It was once suggested that if you want to see why some of us like grippers quite so much try taking one to a gym. So I did. When I lived in Gloucester I started training there at first in the now gone and missed Gymnation.
I sat in reception and had placed on the counter a IronMind No 1 (if memory serves). Pretty much every man that came in looked at it and I’m gonna say 90% touched it and close again to that number picked it up.
Grippers are, in a word, tactile. The feeling of the knurling is tool like.
What makes it worse/better is guys then treat it as a test of strength. I proved this by also sending a sample gripper to an online men's toys type company.
I knew that even without the usual presentation type situation for such things it’d be passed around the office by the guys. I’ve read of workmates trying it out. It’s not exclusively a man thing but it mostly is.
Those of us who train grip get all this only more so. For us picking up such a gripper and nearly getting it is a kind of torture which becomes, as above, that sweet obsession. That fraction of an inch between the handles annoys us. We want the handles to touch dammit! It gets worse when we then want to rep it. Then move up the the next one and so on. In the damned we get so bad as to collect as many as we can.
One well known fan of grippers has even managed to get his name into the Guinness records book with his 500 plus collection.
Way back when I used to have something like 40+. Even now I’ve 20 or more. The latest addition is, as you might guess, the #GodsofGrip 250. And it’s a fine looking beast.
But I hear we might have a new one on it’s way… come to daddy. As obsessions go… if the worst that happens is that I end up with a monster crushing grip.. Oh well :D
