TWO HANDS PINCH

I am incredibly interested in 2HP lately; and pinch feats for that matter.  In the past weeks I have experimented a lot with different pinch widths.  While at Adam Glass's gym recently, he made an observation that stuck with me.  He said strong gripper guys tend to favor wider pinch widths because they can take better advantage of the torsion offered by the ring and pinkie fingers--which are the gripper "deal closers."  As these same people develop stronger pinch strength, they will likely tend toward a narrower setting for the best mechanical advantage.  

Here I sit with a decidedly average-size hand, but have been pinching in the "wide" range.  My standard has been 58mm.  Not a ton of people pinch wider than that, and if they do I would expect them to have a massive hand; Chad Woodall, et al.  I settled at 58mm not necessarily because it felt best, but because more weight came off the floor.  Chris Rice has prepped me that it will sometimes be this way.  I mean, that's what it's about right?  More weight?  

However, based on Adam's comments, I feel that I might be doing myself a disservice at 58mm.  In David Horne's pinch DVD, he goes through a simple way to measure your hand to get a starting 2HP width.  An educated guess.  Then through experimentation you can see what width exactly brings the most weight off the floor.  If I measure my hand this way, I come up with 46-48ish millimeters.  What I noticed is that when my hand is in position over 58mm, it becomes a noticeably open-handed lift for me.  I did an experiment where I positioned my hand on the 2HP at 58mm and then did my best to hold that position for a photo.  The fingers and thumb are sharply angled away from each other almost like I'm ready to pick up a blob.  This simply cannot be ideal:

The lines I drew don't mean anything except are meant to highlight the angle of the fingers and thumb.  The picture on the right is what my hand would look like if the fingers and thumb were opposing each other better.  If I measure the distance where the 2HP would be during the lift, that space is roughly 46-48mm; keeping in mind the edges of the 2HP plates would squish into the skin some.  Which reminds me of another priceless nugget from Chris Rice: if you're tearing often, you're probably too wide.  I tear every workout.

What makes the most sense to me is that I would want to be just barely outside that distance where my fingers and thumb oppose each other.   Maybe only by as much as a millimeter or two.  Any wider and I'm lifting blockweights like the photo on the left.  Any narrower and I've given up the sweet spot (a bit like trying to close a filed gripper maybe).  

My goal for the next couple of weeks is to do a lot of pinching at 48-50mm.  I will be shocked if this does not pan out.  I have a decent baseline on my set-up for 58mm.  166 is the most weight I've ever lifted.  156 is the most I've ever pulled consistently in training.  146-154 is the most I've been able to get lately (but I did make the mistake of stripping off all the seasoning because I was not happy with the finish).  My plates are reasonably seasoned again, at least back to where they were when I was getting 156-166.

I'll post some results when I have some.