If, however, your aim is closing a specific gripper, or simply maximum crushing grip strength for certain grip strength feats, you should aim to increase the weight whenever possible. Even if you uphold the weight for only a few seconds, you will benefit more than by going for endurance. Also, you should always aim to use the heaviest gripper with which you can do a strap hold at all.
Once you have that weight dangling from the strap, you simply hold it for as long as you can, Tommy says. He adds: "You have to have your mind in the right place. And you don't wanna hold your breath. The more oxygen you get in there, the better your muscles work. Keep your mind set: 'I'm not gonna give up. I'm determined to do this. I don't care what people say. They tell me I'm too small and too weak, I'll show 'em. Just watch this.'"
a) Once the machine is loaded, get a good grip on the handles, then shut them with the help of the other hand.
b) Machines have the advantage that they are - usually - much easier to close with the help of the other hand than it is to force a heavy gripper shut. So most likely you will have a chance to adjust your grip a little until comfortable.
c) Then hold it fully closed for as long as you can. (How long that is going to be depends on the weight you chose. Ideally, if you want to go for maximum
strength, you choose one that allows you to hold it shut for a very short time -like a few seconds.) you find a weight you can barely handle (don't cheat) and gradually aim to increase the weight. In the beginning, while you are getting used to the machine, don't load that much weight onto it until it doesn't even allow you to hold the machine shut for at least a second or so. If the weight is as heavy that it forces
Actually, you can do two slightly different exercises in this way: You can do holds, meaning you go for a specific amount of time you hold the machine handles shut. Or you do pure negatives, meaning you use a heavier weight that hardly allows you to hold the handles shut. On his Gripanator, Tommy would do holds with about 100 lbs (c. 45 kg) loaded on the machine, and negatives with about 130 lbs (c. 59 kg). As the machine has a certain leverage, those 130 lbs equalled about 400 lbs (c. 181 kg) of pressure on his hands (that's stronger than the #4). In the latter case his hand would open right away. But he would fight it and "hang on for life".
To understand how important it is to really hold the machine handles shut and work on that last little part of the movement of closing a gripper when doing holds, consider this: The Gripanator has bolts which are optionally applied to the machine and put the handles real close together from the start, so they won't even open up beyond a certain range. It gives you the same feel as putting a choker on a regular gripper so it won't open fully (a common technique as well).
That way you are forced to work on the last section of the movement, because once the handles of the machine open as far that they are stopped by the bolt, there isn't much left for you to do. You will really fight them handles so they
won't touch the bolts!
For Tommy, however, the bolts that came with his Gripanator weren't long enough. They didn't put the handles close enough together. He really wanted to force himself to work on that very, very last section of the close. So he went to the hardware store and purchased a bolt which was long enough. He then did holds of 5 to 10 seconds at the most before his hand would slowly open. "It worked," he says.
If you want to do both holds and pure negatives in one workout, you can (after you have warmed up properly) load the machine with a heavy weight and do a few sets of negatives. Then you reduce the weight and perform a few holds.
Doing the two exercises in this order makes sure that your hands are still fresh when you do the heavy negatives, so that you can use full power on this more difficult exercise.
Hint:
You have probably realized how much your grip strength training can benefit from innovation, improvisation, and experimentation. Don't be afraid to try things out. Your equipment is there to suit you, not the other
way round. Maybe you will come up with your own, home-made grip strength machine. In any case, be prepared to become a more frequent visitor of your local hardware store. Remember: making or adjusting your training equipment with your own hands not only saves you money but can
be a lot of fun too.
I mentioned that you might have the possibility to adjust your grip on the machine until comfortable, in contrast to a heavy gripper you have to force shut for negatives. That's a tricky one, because the grip that is most comfortable and allows you to hold the weight for the longest time might not be the most effective one. Usually, if you close the machine handles, you would wrap your finger around them as tight as possible and hold. But now imagine closing a gripper with a credit card set. Your finger might not be completely wrapped around it at the end of the movement. You will rather notice that some of the strength comes from the part of the fingers closer to the finger tips instead of closer to the palm. It is not actually the ideal position to hold the gripper shut (that's why people invented the parallel and deep set). Still, those are the rules and that's how you have to do it. So you have to train for it. Meaning that, when working with a machine, you ideally hold the handles of the machine shut like you would hold a gripper shut after a credit card set. This position varies from person to person as everybody has differently-sized hands. So observe and experiment.
If this sounds to scientific, just forget about it. Machine work will do its part either way.
By the way, I mentioned it before: you can also use a regular gripper for beyond the range training if you grind off the handles at the bottom, so that they can be moved closer together. Here, the same applies as for any machine work.
Obviously, you would use a slightly lighter gripper. For example, if you can just barely close a #2, you could use a #1.5.
I don't have to tell you about the disadvantages of this method: By manipulating the gripper you risk damaging it and hurting yourself. You are generally apt to squeeze your skin when closing such a manipulated gripper. You cannot adjust the resistance in small steps, and as you grow stronger, your one manipulated gripper becomes useless and you have to "damage" another one. You cannot close it with the help of you other hand as comfortably as you could close a machine.
The advantages are: it's easier to carry a manipulated gripper around with you than a cumbersome machine. In all likelihood, another gripper is easier to obtain and cheaper than a grip machine (unless you build one yourself). And, training with a gripper with ground off handles comes closest to training with a regular
gripper.