Nice and deep.

A brilliant week here on Straight to the Bar. The highlights :

• Articles : Rob discussed the necessity of good footwork in the ring, Adam continued his superb series The Investments and Mike noted the value of a neck of steel. Good stuff.
• Videos : Dave demonstrated the Sharkbite phonebook tear, John noted how he learned the pistol squat and the Sorinex guys tried a little Double Blob Lifting. Nice one.
• Elsewhere : You’ll never go hungry again, Ryan noted the limited edition Gut Wrench (beautiful thing) and over on the Fight Geek site I looked at modifying your exercise routines to suit the equipment you have.
• Ideas : Try out the Donkey Barbell Squat, some of the many Hanging Core Variations and some Choked Gripper Training. Beautiful.

Bonus – DIY Grip Tools
Grip training certainly doesn’t need to be expensive. Bill Long notes a couple of grip tools that can be built in minutes, at little or no cost. Enjoy.
Due to the economy most of us have to save our money for unexpected challenges that come up. Then again there are people who didn’t have any money in the beginning but still love to train. So they have to use their imagination and build odd devices to train with. Well here are a couple Do it Yourself devices that I have made. Some of you have seen these before on other sites and some maybe new to you.

Shell.

I found this “doorstop” at work one day and picked it up, it was thick and decently heavy so I took it home for my grip work. It is a massive 3 1/2 inches in diameter weighing in at 22lbs. Now it’s not too heavy but with that diameter I like to use it at the end of my training to really smoke my hands.

Wrist roller.

Next I was at work again and someone had an empty map tube about 4ft long and as soon as I seen it I thought wow that could be a great wrist roller. So I took it home and cut it in half, drilled a hole through it and pushed some parachute cord through it, tied it up and attached some weight to the bottom of the cord. I just tied a knot around the weight but you could attach a carabiner to the cord and use a loading pin or something. This is a big 3 inch diameter roller that really stretches my hands so I feel the burn in my hands and forearms.
DIY tools are a big part of my toolbox of strength. I frequently see random things and think how I could incorporate that in to my training. Hope you do the same. Later I will show my Viking Press!!!

Bill Long is the creator of Body by Long blog. If you’re interested in Tactical Training or just plain old strength training in all forms check out his blog.