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For those wondering if Grease-The-Groove works

bencrush

bencrush

Level 5 Valued Member
Recently I've had an increase in blog and email inquires about whether GTG "works" or not. Well, most likely everyone who has spent time here knows that it works quite well. And likely has for millenia for various physical pursuits. But the first time I read about it was from @Pavel writing.

I fully credit GTG-style gripper work for my Captain's of Crush #3 certification in 2005. For a few months before certifying in May of that year with IronMind, my workouts were GTG and a relatively high volume of singles. At that time, I worked 12 hour night shift in a jail. So after the inmates went to sleep, my grippers came out and I began work. I'd write down every single rep I did. And for that period it was entirely singles for my work sets with my #3 gripper. I could only handle about once per 5-7 days doing 100+ singles (no set - just picking it up with one hand and closing it) with both hands with my #3. A few times I'd switch to 500+ singles with my #2. Or crazy high singles with my #1 or Trainer. But the vast majority of the training was very specific. The #3 for about as many singles as my skin would tolerate, or as many as I could "comfortably" do during my shift. Obviously I had to do other things at work besides close grippers. But it gave me plenty of rest between singles at time. It could vary between literally 1 minute between singles (pretty rare, I enjoyed resting) to 30 minutes or more if I was busy.

I've never been stronger than when I was doing GTG with grippers.

I'm going to add to this post when I have time, possibly tonight. It will be GTG - Part 2: Unbraced Steel Bending. Then GTG - Part 3: Vertical Bar Deadlifts. Then GTG - Part 4: Plateau Buster One Hand Deadlift.
 
Thank you. I’m working on the #2 right now as a small framed, non lifting guy, not making much progress. 1.5 with both hands and maybe 1/4” on the 2 RH and 3/8” LH. I’ll have to try gtg a shot.
 
Westtxco said:
Thank you. I’m working on the #2 right now as a small framed, non lifting guy, not making much progress. 1.5 with both hands and maybe 1/4” on the 2 RH and 3/8” LH. I’ll have to try gtg a shot.
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If I were you, I'd use the #1 for the GTG work. My GTG work was done with a gripper around 85% of my (at that time) no set max close. You might be tempted to use the #1.5, but I don't think you'd accumulate enough volume to make it really helpful over weeks and months. The Bumper This product could help you bridge the gap between your #1 and help make your #1.5 a more viable GTG option over the next few months. The Bumper adds 1 to 7 pounds to any gripper.

If you have decent recovery ability, you could do two GTG training sessions per week. Make sure you're trying to crush each single closed. Not just barely touch the handles together. Keep written records so you know each session what your goal number of singles is. Here is a simple (but not easy!, as Pavel says) 6 week program to get you closer to that #2 close.

Week 1, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 20. Space them out of course, with no set time limit. Rest enough to feel like you're going to smash every single to dust. Week 1, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 25. Same as above.

Week 2, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 30. Week 2, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 35.

Week 3, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 40. Week 3, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 45.

Week 4, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 50. Week 4, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 55.

Week 5, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 60. Week 5, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 65.

Week 6, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 70. Week 6, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 75.

Week 7, rest 3 to 5 days from your last training session. Attempt the #2 and see how close you get! I think you will be very pleasantly surprised and either close the #2, or get close enough that you're very excited about it. I like to video my max attempts with grippers so that I can slow motion view it and see exactly how close I got.

Practice perfecting whatever set you use so that you minimize the amount of force "wasted" on getting ready to smash the handles together. The increasing volume is great, because you get added work on your set and the close in a slowly increasingly fatigued state.
 
bencrush said:
If I were you, I'd use the #1 for the GTG work. My GTG work was done with a gripper around 85% of my (at that time) no set max close. You might be tempted to use the #1.5, but I don't think you'd accumulate enough volume to make it really helpful over weeks and months. The Bumper This product could help you bridge the gap between your #1 and help make your #1.5 a more viable GTG option over the next few months. The Bumper adds 1 to 7 pounds to any gripper.

If you have decent recovery ability, you could do two GTG training sessions per week. Make sure you're trying to crush each single closed. Not just barely touch the handles together. Keep written records so you know each session what your goal number of singles is. Here is a simple (but not easy!, as Pavel says) 6 week program to get you closer to that #2 close.

Week 1, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 20. Space them out of course, with no set time limit. Rest enough to feel like you're going to smash every single to dust. Week 1, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 25. Same as above.

Week 2, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 30. Week 2, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 35.

Week 3, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 40. Week 3, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 45.

Week 4, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 50. Week 4, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 55.

Week 5, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 60. Week 5, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 65.

Week 6, Day 1: GOAL number of singles is 70. Week 6, Day 2: GOAL number of singles is 75.

Week 7, rest 3 to 5 days from your last training session. Attempt the #2 and see how close you get! I think you will be very pleasantly surprised and either close the #2, or get close enough that you're very excited about it. I like to video my max attempts with grippers so that I can slow motion view it and see exactly how close I got.

Practice perfecting whatever set you use so that you minimize the amount of force "wasted" on getting ready to smash the handles together. The increasing volume is great, because you get added work on your set and the close in a slowly increasingly fatigued state.
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Oh interesting... I always took GTG to mean higher frequency than once a week. My mediocre results were probably from trying to do it every day.
 
@bencrush Thank you for laying that out! I have been stuck for a while coming very close to crushing the #2 but always fall short by a very small amount. The #1 always felt better to gtg with but I usually just did it once a week and probably never more than about a dozen times for the day. I think I'm going to add this work in. Thanks again!
 
silveraw said:
Oh interesting... I always took GTG to mean higher frequency than once a week. My mediocre results were probably from trying to do it every day.
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I think you're correct. On the other things I used it for, I was much higher frequency than once per week. In reference to the once a week session I consider it GTG just because the rest breaks are not set in stone and there are a LOT of singles.
 
Luis T. Gonzalez said:
@bencrush Thank you for laying that out! I have been stuck for a while coming very close to crushing the #2 but always fall short by a very small amount. The #1 always felt better to gtg with but I usually just did it once a week and probably never more than about a dozen times for the day. I think I'm going to add this work in. Thanks again!
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I hope it works for you too! Twice a week is really the minimum that I think is "best" for this gripper program. Three times a week would probably work well too, if you can recover from it.
 
Antti said:
GTG absolutely means doing it more often than once a week.
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Agreed. In my case, I had better results doing a lot of singles once a day and then resting 5-7 days before doing the next session. But I experimented with every day and multiple times a day. Just didn't have the same results. One thing I remember being better from every single day doing grippers was at least the warmup was quicker. Because I was using an easier gripper.
 
GTG - Part 2: Unbraced Steel Bending

The year was 2008. I was blowing through a bunch of unbraced steel bending certs with Fat Bastard Barbell Company. GTG was helpful because I had a very demanding job that would sometimes call me in the middle of a day off.

So I set out dozens of Red Nails on my garage workshop counter. Some of the Red Nails were cut quite a bit (5" was pretty common for me at that time). I had several pairs of leather pads pre-rolled to the diameter (5/16") of the Red Nail. If I went outside to do a chore, or just to walk the dogs, I'd first trot out to the garage. Slide a Red Nail into the pads and then bend it with whatever "style" (double underhand, reverse, double overhand, etc) I chose for that particular bend. I wasn't a great reverse bender, so I mostly chose DU or DO.

My leather pads ranged from very thin (about the same size as the IronMind blue pads when wrapped around a Red Nail) to double thick "fat pads." This gave me some "same-but-different" technique and strength work.

I always kept track of every bend, on paper. Guesstimating that for the middle part of that year I bent on average 4 times per week. And anywhere from 6 to 12 Red Nails a day when I did the GTG style. This also included other bends of varying difficulty, if I felt like I needed a warmup again. But during that time, I was capable of warming up with Red Nails most of the time. Full Disclosure: this turned out to be a very bad idea for my long-term shoulder joint health, duh!

GTG is also more difficult with steel bending. Because you are obviously going to be spending a lot to go through a bunch of steel like I did. There are other ingenius ways to train your bending strength without actually deforming steel and making your pocketbook much lighter.

The volume was much, much lower than with gripper closes. And for me that made sense, because the amount of force from much more of the body was a lot tougher to recover from.
 
bencrush said:
GTG - Part 2: Unbraced Steel Bending

The year was 2008. I was blowing through a bunch of unbraced steel bending certs with Fat Bastard Barbell Company. GTG was helpful because I had a very demanding job that would sometimes call me in the middle of a day off.

So I set out dozens of Red Nails on my garage workshop counter. Some of the Red Nails were cut quite a bit (5" was pretty common for me at that time). I had several pairs of leather pads pre-rolled to the diameter (5/16") of the Red Nail. If I went outside to do a chore, or just to walk the dogs, I'd first trot out to the garage. Slide a Red Nail into the pads and then bend it with whatever "style" (double underhand, reverse, double overhand, etc) I chose for that particular bend. I wasn't a great reverse bender, so I mostly chose DU or DO.

My leather pads ranged from very thin (about the same size as the IronMind blue pads when wrapped around a Red Nail) to double thick "fat pads." This gave me some "same-but-different" technique and strength work.

I always kept track of every bend, on paper. Guesstimating that for the middle part of that year I bent on average 4 times per week. And anywhere from 6 to 12 Red Nails a day when I did the GTG style. This also included other bends of varying difficulty, if I felt like I needed a warmup again. But during that time, I was capable of warming up with Red Nails most of the time. Full Disclosure: this turned out to be a very bad idea for my long-term shoulder joint health, duh!

GTG is also more difficult with steel bending. Because you are obviously going to be spending a lot to go through a bunch of steel like I did. There are other ingenius ways to train your bending strength without actually deforming steel and making your pocketbook much lighter.

The volume was much, much lower than with gripper closes. And for me that made sense, because the amount of force from much more of the body was a lot tougher to recover from.
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When I bend nails, it usually puts a lot of strain on my shoulders and almost always get a cramp in a pec. I bought an assortment of nails from IronMind a couple of years ago. I think it came with some green, blue, red and maybe one other color. I need to get me some leather wraps. GTG helped me when I was working through ROP to press the beast. I just did the clean and presses throughout the day and never worried about getting a "workout", just pure strength work. Oddly enough, I had to buy XL shirts in no time and put on some weight. Plus I was eating a lot too.
 
GTG - Part 3: Vertical Bar Deadlifts

Vertical bar (vbar) deadlifts still remain one of my favorite grip lifts. There are basically two commonly used diameters. Or for the last ten years, ONE diameter, because it's the one that isn't painful. 1" and 2" are the grip standards. The bar is anywhere from 18" long to 24" long. Fat Bastard Barbell Company (FBBC - was started and owned by WSM competitor John Beatty) used to sell (and possibly still does) a MONSTER piece of solid steel that was their signature 2" vbar.

I bought a 1" vertical bar from FBBC in 2005. Baseline best pull was 225lbs. Which wasn't terrible, but certainly wasn't strong. I set my goal for 300lbs and got there by GTG pulling on that handle about 4 times a week at first. And not for very high volume. Anyone that has done even a few pulls on the 1" vbar will know what I'm talking about. I left four 45lb plates on the bar and the total weight was about 186lbs. That was for the first month. Then my max went to 242lbs. And my frequency went down to about 3 times a week. I tried not to do so many pulls that my skin would tear. Because then I'd be out for a while as my skin healed. Anywhere from 3 to 10 pulls would get the job done per training session.

When I tested my max again it was 275lbs. My frequency went down to 2 times a week then. Skin was barely holding on most of the time, lol. Volume of pulls was about the same as with the lower weights, although I started waving the load up and down to get more heavier pulls in near my max.

I was ecstatic when I pulled 300lbs for the first time. That was a good benchmark for the grip contests I was interested in at the time.

I eventually moved away from GTG for the 1" vbar because it was too painful to do many lifts above the 300lb mark. And eventually, I crossed the 400lb barrier (411) left hand and about 385lbs righty. By that point, my training sessions were about once a week. And maybe 3 pulls above 300lbs, mostly just getting warmed up for the heavier pulls.

2" VBAR

On the other hand, the 2" vbar lends itself perfectly to GTG style training. It is not a painful lift on the hand skin like the 1" vbar is. And it has drastically fewer bicep tear injuries than what I've heard of on the 1" vbar.

My best on the FBBC 2" vbar was about 306lbs in a contest. I failed to mention that the weight only had to be pulled off the ground 2" to count as a legal lift in most of the grip contests I competed in.

In the United States All-Round Weightlifting Association (USAWA) comps, the legs have to lock out and the weight plates have to remain perfectly still for the lifter to get the "down" command from a judge. MUCH harder rules than the non-USAWA grip comps. The USAWA vbar is only 18" long, which also lowers the amount of weight someone is going to be able to lift.

For reference, my best contest pull on the USAWA 2" vbar was 255lbs. The same rules applied to the 1" USAWA vbar, and my best contest pull was 315lbs. So about 100lbs less on the 1" vbar and 50lbs less on the 2" vbar. I employed a very deep supinated grip on both of the vbars. Except in the USAWA comps where a supinated grip didn't make sense, because the rotation of the plates had to be stopped to get the down command.

Edit: Another thing worth adding about the vbar is that when my 1" vbar strength was at its apex (able to close #3.5), my gripper strength from a handles-parallel set was at its best and never stronger. I do feel that the two were interconnected, maybe not a lb for lb basis. But enough that I mentioned it more than a few times to anyone trying to increase their gripper strength.
 
bencrush said:
Agreed. In my case, I had better results doing a lot of singles once a day and then resting 5-7 days before doing the next session. But I experimented with every day and multiple times a day. Just didn't have the same results. One thing I remember being better from every single day doing grippers was at least the warmup was quicker. Because I was using an easier gripper.
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I think what you were doing totally meets the spirit if not the actuality of GTG. i.e. multiple sub-maximal efforts spread out over some larger time period. Even if you only did it for one day a week it would still be considered GTG (at least in my books…)

Often times I do ab training spread out multiple times over the course of a day. GTG.

In any event… I like what you laid out for your gripper programme.
 
bencrush said:
Agreed. In my case, I had better results doing a lot of singles once a day and then resting 5-7 days before doing the next session. But I experimented with every day and multiple times a day. Just didn't have the same results. One thing I remember being better from every single day doing grippers was at least the warmup was quicker. Because I was using an easier gripper.
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I can see that.

I'm not sure if and if so, when, there comes a time for a trainee that high frequency GTG loses steam. I think high frequency in general benefits the beginner the most, when the loads are lightest and recovery the quickest.

When one needs to lift heavy to progress it demands more rest. But splitting the volume in smaller parts during the training session or the training day is a good idea. I'd even go as far to say that the longer it is, the better as more volume can be done. The key is maintaining training performance during the session or the day.
 
silveraw said:
Oh interesting... I always took GTG to mean higher frequency than once a week. My mediocre results were probably from trying to do it every day.
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My ongoing semi-GtG handstand pushup training seems to benefit from having 2-3 days off per week. Sometimes I'll do very low volume on those days (like 1 set, or maybe a couple sets of 3). I also think you have to find a balance between the intensity of the exercise you're practicing and total weekly volume. But yeah, my progress is more mediocre when I push it a bit too much.
 
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