I think people get injured from the CoC grippers because they train them the wrong way. These aren't the kind of thing you keep in your car and squeeze out while you're driving around. They need to be treated like a maximum lift with a warm up, mobility work, cool down using the expand-your-hand bands, etc and done once or twice a week at the most with a week or two of complete grip rest built in periodically.
Farmers carries, plate squeezes, deadlifts, cleans, snatches, etc are great at building grip endurance, but they don't do much for your maximum grip strength. Rob Shaul (Mountain Athlete, Military Athlete owner) did a study about a year ago on grip strength and endurance and found that training one did not correlate to improve the other and that both max strength and endurance need to be trained independently to make gains on either. With any kind of action shooting, we are only gripping for 3-5 seconds on average before we get a break to reload or move, so maximum grip strength seems to be much more applicable to pistol shooting than the ability to hold something heavy for a long duration.
EDIT: Link to the study
Quote: "when it comes to training for grip strength it is vital that an athlete train sport specifically for the improvement they are seeking. In our most recent cycle, athletes trained grip endurance using the farmer’s carry and towel hang pull-ups mentioned above. Athletes completed 3 grip circuits 3 times a week as part of their regular training. Although the cycle only lasted 4 weeks, during our post test assessment it was clear that our grip training have very little effect on our athlete’s dynamometer grip strength.
Of the 17 individuals who participated in the testing and training 5 actually experienced decreases in their dynamometer grip strength while they increased their farmer’s carry and maintained their towel pull-up scores. Overall, all 17 subjects averaged only an insignificant increase (based on paired T-Test analysis, p>0.60) in dynamometer strength: 5.8% despite near significant increases in both farmer’s carry and towel pull-ups."
Last edited by Gio; 12-21-2016 at 01:43 PM.
Never formally diagnosed, but I strongly suspect tendinitis. I'd had bouts of it on and off for a couple of years, long before I did anything with COC grippers.
3/15/2016
COC grippers gave me some wicked tendonitis. But then again, I was overdoing it for sure. I also wasn't exercising the rest of my upper body at the time.
Honestly, I don't think they are truly necessary if you shoot a lot. You will develop grip strength with practice. Shoot until the gun tracks where you want it. Good enough.
For what it's worth to the OP, I was closing a COC 1.5 when I made GM.
Have we seen this one yet?
http://gawker.com/millennial-men-lac...-na-1785295658
I blame the "fleshlight" for reducing our nation's readiness.
Carry on.
Never heard of it, but I do climb a rope everyday; so I'm guessing more than 150 pounds, which is what I weigh.
I just got the #1. Today I did 10 reps each hand with the trainer warm up, then I could only do a couple reps each hand with the #1. Then a burnout of 30 reps each hand with the trainer. Those of you who can do 2 and up, impressive! That is my goal.
Just watched the Bob Vogel interview on the Shooter's Summit series. Ordered a No. 1 today. He and Stoeger talk about gripping the gun as hard a possible. Since I follow both guys I might as well do some focused work on my grip strength.
As a PT by trade I would think tendonitis issues would be caused by overuse. These are far heavier than the grippers we use in a rehab setting. Low reps and moderate frequency is my plan.
As a PT, your further thoughts would be interesting to me... Especially as far as building grip strength safely is concerned. The tools, techniques and frequency you'd recommend etc...Lots of guys here like the flexbars, the CoC grippers...I personally just try to shoot, lift, and grapple but stronger grips would improve my BJJ game a small degree too I suspect.