Check it out.

Taking requests for upcoming videos – anybody got anything they want to see?

Thanks,

Jedd

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Prepare to be blown away by the most amazing Euro Pinch Set-up ever designed, owned by the Texas White Boy Rapper, Paul “Up All Night” Knight and Certified Red Nail Bender and Horseshoe Bending Pioneer, Eric “The Pointed Goatee” Milfeld.

Now, if you are clueless as to what the heck is going on with this video, let me point a few things out.

In Grip, everything is weighed to precise measurements in order to calculate exactly how much is being weighed. So, we don’t just count 4-25′s as 100-lbs. In reality, each plate is most likely off by a few ounces, so we either take our plates to a post office or we calibrate a scale we own against another calibrated scale and we identify the exact weight of each plate.

For instance, if you saw all of my plates that are used in competitions here, you will see that each one of them has a number on it and it has the weight in pounds and ounces. So, a certain 25-lb plate might be marked with the number 17 and have 24 – 14.4 on it. That means that this specific plate was identified as being weight number 17 and it weighs 24-lbs, 14.4-oz. I then log that into an Excel spreadsheet and am able to calculate exactly how much weight is being lifted on each attempt.

What Eric Milfeld and Paul Knight have done is they have modified the internal rubber inserts so that the base apparatus weighs exactly 38 kilos, so they are starting with a nice round number each time. If you are doing everything on paper, which some do, this can make it a lot easier to count everything up. Normally adding things up on paper is a giant pain in the ass, but Eric and Paul have also gone to the expense of purchasing calibrated lifting plates, so they are dealing with a series of nice round numbers, instead of having to add up 2 to 4 decimal places on a sheet of paper – AWESOME!

Why a fiberglass cross-bar you might ask? In the past everything from rulers to elastic cord to steel bars have been used for the corss-bar or stick. Each material has it’s own benefits and risks. For instance, we used a long metal ruler one year for our stick. Everything was awesome until John Mannino missed an attempt and got fired up about it and pushed down on the metal ruler and bent it.

In 2008, I traveled 8 hours to compete in a Grip Contest and had the World Record weighton the apparatus. Thee “stick” cross-bar being used was made of either steel or possible lead or some other extremely heavy material. Also, Dave “The Genius” Memont failed to secure the front loading collar like a man. He must have hands like a bitch, because he did not compete in the contest. You are only a cool promoter if you promote and lift in the contest. The result of the loose front collar and the ultra-heavy cross-bar was that the weights ended up falling off on my World Record attempt and my lift was disqualified.

By using the fiberlass cross-bar, Mannino can press down on it as hard as he wants to and it appears it will retain its natural shape. Also, it looks to be so light that it will not interfere in the pull-to-height or angle of the loading pipe.

Many other things are intriguing about the Texas Fella’s Euro Set-up. They are using a solid steel loading bar. It will be interesting to see how numbers are affected by using an implement with such a heavy loading bar. Will it make tilting easier or more difficult? Will the length play a factor? Will plates loaded on the bar take up so much acreage that only a nub of it will be jutting out from the plates? It will be interesting to see, as well, how the size of the plates being used affect tilt as well.

In the end, without a doubt this is definitely the most Pimped out Euro-Pinch in existence. Paul and Eric truly love the sport to invest that much money into it. Eleiko calibrated plates are not cheap, no matter where you buy them, and the rest of the set-up right down to the collars and the bull-nose shaping of the stainless steel loading bar were all appreciable expenses tambien.

My hat is off to these two for being a good example of taking pride in the sport of Grip, as well as showmanship and playing to the power of social media by cutting up a classic like this for all to see and share.

I do think Paul’s little raps could have been better if done with a fat lip of Copenhagen, and with Eric Milfeld scratching a record or doing beat-box off to the side, perhaps next to the fern int he garage.

All the best in your training and Happy New Year to you!

Jedd

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Hello Diesels.

As I have posted before, I am a huge baseball (and especially New York Yankees) fan. I watch them every chance I get. I stay up to date on the Yankees’ rumor mill, trades, signings…all of it in-season and out.

However, putting all that drama aside, I also like to study what they do for strength and conditioning, and what other industry leaders are saying about strength and conditioning for baseball. I have a handful of baseball players that come to train every so often, and I like applying the stuff I learn to the training I do with them, plus I try to apply it to my own training. Although I will probably never play baseball again, I do indeed suit up for Slow Pitch softball during the summer and enjoy playing to the best of my ability because it is fun as hell and it is a good break from the “hardcore” training I am normally doing in the gym.

This season, to my enjoyment, it seems the Yankees have actually put a lot more information out there as far as what their players are doing.

For instance, in a recent episode of Yankees Magazine, they showed a Strength and Conditioning session between first basemen, Mark Texeira and strength coach, Dana Cavalea.

For the most part, it talked about how they have incorporated the use of the foam roller into Mark’s training (I am not sure if all the players use them). Cavalea spoke about the foam roller’s ability to improve tissue quality while Texeira spoke about how he would utilize foam rollers as a part of a warm-up prior to strength training.

Improving Tissue Quality

The idea is that by rolling over the foam roller, the pressure will do a couple of things. First off, the localized pressure will “break up” adhesions and improve the quality of the muscle tissue and allow it to perform better. Going further, these adhesions, similar to scar tissue within the muscle, can reduce flexibility and mobility, so by eliminating these flaws in the tissue, you should be able to perform better in lifting and sports.

Here’s a little bit about foam rollers in my experience.

Smitty made me a ghetto foam roller in like 1999. From then until 2008, I used it solely to crack my back every once in a while. It worked great for that purpose, but I had no idea what else I was supposed to with it until like 2007 or 2008 (can’t quite remember which).

In 2007 or 2008, whenever I trained with Smitty and the other guys in the Diesel Squad, I would roll on the foam roller they had. In 2008, they eventually upgraded to a new foam roller which was black and scary looking and they let me take the white foam roller to my place to train with. That was right around when I built my home gym here in the garage. Every so often, I would roll on it prior to a workout, but mainly I only used it to adjust my back prior to workouts.

In 2009, I started to come to the conclusion that my neglect for my joints and my flexibility was holding me back in my strength training. I had gotten so tight in the hamstrings that I think I may have torn one playing softball that year. A lot of this was compounded by the fact that I have worked at a desk since 2001. My thighs and hips have been locked up for several years and this has gradually worked up my back into my thoracic region as well. Around this time is when I started to use foam rollers more frequently.

I started using foam rollers of some sort in almost every workout session in 2009. I started out still using the old beaten up white foam roller. However, that thing was well beyond its time and it literally was now shaped like a flattened U. This was a softer grade foam roller that got used heavily for years by mostly lighter dudes and then I put it through the ringer with my 260-lb ass, so by this time it was just plain wasted.

That was when I abandoned the foam roller made of foam and went with a cardboard core from my old place of work. It was a similar length as a form roller or maybe longer (I have since cut in half so I have one upstairs and one downstairs), but it is smaller in diameter and of course much much harder.

So, because the cardboard pipe is a bit smaller in diameter, it could focus into the dense adhesions more directly and let me tell you – the sensation I would get was nearly a 10 on the 1-to-10 pain scale. Some of this dramatic sensation I wasn’t even feeling on the foam roller. The white foam roller had essentially become useless in my opinion – I could barely crack my back with it because it was beaten up so badly. Jumping onto the hard pipe was a WAKE-UP CALL as to my tissue quality.

To this day, I still use the cardboard core roller every single workout. I start with my thoracic spine, then move on to the lats and then the lumbar area. From there, I move to the hips, working around the head of the femur, the glutes, piriformis, IT band, hamstrings, quads, etc.

I must say that when I go down to the gym, I sometimes feel like ABSOLUTE TRASH, especially in my hips and my back.

After I get off the cardboard core, the feeling in my hips improves DRAMATICALLY.

However, here is my issue…

I see very little proof that my flexibility, mobility, range of motion has improved “chronically.” In other words, while I feel like 900,000 bucks (not quite a million bucks) after hitting the roller and prior to my workout, the next day, I feel locked up just like any other time. So I am not entirely sold on the idea that the foam roller will change your life.

Yes, my injuries have been reduced DRAMATICALLY since employing them religiously – YES SIR. But as far as how I feel throughout the day, there has been very little change.

Now onto the other side of the foam roller equation…

Foam Roller as a Warm-up

I think the foam roller has been a great addition to my workout as a part of my warm-up. Part of being strong is feeling good, and I must say that I feel much better after foam rolling and perform better in my workouts after I hit the foam/pipe roller. I even do this if I am just hitting an extra session of Grip Training – it makes me feel that damn good.

I think there are a couple reasons why the cardboard roller works for me as a warm-up device…

First off, you have the tissue lengthening and circulation promotion properties of the foam roller. Seeing how I am pretty much sitting on my ass all day, getting down on the foam roller and moving around a bit is a welcome feeling. I can feel the blood moving into the areas and I start to feel less like Frankenstein or the Tin Man once I do it.

Secondly, many of the positions that I get into with the roller are similar to the Plank. The Plank is a great movement for warming up and strengthening the core. I think we all know this and have used it from time to time. I’ve noticed that as I roll on the roller, if I make sure to keep my feet off the floor and support myself ONLY with my hands or on my elbows, my core gets a light stimulation, much like in a Plank position.

Incidentally, my warm-up does not include ONLY foam rolling. I also do quite a bit more general warm-up moving patterns prior to each training session using a mixture of Scott Sonnon-influenced Flow and stuff from Smitty’s Amped Warm-up Protocols. But even if I don’t do that stuff, I feel much more mobile and better prepared for the workout once I roll for 5 to 7 minutes.

So, the point I am trying to make here is simply that I have seen lots of short-term benefit from using rollers, especially the cardboard one.

Foam rolling is somewhat of a controversial topic. Some people swear on them uphill and down. Unfortunately, some of these people also throw around fitness buzz words like “Core” left and right, and sometimes when you hear fitness professionals like that talk about something and they are buzz word-aholics, you can shut them out of your mind right away.

Foam rollers also seem to be completely abhorred by the Gym Movement community. For instance, I have read Mike T. Nelson shoot these things down on multiple occasions. He even submitted an article to our site several years ago called “Get Off the Foam Roller.” One thing he pointed to in that article was that they caused pain, and so he did not believe in their use (there were other reasons given, that is just one of them…)

So I guess I am stuck in the middle between the dude that absolutely loves these things and thinks they can cure everything from flexibility/mobility issues, to cancer, and the dude that hates them because they cause pain and anything that causes pain is bad.

As far as the longer lasting benefits of foam rolling, I can’t say I have seen that many. But maybe I am doing it wrong?

What I am asking is this. If YOU have tried foam rolling and given it an honest try, post here and tell me what you think. What benefits have you found? What limitations have you seen? How often do you use foam rollers?

Just leave a comment below. I appreciate you sharing your experience. Thanks ahead of time!

All the best in your training, Diesels!

Jedd

P.S. I just got word from Eric Cressey that he is taking $50 off his Show and Go Training System because he is celebrating his tenth anniversary of turning 21! Cressey is a strength training genius, so you should really consider this deal. This program is usually $127 and for a short time it is just $77 = > “>Cressey’s Show and Go Training

As a BONUS, I will offer up a 30-minute phone consultation to anyone who picks this up through
my link above. I believe in Cressey’s stuff so much, I really want you to benefit as well. Just forward me your receipt and we will schedule it!

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This is a guest post by Chris Smith from Train Better Fitness. Chris is promoting the Cyberzone Strongman & Fitness Challenge on June 12 in Rockaway Beach, NY. If you want to try it out and you are in the NYC area, get in contact with Chris, TODAY, because like Chris says, you don’t have to be as big as Bill Kazmaier to enjoy the sport of Strongman! Go here for more info = > Train Better Fitness Strongman.

You’d have to be living under a rock to have never at least heard of Strongman. Every year men across the globe anxiously await the newest World’s Strongest Man series on ESPN and watch in awe at the insane strength and power that those athletes display. I would wager that a significant amount of them watch with a glimmer of envy and the desire to be able to perform those feats.

But how many actually will ever give strongman training a shot? Probably not too many.

When most people think of strongman training, they immediately tend to envision 400 pound Atlas stones, 800 pound tires or pulling a 747. Because of that, most people will never even attempt to introduce strongman training into their program.

But you don’t need to be a monster to incorporate strongman training effectively into your gym routine. Strongman training methods are just like any other training method. It’s all movement, and it can be fit in anywhere in a variety of ways. Here are a few strongman methods that the average guy can throw into their training with no problem. Hey, if I can effectively use them, anyone can.

Farmer’s Carry

The Farmer’s Walk is a staple Strongman event. It’s easy to perform and is one of the best exercises out there to develop a stronger grip, traps and upper back, and overall conditioning and strength.

I like to use Farmer’s Carries as a finisher on a lower body or full body training day. Ideally, you can take Farmer’s Walk handles for a stroll outside, but that’s not always an option. For those of you who training in a “normal” or commercial gym, the management might not appreciate you taking equipment outside. Instead, grab a pair of dumbbells and find an area in the gym where you can walk around without interruption. If you’re really pressed for space, find an area that you can walk back and forth, or even in circles if necessary. Try to use a weight that you can carry for around a minute and then experiment with different loads from there.

Axle/Fat Bar

Fat bars, sometimes called axles, are excellent tools to work with. Since they are thicker than regular barbells, they place a very high demand on your grip strength, in particular the thumb.

Incorporating Axle work into your training is incredibly simple. You can basically use a fat bar for anything that you would use a regular barbell for: all types of pressing variations, cleans, deadlifts or rows just to name a few. You don’t necessarily need to set aside an exercise as a dedicated “axle movement.” Just substitute the axle for the barbell and get lifting.

Obviously you can also do movements just for the grip emphasis. For example, I will often do double overhand deadlifts as a grip exercise, not in place of deadlifting since I can’t handle anywhere near the same amount of weight.

Odd Objects

Let’s face it, not everyone has access to atlas stones. The good news is that there are plenty of other odd lifts you can throw into your training. I like to use sandbags because they are convenient and versatile. If you don’t have sandbags, you can try to search around and find some big rocks to training with, or contact a local beer distributor and get your hands on an old keg. These types of odd objects are a lot of fun to train with and very effective at building real-world strength.

Some of my favorite sandbag exercises are cleans, presses, bear hug squats, and shouldering. You can do those for reps or use them for loaded carries (a personal favorite). To do a loaded carry, just grab the bag, rock or keg however you choose (shouldered, bearhug, across the shoulders) and take a walk just like you would do a farmer’s carry.

Putting strongman training into your routine doesn’t mean you have to abandon all other training methods. Throw in some strongman objects wherever they may fit. Some of the most popular ways of using strongman methods are as a finisher or substituted for your main movement (such as an axle clean and press instead of a barbell or a heavy tire flip instead of deadlifts), so experiment with different techniques and see what works best for you. But whatever you do, don’t think that if you’re not Bill Kazmaier you can’t do strongman.

• Video / Article: Beginner Training with Odd Objects
• Article: Improving Technique on the Log Press by Jedd Johnson
• Stone Lifting Fundamentals DVD
• Article: To Lift a Heavy Stone by Rick Walker
• Thick Rope Training

Need Strongman Equipment? Check out the sites of these longtime friends of Diesel Crew, Total Performance Sports and Strongman Stuff for all your Strongman Equipment Needs

• Strength and Power Workouts with Strongman Implements
• Strongest Strength Coach at Juniata
  Demonstrating the Lifts for the Competition
• How to Make Home Made Rotating Thick Grips
• Strongman Training for Football Players and MMA Fighters
• More Medley Training for Serious Athletes

Please leave a comment below. One vote per I.P. address, please…

Carlos Rodriguez

Richard Manchur

Darrin Shallman

Josh McIntyre

Gene Pires

Johan Nederhof

Have a great weekend, and all the best in your training!

Jedd

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