As a human being, we are responsible for what types of strength we develop whether it be physical, mental, emotional and/or spiritual. Some don't always get to even choose that responsibility because of either birth defects or other things but if you're compelled and learn to work with what's possible, there are many ways to strengthen yourself.
Strength is not always measured by a cannonball shaped bicep or having washboard abs that look good in a magazine, it really is measured what the body can handle and be able to do things that require sometimes a great deal of effort in order to provide the strength needed in life. The hands for one is probably, arguably one of the most prominent aspects of strength that we don't always understand the true meaning of it. We build things with our hands, we can clip hair like it's electric with such precision and speed, we destroy things, we test a man's grip with a simple shake, we lift and hold onto things as if our lives depended on it. Our hands are the ones that turn the knob to a world of possibilities.
When I was in my teens, I didn't have thick forearms or crazy strong hands and wrists even though I threw the shot put and the discus along with some mediocre weight training. I didn't understand the value of grip strength and hand health until I started learning feats of the old time strongmen. The first people to show me this were Logan Christopher & Tyler Bramlett. They showed me how these small guys like Dennis Rogers & Mighty Atom were able to bend, twist, break and shape steel with such power it looked effortless yet impossible to look at. They were the first men to teach me steel bending short and long along with leverage work and utilizing the flexion and extension of the hands. If these small dudes can teach me how to do things that men twice their size can barely even touch, that gave me the reason to be able to do it too.
For years, I've bent hundreds of spikes, tore through dozens upon dozens of phonebooks, levered sledgehammers and shaped flat bars and rebar till my hands bled (literally) and those were the foundation of making my hands crazy strong, durable and powerful. My fingers would feel like bone, my forearms were hard as stones and my wrists had strength yet were flexible and limber. As time went on in the midst of doing these crazy feats, I started studying more on how to keep the lower arms healthy and as pain-free as possible. When I was learning the unorthodox and strange ways to train using Garin Bader's CoreForce Energy, he also had a course specifically for the hands called Finger Gymnastics. You've all read about my dealings with the meningitis and how it shaped my nerves to the point where dexterity in my right hand is almost impossible with using individual fingers. With FG, it gave me tools that I never was able to learn before as a child and it showed how I can use my hands differently than what I was attempting during therapy sessions. It opened up a new world to me that was unbelievable.
As I got older and shifting away from the strength feats, (is a comeback in the works?) I had put my effort into a more movement based type training and for the last 10 years or so, working with sledgehammers has been my go to for hand strength and conditioning. I also found the Fat Gripz useful as I use them from time to time with my resistance cables to really dig into the muscles and build grip strength at the same time. I've used them also on machines, barbells and dumbbells. Slowly but surely overtime, my hands just kept getting stronger and rarely if ever got injured.
Because of the sledgehammer work, it has even helped me in arm wrestling; faced all three generations of my wife's family (father, brother and grandfather) as they all challenged me and I won. This family also comes from several generations of loggers and heavy laborers so they have incredible strength in their blood. Neither of them were easy either especially her grandfather who tried to pull my arm off for a second or two but to didn't let up. That was a defining moment where they were like "ok this guy is good for the girl in our lives" in my opinion. Gramps still has that "old man strength."
In a nutshell these days, hammers, fat gripz, occassional fingertip pushups and walking like a gorilla has kept my hands pretty damn strong and healthy. Keeping the wrists limber as much as possible and fingers just keep getting stronger. I have also kept an eye doing joint loosening exercises especially in the hands and wrists for a while now because as we age, we won't always be able to do the crazy shit we did but if we kept our joints healthy, that's what makes living the more important. Be strong, build strong hands and be amazingly awesome.
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