Grippers

At the same time, interest in grippers that challenged even the strongest people in the world broadened beyond audiences directly involved with training or physical performance,[11] and have been reported on in such publications as The Sacramento Bee,[12] and BusinessWeek.

[13] Grippers come in a range of strengths, suitable for everyone from beginners to World's Strongest Man winners, such as Magnus Samuelsson, whose YouTube video clip closing the No.

4,[17] Closing grippers of this strength level has been compared to crushing a raw potato in one's bare hand.

Historically, users trained with grippers by doing high repetitions, but it has been argued that while this was necessary in the days before more challenging grippers were available, this is an inefficient way to increase strength, and that lower repetitions are preferred, consistent with other strength-training protocols[20][21] Joe Kinney, the first man certified for closing the Captains of Crush No.

[24][25] Randall Strossen has argued that the generally accepted principles of effective strength training apply to grippers, just as they do to any other movement.

[10] Grippers are commonly rated in such units as pounds per square inch to inch-pounds to inches, but arguments have been presented that in many cases these numbers have little real meaning and in all cases they are not as transparent as the label (in pounds or kilos) on a barbell plate, so they should be viewed with caution.

[10] Similarly, “calibration” is sometimes misused, as when a gripper is rated, whether subjectively[31] or objectively,[32] Instead of made to conform to an external standard.

Others have argued that grippers are symmetric with regard to forces applied to the handles and that the dogleg is another myth, and this has been demonstrated with an analysis of the underlying physics,[34] but the concepts remain in use.