Think about how when we develop as toddlers, we pick stuff up and put it in our mouth. It now makes perfect sense to me, after hearing about this “homunculus” concept yesterday at a kettlebell workshop taught by Franz Snideman, of La Jolla, CA. The point Franz was making was another “aha” moment (so frequent in the RKC community whenever a movement makes suddenly sense to you, or you get how to do it and what seemed like an insurmountable mountain is now barely a curb) about how if we do not develop our grip, we may never tap into our actual strength.

Things have seemed to line up for me strangely lately, but all for a reason. I was greasing the groove on my deadlifts and went for another sub-maximal PR (i.e. I lift heavier than I ever did prior, with some fuel left in the tank). I wasn’t happy though, because I wasn’t tired and knew I could eek out an extra 10lb, but my grip was faltering and I had to resort to straps. I almopst considered buying special hooks I saw at Sports Chalet, but what’s the fun in that? That would be like surfing with a propeller!

There are a few grip guys out there, and they bend nails and tear phonebooks. I always thought it was something that wasn’t for me. I’m sending an application now, I want to bend, rip, tear, hold stuff in weird ways because all that was stopping me from lifting heavier was my grip!

We place sooo much emphasis on our physical appearance, but neglect how we get there. The answer is amazingly obvious: we pick the weights with our hands, and how we look is based on how we hold the stuff that’s in our hands and how we put stuff (with our hands) in our disproportionally sensorily small mouth.

Check out the link below to see what we’d look like if we actually matched in size our hands and mouth to the amount of sensory perception they respectively pick up.

http://www.juergenhaenggi.ch/index.php?mcid=1&scid=141