I have always been a BIG fan of grip strength. I have never met someone with strong hands and a weak body. It NEVER works. Strongs hands = strong man, period!
In the world of grip, you know of Smitty and Jedd from The Diesel Crew and John Brookfield who has been featured on the Iron Mind web site for years and has also created a system of training called Battling Ropes (http://powerropes.com).
I have a 60' Battling Rope at The Underground Strength Gym and man does this thing kick your ass up and down the street! John calls this velocity training, because it is ALL output.
We use this with all our athletes, and, like I told John, if I had a bigger place, we would have several ropes layed out at all times, ready to go.
The thing I like about the ropes is that they go BEYOND being only a grip tool. I have only just begun to delve into this system John has put together, there are endless variations to these ropes, but the few that we are currently using are doing lots of damage 🙂 In a good way, that is!
A few sets of 15 - 20 seconds of work for a total of 2 - 3 minutes has been plenty to slow down even our toughest athletes.
If you're looking to ramp up your workouts and want to try something high octane, check out the Battling Ropes.
I'll be bringing them out to play for my athletes this week, especially our Football players. I see too many strong Football players with not enough conditioning. When conditioning goes, strength goes and then all the strength in the world means nothing.
Check out the video below of John using a 2" thick battling rope doing a test called "The Tsunami". It's WAY harder than it looks!
Stay tuned, as I'll be getting an audio interrogation with John Brookfield soon enough 🙂
If you have specific questions for him, feel free to post them in the comments sections below 🙂
In Strength,
--Zach--
P.S. - A perfect compliment to John's Battling Ropes is the compilation of Grip Experts, Click HERE to check it out.
One Response
I’m gonna bring these battling ropes in to my classes this coming year!
Awesome!