this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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Most of us non gym people are the other way around. Not me, I'm weak everywhere.
Yea, idk why the pickle jar is so hard to open at the gym. It's like it's trying to embarass me!
There's usually a high friction between the jar lid's deformable seal, and the lip of the glass jar itself.
A gentle knock of the lid on the edge of the counter will reduce the friction effect, making it far easier to open a 'stuck' lid.
I dent the lid with a butter knife's blunt edge
If you want to reuse the lids, you can just pry the lid a little and let the pressure equalize. That way there is no dent and sealing it again will work properly.
One day I will get a consciousness transfer into a fancy robot girl body and then I will open all the jars.
Increase the lever, don't try to open it with your wrist, do it with you whole arm the fingers must do the friction and the wrist must stay still.
That or you can always shot the jar open
Yeah, I know the other tricks like running warm water or tapping the edge, and those are fine. But honestly use your arm instead of your wrist and most jars pop open. Torque that thing!
It's cold and the metal shrinks more than the glass, run hot water over it.
All these people are complaining about how hard it is to open a jar, and I'm sitting here scratching my head because the only times I've ever struggled with jars was after someone closed them too tightly. Just don't use a death-grip when you're closing your jars and you'll be fine unless you're elderly or something.
This guy complaining about struggling to open jars that someone closed too tightly, just be stronger, unless you're weak or something
When my mother was still around, any time I tried to open a jar after she'd gotten to it, I would destroy my hands and still not be able to get it open. I could wreck tendons, give myself blisters, try all the tricks mentioned in this thread, and those lids wouldn't budge. It was like she found a way to weld metal to glass with her bare hands. By comparison, opening the factory seal was no effort at all.
Some jars are sealed at the factory.
I'm well aware. I've never had any trouble opening a factory-sealed jar.
Stick the tip of a spoon under the lip of the lid and push the handle towards the jar. That should open a little gap that releases the pressure inside the jar and it'll open pretty easily then.
If climbing has taught me anything, it's that lifting (deadlifting in this case) is no indication of grip strength.
OP should try opening the pickle jar with their thighs
Kinda. It can help grip strength a lot, or at least holding weights in that way can. But its not a grip strength exercise. Deadlifts, barbell/dumbell shrugs, farmers carry, curls, etc.. stuff like that can all help improve grip strength while not being the primary goal of the exercise.
What do you suggest for increasing it? I normally do dead hangs and wrist curls
Any sort of exercise that removes the thumbs and metacarpophalangeal joints from the equation, if you can close your hand, lock your grip and hang off of your skeleton you'll only add so much to your grip. There are actual crimping blocks and rolling handles you can attatch to weights to strengthen your grip.
Emil Abrahamsson seems to think that hangboarding is the answer to this problem, he suggests holding a hangboard without lifting your total weight off of the ground on the smallest ledge you can manage, twice a day, every day, to turn your grip into iron. He recently beat a lot of pound for pound grip championship records so I think his training techniques are worth paying attention to.
That being said, climbing itself might be the answer since these elite dudes routinely hang off of the absolute tips of their fingers while lifting their bodies up a wall and even for someone who can deadlift a shitton getting used to lifting your weight on crimps takes months to achieve.
It's also worth saying that you have very few muscles in your hand and grip strength is more a game of strengthening tendons and ligaments, which takes a lot longer than strengthening muscles, which might be why one of the guys with the most world records in grip strength right now is 70+ years old.
Metacarpophalangial, look at Dr. Knuckles over here
For some reason I'm picturing a red hedgehog in a white coat now
I looked it up because I couldn't figure out how the hell to refer to a specific row of knuckles, first? second? do you count from the palm or the tip? figured better to be precise.
I dig it. I inferred that joint from your description but had to look up the term to be sure.
Punch knuckles, not door knocking knuckles. Climbing needs more strength in the door knocking knuckles, whereas many grip strength exercises like deadlift do more work on the punching knuckles, the metacarpophalangial joints.
I've seen doodads that connect to the fingertips to focus work on the proximal interphalangeal joints.
Great descriptions! Lately I've been working on the (pardon me, I couldn't find a use for them) distal interphalangeal knuckles, just hanging from my finger tips. Pretty much all the good climbers at my gym can do that with weight added on a belt so I've still got a long way to go. But yeah I used to lift pretty heavy and this was pretty much impossible before I started practicing, just seem like totally different parts of the body although they're all in the hand.
Either lots of pull-up bar related exercises, like hang-toughs, towel-pulls, and L-sits, or these things
Get those spring hand grip strengtheners?
They are hard to open due to a vacuum seal. So just take a very small flathead screwdriver and put it under the lid, and apply a small amount of upward force to break the seal. The jar pops, releases the pressure, and now a toddler can open it. I use the nail file on my pocket Leatherman. Works every time.
Won't you bend the lid and lose the ability to reseal it properly though?
Literally me. I deadlift 700 with hook grip, 500 double-overhand, and I still struggle. I just smack the lid on the edge of the counter a bit to help.
Everyone starts somewhere. Those numbers are dangerously close to my lateral raise! Keep it up!
Very dumb trick but I use a rubber band to have better grip around the lid, as they are usually quite slippy imo
I actually keep a pair of grippy work gloves in my junk drawer specifically for opening stubborn jars.
This pair to be specific if anybody is interested.
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