The Power Of Your Fingers

             What you may not realize is that your fingers have more strength and power in them than you can imagine. What most people do in training is they grip weight in a tight fist or lay down on a bench and lift with the hand slightly opened or they do most bodyweight exercises with an open hand or tight hand squeeze such as push-ups and pull-ups. When you train the fingers however, you're not just building your body, you're hitting a specific place at the same time.

            Our fingers are mostly in tuned with nerves, tendons and bone and the muscle is within the lower arm and the hands. When our brains construct the nerves to move our hands, it sends signals to billions of areas so we can use the hands to build things, lift, carry, throw and many other things. The strongest finger as far as I know is the thumb because it carries more padding and strength in the hand than any of the other fingers.

            When we build strength in our fingers, it helps carry over to other things we didn't think of before. Some don’t know this but I had spinal meningitis as a baby and because of this, my brain went haywire and had some damage somewhere and now I have trouble in some of the nerves in my body especially in my hands. I’m mostly left handed and have great dexterity in that hand plus have more strength on my left side but on my right side, I have trouble moving my right fingers individually. When I was little I used practically nothing but the left side of my body and my brain damage has caused me to think in ways I can't explain but that’s another story.

            Training your fingers in a totally different format can put a whole new perspective in the way you train. The next time you lift a barbell or dumbbell, try lifting with your fingers, it’s very different and very awkward but there’s a point to it. Instead of doing regular push-ups using your palms, do them on your fingers, it’s harder and requires more stability, balance and strength. I like to do animal type movements on my fingertips such as bear crawls and gorilla walks/jumps. I want to work my tendons more and be creative with it so I can do some of the strength feats I do. When you move or train the fingers more in your lifts or exercise you're building powerful grip strength, finger power and turn your fingers into eagle’s claws.

            When you become crazy strong working the fingers in certain lifts, you can lift most likely more weight using your fingers than the rest who use two hands. One of the strongest men that ever lived was Hermann Gorner who not only did great feats but accomplished some using only his fingers including his still world record of a one-finger deadlift of 727 lbs. Most men can't lift that much with two hands so you see, the fingers have more power in them than we give credit for.

            A favorite exercise of mine is doing fingertip push-ups, if you get good at using 10 fingers, you'll want to reduce more of them to add resistance. My best is using 4 fingers (2 of each hand) doing a few reps. I felt compelled to take it to another level. I've tried doing explosive push-ups where you come down and jump with enough power to have the hands leave the floor. What if I tried doing the same thing but on my fingertips? I did it and it was awesome, hurt a little but I kept at it and here’s a video to prove it.

            One of the upcoming strongmen today has some of the strongest fingers I've ever witnessed on film. His name is Matti Marzel of Ferocious Strength who’s done many feats using the fingers such as handstands, push-ups, pull-ups, v-sits, gymnastic bridge and plenty of others. These things have helped him make certain strength feats like a cakewalk such as tearing decks of cards, bending steel, ripping phonebooks, levering hammers and juggling kettlebells. If there ever was a man in the 21^st century who can teach you about finger training it’s this dude here. Build your fingers to create strength that most men can’t imagine and see where it carries to other things in your life. Shatter your personal records and build super strength using the power of your fingers. 

Building Eagle Claws

Building strength in the fingers, hands, wrists and the entire lower arm can make you or break you in a workout or anything you need your hands for. We need our hands to build things and create things so is it essential to build a level of strength, flexibility and dexterity that helps us in our everyday lives? I believe so. There are many ways to build a solid steel grip but there are other ways to keep the tendons strong and durable no matter what you do.

 The lower arm area all the way down to the fingertips is the most neglected parts of the human body in exercise. You won’t get by much with just wrist curls and a few isolated circular movements; you are learning to build that area by squeezing, flexing, extending, push, pull and working the individual fingers. It is important to master all these factors because if you don’t have strong hands, you won’t be able to pick up a weight no matter how big your arms it’s not going to happen. What if you need to fix something with a wrench or screwdriver and don’t have the hand strength to twist and turn, that would suck and if you work using those types of tools you won’t be at your job for long.

 When I talk about building eagle claws, I’m not just referring to training the entire lower arm to claw somebody in a fight or having great strength to do amazing things, I’m referring to creating great strength, flexibility and dexterity no matter what you want to do with your life. It doesn't matter if you’re a musician, athlete, entertainer, carpenter, construction worker or landscape artist, you will have great attributes if you gave yourself the chance to learn. How about curing Carpal Tunnel and never needing to wear a brace ever again, be less prone to injury and be able to heal quicker with exercises that work the entire region and not just that area but the shoulders, the arms and the trapezoids.

 One of the best conditioning programs ever assembled is the use of Animal Exercises. You can learn how to move like an animal in the wild and teach your body to burn fat, build muscle, increase the strength in your organs, tendons, muscles and so much more for only a few minutes a day. Now how about amplifying those exercises once you have mastered them, begin to do some on your fingertips, this type of training alone can build crazy strength in your lower arm in ways you can never get from machines. Having a solid steel grip and power in your lower arm can help increase your strength in other areas, it’ll help you pick up weights better, and it’ll help your grappling game much more efficient and if you’re into Arm Wrestling, look out because you’ll be ripping those guys up in no time.

 Getting started is like everything else, begin where you’re at and progress from there, work certain exercises that keep the blood flowing and ready to go. Spread exercises throughout the day so you can keep that energy flowing and use certain tools to help the grip. One of the coolest tools I like for building grip strength is called Fat Gripz, these babies will take thick bar training to a whole new level and you can attach them to just about any dumbbell or barbell but if you’re a bodyweight guy, you can attach them to your pull-up bar to increase the difficulty. I use these for building strength and endurance in Arm Wrestling using my lifeline Chest Expander. Progress is a very important factor because once something becomes easy; you want to continue to challenge yourself so you increase the difficulty by a small percentage. Even Rock Climbers have to progress otherwise if they jump in too soon, they’ll fall off much quicker and that can mean certain death so it’s important to build progression.

 No matter how you slice, strong hands equals a strong body because when you have the strength to pick up really heavy weight or be able to twist off certain objects with a wrench or even pick up groceries for that matter, your hands are the tools that open doors to everything you pretty much do. Even doing certain Feats Of Strength requires strong hands, you can build as much strength as you want in every other area in your body but if you’re hands aren't up to par, you’re pretty much done. Complete the whole package by training as many areas as possible including your lower arm, you’ll be amazed how weak or strong your hands are certain situations so my suggestion is make those hands work for you and build a foundation to have the strongest and most functional hands as possible.     

Building Strong Tendons

Unlike muscle building, if you want to increase the strength in your tendons you need specific type training. Wrist curls and things of that sort will not cut it unless you have a thick bar but not too many commercial gyms have them so what do you do? Well for a weightlifter you might want to consider Training With Partials. The reason why I say this is because with partial lifts you’re hitting the body from a certain angle and the tendons actually go into play more then muscles do plus with partials you can lift heavier and heavier weight then you can with full range.

Now we all heard that building a great body means you need to build/tone muscles but nobody really talks about the tendons and if they did, most of the time the exercises to build them aren’t really good for you (trust me I’ve been there). One thing I learned from York Barbell Hall Of Famer Slim The Hammerman Farman in his DVD was that exercising the tendons are a key to developing great strength. Muscle building is great in many ways but building muscles may not be quite enough. Slim’s mentor The Mighty Atom was an avid explorer in building tendon strength and for good reason. He was and still is the World’s Strongest Little Man.

If you want to build great tendon strength, there are many ways to do them and a favorite of mine is through isometrics. Even though I love doing that I still need specific type work on them and I want to feed the energy in my hands in order to accomplish my training. When you can do that and build a solid foundation your tendons will be supple, strong and healthy all at the same time. However you do not want to do exercises that can damage your hands. There are exercises out there that do more harm then good in your hands because of the way angles are made and how many repetitions and all that crap. You want to have vital strength and vibrant health in your tendons because the more you develop it the healthier your hands will be and it can even save your life.

One such guy I know has been building his tendons since he was a little boy and now is one of the best pianists the world has ever seen. His name is Garin Bader and seeing him up-close I can tell you first hand he is one of the strongest dudes I’ve ever met. At his size of 6’ over 200 lbs. he can do 2 finger superman push-ups and that’s just an appetizer of what he can do. Because of that he has developed a system that not only works but has kept him from getting injured because some of the stunts he does are extremely dangerous and he has no safety net if he fell doing certain things. That’s where Finger Gymnastics come into play. It’s a simple system that can help you turn your tendons from jello to solid steel with a touch of flexibility. We all have suffered carpal tunnel in our lives at sometime.

Its no fun wearing those casts on your wrists and not being able to move your hands without them hurting. I’ve been there a time or 2 and I’m younger then most people who have/had it. With this system you don’t have to go through complicated exercises or do this or that to get results, the results come from working what you can and making a little fun out of it. You learn to use energy and relaxed strength to build a solid program of building the strongest tendons possible. I may look big at 242 lbs. but I don’t rely on my muscle building training to get where I want to be, I rely on my tendons and when I have built them up to a degree, my muscles will come in automagically (sorry had to go biz Markey on ya). The same can happen for you and it costs far less then a doctor’s visit. Have Garin share his story and how you can develop strong and supple wrists and lower to the degree where if you’re a martial artist, your grip will go through the roof, if you’re a musician your playing will become much greater and if you’re a strongman (like yours truly) you will be doing things far better then you ever thought before. Get yourself some powerful tendons my friend.

Why Hand Strength & Health Are Keys To Super Strength

There are many ways to build Super Human Strength. You can lift weights, Lift Heavy Objects or better yet work on building Massive Functional Muscle. I mean theres variety in everything you can accomplish but if your hands arn't up to the challenge, all that goal setting won't be worth a lick. Hand Health and Strength are one of the missing links in many people's training arsenal. Lets face it without strong powerful hands you can't be a great muscian, steel bender, phonebook tearer, heavy deadlifter and most of all without strong, functional grip strength you won't be able to do the things that go on in daily life.

Years ago around the time of my recovery of my legs, while I was getting my leg strength up to great levels I realized that if I want to get stronger in the things I wanted to do like bend steel, tear up phonebooks and whatever else I needed to work my grip because lets face it grip strength is neglected a lot in commercial gyms. Its just sad you know. What if you need to save someones life and your grip isnt up to the challenge. Let me tell you a little story.....

Back in the 30's an old-time strongman named Sid Klein was training up in his gym in New York when he heard a man yelled out "FIRE...FIRE....HELP" and the strongman jumped to the rescue to find that the old man's wife needed more help then he did so Sid climbed down to grab the wife and climb back up to save her. Now I don't know how accurate I made that story but the ending is Sid's grip was so strong it helped him save another human being from harm and possibly death. Now hopefully none of us would have to do certain things like that in our lifetime but we should be prepared for it.

Now you do all the heavy weights, you can even try doing Hand Balancing or Kettlebell Juggling but if you don't have the hands for them it just won't come to you. To be the strongest person you can be taking the time to work your hands, wrist and lower arms will take you a long way more then you ever though possible. Take it from me, in my experience grip strength for certain things is almost mandatory. Not may people at 240+ lbs. are doing sets of 10 chin-ups or pull-ups but with my training in the grip i've been able to do that. One of the key things to grip training is just like anything else and thats progression and theres also consistancy and practice.

Now one guy in my opinion who has taken Grip Strength to another level is my man Garin Bader. A concert Pianist with 13 Gold Medals in International Competition is by far one of the best athletes in the world when it comes to Dexterity, Agility and just flat out Strong. In his shows he also does Hand Balancing, plays the Sax, Magic Tricks and he even swings across the stage on a silk curtain just using a pinch grip. Believe it or not he's never had a major injury in his career and thats pretty damn good consiering the types of things he does. He's also a business man and wants to help others get in awesome shape and like him take their hand strength to levels they couldn't imagine.

I have personally seen how powerful Garin is and for a guy his size he's one of the most agile and flexible guys I know. I trained with him one day and not after maybe an hour or so he was showing me a thing or two and he was tossing me around like a rag doll and i'm 40 pounds bigger then him. His grip is off the hook (no pun intended) and he is def. an example of what you can do to get from place to place with a mighty grip. Take a look at his 2 Biggest Courses..........CoreForce Energy and Finger Gymnastics. Read his story and he'll show you first hand what you can do to create the most powerful hands you can take hold of (pun intended).

Dexerity That Makes Up For Strength!!!!

When it comes to fixing things, playing the piano, lifting weights, moving your body in different directions you have to have a good amount of hand strength and suppleness. To increase our dexerity in our hands, fingers and wrists we need the right tools and exercises to create power and tendon strength in the lower arms. Grip strength is a key to do some of the most phenomenal feats ever. No matter how you put it, you can have a big chest, shapley legs, upper arms the size of cannon balls, a back of North Dakota and shoulders that can carry a mule but if you don't have strong hands you don't have anything. Work your hands the way you train your body. Imagine what it would be like to have hands that can do things with ease and never get injured or get carpal tunnel and yet getting stronger each time you work your hands with the exercises i'm gonna recommend. I've learned these from a guy I recently trained with and now I'm gonna recommend his course to you. These have helped my hands get stronger for my feats of strength in ripping phonebooks and bending long peices of steel. At the same time since using this I have not had one shred of carpal tunnel or hurt my hands in any way. One of the things this course will help you on if you're a martial artist is increase your punching power and grip your opponent unlike ever before. I have done exercises that work and have done ones that havent and this course has the right ways of training your hands for strength, flexibility and suppleness. Now I'm not endorsing this, not asking for any money and spreading the word about having strong and healthy hands that can help with whatever you need in your daily life.

Finger Gymnastics

Push-ups & Working Other Muscles!!!!

Doing high rep push-ups is considered to be very beneficial but it isn't for everyone. Now there are people that believe that high rep push-ups is doing mindless reps and are not beneficial. Obviously they don't do that and feel they are experts. Now doing high rep push-ups throughout the day is more beneficial I believe then doing them all at once. Throughout the day your body is at recovery and when you get to a new set your body is refresehed and ready. I have done this plenty of times and got up to about 250-300 push-ups a day for a while. Do you need to do high reps....No but you can use push-ups to work into other muscles. Example on incline push-ups focus on your legs and squeeze them while your doing push-ups. For grip and finger power do fingertip push-ups. There are many ways to work into what you want and any way you choose push-ups can make you far stronger health and strength wise to your body to weight ratio.