MORE TWO HANDS PINCH

I just watched a ton of 2HP footage between Chris Rice, Jedd, Adam Glass, and as many others as I could find.

One thing that I noticed is that at 58mm my slip into what Chris Rice has called "2nd position" is huge. The expert lifters above have very little slip from their initial setup. I'm sure this contributes to tearing as well. Any footage I can find of my own lifts all show this significant slip.

Consider this video from Nationals: >>>LINK<<<. My initial set up is real deep and my fingers are mostly at a right angle from my hand. The plates slip down until my fingers are at an acute angle, then my grip holds. To me this highlights that the fingers have a better leverage advantage for me in that acute angle position; which is what I was driving at in the previous post.

Also, I did a bunch of lifts at 48mm. This felt like total garbage and I actually failed to budge 80% of my max. The lifts that came up slipped significantly and were very heavy in the fingers. This taxed my forearm flexors in a very uncomfortable way. My friends at the GripBoard have mostly confirmed this is a bad thing. 48 is too narrow. So then I jumped to 54mm at the same weight and I could at least get a full lift. However my left thumb tore after only a couple of lifts. The wrap felt better, and I wish I was more aware of any slippage at the time. My goal for the next workout is to warm up at 54mm and then compare that to 50 or 52. I have weird spacers (old conveyor belts) and cannot make both widths. I actually think I can only make 51mm which might be a reasonable approximation of wither width. I hate that I cannot get the even widths exactly.

Another few takeaways from the footage I watched: These lifters were mostly bent over the apparatus to start. Bent at the waist and not as much at the knees. Elbows are bent and stay back toward the body. During the lift, the angle of the elbows did not change. I KNOW this kind of bent arm lifting is crucial for GripTopz lifts like the stub and penny. If you let your arm straighten then you lose strength. I just might not have the upper body strength to accomplish this on 2HP, but I did notice in my own videos that my arms straighten considerably. So it seems the lifting is largely done by the legs and back, and the arms and hands are just “hanging on for dear life.” This makes sense; and I think I mostly do this, but can probably give it more attention.