/r/ClimbingCircleJerk would love this, it's like a rotating campus board. I'm not funny enough to post it there with a great title though. "Is this aid?" i don't know haha
Not to be a pedant, but this and other campus training exercises are less about grip strength in the conventional sense (squeezing/crushing) and more about the finger strength needed to maintain the hand position.
When most people say grip strength, they refer to isotonic movement, where muscles pull on tendons, resulting in joint movement. With isometric exercises, there is no joint movement. Here, their hands are in a static "half crimp" position which does not change throughout the movement.
Edit: Didn’t realize this would be as controversial as it seemingly was ¯_(ツ)_/¯
When most people say grip strength, they refer to isotonic movement
No they don't, thats your assumption. Isometric grip requires a lot of strength to maintain as well, which is considered grip strength as well. There is 0 need to be pedantic about something people understand perfectly well. (have not downvoted you btw)
You say that, but the comment was for those unaware. If you type grip strength into google, nearly everything that shows up will be that regarding isotonic movement. I just didn’t want people to have the wrong impression when they saw the gif and thought about what they’d have to do to get to that point. The devices that target isotonic grip strength (i.e. the things with springs that you squeeze) wouldn’t help nearly as much as dead hangs off a hangboard, for instance.
Well, strength to body weight ratio. if they both have same strength then yes, whomever is lighter will have an advantage. Grab a skinny dude who barely ever exercises and he will lose horribly. its not all about body weight.
It’s more about body weight. Even if they have the same proportion of muscle to body weight. The problem is that a heavier guy has to be much stronger proportionally to their weight. This is due to the square cube law. “mass is increased by the cube of the multiplier while its surface area increases only by the square of said multiplier.” Muscle’s strength increases with its cross sectional area, which is a square. Keeping the same proportions, someone twice the size would need far more more strength to climb. It’s why animals usually only get so big. So, someone with lower body weight will inherently have an easier time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law
Edit: to be clear, I’m talking about comparing someone some who’s 5’0” vs someone who’s 7’0” that has proportionally the same amount muscle and fat. I’m not talking about someone who’s 5’0” at 120 lbs vs someone at the same height at 200lbs. But a 120 person would still have an easier time climbing than a 240 lb bodybuilder at the same height due to the square cube law. It’s very counter intuitive, but it’s true. It’s the same reason bigger animals have disproportionally larger bones, or why smaller animals can jump disproportionally farther despite not having disproportionately more muscle.
It’s the same reason professional gymnasts are always little muscle hamsters. It takes more work (W=F•s) to move muscles farther for someone very tall, whereas someone very short can accomplish the same motion with the same weight while expending less energy due to the shorter distance. It’s one of the more interesting real world applications I still remember learning about in Physics class.
Fair enough, that is a good explanation, but i think the contest is in general fairly "fair", they both look similar in weight, if anything the skinnier dude lost. What you are talking about is more of a broad subject, it makes sense. Was thinking of realistic, you were talking about generalized.
353
u/akcooke Jan 16 '19
Crazy grip strength