The original Gripper Guide focused on the beginnings of gripper training. In that post I used CoC grippers as my standard gripper (hence the table is based on CoC resistances only) and laid out some suggestions for picking resistances and how to train. The reason I use CoC is simple. They were among the first to take grippers to the next level and they have a very good product. This part of my guide is centered around the very first thing you will do in your grip training. Buying a gripper! I've also got some other training tidbits and advice thrown into the mix.

Casual Grip Training

For those that are not interested in peak crushing grip but have grown tired of the weak and easy department store grippers, this section is for you. Grippers may be an accessory as opposed to a necessity to you but you can still use the information here to find what you need. The key to casual grip training is to have a gripper, or grippers, that will challenge you but can be readily closed. You're not doing maximal work so you'll want something you can perform low rep sets (~4) now and higher rep sets (~10) down the road.

Even if you're only interested in a single gripper, you still want a quality gripper that won't season or weaken on you. That will compromise your progression. The cost of a gripper is anywhere from $10-50 dollars. I'm not suggesting you buy a $50 gripper but something of good quality in the $20 range will do. The good ones last a long time and are very consistent so why not pay an extra couple of bucks for quality and consistency? Between this article and my original Gripper Guide, even a casual grip trainer can find what they need.

Gripper Brands

Trying to find a brand of gripper can be a daunting task. There are many brands to choose from and unless you're into grip training it is hard to evaluate them. All of the heavy resistance grippers I've seen have a rating associated with them. While I'll be talking about ratings later on it's important to know two things before buying grippers: 1) What is my starting level? and 2) What are my short and long term goals? If the brand you are considering doesn't have resistances that satisfy these two questions, you should pick another brand.

Along the same lines, you can learn a lot by what products a company offers. For instance if you notice a particular company has 40 different grippers you should ask why you need so many grippers when other companies get by with less than 12. Gimmicks are prevalent when it comes to the fitness industry and grip training is no exception.

Examples of gimmicks:

* Grippers that have an extended handle for negatives…probably not the best way to spend your money.
* Chrome plated grippers. You're going to cover them with chalk, not put them on the hood of your car. Chrome is not a perfect alloy either, it can flake off and if it does you've got an unsightly gripper handle.
* Thicker handles. The only advantage to a thicker handle, in my opinion, is that the closing gap is smaller (proportional to the increase in handle size) but that also happens to be it's greatest weakness. Thicker handles have a more difficult starting position (hand is "more open") but I see no advantage to increasing the difficulty of a no-set close (setting defeats the purpose of having an open hand) at the expense of closing distance. Static holds are another story, but with a thick handled gripper you're moving into the realm of open hand supporting grip. Something that a gripper was not designed to train. Why not put that money towards a thick handle (i.e. Rolling Thunder or thick bar) instead?

While spotting gimmicks you should also be on the lookout for desirable traits. Like anything else you have to weigh the pros and cons.

Examples of desirable traits:

* Grip texture/knurling. The grips or texture of the handles is important. You don't want something so coarse that its going to rip your skin to shreds but at the same time you don't want a powder coated finish. IronMind's CoC gripper seems to be the middle road approach, while Heavy Grips and Beef Builders (and Mash Monster) represent a finer and coarser knurling, respectively.
* High level of quality control. It sounds dated but there are a lot of things that aren't built like they are in North America.
* Price. Dirt cheap grippers may not be the way to go and a 'top shelf' priced gripper may be equally as bad in terms of cost effectiveness.

When it comes time to build your gripper arsenal, try to pick a brand. Consistency makes progression easier and can save money on shipping costs. If you stick with the same brand you can also expect a similar performance over time. A set of cheap grippers will most likely become easier with time, while a set of good grippers will be the same from day 1 and onward. Mixing a cheap gripper in with good grippers may give you the illusion of progress as the cheap gripper becomes weaker while the stronger gripper remains the same. This is especially prevalent when your cheap gripper is in the mid-high range of resistance within your set. The nature of gripper training is patience, consistency, and a bit of creativity (and oh yeah, lots of chalk). You want to progress because your hands are stronger, not because your gripper is weaker.

If you do mix brands, it's best to keep the cheaper or lower quality grippers in the lowest range of resistance within your set. Use them for warmup and close each brand separately. Meaning if you have 3 from Brand A and 3 from Brand B, all 3 from Brand A should be closed before you move to Brand B. Purchase resistances accordingly.

Here's a barbell analogy to illustrate: You're goal is to deadlift 400lbs but everyday someone is filing off a bit of weight. One day you finally do it. Just because the marking on the barbell plates add up to 400lbs doesn't make it so.

Remember, the internet is a very useful tool. Doing a quick search of a gripper brand can lead you to customer reviews, FAQ's from the manufacturer, as well as vendors.

Left Handed Gripper

Recently I came across an ad for a "left handed" gripper. I covered the left handedness myth in a previous post titled Myths and Misconceptions: Torsion Springs, The Dog Leg, and 'Handedness' however that was geared towards the physics of a torsion spring and the forces you get in each handle. However in this ad the argument of varying ROMs arises. My first reaction was to agree with the claim however I had no concrete reasoning or science that could back it up. After some thought and some very informal 'scientific evaluation' (read: me closing a bunch of grippers with my left and right hand) I came to the conclusion that there may be a difference. What I also concluded was that this difference, if any, would be negligible. However I was not totally convinced so I contacted IronMind and in talking with Randall Strossen1 we both agreed that any difference would be negligible and would change neither the function of the gripper nor the resistance it took to close it.

The best analogy I can think of is a deadlift. Imagine we have a loaded barbell and one side is loaded with plates at their lower tolerance for weight (-2%) and the other at the ceiling (+2%). You perform the lift with the bar as is, but then you flip it for the next attempt. Overall the movement is the same and while there is a slight difference, the overall affect is the same. You wouldn't even know there was a difference.

Money is always a factor. For the same money you can buy two grippers of varying resistance or two grippers of the same resistance, one for each hand. If you have a set of four different resistances, you pay double for the novelty of having a gripper dedicated to each hand. Don't forget to label them either, lest you forget and close your left hand wound gripper with your left hand!

'N' Designation

Grippers with an 'N' designation typically mean that they are a Narrow spread (hence the N). What this means is that the handles, compared to a regular gripper, are closer together when the gripper is open. Originally I thought that the 'N' stood for Newtons and I'd hate for someone else to pay, literally, for that same mistake.

The advantage of a narrow gripper is that you don't have to set it. However, that is also it's greatest weakness since a no-set close doesn't allow the same ROM as a regular gripper. In my opinion the benefit of the no-set close ROM from a regular gripper is worth having to set a gripper once in a while. I don't find it difficult to set a gripper anyway so that isn't high on my list of desirable gripper characteristics.

Gripper Ratings

Every gripper has a rating. But what does that rating mean? During my conversation with Mr. Strossen we also discussed gripper ratings, more importantly their interpretation. If you have a 400lb barbell, you know what you've got, if you have a 240lb gripper…what does that mean? Couple that with the fact that evaluation techniques vary and you have a very muddied system for identifying the resistance level of a gripper. Case in point is Heavy Grips:

The above quote is taken directly from heavy grips' website. Without a standardized system I can produce a gripper which is tested at the base of the gripper (more specifically, the base of the handle) or at the top of the gripper. Both tests will produce drastically different results, proportional to the length of the handle. I can also report my results as a force (which some companies do) rather than a torque (which Heavy Grips prefers). Or I can modify my unit of measure for marketing purposes. ALL are legal as no standard exists to govern it. Looking at Heavy Grips again. Read the following three statements carefully. Pay attention to what they are actually saying about the resistance of their grippers.

In the first statement they state most strong people can do reps with the 150 and find the difficulty begins with the 200, meanwhile people of average hand strength have trouble closing the 200 for reps. Pay attention to this phrase from the third statement: "those with no grip training experience will most likely find it very difficult to close the HG200 at the beginning of their training".

Let us assume I have no experience with grippers. Reading those statements I would have no clue whether or not I should buy a 200. From my strength training I may consider myself a strong person of average hand strength but have never done any dedicated grip training. It boils down to this. Who can close a 200?

Aside from those contradictory statements, let's examine this quote: "When training their hand like other body-parts with reps under 20, most athletes, including women, are surprised at how fast they can master the HG 200 and HG250 and some athletes do reps with the HG 300 and HG 350."

Obviously the ratings system is very similar to the CoC grippers. Without going through their website and finding their unit of measure, you may assume that a HG 350 is a 350lb gripper. If you buy this gripper thinking you've got a #3.5-#4 CoC, you're mistaken. Units aside the quickest way to tell is right here: "some athletes do reps with the HG 300 and HG 350". A 300 is between a #3 and #3.5. People have enough trouble closing a 3, let alone repping with it. A #4 has only ever been 'officially' closed by 5 people!

I know I picked on Heavy Grips a bit. I have nothing against them, they just so happen to provide a good example for me to use.

Rather than compare a 100lb gripper to a 100lb gripper, or a 200lb gripper, it's easier to compare to a brand. Use the resistance, or certification system if possible, as a 'step in the right direction'. Couple that with a bit of research on the manufacturer, some customer reviews, and you have a gripper for your skill level. If you mix, fit your grippers into your training and progression based on the relative resistances within your set. Just remember what I said earlier about mixing brands.

I dream that one day there will be a unified method for evaluating a gripper's resistance, but until that day I'll stick with my favorite brand. :)

Seasoning

Seasoning has been around for a while. The idea behind it is that a gripper's resistance and spread will decrease over a certain amount of closes. To have a consistent resistance/performance, and a means of measuring progress, it is supposedly required to season your gripper. If you imagine having to season a No. 3, or even 4, level of resistance…Seasoning becomes daunting as those grippers are no easy task to close, even with two hands. Not to mention the fact that seasoning occurs (if you believe the legends) after approximately 100 closes.

My personal view is that it has no place in today's grippers. There is a marriage between material and design. The result of a bad marriage is a divorce. You pair a gripper designed for X amount of resistance but the material is not truly saying "I do", you get a gripper with a first time promise and a life time of shortcomings.

Of course, this wouldn't be a gripper article without some solid math and science. So here goes. The whole idea of seasoning is that over time the spring will lose strength and the gap will decrease a bit. The end result is a gripper with a shorter set and a weakened resistance, neither of which are a good thing. Why does this happen? It goes back to the altar (the marriage analogy). A proper design would ensure that the spring remained within the elastic range of stresses on the material's stress-strain curve. If the spring were improperly designed, then every time you closed the gripper it would exceed the elastic range ever so slightly. Every time you exceed that range, you get plastic deformation (read: permanent, unrecoverable movement). In the case of a gripper the handles no longer sit as far apart as they used to.

Resistance loss comes in because it is now easier to strain the gripper. Suppose the first time you close your gripper it starts at 0 strain and at close it reaches a strain of X and a stress of Y. This is slightly outside the elastic range. When you close it a second time it is already at a non-zero level of strain and to increase it to a strain of X takes less stress (for arguments sake, this is the resistance), owing to the non-zero strain component.

Graphically, our initial gripper is represented (below) by the black curve and upon closing reaches the red line. Upon the second close the gripper now takes on the dashed line. Drawing a line from the black-red intersection to the dashed line we have the vertical gray line representing equal strain values. Looking at the blue line we see the reduction in strength (the distance between the red and blue lines).

Now, this does not have to occur right away. It can occur after several uses. In fact I've exaggerated the effect in the above curve for ease of interpretation. This can be due to the endurance limit of the steel, which falls under the fatigue properties of the material. In a nutshell, everything has a limit as to how many times you can apply a certain stress. Think of a paper clip. You can bend it all the way back and forth only a few times before it breaks or quite a few times if you only bend it a little bit. The stresses in the latter are less, thus more cycles can be performed. The endurance limit refers to the minimum level of stress at which, theoretically, infinite cycles can be performed without failure occurring. Continually stressing a material, slightly above the endurance limit stress, will still allow the material to exhibit a large number of cycles before failure but each cycle is 'taking something' from the material performance. Don't be concerned that your gripper will break after 10 closes, fatigue cycles just about the endurance limit of steel can be in the millions.

Degradation over time can also be explained by the fact that plastic strains are very small. Along the same lines as looking in the mirror. If you're gaining or losing weight and using the mirror everyday you won't see a change but if you look at a before and after photo the difference is usually quite visible. Chronic exposure and slight differences make it very difficult to notice long term changes.

Seasoning may have been meant for steel which was not up to today's standards of quality control or as a means of justifying the use of cheap steel or improper design. With today's technology there is no reason why a gripper cannot perform its task well within the elastic range of stresses and strains. Thus making your gripper perform the same from day 1 to day 1000. To use ANOTHER barbell analogy: Think of 2 barbells. One is top quality and the other is cheaply made, both are calibrated to Olympic standards. You put 400lbs on each bar and the chances of the cheap one bending, permanently, are pretty good. You put even more on and the cheap one is frowning while the top quality one is straight as an arrow.

Hand Extensions

We endeavour to find balance in our regular gym training. Matching push and pull, chest and back, quads and hamstrings, but sometimes forget that opening the hand is the opposite, antagonist, of closing the hand. To keep your hands and grip healthy you need to train both functions of the hand. Problems in your hand can lead to problems in your wrist, your forearm, and even your bicep! If you don't believe me then you haven't got a copy of the trigger point manual by Claire Davies.

Extensions are simple exercises and not as boring as you might think. In my previous Gripper Guide article I mentioned using pails/buckets of sand or rice and working the hands that way. I also mentioned broccoli elastics (simply thick rubber bands) and to illustrate the technique Anuj (aka Wolf) has made a video demonstrating the exercise:

The beauty of using elastic bands is that micro loading is very easy. Placing the elastic closer to the base of the fingers provides the least resistance while placing them at the tip provides the most. When one elastic becomes too easy but 2 is too difficult, you can place one at the regular distance and the other closer to the base of the fingers. Don't forget about regular elastic bands either. They're a light resistance and you can add just about as many as you can keep in place.

Static Holds

I mentioned using grippers to perform static holds in my first gripper guide. While I stand by that recommendation there are a couple of things I would like to explain further. Static holds can damage the skin and tissue of your hands. I suffered a particularly nasty injury trying to squeeze a couple of seconds after I began to lose my grip. The gripper shifted slightly as it opened my hand and the result was a missing patch of skin between my pinky's 1st and 2nd knuckle. Lesson learned. Stop shy of failure or if you feel the gripper begin to slip. Grippers are different than a static barbell hold because a barbell doesn't push back like a gripper does.

Another solution I have found is to wear a leather palm work glove. It protects your hand. It's not 'legal' but since you're working supporting grip and you're not in a competition setting, who cares. :)

Even something as minor as a blister can interfere with your grip training. Regular barbell and dumbbell style training may not suffer since you can just resort to gloves and straps, but it sure has a way of messing with your grip training schedule.

As always thank you for reading. If you have any questions or comments (or if you would like to debate my explanations), please feel free to comment as either a guest or a user.

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by JoeWeir

In Part 1 we talked about planning and material selection, in part 2 we're going to talk about the design and construction aspects.

Let's get right to it.

Know Your Building Material

This is a crucial point, well one of them. Every material has a weakness. There is not one super material. Commonly used materials include Steel, Wood, Concrete, and Polymers/Plastics.

Steel

Steel is as close as you'll get to a super material but it still has its weaknesses. Welds are often susceptible to stress concentrations and weakness. Solid pieces of steel are usually bullet proof and where things typically fail is at a joint, hole or weld. Steel can still wear and fatigue which makes it susceptible to failure and sometimes the repair or replacement can be tricky depending on how you've designed/manufactured the piece.

Wood

The strength of wood depends on the orientation of the grain. When the stresses are distributed parallel to the grain, wood is at it strongest. This is just fancy talk for "go with the grain". If you're going to use a piece of wood for pinching deadlift, or lift exercises you should orient the wood so that the grain direction is vertical, not horizontal. Wood wears very easily and thus is not a good candidate for mechanical equipment. Wood with large dimensions (6x6 and up) can make a decent sled though.

Cementitious Materials

Ceramics, concrete, brick and cementitious materials alike are brittle materials. They are not very robust when it comes to impact resistance, meaning if you drop it or expect to drop it don't be surprised if it chips or fractures. I haven't found any uses for concrete, aside from the floor, in a home gym. The cost, labour intensiveness, sheer mass and lack of impact resistance make it a very niche material. Making a kettlebell or blob (or similar grip training implement) requires the ability to not only make spherical moulds/forms but also to ensure they are free of voids and finished with a surface that looks like glass. I'm also aware you could make rectangular kettlebells but then you have the bulky shape and the worry over chipping corners and edges.

Atlas stones are an exception to this rule because of their dimensions, mass, and spherical shape. Chipping usually occurs at an edge/corner whereas fracturing usually occurs at the smallest cross section. Examining the shape of the Atlas stone, there are no corners or edges and right away we've sidestepped that. The mass of the stone means that it will, 99.9% of the time, damage what its dropped on with only minor superficial damage to the stone. In order to fracture a stone we'd have to split it. The large diameter of the stone gives it a large cross sectional area and therefore a large resistance to a tensile/splitting failure.

Tension is a particularly weak aspect of these materials. I mentioned that an atlas stone had a large resistance to tensile failure. Seems contradictory but the Atlas stone does not gain its strength from the material, it gains its strength from the amount of material. Meaning that a smaller diameter Atlas stone would be more susceptible to splitting than a larger diameter one. Unless there is a lot of material there won't be much tensile resistance. In layman's terms this means you shouldn't be pulling on them; meaning you shouldn't make a concrete loading pin.

Olympic Loading Pin

Why is a concrete loading pin a bad idea? A Loading Pin, on the right, has a shaft and a base. Plates get loaded onto the shaft and when you lift it the base lifts the plates up. From a technical standpoint this means that there is pure axial tension in the shaft and shear in the base (not the same as axial tension but produces a similar effect). From a practical standpoint the strength of these materials is in compression and using it to resist tension is extremely inefficient. With the limitation of a 2" shaft (plates have to fit over it after all) there isn't a lot of room for massive dimensions.

For any of you who are familiar with concrete, I realize you could make a reinforced concrete loading pin or simply a reinforced base with a large diameter reinforcing bar serving as the shaft. BUT anchorage of the shaft is difficult unless you weld something for mechanical anchorage. That combined with the reinforcing and form work makes it more feasible to just weld some steel together and make it all out of steel. Who knows, you may chip an edge on your first bad attempt. Building a loading pin out of reinforced concrete is not a good idea in terms of durability or strength.

Polymers/Plastics

Plastics/Polymers aren't typically used for 'heavy' exercises although they can be used as handles. When using any sort of polymer, bolt holes are weak planes as are bearing areas, particularly edges where chain or rope are in loaded contact.

Regardless of the material you use, endeavour to know when/where it is strong and when/where it is weak. I'm not suggesting you pull out a calculator and crunch the numbers, you can over design just about any piece of DIY equipment without any math.

The Weakest Link

We all know the phrase "only as strong as the weakest link" and this is for good reason…It's absolutely true!

Joints

Think of 2 pieces of steel butted together (butt joint) with a couple strips of some good ole packing tape. Now we grab each piece of steel and pull, as if we're trying to create a gap in the butt joint. Obviously the steel is not going to fail! The tape is going to either peel off or break with failure right at that joint and the steel just going along for the ride and .

Failure will ALWAYS occur where the resistance is lower than applied force and this typically occurs within a very localized area.
That being said, joints are typical weak points. I wouldn't recommend using anything with a wood joint, unless it is a very lightly loaded piece of equipment. Steel joints are typically welded.

Dimension Effects

Let's take 2 pieces of different diameter pipe, slide one pipe a few inches into the other, and weld them together. Let's also assume that the joint is as strong as the larger diameter pipe. Now we try and pull them apart. The larger diameter pipe and the weld would be fine but the smaller diameter pipe would break because it's weaker than the larger diameter pipe and the joint. The failure of the smaller pipe would also most likely occur around the area of the joint. Weaknesses commonly occur at places where dimensions change abruptly or where they are the smallest.

For another example we can simply take a piece of chain. One of the links in the chain is substantially smaller than the others. If we pull on this chain hard enough the smallest link will eventually break because it isn't as big as the other links.

Bolts & Holes

Holes or places where material has been removed are weak areas. This subtly ties in with the abrupt dimension change that I mentioned but also opens the door for bolts. Bolts can also be weak areas. Its a bit of a catch 22. If you drill a small hole you retain the strength of what you drilled in to but you have a very small bolt. If you drill a large hole you will have a very strong bolt but you remove a lot of material from the thing you drilled. The trick is to get a happy medium between bolt size and the amount of material you remove.

Designing

A good starting point for DIY equipment is to pick up a catalog, do a google search or visit a manufacturer's website. I'm not saying that you blatantly copy someone else's design, but that is usually the easiest way. Manufacturer's websites can be the most helpful. Just take a look at the item and brainstorm from there.

When looking at any design or the manufacturer's design always think of where you can add strength. Generally you cannot take away strength but more often than not you can add strength. Even if you cannot 'out-do' the manufacturer's claims, you can figure out where your construction may be weakest or where you may want to have some extra peace of mind.

I have a Rolling Thunder deadlift handle and a carabiner from IronMind, however I made my own loading pin. The base of my loading pin is about 2-3" of solid steel. I can drop that until I'm blue in the face and it will keep smiling at me. With the added thickness I don't have to worry about it dropping funny either. It always lands on the base and very quickly finds vertical. I don't have to worry about dropping it cockeyed on a plate (and possibly damaging my pin or plate) or having it roll onto my foot.

The loop at the top of my loading pin, where I attach the handle, is made from a small diameter piece of rebar and has some ribs on it. The ribs on the bar would undoubtedly cause excessive wear and premature life span of my carabiner. So to prevent this I bought a steel shackle and now that takes the wear from the rebar and allows me to hook my carabiner onto something. You may be wondering why I didn't just attach the handle right to the shackle and the answer to that is because the shackle is a hard steel whereas the deadlift handle is either at par or a slight bit harder. If I attached the shackle right to the handle it could wear out my handle! The carabiner seems to me made from a soft metal and so far there are a few wear marks on it and none on my handle.

Simple Training Sled

Examining a sled, the rails and the point where you attach your harness are going to be taking a lot of abuse. The loading pin can also take some abuse depending on how much weight is on it. The rails obviously take a beating because they're being dragged along the ground and the attachment point will wear because of movement or excessive stress. A lot of people use sleds outdoors and on grassy surfaces, parking lots, some even use sand (think of sand paper on the rails of your sled). Uneven surfaces or jerky movements can wear out that attachment point because of the continual shifting, can damage your loading pin because of all the plates shifting around, and can wear down or damage the rails. Those 3 points are important places to reinforce.

As you can see, durability (and the ability to take a bit of abuse) is a pretty big one for me. I don't want to spend a lot of time and effort in something only to have it break because I dropped it, was too aggressive with it or used it too much! For that reason I typically make things heavier and bigger (thicknesses, welds, etc) than they need to be.

When adding strength or reinforcing something the answer is usually to add more material. A bigger piece of steel is stronger than a smaller one. When it comes to durability (reinforcing wear points) there are a couple options. We can add material so that there is more to wear, you can control what wears and make sure that whatever wears out is easily repaired/replaced and economical. In the deadlift handle example I used the latter of the two, a shackle costs about 50 cents. I can afford to wear out at least 6 of them.

For impact resistance for a log, you can simply wrap some rope around the ends. Because of the way the weight is distributed the log will either fall straight down or on one of the ends. Wrapping the ends with rope safeguards against, approximately, 99.9% of the ways it can land, unless you caber toss it..To protect your equipment from damage due to missed attempts or dropping, etc. reinforce/cushion the points which will bear the impact.

Existing Equipment Modifications

Take a sled for example. You don't like the way the rails are performing, maybe the sled is upsetting if it goes over a bump or uneven ground. If the rails were bolted rather than welded it would make it a lot easier to put a new set of rails on. You should try and make your equipment in such a way that you can change it or modify it once it's been in use. You may find one area that could be improved and its always nice to be able to just improve it rather than start from scratch.

Hopefully you find that your training involves heavier and heavier weights or more and more demand out of your equipment. Today you may design a log capable of going up to 260lbs but one day you might be able to do 280lbs. While that would be a great day, it would suck to have to re-make or buy a new log. By the same token you may find that you made something too heavy. Being able to shave a couple of pounds of it means the difference between starting over and starting to use it.

Now that I've finished boring you about general material properties and design I'm going to be concluding this series with some DIY examples. It will be some of my stuff plus some of the stuff I've seen on the web. If you have any suggestion or question….my comments section gets lonely sometimes, feel free to keep it company.

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by JoeWeir

Recently I've been getting involved in more and more aspects of grip training and strongman training however, these endeavors require specialty equipment at times. Anyone that has ever looked at buying training equipment knows that it can get expensive in a hurry, even for a couple of seemingly small things. The shear cost of equipment, combined with the fact that shipping to Canada can be just as much money as the item you're buying, has sent me into the workshop to build my own equipment. This series of articles will serve as a general overview to building your own equipment. I'll include a basic outline of how to come up with ideas, how to build, tools that you may need, building materials, etc. and I will do my best to make it as comprehensive as possible.

I'm going to set this guide up as a series of posts for easy reference so keep an eye out for future articles. They'll be indexed on my sidebar similar to the Grip It Series.

Before I begin I want to state the most important rule. Always fabricate and use your equipment SAFELY. Safety is the biggest issue when using your equipment and always assume it can/will break! The information contained in this post and other posts of this nature are just that, information. Use this information and any manufactured equipment at your own risk. Ground Up Strength, its' owners, and I (Joe Weir) are not liable for personal or property damage due to equipment misuse, equipment failure, or the use of the information presented herein.

Let's get building!

Planning and Feasibility

I lied, we're not building yet, before we think about building anything its a good idea to sit down (or stand if you prefer) and think about what purpose or need we're trying to serve and if our plan satisfies it.

• Will this idea work? Is it feasible?

We don't want to build something that won't work! You want an olympic barbell but they're expensive…So you replicate one using a piece of lumbar and a lathe. I've set up a table to be sort of a checklist for the equipment we're considering and I've put our wooden barbell into the table below:

For your convenience a blank copy of this table can be found here.

• Is there room for me to progress?

Suppose you want to build a military press log. You build a log that weighs 140lbs but you're not able to add any extra weight to it. You manage to perform singles with the log but in a few weeks the weight is no longer challenging. Keep the idea of progression in the design. In the case of a log, loading pins on the ends of the log allow you to add plates to the log.

• Is this representative of the equipment I'm emulating?

This is a big one. Suppose you're building a loading pin, but when it is completed you find that it is much too tall. Its so tall that when a handle is attached you can readily grab it from a standing position, making it impossible to do any sort of deadlift style pulling. This also ties into the first point of "will it work".

• How much will this cost? Will it cost more than just buying the item?

Usually you build something because it is too expensive to purchase. If you're building something that will cost more than just buying it, it's probably not worth it. The exception would be if you're building something because you want an improved design or an added feature that isn't part of the original equipment.

• Is it an appropriate starting intensity?

Going back to the log example. If you can military press 140lbs but you make a log that weighs 240lbs…doesn't make much sense. Its good to have that long term goal of pressing a 240lb log but rather than start at that weight, build a log that is an appropriate intensity when unloaded but make it capable of being loaded with an extra 100lbs.

• Can you build it?

If it you build it, they will come. No, I don't mean Kevin Costner, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the voice of Darth Vader. I mean the ambulance. If you aren't confident in the fact that you can build or have built a safe and reliable piece of equipment… DON'T BUILD IT! and if it's already built DON'T USE IT! Get a skilled worker to do the tricky stuff for you or just bite the bullet and buy the item. In the end the risk vs reward is not worth it if there is a chance for personal injury or property damage.

After we've figured out that it is feasible to make this piece of equipment and that we can in fact build it we need to think about what types of material we would like to use.

Material Selection

A few things go into material selection:

1) Is the material strong enough?

If you remember our wooden barbell example, we don't want to build with a weak material. Let me rephrase that, we don't want to try and achieve strength with a material that is not strong in that particular configuration. From a safety standpoint we want as much strength as possible. Steel is the preferable choice because of its strength.

2) Is the material an appropriate weight?

Suppose you read my post about the crosswise brick exercise and decided to give it a shot. You don't want to buy the 'brick' from IronMind because you can get the material to do it for free. In this case material strength is not as big of a factor as the weight is. A solid steel 'brick' would survive nuclear holocaust, too bad we could never lift it from the table. A steel 'brick' will definitely work but it would need to be a hollow, thin walled, piece of steel. Another solution to this problem, a much lighter solution in fact, is to use a piece of wood and some galvanized pipe similar to the photo below.

Wooden Hermann Goerner Brick with a Galvanized Pipe Loading Peg

I'll explain what materials are needed and how to build this particular piece of equipment in Part 3.

3) Is the material easy to work with? Do you have the proper tools?

If you haven't got the tools, or access to them, to work with the material it doesn't make sense to try and make something with that material. Steel is an easy material to work with but not if you don't have a welder or a grinder. Threaded rods and chains can go a long way in the absence of proper metal working equipment. Going back to the idea of making a loading pin we have 2 approaches. We can use a piece of pipe and weld a base onto the pipe OR instead of a pipe you can use a large diameter threaded rod, some large washers or flat piece of steel and some fasteners. The main difference is that the first method requires a welder, the second requires a wrench.

4) Is the material durable and resilient?

Everyone loves the farmer's walk. Suppose you make a pair out of concrete (yes, I have done this). You get tons of weight and you can cast handles into the blocks of concrete and pins onto the ends. It is actually a very easy way to make some heavy farmers handles. However, if the concrete is a bit weak or you use them on a hard surface…dropping one can cause some damage…to everything. Aside from splitting in two or damaging the surface your using them on, chipping the edges or corners will change the weight of the implement. While it is an easy way to make some farmer's blocks, they're not as resilient as a pair of compressed gas cylinders (no gas of course, filled with water or sand (or both) and with pins welded to the ends).

5) How much does it cost and is it readily available?

If you want to build a log there are pretty much 2 choices, steel or wood. If you have a nice looking tree, the log cost is pretty much zero. If you can get some old compressed gas cylinder, you can make a log relatively cheaply. In this case, assuming you can work equally with both materials, material choice is dependent on what you can get your hands on for the lowest price.

Here's another example. Let's look at a pillar of pain, which is basically a pipe filled with water. My material choice would be a 6" watermain pipe. It's heavy, durable, and easy to work with. You can even make them into a log because the pipe walls are thick enough to support installing a pair of steel handles. However, not all suppliers will sell to the general public and I would not trust that thin wall ABS plastic pipe from the hardware store.

6) Does the material match the purpose?

This ties in with some of the other things I've said but consider this. We're building a hub. We have a couple of choices. We can make it from a piece of steel, copying the IronMind design, or use a hockey puck (rubber). The benefit of the hockey puck is that it is already the right dimensions and it is dirt cheap. The downside is that just about all pucks have a texture. Texture and the rubber gives you an inherent advantage over a steel hub. Steel hubs can be painted to decrease friction or even powder coated like the IronMind version. That gives steel a distinct advantage in terms of the difficulty level you can achieve.

A very good method of material selection that I did not mention is to simply copy what manufacturers use. It worked for them so it will probably work for you. The exception of course is if you can't work with the material, you can't get it, or you can't make it cost efficient by using that material.

In this post we discussed some of the planning and material selection aspects. In the next post I'll be getting into the good stuff, design and construction.

Comments

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by JoeWeir

I came across this video on youtube this morning. All I can say is WOW! That is some pretty serious grip strength. The one point in the video where he is holding the flange of the plate I thought he was going to do a plate flip but then he pulls off that mid air hub grab. Awesome!

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by JoeWeir

Well, it goes a bit deeper than that, I actually love weighted vertical pulling (that's my fancy term for chinups and pullups with a weight belt strapped to my waist).

So many people, myself included, started out with lat pulldowns and didn't give a seconds thought to doing pullups. Having been converted from a lat blaster on the pulldowns to a weighted pullup junkie, I can honestly tell you that I will never go back to the pulldown machine even if one day I can only do a single pullup. (At which point I will be revisiting this article)

But why do I have so much love for vertical pulls? Let me count (or maybe list) the reasons:

They're hard!

Vertical pulling can be a big challenge even without the added external resistance. It took me quite a while before I could pull off any bigger sets and with the added weight it makes it even more of a physical challenge! Plus who doesn't like strapping an unholy amount of weight onto themselves?

They encourage good form

Take a look at the guys doing lat pulldowns, maybe even yourself. The handle is attached to a cable or belt and you can change the angle to whatever you like. A vertical pull is just that, vertical. Pretty soon people are pulling on most of the stack but the angle of the pull is not 90 degrees, to the horizontal, (or close to 90) its 110, 120, maybe even 130 degrees and that, my friends, is not proper technique. Changing that angle changes the muscles you're using, in this case it allows you to recruit more of those bigger muscles we use for horizontal pulls (i.e. Rows). In many cases these muscles are stronger and at the very least it takes some pressure off the muscles that are supposed to be working. And of course there is always the ever popular technique of back extension/leveraging.

I've seen some pretty crazy attempts at making pullups 'easier'. These include torso inclines (same idea as changing the cable angle, except your doing it with your body), swinging (like on a swing set) and kicking (call them extreme butterfly pullups if you like but I call them something else that starts with 'bu' :) ), to name a few. While these still allow you to change the difficulty of the pullup, they're extremely difficult to do with any sort of weight strapped to you. The weight encourages a vertical position and swinging the weight (by either kicking or swinging your legs) seems to make the exercise harder. Its also a good way to injure yourself, especially the abdomen and groin.

But all of this stuff about cheating is overshadowed by the benefits a proper pullup provides in terms of the scapula and lower trapezius. Benefits which carry over to essentially everything involving the upper back and a stable shoulder girdle.

They're good for you

As I just mentioned they're good for a lot of muscles which aren't visible on the beach.

If you spend countless hours shrugging things on 'back day' then chances are your lower traps need some loving. Getting a nice full pullup with plenty of retraction encourages the lower traps to function correctly and offsets the overworked upper traps.

We're all familiar with problems that can occur when the antagonist-protagonist relationship is severely unbalanced. Good routines will balance pushing and pulling or antagonist and protagonist. If you bench (we all do) you need to balance that with horizontal pulling (rows). Something that is often overlooked is vertical push/pull. Just about everyone does military presses or some form of it but what do you do to balance that? The answer is, obviously, to do vertical pulling.

Nobody wants unstable shoulders or an unstable back. Stable shoulders require the scapula to be abducted and depressed. If you're upper trap dominant it may be difficult to obtain or maintain that depression. Likewise with abduction. If your shoulders are rounded forward and you have poor scapula function, well…horizontal pressing relies on scapula function, horizontal pulling (done correctly) relies on scapula function, deadlifts and squats (especially overheads) rely on it as well. And your lats are more than just for doing lat spreads. They stabilize the thoracic region of your back. We can all appreciate the ability to have a stable thoracic spine when doing any sort of heavy row, horizontal press, squats (especially front) or deadlift.

Most of us are familiar with open vs closed chain exercises but, because I like to beat dead horses, pullups and chinups are CLOSED, pulldowns are OPEN. If you conquer pullups, you conquer the pulldown. The converse, however, is not true.

BICEPS

Many exercises involve elbow extension and those seem to be the most popular among beginners. To balance it with more than just bicep curls, vertical pulling will do the trick. Chinups are very good for bicep development and pullups are right behind it. Ever remember hearing people talk about not doing direct arm work. This is part of that. Heavy pulls do the trick and I've found that they're better than doing bicep curls. In a recent discussion with Eric Troy, he mentioned how doing bicep curls AFTER pullups or chinups actually increased the amount of weight he was able to curl, I've noticed this in my training as well. One thing that Eric also noticed was that performing curls BEFORE doing pullups DID NOT help his pullups. We all know raising your curling weight is good for bicep growth. If that hasn't sold you, you must be out of my price range.

To finish this post off I pose a question. Would you rather pulldown a stack that is twice your bodyweight (which we know isn't REALLY twice, damned pullies) or would you rather strap on a belt loaded with your bodyweight (or perhaps a friend of a similar bodyweight) and do a single pullup? I won't give you my answer….I'm biased.

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by JoeWeir