By Pete Sisco

Fact: These lifting hooks are a necessity! They are not just a gadget or an accessory…if you’re doing deadlifts, shrugs or lat pulldowns without these hooks you are absolutely, positively cheating yourself out of huge gains in your shoulder and upper and lower back development!!

And I can prove it!

There is actually a pretty long story behind how these hooks came into existence. In the past I’ve tried selling two different kinds of lifting hooks. One type was hand made and excellent but the guy who made them was in his 70’s and quit business. The others were the common type you find in gyms and sporting goods stores. I soon discovered these were just too cheaply made for the level of strength my customers develop (see below) so I quit selling them.

Last year while at the National Championship Air Races in Reno , Nevada I was complaining to a Canadian friend of mine about how nobody makes really heavy duty lifting hooks that could hold a lot of weight and were comfortable. My friend, Dave, has operated his own manufacturing company for nearly twenty years. His company makes automotive parts and specially designed machines for various manufacturing processes. Basically, he’s one of those guys who can look at something and immediately figure out six ways to make it better!

He asked me what features the ideal lifting hooks should have. I told him they should be able to hold a ton of weight…and I wasn’t using hyperbole…I literally meant they should support a 2,000 pound barbell or machine lift!! They also need to be comfortable when hoisting really heavy loads…no digging into wrists, hands and fingers! They also needed to be fully adjustable for every size of adult wrist…and they should also adjust for the distance between the wrist and the fingertips, something no lifting hooks in the world offer today.

So that’s exactly what he manufactured. And they are absolutely awesome!

Testing in the Gym

Before I tell you about how we tested these lifting hooks, let me explain why everyone needs them. The strength of your grip is determined by the muscles in your hands. But your hand muscles are not nearly as strong as the muscles in your lower and upper back or in your traps and shoulders. So when you do an exercise like a barbell shrug, deadlift or a lat pulldown, you have to stop the exercise because of grip fatigue rather than total exhaustion of the target muscle. You might not think this is true…but you’re about to see proof. Lifting hooks distribute some of the load off of your fingers and onto your wrists and hands so you can hold on to heavier weights for a longer time. (That means more weight AND more reps per set.)

If you know anything about how I think and work you know that I always want numbers to back up claims. You have to measure so you can objectively quantify the benefits of an exercise or a technique.

So when I received my first pair of 1 Ton Hooks for evaluation I headed straight for my local gym to have random test subjects try out these hooks under real gym conditions. What happened? Honestly…they were absolutely blown away!

See, the way to really test something like this is to measure how much you can lift with them and compare that to how much you can lift without them. But there is a serious limitation here! If you do your first set to absolute failure with the hooks…and completely exhaust a specific muscle group…and then remove the hooks and try to do a second set without them it's very obvious you’ll be substantially weaker on your second set and the true value of the hooks will be greatly exaggerated.

What to do?

Well…what if we tested the opposite way? What if we had test subjects lift to absolute failure without the hooks…then slapped the hooks on to see what they could do when their muscles were now pre-exhausted? Wow! That’s one tough test! So that’s what we did.

You really have to appreciate how hard these guys tried on their first set without the hooks. They knew their effort was being measured by me…and there were other guys standing next to them waiting for their turn at the test…so each guy really gave it everything as we all stood over him and coaxed him on and counted his reps out loud in a crowded gym! I really think these guys set personal records without the hooks just because of the audience and the encouragement. Wouldn’t you? They squeezed out every rep they could until total failure.

Then…after that all out performance on their first set…the subjects put on the 1-Ton Hooks and did a second set.

What happened?

They ALL lifted more weight and completed more reps!! A lot more. In fact, they averaged a 98% increase in the total weight lifted on their second set!! Remember, that’s after they pre-exhausted themselves going to full failure using no hooks on the first set!

Here’s a graph to show the total tonnage increase in weight lifted by the test subjects: