Via The Adventure Blog : Chris Sharma climbing in Margalef, Spain. Not bad at all.
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Every PR leaves a trophy. It is a truly manly activity, and it is in danger of being a lost art in today's namby-pamby metrosexual American fitness scene. Rest assured there is nothing soft, weak or manicured about destroying steel. My goal is to stop the madness, and restore this destructive science to its proper place in strength and conditioning. Perhaps you believe this is too hardcore for you, the weekend warrior who just wants to be healthy? I hope after reading this you will see there is a place in the bending world for you.
Short bending is one of the greatest ways to build true power and endurance in the lower arms, but its effects are not just experienced in the arms. You will build your chest, shoulders, lats, traps and abs while bending. You will benefit across the whole spectrum from muscle hypertrophy to power to endurance. I will discuss this in detail.
First benefit is to your neural strength: Steel bending is an exceptional way to build your single unit application of tension. What I mean is this - you have to tense and load every muscle in your body, take out all "leakages", brace everything together and direct it through you hands with a sniper's precise angle. If you get sloppy punching on the nails ends, you will hurt yourself. You could possibly punch yourself in the face, roll your hands out of the groove, stab yourself, or any other combination of less desirable outcomes. This activity will turn your wrist to stone. Your ability to direct power will be significantly increased. This will directly carry over to any other strength-skill you currently have. The way I load up to bend a Huge Stainless Steel Bastard is exactly the same feeling as when I load up to pull a max dead, to press a 48kg bell, or to slam an axe through a log. It adds a critical power appliance to your "strength skill tool box".
This increase in strength and power naturally will carry over to an increase in your endurance. Anyone who has bent a nail will tell you the first time they bent it was so tiring. I have watched people sweat bullets bending their first respectable nail. As time goes on you gain huge reserves of power. A personal testament to this level of power for me was October 2007 when I bent 150 60D nails in one hour using the double under (DU) grip. That represented a massive improvement from Jan 2007, when bending 10-15 nails left my hands extremely fatigued.
Let's talk about the muscle growth. Bending is a high tension exercise. Forcing a steel bar to yield requires hundreds of pounds of force, applied for several seconds. A big bend often will take much longer than it would take for a dead lift or squat. Your muscle fibers will get much denser. If you have ever met some one who does a lot of bending, you can not help to notice the density of the forearms, chest, arms and back.
Steel bending builds real confidence. You are doing what should not be done. When you trash a piece that takes hundreds of pounds of force to bend, you can not help to feel good about the achievement. I promise you will tackle your other hobbies, sports and challenges with greater confidence and determination after going all out on a steel bar. Bending can become a powerful implement to develop an individual's mental toughness and pain tolerance. I have witnessed this effect on people from both steel bending and kettlebell lifting.
UPDATE 2/2/15 : The video below was public when this post was written, but has since been switched to 'private' by the user.
Apologies for that. Incidentally, if you want to make sure you're always kept in the loop when we put new content on this site, subscribe to the RSS feed or grab the weekly Strength & Fitness Newsletter.
cheers,
Scott
Via Hood Workout : I'm not sure what you'd call this exercise (the behind-the-back thing), but it looks great.