Random thoughts on strength training @$HOME

Sunday, May 10, 2009

#11 Grip Strength - Breaking Folding Rules

Grip strength is something strange. Most men can't hide their fascination when they see feats of grip strength the first time. Like Josh Hanagarne puts it here , there’s an element of showmanship to it. Most people would never believe that I can tear telephone books (it doesn't look fancy yet and it only works sometimes with books less than 1000 pages, but hey, it works!). They think it can only by done by people that look like they can do it. I just love underdogs.

There's a whole grip world out there, with own competitions, books and unlimited challenges.

Here are some I found for myself:
  • tear telephone books, catalogues, used paper and stuff like this
  • tear apples in half
  • breaking walnuts by pressing them against each other
I just started exploring this world and built a DIY Wrist Roller for training, will blog that soon.

Last week I told my father about that interest and what feats are out there. We never spoke about this in 30 years when he said: "I could break folding rules with bare hands when I was younger". There was no doubt he could I thought. Today we spoke again about it and I showed him some feats on youtube. He even put his glasses on, so he really was interested. After seeing some vids of folding pans he wanted to give it a try and I recorded it with the mobile phone. He's 56 and has never trained grip strength, but he works as a craftsman since he was 14 and does so when he comes home from work and on the weekends.




I can't do it right now. What about you? Can you do it?

2 comments:

  1. Very cool. I'm going to find some of those and try it.

    Josh

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Josh:

    Have fun and let me know how your first try went.

    ReplyDelete