A Different Kind of Wrist Roller – Howard Menkes (1996)
Iron Mind July 1996
This is the first of several articles graciously submitted by Howard. Thank you for the content!
The wrist roller remains the single most effective tool for lower
arm development. This throwback to an earlier age of hard-core, functional
equipment will pump you so tight that after just one set, you won’t be able to pinch
any loose skin along your forearms.
The problem with the traditional model, however, is that by
holding it at arms’ length to perform the exercise, you are severely limited by
the weak link of anterior deltoid strength. To surpass this obstacle, I made a
wrist roller from a five-foot long wooden dowel, and mounted it in a power
rack. This allowed me to work with much heavier weights, my shoulders having
been bypassed, but quickly revealed another problem. Jim Duggan had 225 pounds
rolled almost all the way up, when the wooden dowel suddenly snapped like a
toothpick, the plates crashing to the gym floor.
The next day I picked up a hollow steel pipe from my local
ironworks. The pipe is 62 inches long, with a 1-1/2 inch outer diameter, and
weighs 10 pounds. I tied an 8-foot length of 500-pound test rope to the center
of the pipe with a loop knot. I tied an IronMind regular carabiner to the other
end of the rope with a Palomar knot. The regular carabiner fits the IronMind
Olympic style loading pin, and has a breaking strength of 6,000 pounds. Lastly,
I wrapped the middle four feet of the pipe with friction tape, just like you’d wrap
a stickball bat, to secure both the center knot and my grip.
To use this wrist roller, I like to mount it on the pins of
a power rack while standing on an IronMind Elephant Step. This adds about 16
inches to the range of motion, increasing the intensity dramatically. I roll
the weights up the pipe in both directions, first turning my wrists away from
me, then toward me. Do yourself a favor when lowering the weight. Move your
hands outside of the tape, onto the smooth pipe, and simply let the weight
unwind to the floor. Keeping your hands on the tape will invariably tear the
skin off your palms as the weight accelerates downwards.
So far, I’ve rolled 235 pounds up using my new steel model.
Both Jim Duggan and I have found that we’re stronger rolling the weight toward
us. We were also surprised to find that the muscles of our hands and forearms
stayed sore for four days after each workout. Not only is the wrist roller an
incredibly effective training aid, but the variety it adds to your workouts is
just plain fun!
Wow, that's amazing weight done by these guys on the wrist roller! I must have been training incorrectly with my rackable wrist roller because the most I ever did was a mere 90 lbs. However, my wrist roller is 2.5 inches thick so that's probably why my poundage never got as high as they did. Not sure if my 1 inch increase makes a difference of 100 lbs. but it might.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to read that they were stronger rolling the bar towards them as I found that true with my training as well. Rolling the bar up with the wrists turning away from me is way harder and I found there to easily be anywhere from 30 to 40 lbs. difference between those wrist directions.
I haven't trained on my wrist roller for 6 years now. I stopped because I would frequently tear the skin on my right thumb and it would take a few weeks to heal which was frustrating. Ironically, my wrist roller doesn't have any knurling and yet I tore the skin on my right hand frequently. I guess it's better to have some knurling to provide a better grip. My hands would always get sweaty and so I had to grip harder to prevent them from slipping. These days for grip training I do single finger lifting on a loading pin using Ironmind's eagle loops with a timed hold on each finger. After that I do leverage bar twisting and then finish with a timed hold on a 3.75 inch thick pinch block with 15 or sometimes 20 lbs. depending on how fatigued my hands are that day.
Just fashioned my 2.5” roller in the squat rack and gave it a try. The inability to pinch any skin after a set is absolutely true! Gonna incorporate this move. I recall strongman Mike Dayton winning a WSM event that was similar to / the same move described above. Terry
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