Here it is as promised. This is one of the main ways Mr. Stapleton trained his grip to be like a vise. (I labeled it before I knew he didn't keep any secrets lol)
So as you saw in my previous post on the last page I just used a cleaned out 1 gallon coconut oil bucket.
I filled that with 1 smaller bag of black beans for the bottom and 1 big bag of rice. Sorry, I didn't pay attention to exactly how much. Just fill it up enough so that rice isn't spilling out of it when you use it. I showed Mr. Stapleton this one and he said it was perfect for beginners and would even work just fine if it's all you used. Light weight, high reps is his philosophy.
I love it because it's so simple and clever and it's super duper cheap and accessible for the vast majority to make.
To use it, you place your hand over the bucket and slowly lower your hand down into the rice. wiggle your fingers back and forth in order to reach the bottom of the bucket. Though you will be using a lot of the muscles all the way up your arm, DON'T use the
weight your arm or body to help push your hand down. Let it sink to the bottom with the weight of your hand only as you move your fingers and thumb.
When I use it, I sit or stand, but I will always have the bucket propped up on something so that I can have my arm and wrist to my side as straight as possible so that my arm isn't resting on or touching the sides of the bucket when I'm using it. For me when I'm sitting, this means setting the rebounder next to the chair (Note, we don't have any thick chairs like lazy boys. Just a glider and some thinner deck and dinning room chairs. I use the glider for this just fine. It's wooden arms don't get in the way very much.) and putting the bucket on that since this is the perfect height, then moving it all to the other side of the chair for the other arm.
Once you feel the bottom, check and see if the rice is up to at
least the middle of your palm. If it isn't then fill the bucket with more rice. This is where you want it for a beginner. If your hand is too big or fingers are too long and the rice is spilling everywhere then upgrade to a bigger bucket.
Once the level is right, with your finger touching the bottom, swim your fingers till you feel a bean and try to grab it with your thumb and one of your fingers.
At first I was barely able to even open my hand at all. I could hardly even feel any beans, even when they where right there at the bottom. It took a lot for me to even fish one out during one 45 minute session. But I'm also doing this in-between practices and during recovery so you guys might fare better.
I've become addicted to this thing. If I'm sitting down watching a show, one of my hands are in the rice. I divide the time I'm spending watching something between both hands. I usually watch two episodes of something like Bosch so that's about 45 minutes per hand now at the very least.
I'm about to upgrade to a 5 gallon bucket myself as this seems pretty easy to me now. With that I could still adjust the difficulty by how far I stick in my hand. But I don't know how much of a difference it will actually make. I'll report back when I do it. For now, I've come up with a way to make this one I'm showing you harder on me and you guys can do it too. Every time I reach a bean now, I fish my hands back down to the bottom and then grab a handful and squeeze like I'm trying to grind the rice into dust.
So for me a session would look something like this.
Left or right hand, 45 minutes non stop, swim hand down till fingers touch bottom. Fish for bean. Place bean in bucket lid. Fish hand back down. Grab handful of rice and squeeze and grind as hard as you can till hand closes, while hand is at bottom of bucket. Touch bottom of bucket again and repeat.
Repeat for other hand.
I ramp it up a little further by starting with my pointer finger for grabbing the beans with my thumb and then using the next finger for the next bean till I reach my pinky, repeat till the end of the session.
I'm up to 14 beans per hand for that time.
One thing you're most likely going to immediately notice is how weak your opening strength is. I could close my hands alright and curl in my fingers but going the other direction was torture in the beginning. The next you are going to notice is how weak your fine motor muscles are for minor adjustments in different directions. This is one thing I love about this tool. It allows me to keep my fine, stabilizer, muscles trained in every direction so that I don't lose so much dexterity for fingerstyle guitar and anything else that would require it. If I only trained one direction like most do with grippers, I would over develop that muscle group, train and develop the fibers in one specific direction, and my smaller stabilizers wouldn't be able to work as efficiently when trying to move in different directions because they would have to fight against them so to speak. Developing my grip this way makes it so MUCH more of my muscle group is utilized and developed at the same time. I can absolutely feel a HUGE difference in my grip and overall hand strength and endurance since I started.
Anyway, hope you guys enjoy. If any of you try this please let me know how you like it!
haxan7
and
Cutty Flam
I am also trying to stand up as much as possible during the day. My work 'desk' is now one of my tool shelves in the garage, about chest height. Tons of free leg conditioning standing / bouncing around, but it never becomes exhausting.
