Technically, the York blob is one half of a York 100lb dumbbell. Lifting the blob has long been considered one of the markers of real strength.
To train for the blob lift, other block weights and devices are used, including smaller York “blobs”. As the weight progresses, so does the width of the blob — and though the changes in width are objectively quite small, the changes in terms of grasping and holding onto the thing are enormous. The two most common lifts are the standard pinch (where the blob is grabbed over the narrower sides and pulled up) and the face lift (where the blob is grabbed over its wider side and lifted; this is a bit more difficult in that it requires the lifter to use only the tips of the fingers and the thumb, with the grip spread very wide).
Here I’ve pulled up a York 30# (half a 60# dumbbell). I’d just gotten done wrist and finger curls so I was a bit fried. But after a couple tries my thumb loosened up a bit and I was able to get it with relative ease. Pull up a 20# and you’ve got a decent grip. Pull up a 50# and that’s pro strongman stuff.
You can attempt this without a blob — I’m sure most of you don’t have a half dumbbell just lying around — by using Olympic weight plates. The strongman standard is 5 10# plates pressed together, with the smooth side out on each end plate. 6 10# is how the strongman separate themselves from other strongmen.
Go on. Give it a whirl.
Me, I’ll be watching a baseball game. In the snow.
****
update: if you don’t have 5 10# plates, try 2 25# plates to start. That alone is quite difficult and if you can pull those up with one hand, smooth side out, you have a very strong grip. 2 35# plates you have an excellent grip; almost no one you know will be able to do this without training. 2 x 45# is the strongman standard.
Michael Moore punch lines in search of their set-ups:
1. High-speed trains for the blob.
steel toed shoes i assume
Mrs. Michael Moore punch lines in search of their set-ups:
1. “No, I’ve got a whole one.”
“I’m sure most of you don’t have a half dumbbell just lying around”
i left mine near 1600 pa ave
I left my heart in Nan Pelosi.
3 10# plates is a piece of cake for me. I’m guessing there’s a sudden break between 3 and 5.
Meanwhile, I’ve recently bought an 8# sledge to do forearm exercises with, so as not to be asymmetrically outgripped by Godlstein, assuming we’ll eventually meet. I mean, I don’t expect not to be crushed, just not to be completely outclassed.
Ok, maybe I’m just living in hope, here. Give a guy a break.
Back when I lived in the heart of the country (where the holy people grow), swinging a splitting maul was just about as much exercise as a guy could want.
Now, look at it. No one in the country, back then, would be able to tell you what “York blob” meant.
2: [tbd]
mmm: Well, all I can say is three plates of ten pound cakes begin dessert for fatso.
3 10# plates won’t do much. You want to try 2 25# to start, then move to 2 35# and finally 2 45#, smooth side out. With the 10s you want to start at 5 plates and see if you can budge them.
It took looking at the video to realize you were not talking about the Sunday New York times.
My bad, sorry.
3: Lifting the blob has long been considered one of the markers of real strength.
mmm: Where does “prying the overweight, half bright, whole dumbbell off the sofa every time it’s time to vaccuum fall on that scale?
Hmm… I don’t have any blobs or 10# plates lying around the house. What I do have is a variety of hexagonal dumbbells, which I refuse to cut in half. Precludes doing any sort of pinch lift, but shouldn’t matter for a face lift, unless I’m missing something.
Was able to do a face lift of the 25#er (an exercise that was made more exciting given that I wasn’t wearing any shoes at the time). The 35# one mocked me — possibly because of the larger diameter, possibly because of the extra 10#. Both, likely. But it seemed like it might be within the realm of possibility, with time, practice, and proper footwear. Unlike the sledgehammer thing.
One cee, and one cee only, please.
The hex dumbbell face lift is a bit different, in that all the weight isn’t beginning on the ground, but is rather broken up into two heads, so the weight feels less concentrated. Also, you don’t have as much curve. Still, lifting a 30lb hex by the face is a good lift. To approach what the blob feels like, I’d say try a 35lb to 40 lb hex dumbbell by the face.
Dude, you really have gotten pretty strong.
This opens up a whole weird branch of submissions for you. You could pull a knee-bar from anywhere. Could probably pull a kimura from out of position.
OT, Jeff, is Denver so smitten with Tebow that he’ll be the starter next season, given a season is even in the offing? Because if the Broncs don’t start him, a certain team right down the street from me has desperate need of a QB… )
The Tebow love is strong, serr8d.
bh — I haven’t had a training partner in a long time, so I haven’t been doing any rolling, save for solo drills. It’s a shame. But yeah, I feel like if I got a hold on someone they’d likely not get away.
I see the Colorado game was postponed due to snow.
Damn that global warming.
Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but I just did two reps with a 50 lb plate. This wasn’t an olympic plate with wide flanges, but a plate for a 1 inch bar that had smoother sides-and I’ll be 62 next week. Of course, I had a 1,000 lb total in the power lifts back in the day…
If you want a real challenge, try chinning yourself on a floor joist. I saw a photo of some wiry little guy who could do it one handed.
A single plate is too thin. The challenge of blob lifting or plate pinching is that you are lifting concentrated weight with a fairly wide grip. If I get a chance today I’ll get out the caliper and measure the plate expanse on two 25s, two 35s, and two 45s.
Oh. And that chinner was probably Brian Johnson. He has a book out on that stuff. He does some very impressive stuff on a chin bar and rafters.
Wouldn’t that involve braining yourself on the floor that’s attached to the top of the joist?
Okay. On the standard Olympic plates, the width of the pinch is 2.873″. 5 of the 10# Olympic plates run about 3.8″ wide.
Compare this to a single standard plate’s width and you can see where the challenge comes from.
Damn that global
warmingclimate changeclimate disruption.Dammit
Jeff, have you ever tried palming a basketball? Palming a basketball seems to me to require either strong hands, or long hands (if you’ve got both, you can carry it in one hand like it’s a baseball). My grip isn’t especially strong, but I can palm a basketball because my fingers are long. Or look at a guy like Dr. J, who’s hands are so big they cover just about half a basketball. To what extent do you think hand length can substitute for hand strength on something like a blob lift?
Showy —
Without a doubt hand size plays a major role, which is why grip strength guys always figure in hand size. I don’t have especially large hands, I don’t think, nor are my hands small. From tip of the middle finger to crease where the hand joins the wrist is how you measure. My hands are 8″. I can palm a basketball, but I’d be more comfortable doing were my hands another 1/4″ long.
Mine measures a hair over 7″ for the same span. I could never come close to palming a basketball.
Supposedly, average hand length for a man is a shade under 7.5 inches. I’d imagine only upper-echelon grip strength would be able to palm a basketball (circumference ~30 inches) at that size. Even at 8″, I’m sure your grip would need to be pretty darn strong to palm a ball for more than a couple seconds. My hands are more like 8.5″, so I can get away with fairly average grip strength on a ball-palming exercise.
Jeff, I probably won’t get a chance to put the length vs. strength question to the test, because I don’t own a blob, or any plates. I do all my work (upper and lower body) with adjustable Powerblocks. Which raises my question. Based on your experience, do you think a person could develop decent grip strength – not spectacular, just decent – without doing any grip-specific work, but simply by throwing thick grips on his dumbbells for all weight work?
Throwing thick grips on your regular weights will work wonders. I’d say it’s the single best way to get stronger.
Local Chicago lore had it that Dick Butkus could pick up a bowling ball with one hand without using the holes.
Butkus must have huge hands.
I got tiny carny hands. but I can do 4×7.5# (only smooth plates I have). But they’re only about an inch and a half wide… and only with my right hand.
I did pull ups on an i-beam in my basement for years because I was too cheap to buy a bar. Helped with rock climbing when I was into that (OK, I went twice right after college), but I never noticed any real benefits and I still have skinny forearms and wrists. Probably the skinniest wrists ever, and I’m serious.
Some of these posts got me thinking about rock climbing, and the grip strength that people who are serious about it must have. Just playing around on one of those recreational walls fried my fingers. To be able to hold your body weight aloft with three fingers a knuckle deep in a little crack of rock, and maybe a little support from one knee? That’s pretty impressive.
And that’s an area of functional hand strength where hand size probably isn’t going to help you a whole lot. It might even be a disadvantage.
I recently started training with a piece of equipment from David Horne that, when attached to a gripper, encourages me to work pinch strength in each segment of the fingers independently.
So you got me thinking. I just went to the bar and banged out four pull-ups with just my fingers curled over the bar. (I know, right? Watch out ladies.)
That means I still got it, but it also means that the weak point is my thumb.
I guess that actually explains why people will always ask me to help move a couch, but won’t pick me up hitchhiking.
The thumb is the week point of nearly any grip.
I remember on that old ABC “Superstars” show an Olympic athelete named Brian something getting frustrated/amused by how bad he was bowling and finally grabbing a bowling ball like you would palm a basketball and rifling it down the lane. Between his legs. I think he might have been a shot-putter or something.
Okay. I just banged out 6 one-hand concentration curls using an 80lb dumbbell with a FatGripz handle attached.
I’m feeling very proud right now.
Right hand only. My left laughed at me about half-way through the first one.
I can probably do twice that many, but I have to use both arms to do it.
You bought their gripper, too? The People want their CoC grippers back.
80 lb curls? Yikes.
I tried gripping the end of a hex weight at the gym about 15 minutes ago. No luck with anything remotely resembling serious weight. Those FatGripz can’t arrive soon enough.
I remember on that old ABC “Superstars” show an Olympic athelete named Brian something getting frustrated/amused by how bad he was bowling and finally grabbing a bowling ball like you would palm a basketball and rifling it down the lane. Between his legs. I think he might have been a shot-putter or something.
Brian Jacks? Judo.
You can slip CoCs into the Tombstone, Slart. But yeah, I have his Vulcan gripper because I use it in conjunction with the Thumbscrews he sells. Put those three items together with a pair of his t-bar collars and a length of 1 7/8″ galvanized pipe (I got mine free from Home Depot) and, in conjunction with whatever Olympic plates you have, you now have a complete training station for any and every pinch grip and gripper feat. Plus you can use the Tombstone to do mimic plate curls, plate wrist curls, etc.
But if you are going to order Horne’s stuff, order now, before the dollar tanks and the exchange rate gets even worse.
I also have his OrbiGrip, which I use quite a bit. He’s got one of the world’s strongest pair of hands — plus he’s a champion arm wrestler — so you know his stuff works.
Did get 8 left-hand reps with a 70# dumbbell and the FatGripz handle.
Jeff, if you don’t mind my asking, I’m curious about a comment you made in the sledgehammer thread. You mentioned that you do low distance road work (a couple of miles) with very heavy weight (~70 lbs. strapped to your body, if I remember correctly). How do you apportion that? Is it center of mass, or do you put it on your extremities? And do you have any concerns about joint impact, or are you of the opinion that muscular strength will protect your joints from the added impact?
I use a short vest that keeps snug to the body around the chest and back (see here: http://weightvest.com/Pages/100short.html). I fast walk/slow jog for about 2.25 miles. I worked my way up to about 70lbs, though that requires a thicker rig, so I usually just go with a fully-loaded 50lb vest, which is easier to get on and off.
Personally, I think the increases in tendon strength and core muscular strength more than compensate for any potential concerns I have with joint impact.
As I told Slart once, most of the visible gains I’ve noticed from weight vest training is a thickening of the chest, back, and core; my calves are simply toned as a result, suggesting to me that, where the leg benefits are concerned, it is with tendon strength.
“blob lift”
Um, no… Don’t wanna go there, thanks.
“blob lift” — Hey, if you could clean and jerk Michael Moore, that would be… disgusting.
Ya know what they say about big hands?…
Thats right kids….
Big Gloves!