Diesel Crew - Muscle Building, Athletic Development, Strength Training, Grip Strength » phone book tearing

The Home Stretch – Challenge 5 of the Classic Strongman Feats Tournament

Jedd Johnson — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:25:03 +0000

Hello DIESELS!

CHECKING IN!

First off, I hope all of you are safe and sound after the hurricane on the East Coast on the United States. I know some friends in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey lost some power and saw damages from the storm, so please take care!

LOVING WWE PROGRAMMING!

Second, I just want to say that if you follow WWE Wrestling, like me, you know its been an exciting few weeks with the return of Kevin Nash and the drama between him, Triple H and CM Punk. What an awesome time!

However, if you are thinking that Stephanie McMahon sent the text message to Kevin Nash to come to Summer Slam and Jack-knife Power-Bomb CM Punk, I am sorry but you are mistaken. I am going to make the call right now, that the culprit who stole Triple H’s phone and requested Nash’s punishing appearance is actually Shane McMahon, making his return to the family business…

I am obviously SPOT ON, but if you have another guess, feel free to post in the comments.

Now, for more important matters – the Classic Strongman Feat Tournament…

Many have been pondering what the final feat in the tournament could be. Watch the video below and you will find out.

Since all of the rules are clearly stated in the video, I am only posting it right now and will add more information below in a few hours.

I do freelance work as a Spanish Interpreter and I have a large project that I have to work on for the company I used to work full time for, so I will be working on that for a bit and will return to the site later on.

However, once you watch the video, if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks and all the best!

JeddSimilar Posts:

Phone Book Tearing Submissions

Jedd Johnson — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:34:49 +0000

Hello DIESELS!

The Mighty Atom, One of the Best Strongmen Ever

We are three weeks into the Diesel Classic Strongman Feats Tournament.

Here is where we left off going into last week:

Cameron Bailey / David Horne – 3 Points
Richard McLean / Jason Steeves / Mike Rinderle – 2 Points
Daniel Reinard – 1.5
David Wigren – 1 Point

Here is how the tournament panned out last week for Phone Book Tearing:

So, the new scores in the Phone Book Tearing bracket:

Darren Shallman – + 3
Cameron Bailey – +1.5
Mike Rinderle – +1

And the new running totals after Reverse Nail Bending, Card Tearing and Phone Book Tearing:

Cameron Bailey – 4.5 Points
David Horne / Mike Rinderle / Darren Shallman – 3 Points
Richard McLean / Jason Steeves – 2 Points
Daniel Reinard – 1.5
David Wigren – 1 Point

BOOM!! – Darren Shallman steps right into second place in the tournament with Rindo and Horne! Nice work, brother!

This Week’s Challenge – Horseshoe Bending

The Challenge this week is Horseshoe Bending. Below are the rules you should follow.

Bent Horseshoe

1. The horseshoe bend must be completed within 3 minutes

2. The horseshoe must be bent past 180 degrees. To demonstrate this, the horseshoe must be placed on a flat surface and show that at least one of the two legs is free from the surface and pointing upwards. If needed you are allowed to push down on one end of the horseshoe to demonstrate that the horseshoe is past 180. However no tilting of the horseshoe is allowed during this demonstration, therefore the entire horseshoe must be visible during this part of the demonstration.

3. The horseshoe is not allowed to be bent under your feet. During the bend both feet must remain on the floor and you are not allowed to lean on any stationary object. Other than that you are free to use whatever technique suits you best.

4. You must wrap the shoe on the video. Only single wraps allowed. Rubber bands and chalk are allowed. Leg padding is allowed as long as it is of “soft material”, and must be demonstrated by folding the padding on camera. A rolled up hand towel is the best material to use.

5. Before the bend during the documentation of the horseshoe all numbers, markings and brands that might be on the shoe must be shown as clearly as possible. Used horseshoes are not allowed.

6. Only completed shoe bends according to rule #2 will be counted.

These are the shoes that will be used for the contest. The list goes from easiest to hardest. The further down you go on the list (higher the number) the harder the shoe and the better your placement.

1. St. Croix Ultra Lite #2
2. St. Croix Polo #1
3. Diamond Classic #1
4. St. Croix Lite rim #3
5. St. Croix Lite rim #1
6. St. Croix Lite plain #3 / Kerckhaert SSP 8×22 #3
7. Kerckhaert SSP 8×22 #2
8. Diamond Bronco PL #000
9. Kerckhaert SSP 8×22 #1
10. St. Croix Regular Plain #000
11. Diamond Special #5
12. St. Croix #5 XTRA / Kerckhaert SSP 10×22 #5
13. St. Croix Plain Regular #3
14. Kerckhaert SSP 8×18 #000
15. AB 1×3/8 Draft Keg #6**

Need to know how to get started bending horseshoes? Maybe you’ve already bent horseshoes and you want to improve your horseshoe bending technique? Click the banner below to get our Horseshoe Bending DVD, Hammering Horseshoes…

All the best in your training,

JeddSimilar Posts:

Juniata Clinic Report

Jedd Johnson — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 04:36:38 +0000

Hard to believe another year has gone by and the Annual Juniata Strength Clinic is in the books. It’s always great to see the other regulars. I have become extremely good friends with many of them and look forward to going every year.

Before I get going too far into this, I first want to thank Coach Doug Smith, the Juniata Strength Coach and organizer of the yearly clinic. This is the most cost-effective clinic I know of for the number of CEU’s that are available, and it is my pleasure to present or conduct a hands-on presentation each year.

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend on day of the clinic this year, as my fiancee got pretty darn sick on Friday night. I drove home to take care of her and missed Saturday’s agenda. However, I attended many presentations and hands-on sessions on Friday and I want to go over them here and share with you all some of the highlights the presenters shared.

If you were there, maybe you can post some of the highlights you thought were most impressive, or maybe let me know what I missed on Day 2, or just respond to my thoughts. Here we go…

A Review of Bioenergetics and their Application to Sport Performance

Willard Peveler, PhD.
Assistant Profesor of Exercise Physiology – Northern Kentucky University

This was an excellent presentation on energy pathways, metabolism, glycolosis, etc. Essentially, Dr Peveler blew me away with this presentation. Really opened my eyes to just how much I DON’T KNOW about this stuff and that I need to work on my knowledge base here.

Dr. Peveler spoke a lot about endurance, and I want to write him a note to get his thoughts on how to maximize strength endurance of the hands and whether he knows if any sort of foods are optimally converted to energy for the hands themselves.

Developing a Strong, Durable, and Resilient Baseball Player

Frank Velasquez Jr ATC, CSCS*R
Pittsburgh Pirates Strength and COnditioning Coordinator

No matter what clinic I go to, if there is a presentation on baseball, I ALWAYS try to attend. Frank had a good presentation and I took a lot of notes. Here are some of the highlights.

“Don’t treat the rotator cuff, treat the scapula”

This is one of the points that Frank focused on for a great deal of time in his presentation. What he was saying was that there is often a knee jerk reaction to do all sort of training for the rotator cuff, but neglect the muscles that support and control the scapula.

This is a great point, and it is something that Smitty and I have focused on since the very beginning of Diesel. We always retract prior to exercises such as rows, pull-ups, pull-downs, posterior flies, etc. We also have an exercise index stashed away on complete shoulder health that we are going to put out for the masses sometime before we retire.

Frank also spoke at length on the importance of correct posture. It’s not just something that grandma thinks we should do – it’s damn important for athletes. Think about it this way. You’re away for 16 hours and your asleep for 8 hours. If during 14 of thos 16 waking hours you are standing and sitting with crappy posture, do you really think a few minutes of a two-hour workout is going to negate all that time spent slouching and protracted? NO WAY! Posture is important not just so you don’t develop thos praying mantis shoulder blades, but also functionally as well. Poor posture results in poor performance of the shoulder, BOTTOM LINE.

“Hustle is a talent. You can teach it and track it.”

I thought this was an excellent point. While hustle is natural for some people and not others, it can be taught and reinforced until it is second nature. So if you have athletes who are constantly sluggish and never seem to have any bounce in their step, talk to them about hustle and how important it is, and then keep after them until it is second nature.

“Hamstrings pull because they are weak.”

Frank said that his ball players do some sort of hamstring exercise everyday, because hamstring pulls happen most often as a result of weakness, not lack of flexibility. He showed some of the exercises they do and they varied intensity from day to day. If you or someone on your squad is suffering from reoccurring muscle pulls, maybe it’s time to look at their strength levels and not so much their flexibility levels.

University of Virginia’s In-Season Training Program for Football

Brandon Houragian
University of Virgina – Strength and Conditioning Coordinator

Brandon had a great presentation. He wrapped everything up with a very cool video as well. During the course of his presentation he had some training clips, but he couldn’t figure out how to get them to play. He wasn’t too worried about it, so he just kept on plugging away, but at the end he really wanted to show his highlight reel, so I went up to help him and we were able to figure it out together.

“Guys that don’t play go through a hardcore program.”

The players who aren’t getting as much playing time go through a more challenging routine. They could very well be starters next year, so at Virginia they take advantage of the limited beating their bodies are taking during game time and work them harder in the gym.

Utilizing Complexes and Segments for Developing Stamina

Tony Decker
Temple University Strength and Conditioning Coordinator

Tony showed us many ways to incorporate barbell, dumbbell and odd object complexes into the athletic training program as we as how to implement this approach over the course of the year, but what I liked the most about Tony’s presentation was his focus on avoiding overtraining.

Tony reminded us that overtraining is a result of too much volume. He specifically pointed to the fact that many people when they feel worn out and overtrained try to reduce the weight and get the reps in when this can actually be counterproductive. Volume is key in fighting overtraining, so keep that in mind whether you are training athletes, clients, or just yourself. ANYBODY can get overtrained.

“We’re not the ones in the pads.”

Tony talked about the importance of listening to the athletes. Are they reporting reduced performance on the field after the workouts we’re putting them through. We’re not the ones wearing the gear and going through the plays, so we have to take their feedback into consideration. After all, the coach isn’t going to be happy with a bunch of overtrained players in-season.

Myofascial Release / Health is Just Skin Deep

Nancy Hawkins Riggs MS, CSCS
Be-Fitness Delaware

Nancy and her two colleagues introduced us to her version of myofascial release, called Mashing. These ladies promote soft tissue health by doing myofascial release on their clients in socked feet!

This presentation was the “Outside of the Box” presentation of the weekend. I am sure most of us have never heard of “Mashing” especially done with the feet. Regardless, when they asked for volunteers, my hand immediately shot up to get my left forearm worked on. It felt great to get worked on, although it is kind of hard to relax with all the people in the classroom watching you get your arm “mashed.”

The idea behind this and the application to a sports team, is that by working one another’s muscle and fascia with the feet reduces the stress put o the hands and more soft tissue work can be done. The ladies demonstrated several techniques, using the toes, side of the foot and even the heel to moderate the amount of pressure applied when mashing.

Balance – Proprioception Training for Performance, Injury Reduction & Lower Rehab

Lori Swaldi DPT, VCS; Tom Swaldi DPT, ATC, CSCS
Star Physical Therapy

Very good presentation. I enjoyed the review on the three balance systems.

Somatosensory System – Maintaining balance by the signals interpreted through the feet (or hands if you’re doing hand balancing)

Visual System – Maintaining balance by the signals received by the eyes and interpreted by the brain

Vestibular System – Maintaining balance by the signals received by the organs of the inner ear

Another cool point Lori brought up was Gaze Stability, which is the ability to maintain focus during movement. These points had my mind racing about how to train baseball and softball players, especially for tracking the ball into the strike zone, and also watching the ball into the glove when chasing down a fly ball.

Now it was time for the hands-on sessions. These are always a great time, because you get to interact with the speakers and often get to try new methods of training. I missed Mike Rankin’s Ring Training portion because I was setting up my hands-on so I missed my opportunity at trying a muscle-up on the rings, darnit.

The very first thing I did during the hands-on sessions was to go find Dick Hartsell. If you don’t know Dick Hartsell, he is the inventor of FlexBands and has built some of the strongest ankles in the world. He puts his ankles through a beating every year at Juniata. I’ve seen him jump straight up in the air, come crashing down on his ankle and say “Any questions on ankle stability?”

Ankle stability and being in a viral video are not why I wanted to talk to Dick. I wanted to touch base with him because I wanted to thank him for fixing my thumb. If you remember, about a year ago I was struggling with thumb pain. I had tried everything and could get no relief. I spoke to Dick at Juniata last year and showed me a compression method that within weeks had brought my thumb back to about 95%, and continuing to do it was a major reason why I broke the record in the Two Hands Pinch and I wanted him to know it.

Next, I went over to my buddy Dan Cenidoza’s hands-on presentation, Steel Bending and Other Feats of Strength. Dan is really dominating the strength feats these days and walked a bunch of the strength coaches through the process of bending nails, horse shoes, long steel bars as well as phone book tearing and other feats of strength.

He also let me try one of his sinister 60D nails that he found in his adventures that he rated near an IronMind Red Nail. I was able to DO it easily with my wraps, which are thick and hard. I also got it with no problem with his thin flimsy wraps. I tried my hand at a horse shoe (not sure what it was) and was able to straighten it pretty easily.

I bounced back and forth between Dan’s Hands-on and Todd Hamer’s Hands-on. Todd spoke with the coaches about using strongman training in the athletic program. Hamer is a good one to speak on this, because he competes in Strongman Competitions and does well.

At this point it was time for my Hands-on Presentation. The Strongest Strength Coach at Juniata!

I expected a ton of competitors, but unfortunately only 5 decided to go after the title: Jerry Shreck (Bucknell), Andrew Jakeyow, Rob Klancher, Tyler Harshbarger, and Dan Cenidoza (BeMoreTraining.com).

There were three events: Keg Press Medley, Sandbag Hold for Time, and Keg Walk for Distance.

For the first time in my experience, all five events were finished in the exact same order every time. Here are the final standings.

1. Dan Cenidoza – 3 points
2. Andrew Jakeyow – 6 points
3. Jerry Shreck – 9 points
4. Tyler Harshbarger – 12 points
5. Rob Klancher – 15 points

These guys did a great job, and the Keg Walk was torture! Two minutes of walking with a keg between two lines – sick! But nobody complained. They just kept moving forward.

So, it’s another Juniata Clinic in the books. It was great to see everybody again and I got to network with some of my closest friends on an upcoming project.

While I am at it, I also want to thank Niki DeSantis for hooking me up with some killer phone books. Nice thick Virginia phone books are always a good tear. THANKS!

In closing, if you’re a strength coach in the state of PA or a nearby state, keep your eyes open for this clinic. It is always a good, affordable time where you learn a lot and meet other good strength coaches.

Until then, thanks and all the best in your training.

-Jedd-

P.S. An Offensive Explosion is returning to the game of baseball. Here’s why = > Ultimate Forearm Training for Baseball

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Grip Strength for Earth – LIVE

Jedd Johnson — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:52:22 +0000

Hey everybody, the Grip Strength for Earth Tearing extravaganza went great. Thanks to everybody who tuned in.

If you didn’t get a chance to see the show, sign up for the Grip Strength newsletter below because I will be sending out links to download it either today (Sunday) or tomorrow.

Thanks everybody!

Fun in the November Sun

Jedd Johnson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:41:17 +0000

It’s funny how much the weather in Northeast PA can change from day to day. It can get COLLLLD here.

Yesterday, I trained for 3 hours in my garage, freezing my ass off the whole time. I was wearing sweat pants, a long-sleeve thermal shirt, two tee-shirts under that, and had a stocking cap on. To top it all off I had an Amish heater humming in the background all the while.

It seemed unseasonably cold for the first weekend in November. Flash forward 24 hours…

Today, I looked out the window around 10 AM and realized that it was probably the most gorgeous Sunday I have seen in months. It rained most of the summer and I never once got a weekend to do any atlas stone lifting.

I have been wanting to lift stones so bad that I took a look at my to-do list and decided I was going to take advantage of the extraordinary weather and do some killer kettlebell training and some serious stone lifting.

I started out with some dynamic warm-up, including foam roller, hindu push-ups, windmills, and some lunge reaches. I have doing a lot of dynamic warm-up lately and it has really been helping me out with my back pain. If you are having back pain, I suggest you look for opportunities to improve your warm-up practices and your post-workout flexibility routines.

After the warm-up, I took our 95-lb kettlebell outside and started to ramp-up. I knew I wanted to do some juggling stuff, so I started out with some cleans and some snatches to knock the rust off. From there I started out with some basic juggles – forward flips, backward flips, side flips, forward flips into a snatch, side flips into a snatch and finally worked up to a double forward flip into a snatch.

All of this with the 95-lb’er. My endurance is down for flipping and juggling, but as far as the technique, it didn’t seem to hard to get back into the swing of things.

From there, I started working on the atlas stones. I love training on atlas stones. I want to do more of it but I have shied away from it because of issues I have been having with my back. I had absolutely no pain today, so I am going to look to do more stone training, as long as the weather allows it.

I have like 6 atlas stones. They range from like 200-lbs to 405-lbs. I got them all second hand and never really weighed any of them. One of my buddies weighed them when he was training for a contest a couple years back, but the elements have since worn them off so I have to guess at them now.

I wasn’t interested in pulling the stones without tacky. I had my eyes set on the 405-lb stone from the beginning, so I went ahead and wrapped my forearms with athletic tape and threw on some tacky.

I started out with the lightest stone, somewhere in the 200-lb range. Then I jumped up to a stone in the 285-lb range. Both of these were easy. The 360-lb stone came up pretty quickly as well. Pulling it to the lap was actually pretty easy, I thought. I then rocked and fired the stone up to the high chest.

Next, I rolled the 405 to the lifting area. The 405 is extra challenging because when it was made a lead insert block insert was put into it to make it heavier. That’s cool, of course, but the block isn’t centered so it makes the stone swivel as you try to lift it off the ground. It also causes some weird leverage forces as you try to load it, so it brings to meaning to the term odd object lifting.

I went after the 405 three times, giving it multiple attempts per try. Twice I got it up to my lap but just couldn’t quite keep it from slipping as I tried to load it to the high chest.

THE 405 WILL FALL NEXT TIME BROTHERS!!!

I am definitely out of practice. The first few pulls on the stones felt slow and cumbersome, but it wasn’t surprising because I think I trained stones one other time this year, if that. It felt awesome to get some work in on the stones today and look forward to more down the road!

To finish off the workout, I then tore one of the phone books I got while I was at OSU last week. They are like 1500 pages.

I couldn’t believe how tired my hands, wrists and forearms felt after lifting the stones. It was quite challenging keeping my grip on the book. It makes sense, since you have to clench the stones with an open hand and the forearms are under tension the whole entire time, but I either never thought about it before, or I just never tried tearing a phone book after atlas stone training before.

I shot plenty of footage today and zipped it all up into a video, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did shooting it.

Subscribe to my channel by clicking here ==> Jedd’s YouTube Channel

Here’s to more stone lifting in the near future,

-Jedd-

P.S. If you are serious about trying out atlas stone lifting, but aren’t sure how to get started, then check out our Stone Lifting Fundamentals DVD. Click here ==> Atlas Stone Lifting Technique DVD.Similar Posts: