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Nail or spike bending is a true test of strength. You could bench press or squat a ton, and everyone will Monday morning quarter back your form, accuse you of heaving, cheating, not going low enough, using too much gear, using steroids, whatever. With a spike - the proof is right there. You bent it. End of conversation.
Every PR leaves a trophy. It is a truly manly activity, and it is in danger of being a lost art in today's namby-pamby metrosexual American fitness scene. Rest assured there is nothing soft, weak or manicured about destroying steel. My goal is to stop the madness, and restore this destructive science to its proper place in strength and conditioning. Perhaps you believe this is too hardcore for you, the weekend warrior who just wants to be healthy? I hope after reading this you will see there is a place in the bending world for you.

Short bending is one of the greatest ways to build true power and endurance in the lower arms, but its effects are not just experienced in the arms. You will build your chest, shoulders, lats, traps and abs while bending. You will benefit across the whole spectrum from muscle hypertrophy to power to endurance. I will discuss this in detail.

First benefit is to your neural strength: Steel bending is an exceptional way to build your single unit application of tension. What I mean is this - you have to tense and load every muscle in your body, take out all "leakages", brace everything together and direct it through you hands with a sniper's precise angle. If you get sloppy punching on the nails ends, you will hurt yourself. You could possibly punch yourself in the face, roll your hands out of the groove, stab yourself, or any other combination of less desirable outcomes. This activity will turn your wrist to stone. Your ability to direct power will be significantly increased. This will directly carry over to any other strength-skill you currently have. The way I load up to bend a Huge Stainless Steel Bastard is exactly the same feeling as when I load up to pull a max dead, to press a 48kg bell, or to slam an axe through a log. It adds a critical power appliance to your "strength skill tool box".

This increase in strength and power naturally will carry over to an increase in your endurance. Anyone who has bent a nail will tell you the first time they bent it was so tiring. I have watched people sweat bullets bending their first respectable nail. As time goes on you gain huge reserves of power. A personal testament to this level of power for me was October 2007 when I bent 150 60D nails in one hour using the double under (DU) grip. That represented a massive improvement from Jan 2007, when bending 10-15 nails left my hands extremely fatigued.

Let's talk about the muscle growth. Bending is a high tension exercise. Forcing a steel bar to yield requires hundreds of pounds of force, applied for several seconds. A big bend often will take much longer than it would take for a dead lift or squat. Your muscle fibers will get much denser. If you have ever met some one who does a lot of bending, you can not help to notice the density of the forearms, chest, arms and back.

Steel bending builds real confidence. You are doing what should not be done. When you trash a piece that takes hundreds of pounds of force to bend, you can not help to feel good about the achievement. I promise you will tackle your other hobbies, sports and challenges with greater confidence and determination after going all out on a steel bar. Bending can become a powerful implement to develop an individual's mental toughness and pain tolerance. I have witnessed this effect on people from both steel bending and kettlebell lifting.

It's been a little over a decade since I first began publishing content online. Gradually it's moved from static sites to blogs, ebooks and posts on various forums.

Of the blogs, by far the most successful has been Straight to the Bar. This strength-training site now has a larger readership than all of my other sites combined; and accordingly, this is at the top of my daily blog-posting list.

The other key aspect of my writing relates to the article-writing, editing and consultation work I do on an ad-hoc basis. I love doing this work, and in order to move from ad-hoc to regular I intend to repurpose this site as a portfolio; rather than a blog.

With this change comes the relocation of a number of articles which have appeared here over the years. As there have been several thousand pieces, I'll only be keeping the best of them. These will appear gradually - slightly updated - on my corner of EzineArticles.

In the meantime, here are a few of my favourites on other sites. Enjoy.

Environmental
Saving Water (part I, II, III, IV, V ,VI)

Diet and Nutrition

• 5 Nutrition Tips for Managing Diabetes
• Get Motivated: Inspiring Transformations
• How To: Easily Prepare Meals in Advance

Fitness and Health

• Starting your fitness journey : 10 things to consider
• Holding the bar in the Front Squat
• The Step-up : a real squat alternative?

Want to win a 4gb iPod Nano? If you're a Twitter user, write a story (preferably related to running) in 140 characters or less and link to it over at Run to Win. Sounds like fun.

It is amazing how the sport of Grip has evolved in the years that I have been involved in it. We have hundreds of athletes heavily involved in the sport now, all across the world, and there has been an explosion in the way of smart, effective training and maximizing technique.

Nail Bending is not exempt from this monstrous mass of knowledge and information. I know I have learned a ton that has helped me improve my bending technique and performance from guys like Aaron Corcorran, Ben Edwards, and Josh Dale over the last couple of years. Even the methods for wrapping nails for bending have improved and this is what I'd like to focus on with this article.

When I first started competing, wrapping techniques were in the dark ages. In 2003, most people were wrapping nails and bolts with towels. Now think about that - we were all taking a pointed nail or a jagged-edged piece of stock and protecting ourselves from being stabbed by wrapping a cloth towel around the end. Needless to say, each bend that was done, the athlete was taking a chance, risking injury.

At the Strong Arm Tactics contest in January 2004, I wrapped a blue nail cut to 4 inches with a normal green bathroom towel (pictured above). I hit it with the reverse style and almost instantly the end of it popped completely through the towel. The only thing that kept it from going through my hand was the fact that I wrapped the very end of the cut edge with athletic tape. I didn't complete that nail bend - the ends wound up about 2.5 inches apart, if I remember correctly - but if I had, it would have been the shortest blue nail ever bent, tying Rob Vigeant who completed it at the contest.

If I remember correctly, the two Vigeant cousins, who have now moved on to full time arm wrestling as their athletic pursuit, wrapped their nail stock that day with a bank bag, a very resilient material, but very bulky and cumbersome to bend with. It didn't hurt them though - one bent the blue nail I mentioned before and the other put a really nice kink into a red nail, which was a treat to watch.

A kinked red nail was a BIG DEAL back then, and I think two things are the principal reasons for the explosion in red nail benders and other tremendous bending eats these days. One of them is the use of the Double Overhand technique. I go into why the Double Overhand technique is so powerful in my Nail Bending eBook. The other, quite frankly, is wrapping techniques.

Looking back at the memories of early grip contests I competed in, it was just plain silly to wrap a pointed nail or a jagged piece of HRS/CRS stock with just a towel. Talk about ludicrous. But, we didn't really know any better.

Today, it's a different story. Nowadays, people are using leather wraps that are both more effective at completing big impressive bends and at protecting their hands. In fact, it's been probably two years if not longer since I have seen anybody wrap with something besides leather or a combination of leather and something else.

The first person I ever saw wrap with leather is the Terminator, Pat Povilaitis. In 2005 (I believe), I went to the Arnold Classic and participated in that year's Night of Strength, a gathering of Grip athletes where everyone demonstrated feats of strength. There, Pat proceeded to shock the crowd bending reds cut to sub-6 inches time after time. Seeing the best nail bender in the world devour red nails with these new types of wraps was what I believe to be the catalyst for the shift in the Grip world toward using leather wraps when bending nails.

If you're going to start bending nails, bolts, and stock, you need to get yourself some leather. You can get leather at many places. I have gotten good quality leather wraps from three sources.

The first source I got leather from was a vendor on ebay. Smitty bought a welding cloak and we cut it up and got lots of good leather wraps from it. Smitty and I have used these leather wraps for well over 2 years. They've taken a beating and they have some worn spots in them, but they're still good enough to get it done with some serious steel.
I got another set of wraps from John Beatty at Fat Bastard Barbell Company. They are sweet. Even when brand new, they still wrap around the stock tight and get a good hold.

The last type of wraps I have gotten, and what I am currently using, are the wraps from Adam Glass. I am not sure where Adam found these wraps, but they are really nice. You barely feel anything when you use these wraps, and when you do as much grip training as I do, you need to minimize the wear and tear on your hands as much as you can when bending.

For the athletes looking at starting out with nail bending, all I can say is GET YOUR LEATHER NOW. There's no need to risk stabbing yourself with a nail or cutting your hands up with the threads of a bolt. Find a source of leather you like and get a few pairs so that you can be sure you can have fun doing it for a long time, and so you can excel at nail bending.

The most important thing for you to remember when wrapping your attempts with leather is to get them really tight on whatever it is you're bending. Check back next week and I'll show you how to wrap your nails so tight, they'll never slip or shift on you while bending.

For more information about nail bending, check out my Nail Bending eBook. It should answer any questions you have, and if it doesn't then email me.

NAPALM

Check out the newly revamped Diesel Site

Several updates to the site have been made over the past few days, with a number of others in progress. So far, a few bios have been reworked; including :

• Alfred Edward Bird
• Victor Rahmann
• Clive Burnett Bird

After testing out several pieces of genealogy software over the past few months, I’ve settled on a combination of Reunion (for local data) and The Next Generation (for the online version). Both are superb, and very highly recommended. You’ll find an updated tree here.

Finally, a number of old photographs and certificates are being scanned; and put online (as appropriate) for general use in your research. These are in the Family Tree gallery on my SmugMug site; and yes, there are many, many more. If you’re after a particular photo of a Bird family member, just ask.