Northsider has the greatest grip

A
NORTHSIDE gym instructor has succeeded in winning a specialised national strong
man event that tests the strength of competitors’ fingers and hands.

David
Loughman (27) from Finglas who is just over six feet tall and weights over 21
stone won the Ireland Strongest Hands open series at the Brute Force gym in
Drumcondra on Saturday, October 1 to become Ireland’s Strongest Hands champion
2011.

The
competition involved contestants – just using their fingers and hands – lifting
and squeezing a number of specially adapted apparatuses to determine which of
them has the strongest grip.

David,
who is a professional gym instructor, explained that he participated in several
different disciplines involving different apparatuses designed to test the
strength in his arms, forearms and fingers.

“One
of these apparatuses is a two handed pinch,

? he said.

“You
would have two heavy Olympic discs and you would have a bar coming out of that
and you load weight on to it and then you have to pinch this with both your
hands and lift it up.

“Using
your fingers and thumbs you have to lift this up to a certain height and put it
down in a controlled way.

“Then
there was another apparatus called the shallow hub. It is like a pin that you can
load these plates onto and on the top of it there is a half penny welded on to
it and you have to pick it up with your thumb and your index finger. The weight
involved in lifting this apparatus would not be huge, but would be about 15
kilos because it is such a hard thing to lift.

?

David
broke the Irish record for the weight he lifted on the Shallow Hub competition
and he also broke the Irish record for the level force he exerted on an
apparatus called the Vulcan Gripper.

“The
record for the shallow hub stood at 15 kilos and I eventually lifted 17 kilos,
so I broke the previous record,

? he continued.

“The
Vulcan grip has two handles and you have to squeeze it together with one hand.
This apparatus has two handles that are aligned, so the apparatus looks like a
V shape and at the end of the V there is a spring, which joins the two handles
together, so that it is like a scissors effect.

“The
harder you are able to press the handles together – there is a device on the
top of the apparatus and there are several notches on it and the harder you
press – the higher the device goes. I succeeded in getting the device two
notches higher than it had ever gone before.

?

David
has been participating in strong man competitions around the country for the
past two years, but this is the first major competition he has won. He trains
for up to 30 hours a week and hopes to take part in similar events next year.

“If
I was training for pinching stuff I would pick up a heavy plate or something
like that and hold it and squeeze it with my fingers or the tips of my thumb
and hold it for a while,

? he said.

“I
do a lot of strong man training. There is talk of more of these grip
competitions coming up next year but no date has been set, so I am just going
to train for them in the meantime.

?