Try suitcase deadlifts if you want a switch from regular or Romanian DLs. I've been doing DLs forever and am comfortable in the 250-300 range, but 3 x 8 x 95lbs of suitcase DLs kicked my ass the first time I tried them. Here's a description & video

new one for me.
will try today.
report back.
thanks for a new idea.

It'll rape your obliques.

Also gives the greek statue physique, which may or may not be what you want :x

ok so i did "Nancy" today, 5 rounds of running 400m followed by 95 lb overhead squats, and it killed me so no trying anything today except hauling my sweaty tired ass to the car and trying not to puke.

thrempster. greek statue=very nice. does anyone really want huge pecs these day? aren't they so lee haney?

any keys to snatch grip deads? tried these, but i sucked it up. (see you influence me more than you think) J.

Brown,

I meant it like really really really wide waist. Which is great for performance, terrible for looks. Your call.

Umm... I do a little bit of deads on a box which these are similar to. I also ended up switching to a O/U grip instead of using straps which was somewhat awkward. Not sure on any keys. Max on regular snatch grip is like 75% of my dead. YMMV

Thremp, a few months with Captains of Crush grippers and you'll never think of using straps again.

I really need to get on this.

Me too. Just looked at this page. How do you determine which pound-level to get?

If you're only getting one, and you don't have a freakishly strong grip already for some reason, the #1 is a pretty good bet. Most reasonably strong people without previous grip training can almost or just barely close it. Do hard negatives (using the other hand to help close it) for a while to get started. I recommend digging up blarg's old posts actually, I think there was an entire thread dedicated to CoC.

Yes, I started a long thread on it, with Captains of Crush in the title, in OOT. That would be good to look up, and also search here and on the dragondoor.com forums for "contrast baths," both with my name.

Most people cannot close the #1. But you can still train on it. Doing heavy negatives is by far the quickest way to build up strength on grippers. Use both hands to close the gripper, or push it in against your leg or hip.

BE CAREFUL. Especially as you progress up and use heavier grippers, you can put a lot of pressure on small joints closing a gripper against your hip or leg. More importantly, if you slip and are then left with just one hand gripping a gripper much too strong for you to hold closed, it's like holding a grenade and you can rip your connective tissue and muscles.

When you do heavy negatives, you can either do slow controlled releases, called "smooth outs," or you can try gripping as hard as you can, really fighting the whole way, and then let go in time to help, maybe with a second hand, release the pressure more quickly. You can do heavy negatives with grippers far too tough for one hand

You can expect to see truly astonishing results in as little as a couple of weeks. Your hand can take really brutal work-outs and recover very quickly. You can speed this up even more dramatically by using contrast baths, which are a hand rehabilitation therapy using alternating dips in hot and cold water to force circulation. That helps clear out metabolic wastes from exercising and provide the material to rebuild tissue, especially important for an area of the body that has so many ligaments and tendons, which heal and rebuild much slower than muscle does. You can go from painfully sore and borderline injury in your hands from fanatical gripper work-outs to feeling fine and ready to go again the next day. Doing this, you can have many gripper work-outs per week, dramatically decreasing the time it takes to increase your grip strength.

I'd recommend one gripper below what you can do, one at right about your level, and one above, to start. Warm up with the light one and use it as a variation from strength work every once in a while, to give the tendons and ligaments some time to catch up from your intensive strength training. It also forces micro-vascularity, which helps a lot with endurance(helps on deadlifts) and healing. Sooner or later you should schedule in lighter use periods out of respect for the fact that that your muscle strength will quickly outstrip the ability of your ligaments and tendons to keep up with it, making eventual injury become a real possibility. We can surge ahead, but we need to cycle back down for balance once in a while.

Use the heavy one for negatives. Note that you can use VERY heavy ones for negatives, even so heavy that you can't close them all the way with two hands. But anyone who is not already a grip freak or doesn't have a demanding job using their grip will probably be fine with a #2 for their heavy negative gripper. Get the Trainer and the #1 and the #2 for a good starter set. The lighter grippers will still be very useful for warming up after you outgrow them, and ones that are still way way beyond you are still fine for partial close negatives, so you won't be wasting money. Especially if you do negatives and regular contrast baths, expect to see amazing results.

Note: If I had to get only one gripper for strength training for the average guy, it would be a #2, which will be sufficient for heavy negatives, your most useful strength training in gripping.

ok, well not too sure about getting the super wide waste, so.........not like these would ever become a staple, but fun to mix it up.

tried suitcase deads.
took a bunch of concentration.
can't do them very heavy.
tough to balance the weight end to end.
felt it in my lats.
will do them again.
supersetted them w/ s.l. deads for final couple sets, felt good and def. felt in grip and use of balance.

thanks for the info thremp. lates. J.

oh man these are the absolute [censored] i use them all the time

you can see major gains really really fast in your forearms. i was reading a strength/conditioning book about baseball and they recommended using grip crushers to improve bat control. i can't really say whether they did the job or more skill training did (i'm guessing the latter was way more important but the former probably helped a bit) but i do love the tools.

as many of you know, i am a huge fan of having easy to do workouts just so when i'm idling around, i can do things while watching TV, playing poker, at work, or whatever. SPRI bands, small dumbbells, tennis balls under my feet, and grip crushers are all really great for this.

also blarg has great info on contrast baths. in a similar vein, i never iced my shoulder/arm after pitching, having read a ton of studies that show it didn't really do much. there is a significant lack of sport science on whether or not icing + running is beneficial with the exception of a few japanese studies that link 20/10 ice:cardio workouts to being positive for the arm.

after shoulder fatigue and elbow strain, i took a few weeks off, and then started using an ice sleeve for 20 minutes, jogging 15 minutes, and icing for 15-20 minutes. after that i'd stretch a bit and take a hot shower. the difference is amazing in the next day! i felt so much better and even felt like i could throw 2 innings if needed (which i obviously didn't do).

contrast baths probably work in a similar fashion and as such i definitely recommend checking that out.

Here's my forum post on Captains of Crush and gripping from a few years back. Good back and forth between people discussing getting into gripping and some of the issues involved.

Captains of Crush thread

wow, thanks for all the gripper info. I ordered a trainer to start and I'll see how that goes. I feel like when I do deads or dumbbell lunges or anything with hanging weight, my grip fails before the targeted muscles do.

kyleb,

Something else might just be a warm/cold contrast bath. I did this previously for soft tissue injuries. Extremely painful, but doing 5 rounds of 3 minutes on each is v v effective. Have not contrasted it with ice + run for like 20 min each.

J Brown,

I'll give it a shot tomorrow as part of my warmup, I'll max each side and trip report on how it turns out. Hopefully I don't get too hammered tonight. If my legs wake up feelings terrible, will likely bump to Fri.