[quote]irfhdah wrote:
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
[quote]as wrote:
Question for Thibs but first I’d like to say wow Matt that seems pretty impressive.
Thibs, I just tried 4 sets of farmers walks the other day for first time in my life. I could barely hang on to the 70’s for 1 min walks because my forearms were about to explode. Are my forearms as weak as I think they are or is matt kind of strong?
I also tried to keep rest intervals at 90 secs which really had me gasping. I thought my conditioning was decent from constant 20 rep breathing squats.
Anyway I really want to improve on these so my question for Thibs is what kind of weight and time length of carries and rest periods and amount of sets should I be shooting for. I obviously want to improve my grip strength but my first goal is conditioning and recomp but still want to add some muscle.
I know it’s a tall order with conflicting goals so I guess my question is what is bet combo of sets and time intervals to get the best bang for my buck. Also what is a decent strength level of weight I should be using on these dumbells. thanks
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I find that grip strength is mostly a neural thing and it improves FAST. Think about it, it’s not like you have a ton of muscle mass on your fingers and hands and it’s not a place where you can really pile on a lot of mass. So strength increases are mostly neural, which happen very fast. I’ll give you an example. For year I used straps in my training. I reasoned that I had no intention on competing in anything so I couldn’t case less about grip strength. Well, when I high pulled 180kg it got me motivated to work on my olympic lifts again… well, despite high pulling 180kg I couldn’t snatch 60kg because I would lose my grip!!! I focused on improving grip strength for 10 days and now I can hold on to anything, my grip will not fail.
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I also suggest working on the hook grip. It’s uncomfortable at first but it will make a HUGE difference in your capacity to hold on to barbells and dumbbells. It wont make your grip strength higher, but it will make your grip almost as strong as straps.
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The first time I did long distance farmer’s walk I could barely open my hands as the hand and my forearm felt like splitting open because of the pump… it gets better
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I don’t like to talk about good weights because it doesn’t matter what others are doing, it’s about improvement.[/quote]
I like to use the farmers walk to give me a grip workout as well as the other benefits it has. Won’t using a hook grip diminish the effectiveness of the walk on grip strength?[/quote]
Yes and no.
With a hook grip, you still have to hold the weight with your hands whereas the straps do most of the work for you. Your four fingers still have to hold on tight to the bar when doing a hook grip, especially the first two (or three depending on hand size) that have to keep the thumb pinned to the bar.
The hook grip helps by drastically reducing the tendency of the bar to roll thus opening your fingers, but it’s still your muscles doing the work.
But ask any good strongman competitor (who do a lot of grip work); there are different types of grip strength… crushing strength, holding strength, pinching strength. The hook grip is not ideal to build crushing and pinching strength since the thumb doesn’t do much work. But it does work holding strength.
Then again I’m of the school of thought that you shouldn’t try to do everything with one tool (the “don’t use the hammer to do everything when building a house” phenomenon). So if you decide to do farmer’s walk ask yourself why you are doing them first and foremost… if it’s to gain strength and lose fat do the things that will allow you to get the biggest benefits in those areas, even if it means doing additional grip work.