And by the way, I agree that many people in the Starting Strength movement tend to parrot whatever Rip says. It’s a very good program and Rip is very competent, no question, but there’s a bit of “cultism” over there.

LOL, truth to tell, I own an Ivanko Super Gripper and I can vouch that it’s a very valuable product. :-D It’s their barbells that I have doubts about having read those comments by Rippetoe and his people. If you ever try one of them out, post a review, it’d be interesting. And yes, I myself noticed their website is mostly moribund, go figure.

Interesting! One thing to take into account is the Starting Strength forum members can be biased towards agreeing with whatever Rip says. If it’s all true, I wonder if Ivanko has revised products to fix those issues or if they haven’t felt the need. The members on the bodybuilding.com forums used to favorably mention Ivanko products a lot.

You got me curious, and I did some checks on the ivankobarbell.com website history. The site design hasn’t changed since 2011, sporting only minor edits like removing a few products. Their “FAQ” and “Dealer Locations” header links been broken since April.

These things make it look like they stopped trying at some point and are coasting.

So… yeah on second thought I think it’s a good bet that their gripper isn’t the latest and greatest.

Thank you.

By the way, what do you think of Ivanko’s barbells in general? You say that Ivanko doesn’t sell anything that’s junk, and I have no reason to disbelieve this as I’ve never tried out their barbells, but I was a bit shocked when I found out that the big wigs at the Starting Strength message board are literally trashing Ivanko barbells.

Here’s Mark Rippetoe:

“The knurling on an Ivanko bar keeps me from recommending it. It’s badly-enough designed to make the bar useless for pulls.”

Here’s Jordan Feigenbaum chiming in:

“The markings make Ivanko barbells less than useless, for example the center spacing is off, and they bend pretty easily too. Evidence? Six bent Ivanko competition bars are floating around where I train right now. Absolutely 100% stay away from Ivanko bars. They are not worth it: for 600 bucks, you’re in premium bar market and the Eleiko, though more expensive, crushes the Ivanko in every way.”

And here’s Robert Santana venting a similar viewpoint:

“My gym has all Ivanko bars and the markings are fucked up. When I first started benching heavy at that gym, something felt off and eventually I ended up missing on weights I can typically manage. So I went back to my previous gym, measure the damned markings, then go and figure out where I needed to be on the Ivanko bars. Needless to say those confusing ass markings caused me to grip too narrow.”

How could it be that they’re talking about Ivanko barbells like that? I thought that they may have a dog in the fight since they’re selling their own in-house barbell now, but I see that they actually praise some other brands such as Eleiko. I don’t know what to think.

This was written by a contributor that isn’t here anymore. I have some Heavy Grips I use and like, one of which broke after a moderate amount of use, which they replaced under warranty. I would imagine the Ivanko is good. Ivanko doesn’t really sell anything that’s junk.
I guess I would call it an assistance exercise for pulling, considering a good grip will help you with heavy deadlifts.

Sorry for the typo, “pishing” should be “pushing”.

What do you think of the Ivanko Super Gripper?

By the way, do you think that the act of closing a gripper falls under the category of pulling movements or under that of pishing movements? Is is a pull or a push? I’d say a push but I’m not sure.