One of the coolest feats of strength, in my opinion, is bending an adjustable steel wrench.

Nothing says “strong hands” and “brute strength,” like bending a perfectly good tool that someone could have easily used to work on their car, their house, or an appliance.

I got a wild hair to bend something the other day, so I grabbed a wrench and gave it a whirl, and was successful.

I thought I would share 5 things you might not know about bending steel wrenches.

1. Wearing Pants Makes a HUGE Difference

As demanding as wrench bending is, it may seem like you’d want to wear loose, non-restrictive clothing so you can get the most out of your body as possible, but not with braced-style bending. The denim material of your jeans gives you a much better grip than, say, mesh shorts or sweat pants. This is important for both safety reasons, and for the sake of efficiency, because with jeans, the wrench doesn’t slide all over the place, and jeans don’t shift on you or stretch like shorts and sweats do. Heavy twilled cargo shorts are also a nice option for bending wrenches and other braced feats.

2. Braced Bending is FULL BODY Bending

Bending a wrench over your thigh, like I do it, is called Braced Bending. This bracing is done on purpose. Other forms of bending, of the non-braced varieties, disallow or limit the amount of contact the object can have with the body. But not Braced Bending. With this form of bending, you kink the steel or wrench over your thigh, sweep it down as far as possible between your legs and then crush it down like a champ with chest strength. Because of this bracing, you end up in many different positions that non-braced bending does not put you in, so you actually have to be a bit more athletic and mobile for braced-style bending feats.

3. Be Prepared for Some Pain

Braced Bending is HARD. It hurts to press something like a wrench into your thigh. You have to break through mental barriers, just as much as physical barriers when you are bending wrenches. If your mental governor is on, then you won’t be successful with braced-style bending feats. You have to be able to shut that thing off and drive into the bar or wrench without hesitation or distraction. The reward is worth it though, because once you feel the steel buckle under your strength, you get hit with extra adrenaline to take the bend even further.

4. Get Your Wraps Tight

The biggest mistake people make, aside from trying to bend wrenches without knowing proper technique, is not having your wraps tight. It doesn’t matter whether you are using towels, cordura, or suede/leather, you’ve got to get them tight. If they are loose, the will move around when bending the wrench, and you will lose a degree of strength. You need all the strength you can generate, and don’t want to waste ANY effort. Get your wraps tight as possible, so you can drive into it MUCH harder and with more ferocity.

5. You BETTER HAVE a Strong Core

Believe it or not, even though bending wrenches is considered a feat of grip strength, there’s much more involved that just that. Above all, is you need to have a strong core. You don’t necessarily need a rock-hard set of washboard abs, but rather you need to be able to execute some powerful pressure into the wrench in order to get the bend started and keep it going for that matter.

How to Bend a Wrench

Here is the video of my wrench bend. I kink it over the thigh, which is a very common method for getting the kink started, I sweep it between the legs, and then finish the crush-down up high, like when bending a nail or bolt.

It feels great to bend a wrench. Definitely a cool feat to be able to do.

They also make cool pen holders, which is what this one is going to be used for!

If you would like to learn how to bend wrenches, as well as perform many other braced bending feats of strength, then you need to pick up the Braced Bending DVD.

For this weekend, the Braced Bending DVD is $10 off, so don’t delay in picking it up.

Braced Bending Hard Copy

You’re gonna love braced bending,

Jedd