Riding Shotgun (or Getting a Grip)

I’m a massive fan of bodyweight training, and got into it just as it became the training method du jour. Part of me wants to think I was ahead of the game, but I was probably just caught in the first or second waves of the hype.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of the system presented in the Convict Conditioning (CC) series published by DragonDoor. I don’t quite buy into the hyper-masculine tone sometimes and I take it with a pinch of salt when they discuss the history of its author Paul Wade but I love the system. Through my years of training I’ve picked up Grip training (presented in the second volume of the work) several times; once very seriously. I can’t remember why I stopped the last time, I think maybe it coincided with returning from California. I really enjoy Grip work, specifically the Bar Hang which has been the vast bulk of my training.

It’s also been a characteristic of my training that I’m not overly concerned with the size of my muscles. I’m mildly concerned about gut-fat, and that’s usually monitored through the proxy of others and my current trouser-size in inches. For the last week, though, I’ve been going over the CC training manuals for Grip training and have taken it up again. And there was a promise there by Coach Wade that forearms tend to bulk up very quickly. I’m quite curious as to if this is true and if so, how fast it can go. I’ll be recording the hanging variation with the session number relative to when I restarted the training, the date, the sets/times of the hangs, and then finally the measurements for each of my forearms. The measurement being the circumference of the forearm 2.5cm below the elbow, when extended. I won’t be recording my progress of Fingertip Pushups for Grip Extension as these stay at a healthy 5 reps before and after the hangs.

So here we go:

Session 4 (05/12/2016, Bar Hang)

Hang Time(s): 18s Left Forearm: 30cm (exactly!!) Right Forearm: 31cm (exactly!!)

The difference doesn’t bother me as I’m right-handed and it makes sense. I’m not sure what a “thick” forearm is tbh, and I don’t want to delve into bodybuilding forums to get a distorted view of it. For now, let’s see what happens between now and the Equinox.