Dufisthenics

The other day I saw Metin commented on some guy’s pull up bar picture.  The bar had two blue things on it, I wasn’t sure what they were.  Metin said they were called Fat Gripz and they were excellent.

I did some digging around and found numerous positive reviews on the product.

When I went to TSP one of the first things I noticed was how thick the pull up bar at the park was compared to my 1.25″ diameter pull up bar at home.   Grabbing the thicker bar definitely made the pull ups more challenging.

Well Fat Gripz is a product designed to replicate that scenario.  Not only can you use them on a pull up bar, you can used them on barbells and dumbbells to make any exercise significantly more challenging.

Grabbing a thicker bar requires more forearm, grip and hand strength.  All of the reviews I saw of the grips on Amazon where fantastic.  Everyone reported very good results. Fat Gripz are not cheap but they appear to be made of a very high quality and durable hard rubber.

So I used some of my Amazon perk points to grab a set of the gripz as well as a dip belt.  For some reason my gym has not seen the need to provide a dip belt as part of their exercise equipment.  As a result for several years when I do weighted pull ups and dips there I have done so by awkwardly hanging a dumbbell between my knees.

Now I will just bring my belt with me on days I want to do weighted work.  Today will be the first day of that.

Yesterday I tried to some dragon flags, a full 6 days after the last time I did the movement.  I did about half of one rep before I stopped.  Even after nearly a week I still felt soreness/pain across my core from the flags.  My goal is to try to increase my per set reps by one a week.  The problem is if it takes me more than a week to recover it kind of throws that schedule out of whack.  It is such a strenuous movement for me.