Diesel Crew - Muscle Building, Athletic Development, Strength Training, Grip Strength » how to improve grip strength

Awesome Day Here at the Gym Yesterday

Jedd Johnson — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:02:50 +0000

Hey everybody. Jedd here.

Hopefully some of you got the chance to catch our live UStream Feed yesterday from my Garage Gym here in PA. The gym’s been finished since April, but we haven’t been able to schedule anything where all the guys could make it down until now.

Smitty, Eli, Brad and Brian all made it down. Also Joe Hashey and his brother Pat came down.

We started our squats about 9:30. Even early in the morning it was already hot in the garage. Eli went through like a half dozen shirts I think. We squatted outside the cage with spotters. It was nice having people there to spot me. It gave me more confidence considering the back tweaks I have been having. I actually loaded the bar up to 315 to feel the weight again. We did an intermediate stance, not narrow high bars, but not wide sumo stance with the bar lower either. It was in the middle and felt pretty good.

Next thing we went into were shrug bar deadlifts. This was our heavy pull for the day because later on we did Double Overhand axle deadlift later on for a grip emphasis. Pat managed to get 365 to his knee on the axle. Pretty awesome. Joe and Pat could be really good at grip I think if they had the equipment and time to dedicate to getting good.

After some pull-ups, we tried some Inch Dumbbell Push Press. Eli got several singles, and I think a double once. Brad hit like 3 or 4 reps in a row, re-setting his grip in between reps.

We mixed in hub lifting and log pressing.

The fellas had to take off by noon. They car-pooled down and Smitty had to be back home by one.

Video 1

Video 2

But the day wasn’t over yet. I had a whole other workout ahead of me.

Brent Barbe, John Eaton and Frank Snyder all came down for a grip workout. I took a break and ate burgers and salad but then got into a full-blown 3-hr workout with these gripaholics starting around 2 PM.

We hit a ton of Grippers. CoC’s, Beef Builders, Tettings, etc. What was awesome was trying the new Fat Bastard Barbell Grippers with no knurling. Brent had a whole set of them. Frank and I closed the 4X FBBC gripper.

Frank is 18 years old and has a better crush than me. He closed a couple of 3.5’s I couldn’t manage to shut. He only lives about an hour away so we are going to try to line up some more training sessions.

We did some blob lifting, 5-tens, 2-inch vertical bar, 45-lb hub lifts, 3-25’s, and a ton of other stuff. My hands are fried. I hope these guys can make it up for another workout soon. I am stoked.

I got video of everything. I will go through it and post some of the stuff, hopefully this week if not this afternoon, since it is pouring out.

Unfortunately, we had trouble getting the UStream to work, but we eventually got it during the lower body workout. I hope that it didn’t turn too many of you away. About a half hour into getting it going, I checked the status on another laptop and we only had 3 viewers, which is pretty low compared to the 20+ viewers we’ve had in the past.

So I have some questions for you guys:

Anybody else ever try UStream?

Anyone else ever have any problems getting it to work?

Are you enjoying these streamed workouts?

Looking forward to your feedback, so please leave a comment.

All the best in your training,

-Jedd-Similar Posts:

Success in Card Tearing – Barry Gibson

Jedd Johnson — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:07:09 +0000

Hey everybody, it’s Jedd checking in.

Hey, before I get into this post, does anybody know where I can pick up a pair of boots like this?

That is an image of Frederick Winters from the 1904 Summer Olympics. Seems like a crazy get-up for the summer time, but to each his own.

Speaking of summer, I hope everybody’s summer is rolling smooth. We have had a cool and rainy one here in Pennsylvania, but that seems to be turning around now.

Tonight it was so hot in my new garage that sweat was dripping off my head onto everything I was trying to lift in the gym. I was trying to pinch 3-25′s plus weight, but didn’t quite get a full pull and my camera battery was dead so I have no video anyway. It was so hot, even with shorts and a tee shirt on, i still felt like I was wearing ol’ Frederick’s wardrobe shown above.

When I got done with my workout, I opened up the laptop to check my email and I got a note from Barry Gibson of GrappleFit.com:

“Hi Jedd,
Finally did it man. Got through the full deck!! Thanks for the help and advice with the cards and nails, the ebooks were a massive help!! Thanks again my friend!! I know the camera work is a bit off but that can be improved,
Cheers,
Barry.”

Ya know, the main reason I write strength-related products is to help people. When someone who buys one of my products, I want them to know when they read it that I put everything I could as far as information and effort that I could into it. And when somebody writes or sends a video of him or herself and thanks me, I am truly humbled.

Man, this kind of feedback makes me feel great! Back in April of 2007, I started writing the Card Tearing eBook on a long weekend off from work after I had received quite a few positive emails about my Nail Bending eBook.

I thought that if people were getting so much out of the Nail Bending eBook, then maybe they would enjoy an ebook on Card Tearing as well. I got a great start over the course of that weekend, but finishing it proved to be a long, painful process. Finally, with the help of Smitty I was able to finish it off this past March. Feedback like this from Barry makes me happy that I kept chugging away and finished that project.

Barry sent me a link to a video of him dashing through a deck. Wait until you see this – once he gets this thing started, it’s over in a hurry. Check it out!

I hope everyone else who has picked up the Card Tearing eBook is mowing through decks just as quickly as Barry. If you are, I’d love to see a video. If not, please let me know if you have any questions.

If you’d like to find out more about the Card Tearing eBook, please click here: ===> How to Tear Cards.

Check back soon, too, because I have a big announcement about Card Tearing that you won’t want to miss if you have been training hard. It’s time to get some recognition for your efforts, and I am your man!

All the best in your training,

-Jedd-

P.S. While I wrote this, I got another note in the email from Simon in Australia, who recently picked up the Card Tearing eBook: “Thanks Jedd Great book incidentally.. just spent the last week getting back to crossfit training but moved my sessions to 6am in the morning.. did a great fighters session at CF Victoria this morning (my local crew/gym).. gonna do some heavy lifting and my first grip training tomorrow Peace from Australia, Simon”

P.P.S. To see more posts on Card Tearing, just click here: ===> Card Tearing Posts

How Twitter Will Unite the Grip Strength Community

Jedd Johnson — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:55:39 +0000

By Shane Swing

Grip strength training can be a lonely endeavor. Unlike team sports, usually a grip strength practitioner undertakes his obsession by himself in a dusty basement surrounded by storage boxes, or in a small portion of the garage that’s just big enough to house a garage gym. When he beats a personal record, the radio and perhaps a pet are the only things around to share in his excitement. When he hears terms like hub lifts, pinch grip, CoC #4, or sledgehammer leveraging, he understands perfectly. When he tries to explain these terms to his friends and family, they rarely understand (or want to for that matter).

So, he does the only thing he can; search for a sense of community with other grip strength enthusiasts, and online is the best place to go.

Luckily for him, there have been several key players that have stepped in to fill the void.

The Gripboard is an outstanding resource for people wanting to learn, discuss, and share everything grip. From FAQs to training routines, a gripper will find the information he needs there.

IronMind Enterprises creates many top-notch training devices for grip strength folks. They have standardized grip strength training with their products and certifications, without which no community can grow. It would be hard to imagine how people would train or accurately measure their grip strength without IronMind.

Diesel Crew expands on every aspect of grip training. They create specialized information products, and use their marketing, copyrighting, and video production skills to push grip strength training into a wider audience through ebooks, youtube videos, and participation in social networks.

These sites and many others have done wonders for our community. Yet, the Internet is moving away from traditional websites and forums and into social media—primarily Twitter—and the grip strength community as a whole will inevitably have to do the same. It’s where the action and intimacy that we crave is. Yes, some people in the community are slow to adopt Twitter, but that will change, and change fast.

When it does, though, we’ll be faced with the same problem as before unfortunately. What other grip strength folks use Twitter? How can I find them? What are they doing? What’s new in their training? Why do I feel isolated once again?

Sure, Twitter tries to assist people in finding others with similar interests. But, I used Twitter for months before I learned that Twitter had a search site at search.twitter.com that allowed people to search for topics, Twitter names, and a persons’ own Twitter name. It took me several more months to learn that people used special searches using a hashtag (#) to assist people with their searching efforts. For example, people wanting to find out information about the nationwide tea parties used the #tcot in their tweets. Everyone adopted the search term and could therefore search for this specific phrase and see what everyone within that community was talking about.

So, although Twitter does help people meet up, I feel there’s a need to go a step further to unite our grip strength community.

Why can’t there just be one place where people can go to see all the tweets about grip strength training? Why can’t this place standardize the way people tweet to assist the community in finding each other better?

These seemed like reasonable questions for me to ask, but unfortunately, nothing like this existed.

I decided to change that.

I created a website that captures and displays grip strength tweets all in one place using standardized search phrases. The goal of the site is to get every single grip strength fan on the planet to stop by for a visit, meet and interact with everyone else in the community. There’s absolutely no reason why every single grip strength fan on the planet shouldn’t be able to tweet with every other grip strength fan on the planet. The goal of the site is to allow this to happen.

I hope to have all grippers out there sign our guest book and leave their information (and Twitter handle), so that our community can unite online, and we can finally see how many of us are out there.

I know I’m curious. Aren’t you? Visit http://gripstrengthtweets.com and let’s get this sucker started! And don’t forget to join twitter and follow GST at http://twitter.com/gripstrengthtwt.

Shane is a grip strength fanatic from Maryland. He’s a 9 to 5 working man, but thinks grip all day long. Although herniated disc surgery and a torn wrist ligament get the best of him on occasion, nothing can stop him from trying to be the strongest gripper on the planet. If not for grip, he has no clue what he’d do for a hobby each day.

Want to learn more about Grip? Just click here ==> Grip Strength

Gripper Drop Sets

Jedd Johnson — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:07:11 +0000

I hope you had as much fun on Independence Day as I did.

Let me tell you a quick story about what I did yesterday.

My family always gets together on the 4th of July to play lawn games. Over the years, we have played bean bags, horse shoes, even ladder golf, but this year we played something different – Kan Jam!

For several hours yesterday afternoon I played Kan Jam. Kan Jam is a game where you throw a big yellow frisbee disk at black cylinder (the Kan) for points.

Sounds pretty stupid, but it’s a ton of fun.

The cylinder reminds me of one of those flat plastic sleds I used to sled on when I was a kid back in the 80′s, rolled into a cylinder shape. It has an open top in it and a slit in the side.

If you hit the “Kan,” or if your partner helps you in hitting the Kan or getting it into the Kan, you get points. If you throw it into the “Kan” via the top opening or the slit, unassisted, it is an automatic win. My partner threw it through the slit unassisted 3 consecutive times yesterday. This has to be a record somewhere.

Right now I want to tell you about what I feel will be an automatic win for my Gripper Training.

In order to keep my gains going, I have to constantly be tweaking my gripper training.

I network with some of the best grip competitors in the nation every time I compete in order to pick their brains about what they are doing differently that I might be able to steal and use in my own training.

One of the things I have been doing this year is what I call Gripper Drop Sets.

I first learned about Drop Sets when my primary focus for weight training was bodybuilding. Drop Sets involved hitting one exercise and then immediately moving to another exercise. I recently decided to try and apply this concept to gripper training.

With Gripper Drop Sets, I grab two grippers. One is on the heavier side and the other is on the lighter side. I hit the heavier gripper first and then immediately come in with the lighter one.

Here’s a short video clip showing you what I mean.

You can do this yourself with a pair of grippers, or even more than that. You can set up an entire line of grippers and just go down one after the other from heaviest to lightest or the other way around.

What innovative techniques are you working on with your gripper training? Post below in the comments and let me know.

You can check out even more posts about grippers by clicking here ==> Gripper Training.

All the best in your training,

-Jedd-

P.S. Did you see my Grip history post on Josh Hanagarne’s Blog? If not, check it out now: Napalm’s Grip History

P.P.S. If you got the newsletter I sent out yesterday, you saw that one of my ebooks is on sale right now for a patriotically low price. I will be sending out another one to let everyone know how quickly this sale is going to be ending, so make sure you sign up for it now.

New Episode of Grip Strength Radio

Jedd Johnson — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:03:45 +0000

This week is the conclusion to the two-part interview with Gripboard Administrator and the man behind the login name, Wannagrip, Bill Piche. This one starts out modest and ends up a bit controversial. You’ll have to listen to see what I mean…

How important is hand strength

Who inspires

What is the KTA

What accomplishment

Check it out now.

Go to Grip Strength Radio to listen to this show. ===> Grip Strength Radio.

All the best in your training,

-Jedd-

P.S. I just got back from the Juniata Strength Clinic and helped a couple of dudes learn how to tear cards. You can too, just check out the Card Tearing eBook. Click here ==> Card Tearing eBook
Similar Posts: