As per my blog entry the other day, I have been a slacker as far as achieving my training goals for this year.  Corrective action is ongoing.  You may recall that one of the goals was to close the Ironmind COC 2.5 gripper.  The fact that I still don't even own a 2.5 gives you some idea about how seriously I was taking this.  When it comes to actually training grip, well it never really happened.  I got way into the GS and everything else was put on the back burner.  Heck, as far as grip stuff went it wasn't even on the back burner.  It was still in the freezer.

Still I talked a good game so it is time to back it up.  Since I am putting it up on the blog, there is no way out.  It must be done.  I have a 1.5 and a 2.5 on order.  I already have a 1 and a 2.  I can only close the 2 on a very good day.  I also already have a nice modified olympic size dumbell with a 1.75 inch grip for some fat bar db curls.  I was also offered some helpful suggestions by Doug who reads this blog.  He suggested that I work with a fat grip vertical bar.  This gave me an idea.  When I get an idea it means at least one trip to Lowes.  I figured I would make a fat bar and a loading pin for vertical grip work.  I know what you are thinking, "they sell this stuff, why not just buy it".  My family has a rich tradition of on taking projects that other people (professionals) could do in way less time.  We do them ourselves investing far more time and effort and sometimes expense than we would have if we just paid someone to do it.  I had to respect tradition.

Here is what I picked up from Lowes:

 
After putting it all together (minus the loctite) here is what I ended up with.



The good part is this works great for static holds or hammer curls.  It is also good for crushing cats.  This cat deserves it because he jumped up on the table during dinner this evening and ran off with a piece of steak.  Before we could stop him he ate it.  This might still be a problem as it was part of a red curry dish.  I may have a mess on my hands by morning.  That is why they call them animals I suppose. 

Now the bad part.  The top part of this apparatus looks like the tin man's johnson.  I know he didn't have one in the Wizard of Oz but if he did... I know this shouldn't be a big issue, for some reason it is.  I can't seriously train with something that looks like this.  I am going to make a couple changes.  First I will put the end cap on the bottom and weld an attachment for a carbiner.  That will do away with the t-connector.  Minus that it will no longer look phallic.  I am also going to get a bottom plate for the thinner pipe nipple so I can use wider olympic plates and not have to un-screw the bottom of the eye-bolt everytime I want to change weight.  This didn't take long to put together or figure out at all.  That said, I should have been able to see this problem before I put it all together.  The real beauty of this post is that it featured pussy, phallic objects, screwing, and nipples while remaining G rated.