My Overall Impressions of the Gripster Attachments
I think the Gripster Attachments are an extremely unique offering for the grip-enthusiast that will certainly add abilities and progressive overload to your training. If you aren’t a grip aficionado, you might be best served elsewhere.
Background
My experience with grip training can be summarized as:
- Fat Grips and a Fat Bar (primarily used for building arm size and reducing elbow strain in pressing movement, not building grip strength)
- Building minimal grip strength needed to pull 500lbs conventional
- Doing weighted carries with my Rickshaw, nearing a 400lb carry with no straps, and 500 with straps
I’ve never owned any pinching devices, custom pull-up grips, various gripper tools, captains of crush, or even spent any dedicated time building my grip. It never seemed to be the limiting factor, and since I do not compete, straps are an okay substitute for grip strength when it starts to. I’ve always been told I had a decent hand shake, but I’m not out crushing bones or anything.
But when you receive a box of shiny new toys, you can’t just ignore them. You have to give them the once (or in my case, about 50 times) over. Being that these are cable attachments, this review won’t be too long.
Note: I received these Gripster attachments as a gift from Garage Gym Life editor, John Greaves III, for the purposes of writing this review. I have done my best to write this review as if I had purchased these with my own money. I am not obligated to provide anything but my honest opinion, feedback, ideas, and results with this product. And that is exactly what you get here. After my review was complete, they were tossed back in the box and sent to John.
My Thoughts
Remember that I am a bodybuilder first, powerlifter second, and grip trainer last. Meaning, when I put these Gripster attachments to work, I am looking at how they can help my first two endeavors pretty exclusively. I have no desire to rip a phone book or pinch grip 150lbs or anything like that.
That said, these are pretty cool items for a number of reasons:
I found that the round “ball” attachment, called the Globester, was great for biceps and triceps work. You are able to palm the ball and squeeze the crap out of it to make sure you fully activate the arms during cable work. I enjoyed this enough that I’ll likely be purchasing one of the grenade attachments from Black Widow Training Gear in the future to replace it. Something about the softball sized attachment sitting in your palm just felt right.
The pinch grip orange block, called the Chunkster, did some of the same for triceps, where having to test your grip forced you to really squeeze the entire arm. This is something that I have neglected in the past and feel like it has both impacted my arm development as well as led to elbow pain. As I focus and squeeze, I activate the muscles better and it drives me to not rely on just tossing weight around. Again, good for growth and pain relief.
The third attachment, the finger hold called the Gripster, was one I just couldn’t get the hang of. It isn’t that I didn’t understand it or know how to use it, I just didn’t find the space in my programming to make it work. Directly targeting the fingers was just something I never found time for. I can definitely see the applications, even for someone like me who types and lifts and does yard work, etc. It just never happened outside of the initial test runs.
After a year of use, plus whatever John put them through, they are still holding together. A few dents and dings here and there, but nothing that would scare me from thinking that they aren’t built to last.
Each grip comes in a very rock-climbing-esque color fashion, which is completely appropriate. Though to be honest, I’ll be somewhat happy to have them off my wall as they stand out tremendously among the metal and black that covers my Wall Control boards.
On that note, these have been hanging on my wall for almost a year now. Between friends, family, and even some random door-to-door salesmen, I have had MULTIPLE comments about these attachments. They stand out so much due to their odd shape and different colors, people always asked “what are those?”. After explaining to people what they were and their intended use, everyone’s response was “That makes perfect sense!”. People who had tried rock climbing, but had then hurt themselves due to the finger issues that these attachments were 100% designed to help with. People who currently did rock climbing, and thought “Man! This could be the missing ingredient to my training!”. I honestly think I may have sold a few sets of these to people just with a quick pitch. So the fact that multiple people with different backgrounds in about 15 seconds were sold on the idea of these attachments, made me think that this is one of those ideas that everyone goes “Why didn’t I think of that first?”
Overall, I learned a few things from using these over the past year that I will continue to apply to my training in various ways. I won’t personally buy the Gripster attachments, just because, again, I am not a grip trainer, strongman competitor, etc. But as mentioned, I will be buying similar items for certain applications. I also have no issues saying that if grip training or rock climbing are things you do or want to get into, or your sport requires a monstrous amount of different types of grip strength (finger, pinch, etc.), then these are definitely something you should consider adding to your arsenal. They can easily be used with limited equipment, just some plates and a loading pin or a cable machine with a stack, and you are off to the races.
My Verdict
I think the Gripster attachments are unique, are meant for a target audience, I’m just not that audience. If you are, give them a shot. I’m sure you’ll find them as intriguing and no-duh I should have owned these ages ago like everyone else that wandered into my gym.