The author details their personal journey of significantly enhancing forearm size, vascularity, and grip strength primarily through consistent hand gripper training, later adapting this training for specific sports like arm wrestling.
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About two years ago, I had very small
forums and I decided to go on a journey
to become Popey. And it all started with
hand groomer training. I spammed them
for days, weeks, months on end. But do I
still use them now? Are they actually
the ones that caused all that growth?
You are going to find out. So, at the
start of my foreign training journey, I
was doing all kinds of grip workouts.
Whether it was farmers walks, dead
hangs, studies in uncomfortable places,
and of course, hand grippers, which
resulted in me having the strongest grip
of my life and being able to close a 250
lb hand gripper while being fairly
skinny at 70 kilo body weight. This not
only gave me a crushing grip strength,
but also very vascular forearms that
were pretty aesthetically pleasing. To
achieve this, I was mostly focused on
using hand grippers and did the other
stuff more occasionally. At first, I was
using a 40 kilos resistance one and
slowly worked my way up to 60 kilos,
then the 250 lbs one, which I wasn't
even able to close with both hands at
the beginning. It was going to be a long
grind, but I decided to start training
forearms every day. So, I picked up the
40 kilos one and started doing multiple
sets to failure about 100 reps each
hands, and I was then alternating them
both as rest time. I did that many times
through the day without really having a
structure. I wasn't having any problems
with recovery as forearms can be trained
every day without rest. In fact, my
maximum amount of reps were going up
each day. I was doing both slow and fast
pace as they have a different feeling
each, which I like, and I think it's
great to get gradually stronger. The
first change I noticed was the flexor
muscles starting to appear and bulge out
of my forearms, but I wasn't happy with
the lack of vascularity and wanted much
more. As I kept going, my forearms were
getting more and more defined, and the
extensor muscles were starting to
appear, which is counterintuitive as the
hand grippers are supposed to target the
flexor muscles much more. Even though
I've always found that clenching my fist
activates them like crazy for some
reason, like shown on this clip. After
the 40 kilos gripper started feeling too
easy, I decided it was time to step up
my game and go with the 60 kilos one.
Doing this greatly improved my strength,
and the vascularity started getting
insane. My flexors and extensors were,
of course, getting much bigger and
defined, too. Something worth noting is
that my hands were also starting to
develop muscles and veins, which is a
pretty nice addition. The training with
the 60 kilos one was the same as the 40
except I reduced the reps a little and
was doing around 60 instead. Although I
was never too focused on counting them,
I just went to failure. I think that
such high volume was the reason my
forearms were being this vascular and
defined. I was also doing it every day
and I simply repeated that for weeks on
end until I was able to close the 250
lbs. After achieving that, I wanted to
see how my hand strength translated to
arm wrestling and the results shocked me.
I got completely destroyed and
discovered that grip strength wasn't
that important in arm wrestling. What I
thought were big forearms were actually
pretty useless on the table as I had
never trained specifically for that
sport by doing pronation exercises or
wrist flexions for example. I just had a
strong grip strength that was good to
prevent my opponent from slipping. But
other than that, it was pretty useless.
After that, I decided to start training
arm wrestling specifics, and the least I
can say is that I put on some size. I
went from having 33 cm forearms to 41
cm. Now, I've already made multiple
videos on my forearm training routine,
so I'm not going to talk about it here,
but was I still using hand grippers in
the meanwhile? Yes, I kept training with
them, but I started using them in a way
that would benefit my arm wrestling,
like doing thumb workouts and other
exercises that you can find in my hand
training guide. They were still being
very useful as I developed massive
thumbs that makes it uncomfortable for
my opponents to grip up during a match.
But concerning the grip training itself,
I kind of stopped being consistent
pivots as I have other goals and other
machines that are also useful to develop
grip strength like the Bruce Lee grip
machine for example. They are still a
pretty fun challenge to do with friends
as there are six different grippers in
that box that range from 50 for the
level one to 300 for the level six. You
can find the link in the description if
you want to find out which one you can
close. So to summarize, training with
hand grippers will make your forearms
incredibly vascular. And this is coming
from a skinny kid that had no
definition, no muscle mass, and zero
vascularity at first. You can do high
volume like training them every day. If
your forearms aren't sore, if they are,
just take a rest day. Doing this is the
best way to increase your grip strength
fast. I remember my dead hanger went
from 2 minutes to 3 minutes when I was
70 kilos and training with hand grippers
a lot. I didn't really have a defined
number of set. As I said, I was just
picking it up whenever I felt like it
through the day. Whether I was playing a
game, watching a video on YouTube, or
whenever I would walk past the hand
gripper in my house, I'd quickly get a
pump and then go on with my day. It was
that simple. If you want some structure,
I would say don't go under four sets a
day. That would probably be useless. I
would just recommend not training it
during a pool day, as it could fatigue
your grip before your session and make
you perform worse. Or at least do the
grip training after you're done with
your gym workout. Grip strength is also
a very good way to know if you're
overtrained as it is highly correlated
to your testosterone levels. So, I like
to track it sometimes with a hand
dynamometer. I'd like to end this video
on something I haven't mentioned yet. I
also reduced the frequency of grip
training because I hurt myself while I
was training with a hand gripper.
Something just popped between two of my
knuckles and know it sometimes hurts
when I'm clenching my fist at full
force. I would just advise you not to do
a ton of volume like I was doing
because I remember it was after
countless sets taken to failure that
day. Also check out the fitness
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