Today I was passing by my old middle school
that I used to attend back in the late 80's.
Wow that was a long time ago.
I remember listening to music on casette for crying
out loud. I also remembered a guy who was
a bit scarey to me and my friends yet I was
totally intrigued by him.
It just hit me today after all these years because
I passed by his house last night.
After school, while walking home, there was a house
around the corner from the middle school.
The driveway had a few barbells laying around, except
these were not your ordinary barbells. They were cement
weights with steel rims.
Not sure how the heck they were made, but there were
cement wheels pretty much welded onto these poles,
aka "barbells".
The guy was often training with someone else, maybe his Dad
or Uncle, but one was younger, maybe in his mid 20's and the other seemed to be around 50 or so.
All they did was the deadlift.
They would grab the "pole" with an over - under grip, deadlift
for 1 rep and then put it down. Both guys took turns and my friends and I all gathered and watched them for a few minutes before we all split up and headed home.
These guys even trained in the Winter.
I remember them wearing work gloves to keep their hands warm while lifting, but they probably didn't know it, wearing work gloves (the kind you can get at Home Depot) makes gripping a weight much harder.
These guys were pretty damn strong, and it's funny, looking back and seeing how they did single rep sets of the deadlift and nothing else. This was a sure fire way to develop incredible strength and rugged muscle, yet you never heard of this stuff back when FLEX magazine was telling me how to train.
Maybe they had more equipment in the house, who knows, but man, they were on to something. The deadlift is an incredible full body lift, adding work gloves turns it into an awesome grip + full body lift.
If you wanna be strong, then deadlift heavy.
If you wanna jack up your entire body, especially your legs, back and grip...deadlift heavy.
If you wanna add a truly challenging grip element then try heavy deadlifts with work gloves.
Go Get Em'!
In Strength,
Zach Even - Esh
P.S. - Those strength freaks knew that developing all around strength and incredible grip strength went beyond hand and grip specific movements. They knew it required movements that worked the entire body PLUS the grip.
Check out what some more Freaks put together in this compilation of grip and strength training methods that will have you breaking records in no time over at http://GripExperts.com
2 Responses
I am going to buy workgloves soon.
Those concrete barbells, from what I understand, are actually very easy to make. You simply get two containers of the same size, fill one with wet concrete (after spraying silicon or something on the inside) and let it dry, place one end of the pole deep in the container and let it dry. Remove the container and repeat for the other side.
So yeah, its basically like making atlas stones with a strong pole between them. ^^
Maybe you should try it Zach, that is, if you ever find this comment. xD