I shall fear no lid...

I know I promised that I would confine the workout shit to my other blog, but I'm too excited about this to not blog it. Some of you may recall that I have been working on my grip strength. The grippers that I use are the Captains of Crush (CoC) line made by IronMind. To put things in perspective, the little plastic grippers you see at your local godless corporate superstore call for about 30-40 pounds of pressure to close. The approximate poundage needed to close the CoC range is listed below.


CoC #1 - 140 lb.
CoC #1.5 - 167.5 lb.
CoC #2 - 195 lb.
CoC #2.5 - 237.5 lb.
CoC #3 - 280 lb.
CoC #3.5 - 322.5 lb.
CoC #4 - 365 lb.

I started out with a CoC #1, and mastered it pretty easily. Then came the overtraining, the injuries, the illness, and the painful starting over. I have been back to using the grippers regularly for a while now, but at a much more sane level of intensity than before. I have been doing proper warm up sets, stretching my fingers out, and giving my hands time to rest between workouts... which is all stuff that is found in every training manual, but why would I listen to experts, right?

So with the hard lessons learned and the injuries behind me now, I've been making some progress. About a week ago I finally closed the CoC #2 with my left hand. That was an amazing feeling, since my left side in general has been seriously lagging behind in strength development and coordination (ask any of my handball partners about how my left hand is "my lucky fin").

That was a nice dose of confidence, so I started hitting the #2.5 pretty seriously with my right hand. I have been close to closing it for a few weeks now, and today was the day! At the beginning of my evening kettlebell workout, when my grip was rested and fresh, I gave it a try and the handles touched pretty easily. I tried it again about an hour later, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and I was able to close it again.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not really all that important that I can generate 237.5 lbs of crunch with my right hand, but it does feel good to reach one of my short term goals. Also, it makes me the bane of pickle jars the world over...