Here's the Real Scoop on Ligament Strength and the Hands

Dear Friend,

If you were in on our call last night, you heard Roger LaPointe give a great talk about tendon and ligament strength and several techniques for training those areas. I must say, Roger knows his stuff when it comes to that kind of thing. We had a full boat and many people weren't able to make it on the line. No worries, that'll be taken care of soon, just wait.

Today I'm going to make it a little more specific and talk a little bit about tendon and ligament training for the hands.

As you might have heard me mentioned during the teleseminar, many of the Old Time Strength authors concentrated specifically of the tendon strength of their hands.

Here's a great passage from one of the best known of the old time strength writers, George Jowett:

"...You may wonder how your wrist will become improved by any forearm practice , so before we go any further, lat me enlighten you upon the fact that the muscles all taper off into ligaments. The weaker the muscles, the more stringy and thin are these cables. The stronger and bulkier they build up, the thicker the ligaments become. As these ropes of connection taper off at the wrist, it is only a natural condition that the wrist size should be increased. When I commenced heavy exercise, I had only a seven inch wrist, just an average size as I have said, but to-day my wrist measures every bit of eight an a half inches... The sinews that have massed upon the wrist are very heavy..."

That was published back waaaaaaaay back in 1926.

Here's a more recent passage by an interesting fellow named Mike Brown:

"... [John Y] Smith's hands looked like iron claws. Years of one handed deadlifting with thick handled barbells had so thickened Smith's finger tendons in the palm of his hand that those same tendons stood out like the webbing on a duck's feet... "

I can say from experience that both of these men speak the truth.

Years of exercising the way I do has thickened my wrist sinews as George Jowett talks about and I also have the "webbing" effect on the back of my hands that Mike Brown talks about. In my opinion, you can train your grip and ignore the ligament development...but not for long. At some point you don't want the cable to be weaker than the crane. Know what I mean Vern?

I won't have time to go into it now but I am kicking around the idea of having a full teleseminar devoted to this subject some time after the Night of Strength. Is this something people would be interested in? Shoot me an email of you are. Also include your questions if you have any.

Night of Strength III is coming up soon my friends!

Oh, one other thing, keep Tuesday, March 1st 7:00-9:00 PM open. We are going to have a very special guest on for a seminar interview and this one is really going to blow your mind! Watch you email for more details on who that might be first thing on Monday morning.

Train hard,

John Wood signature

John Wood

P.S. Want to build some "Iron Claws" of your own? Better take a gander at these babies Get a gripper from us and you will automatically be subscribed to our special "Gripper Training" email newsletter.