Mighty Mitts 2012 – Part II

Getting ready to lift both Fatman Blobs

As I posted yesterday, Mighty Mitts was an absolute honor for me to be a part of and it is truly a pinnacle of the sport of grip. Being up on that stage, in front of all those people performing, when they could have done ANYTHING with their time, but they hung around to watch us – it was my honor to put on a show for them, and that is exactly what I aimed to do.

As you’ll see in many of my videos, I tried to engage the crowd by pumping my arms and circling my hands to get them going a bit. And the fact that the Day 2 events were much more my specialty gave me increased confidence that I could do well and prove that I deserved to be there.

Day 2 Events

Medley

The Medley is an event that is commonly held in Grip contests. Because I knew the challenge items that would be in the medley, I only trained them a few times. Primarily, I worked on the Hub Deadlift, Circus Dumbbell (I trained using a similar device) and the Anvil High-Pull, but I only hit them a couple of times because I was mostly focused on bringing up my thick bar strength.

The Basic Rules

The way the Medley was set up, there were 9 challenge items, each listed below in order.

We had 2 minutes to complete all the challenges.

The main difference between this and other Medleys I have competed in was that once you went past one of the challenge items, you could not go back. You could try as many times as you wanted to lift the item, but returning was not permitted.

This gave the event a very interesting twist because in other competitions, we have always been able to go back and try items again, although very, very rarely are you able to successfully lift something upon going back. So this increased the strategic level of the event, and made it very cool.

Also, the time would stop once you finished the final challenge, the Phone Book Tear. If there were ties, the leader would be the person who finished the phone book first. This also made things very interesting and in the end played a huge role in my scoring.

You might know, the three challenge items I trained on the most, (Hubs, Circus Bell, and Anvil) I ended up failing on in the actual event.

Here is a rundown of each of the challenge items and how I did on them.

1. Circus Dumbbell (Miss) – This is one of the challenge items that I worked intently on during my Medley item training days, because I recognized it as a weakness. Richard Sorin announced it to be in the Medley very early on, and I knew that in the past I had never lifted it, so I put the time in on my very thick 4-inch loadable handle. The handle of the Circus Dumbbell was very well knurled, so slickness was no excuse. I just simply could not maintain my grip on the handle as I tried to pull it to the height of the platform. Looking back, I might have been able to pull it a bit higher had I braced the rear head of the dumbbell against my forearm, however, it never crossed my mind to give it a try.

2. 100-lb Pinch – This was a one-handed pinch lift to a full deadlift. Normally, a 100-lb pinch on plates or on the Euro would be a fairly challenging lift, but this plate had a rather prominent indented rim around the outside of the plate, making it much easier to lift. As a result, I think everyone was able to lift this item, meaning I was unable to make up any points by lifting it myself – drat!

3. Globed Leverage Bar / Weaver Stick Lift - This was an interesting piece. The handle was oval-shaped, similar to a sledge hammer, so you had to make sure that you got your grip on it right or else it would try to wobble out of your grip. The weight was in the neighborhood of 13- to 15-lbs I believe. You had to either deadlift it parallel to the ground or you could stand upright and lever it strictly to the parallel position. Either way, handle had to be kept right near your thigh or it would not count. I think everybody got this one too. Drat – no points against these beasts!

4. Hub Lift – This was done on a rather slick 45-lb York Barbell Plate with the characteristic sloping flange, which makes gripping it much more difficult than today’s more common tube-shaped hub designs. The dial grip was permitted instead of just the claw grip, which was good because I am not sure I would have been able to break that plate off the ground by the hub using the standard grip. I ended up pulling the plate up to nearly the height of the loading platform, but for some reason every time I tried changing directions and moving it toward or over top of the platform, it would slip right out of my hand. The platforms were a bit higher than normal, but I actually like a higher platform because it requires more endurance and skill in the loading process. The height was not the issue – my strength on hubs was. I could have really used the point for the hub lift, as it would have put me into sole ownership of first place in the event when all was said and done.

5. Fatman Style Blobs – Two Fatman Blobs had to be loaded on top of the same platform as the hub and same height as the Circus Bell. I had no fear going into this one, as my Blobs are off the charts right now. In prep for MM, I was able to lift Josh Dale’s Fatman with no warm-up, something I have never been able to do. The way this challenge was scored is you had to do one with your left hand and one with your right, and if you did both of them simultaneously, you would get a bonus point. I was the only one in the body of competitors who got both at the same time, although some did get both separately. So I was able to pick up a valuable extra point.

6. Anvil – Next was an Anvil that naturally weighed around 170-lbs and also had a chain wrapped around it for extra weight. In warm-ups, I tested this piece and the horn felt like sand paper, so I was feeling golden to rock this one with no problem. Once I got to it and hit like 5 tries between my left and right hands and it still wasn’t on the platform yet, I was getting pissed, but maintained my cool. Another item that I prepared for hard, felt good on in warm-ups yet failed to load to the 8- or 10-inch platform. And also, mor emuch needed points down the drain. Undaunted, I continued to the next apparatus.

7. Sorinex G-Rex - The G-Rex was loaded with four 45-lb plates and the objective was to grip the handle with both hands and squeeze it until the two handles met, at which point a light would illuminate on the device. I was actually intimidated by this because the fully opened spread on the G-Rex is pretty damn wide, but to my enjoyment, once I got my firngers all the way on there, it came up pretty easily and with a little fishing around at the top I was able to light all three lights. In this case, three red lights was a good thing!

8. Millstone – Richard Sorin feels this Millstone is liftable, but I think in order to accomplish it, it will take some specific training to do so. In my estimation, the stone is about 5 inches thick and in the neighborhood of 120-lbs (just estimates), so it is a very large and heavy object to pinch with one hand. A two-hand lift has been done by many, including my good friend, Chris Rice, who did so in 2006 and got an awesome picture of it, to boot. I gave it a pull with at least my right hand, and maybe my left, but I did not waste a lot of time because when I spun around to check out the time that was left, I was under 30 seconds of time to go before I was done, so I scooted ahead to the last item.

9. Phone Book – The last item in the line was the phone book, more or less 1200-pages, supplied by Nick Rosendaul. It is just hard to believe how many people had a hand in making this contest a success. Awesome! I can usually finish a phone book like this in about 5 seconds, but in this case it took me a bit longer because I don’t normally tear a phone book after lifting and trying to lift so many other things, so I was a bit spent, but finished it before the time limit expired and let out a big scream of excitement to the crowd, which many returned back to me.

Since I knew I was close on many of the items, I took extra time in order to take a couple of extra attempts on things like the Hub and the Anvil, but what this ended up doing is hurting me a bit because in the end I had 7 points for the event, and so did Tex Henderson, but since he made his way to and through the phone book quicker than I did, he grabbed first place points. I am not sure how much first place in this event would have helped me since I finished so poorly on day one, but it would have been cool to make some bigger jumps up the standings.

Here is the video of me going through the Medley.

Medley

I have tons more video clips of the other competitors’ medley runs up on my YouTube channel. I words them all similarly, so I am hoping they show up once that video ends. But just in case, I have also put together a playlist of all the videos I have uploaded from Mighty Mitts 2012. <= Click that link to view the playlist.

If I got the chance to speak on the Mike, I wanted to make sure to work in there some words of recognition and appreciation to the Sorins and their crew for all that they had done, and I got my chance after the Medley. Here is my little nod to them.

Shout Out to Sorinex’s Crew

Wrist Roller

The last event of the contest was the Wrist Roller. These guys really out-did themselves with the Wrist Roller this year, making it both a challenging lift for the contestants, and also a pretty visually appealing lift for the audience as well. A strap was connected to the wrist roller, and a series of weights including chain and other odd objects were lifted upwards, getting heavier and heavier as the distance increased. Thankfully, for safety’s sake, they thought to make the wrist roller a ratcheting device so that if your grip slipped, it didn’t all just roll backwards on you. The perfect balance between function, look, and challenge, if you ask me.

This sucker got really heavy on me towards the end and I had to get crazy near the end of the run. I just shut my eyes and kept digging hard, and even ended up going further and longer than I had to. I was so focused on completed the wrist roller that I could not hear Bert saying I was done and I could not see Cyborg tapping on the device telling me I was done.

While I don’t have all my stats, points, etc., I do know that I finished 7th, and I was damn happy to climb out of the cellar, after a dismal day 1.

DIESELS, I can’t tell you how awesome of an experience the entire Arnold / Mighty Mitts weekend was. It was truly an honor to be a part of it and it was a spectacle to behold. I still have tons of video to upload and once I get caught up, I am going to post a video right below here of the crowd surrounding the stage – what an awesome site to witness – literally hundreds of people gathered around for a Grip Contest – AWESOME!

When I think back to a year ago and realize that I was “suffering” from the worst finger injuries I ever had, wondering if I would ever be able to return to form, I am truly thankful to have gotten this opportunity one more time.

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

Jedd

Mighty Mitts 2012 – Part I

Preparing the Hands for Battle with the Inch Dumbbells (Photo: Bill Piche)

For my 2nd time in the last 3 years, I made the trip to Columbus Ohio and the Arnold Classic in order to compete in Mighty Mitts. Mighty Mitts was organized and held by Richard and Bert Sorin.

I can’t say enough about how well these gentleman, their company, and their crew supported us competitors this year. It was unbelievable. I felt like royalty. I can’t really put into words how nice everyone was.

Mighty Mitts is a huge opportunity for Grip Sport. The platform of the Arnold Classic and the chance to get events in front of so many people is amazing, and I hope it brings more people into the sport. I truly appreciate everything that Sorinex has done to help Grip grow.

Never a dull moment in my Grip life, the trip to Mighty Mitts started out an interesting one. I spent about 30 minutes on Wednesday cleaning out unnecessary junk, removing the baby seat, and loading it with everything I needed for the trip. All the while I was blasting the coolest Johnny Cash DVD that I bought recently at Dollar General, so it was an awesome time.

Unfortunately, I must have had the doors open, lights on, and music blaring for a little too long because when I tried to start up to get on the road, the battery was dead. Just my luck.

I called my fiancee and she came home from work to give me a jump start. While I was waiting for her, I figured I’d take a moment to check and fill the fluids, so I raised the hood up and got that done. I noticed there was some rust on the clamp-thing that holds the hood down, so I also grabbed some WD-40 and sprayed that to try to keep it moving right.

When I tried to clean of the excess oil, I activated the clamp and it closed down. I went back inside the vehicle and pulled the release to open it back up again, and I thought I saw it working, so I thought I was in good shape. Unfortunately, I was mistaken and after jumping my battery, I went to close the hood back down and I think I damaged the clamp-thing.

Unable to close the hood down, I was forced to move everything out of my car and into the fiancee’s car, forgetting my car charger, ibuprofen, and a bunch of other stuff that I had thrown into a plastic shopping bag (dramatic foreshadowing here)

Eventually I got on the road and 8 hours later, I was in Columbus and on the shuttle bus to go meet Arnold.

Yes, I said meet Arnold - the man himself. We actually got to site in a press-conference type of scenario and Arnold addressed us and the Strongman Crew. It was a crazy opportunity. I got a bunch of pics and there was even a big photo taken of our entire group with Arnold. Totally blew me away.

The next thing we did was check out the equipment and go over the rules for the Mighty Mitts events at the actual event center. It was good to see everything and get to put my hands on it to see how it felt and to have an idea of the difficulty. We were able to ask questions about the rules and then we were back to the hotel for nice dinner in the restaurant.

Left: Me with “The Iron Tamer” Dave Whitley. Right: Me with Mike “The Machine” Bruce

During dinner, I got to meet guys like Dave Whitley and Dennis Rogers again and even met Mike “The Machine” Bruce for the first time.

Day 1 Events

I knew going in that Day 1 was going to be the harder of the two days for me. With both of the events being thick bar, my nemesis, my work was cut out for me. At this point, I knew I had trained as absolutely hard as possible for these events and began focusing all of my thoughts on successful attempts.

Double Inch Dumbbell Farmer’s Walk

In my training, I had worked up to taking several steps with two Inch Dumbbells, but these were dumbbells with rather rough handles on them. Whenever I tried picking up my slicker-handled Inch, it gave me problems. In fact, I was only able to deadlift my slicker Inch dumbbell one time. That was several weeks prior to the contest, so at the time I thought I was seeing some gains, but it wasn’t meant to be as I failed to lift them on the Mighty Mitts stage.

I put a tremendous amount of effort into this event. Some would say that it was all a waste, since in 2010 I was not able to deadlift them either, but I don’t see it that way, exactly, because during the time I worked so hard on the inches, my Axle numbers improved greatly. I have some plans in mind for modifying my training in order to get some better results on the Inch Dumbbell, after speaking with my Mighty Mitts roommate, Chad Woodall, so I am looking ahead, and not looking back.

Sorinex Monster Bell Deadlift

Squeezing as hard as I could and my eyes are nearly popping out. (Photo: Sorinex Facebook Page)

The Sorinex Monster Bell is a 500-lb Axle Bar. The handle region is well knurled over the majority of the gripping surface, which helps with the grip a bit, but the sheer weight of 500-lbs combined with the fact that the globe heads of the dumbbell act very similarly to the Inch Dumbbell made the event very challenging for me.

Although this year I felt I had much better control of the Monster Bell, I still did not complete any full repetitions. Whereas two years ago, as soon as I began lifting up on the barbell it seemed to pop right out of my hand, this year, I was able to pull it to my knee height before dropping it to the floor again.

As you can see in the video above, I tried primarily the sumo stance, as this is the stance I used in training. I did try one repetition with the conventional stance, but that did not go so well, so I went back to the sumo position in order to try to muster up enough strength for a full repetition. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t meant to be.

At the end of Day 1, I found myself at the very bottom of the standings, with a lot of work ahead of me and a great distance to overcome in order to reach the leaders.

I was so upset, that even thought I had just met Mike Bruce, I slapped a sleeper on him and put him down for the count.

There’s no extinguishing the power of Napalm’s Sleeper Hold

In truth, the image above was staged by Mike himself and I was not upset either. Although I would have been happier with better performances on the day’s events, I knew that the Day 2 events were my events, and I looked forward to the challenge.

Stay tuned, because Part II will be up as soon as I can get it finished.

All the best in your training,

Jedd

Mighty Mitts, 2010 – Sornex Monster Axle Barbell, 500-lbs

Something I have been meaning to write about for a couple of weeks now has been this year’s Mighty Mitts competition.

What is Mighty Mitts?, you might ask…

Mighty Mitts is a Grip Contest that takes place at The Arnold Sports Festival on the main stage at the expo hall.

That’s right, on the very same stage as the Arnold Strongman Competition and many other forms of competition (including Bodybuilding, Fitness, Figure, and more) there will be Mighty Mitts.

I was in the inaugural Mighty Mitts competition in 2010, and was chosen for Mighty Mitts 2011, but I had injured my hands to the point that I could not train my Grip with any sort of intensity from the middle of February to the end of April.

However, this year, I have put in my resume to be considered once again.

With all that aside, I just want to point out that this is a HUGE development for the sport of Grip, and I want everyone to understand just how big this is.

Now, I don’t know just how many people attend this Festival each year, but it is probably more than 50,000 people, and that may not even be close. If anyone reading this post has been there, they can tell you just how much of a madhouse the Arnold Classic can be. Having a Grip Contest at the Arnold Classic is an opportunity for THOUSANDS of people to find out about it.

And this year, the Sorinex company, and in particular, Richard Sorin, has truly stepped up to the plate to support the Mighty Mitts contest. Without getting into specifics, Richard and his company will be supplying a Hotel Room, Travel Expense coverage, and a daily food allowance for all of the competitors (the hotel room will be split, I believe).

To me, this is just amazing support of the sport that I love. I actually have a hard time putting into words just how much I appreciate this kind of support. Whether I get selected to compete or not, it is going to be an awesome contest and an unbelievable opportunity for exposure for the sport.

I, for one, am extremely appreciative of everything that Richard Sorin and Sorinex are doing this year.

It will be great to be up on the stage once again in from of 1000 people or more. If you are there, then I hope to hear you chanting DIESEL or NAPALM, or just my name.

Now, it is just a matter of time, waiting to hear the roster and whose names are selected for the list.

I will keep you updated as I hear more. For now, I just wanted to share the awesome news.

All the best in your training.

Jedd

The Mighty Mitts grip competition, held this past weekend at the Arnold Sports Festival, was an outstanding experience for me. I thought I would put together a quick write-up here to let you all know how it went.

Before I get into the write-up though, I do most definitely want to send out my gratitude to Dr. Terry and Janice Todd, Richard and Bert Sorin and the rest of their colleagues, Dennis Rogers, Pat Povilaitis and anybody else involved in the organization of this endeavor for including me. This was a huge step for Grip and something I will never forget.

COMPLETE MIGHTY MITTS REPORT- CLICK HERE ==> (more…)

This weekend is the Arnold Classic and counting this year, I will have gone 6 out of the last 7 years. I love the atmosphere and it always triggers a spike in my training.

There’s something for everybody at the Arnold Classic. Let me paint a picture for you.

The Arnold take place in a HUGE convention center covering I don’t know how many blocks in the city of Columbus Ohio. The event started out as mainly a bodybuilding deal, but it has expanded over the years to include Powerlifting, Olympic Lifting, and Strongman contests as well as Martial Arts, Fitness and other competitions.

SEE THE REST OF THIS COOL POST AFTER THE JUMP (more…)