued to build on two separate PR systems on the Axle which I have found to be mutually beneficial, including my 1 Rep Max on the Double Overhand Axle, which I recently got for 423-lbs and have since topped again.

423-lbs on the Axle – New Program Continues to Work

After freezing at 396-lbs and over the course of 4 years and eventually even watching my numbers drop, it feels great to now be consistently working above 400-lbs, and coming ever so close to tripling near 400-lbs on many occasions.

So again, I challenge you to take a look within yourself at the goals that you want to achieve but are not achieving, and ask – Is it time for a paradigm shift? If so, make the change now.

Challenge Your Paradigms, and then Stick With Your Program

Incidentally, my entire Thick Bar Program is fully outlined at TheGripAuthority.com. I’d love to see you there.

All the best in your training.

Jedd