TRAINING:
First of all, you need to have smaller blobs. Idealy, a selection of lesser york heads works best, but I only had Hex-heads, so I'll tell you about my technique. As seen on my #3 page, I train with a number of block weights and have added weight by way of weight plates and 550 cord. I trained by working up to a max weight 5 days a week and by training each finger by it self. Intenstity, by squeezing as hard as possible is key. I found that the biggest part of this training was effort. In all of hand strength, one assumes that their max effort is their actual max effort, but I've learned that the limit of hand strength is mental. One must focus on using all of your given strength, and then a little extra. This mental-physicl link is where most people fail, thinking that when they fail, that's it, and there is no more. In many cases, I've "failed", only to come back in 30 minutes to set a new PR.
With the blob, this is especially true. Summoning the strength to lift this thing is much more than a physical effort, as on your first try it may seem impossible. With training, this is absolutly not true.
One of the biggest factor of lifting the Blob is hand size. A buddy of mine, the other to easily master my 90lb hex, lefted the Blob with two hands, let go with the left and held it for 6 seconds. Sadly, he had to move off to an Army school and never got to train again. In his case, he had thick 8.5" hands that eveloped my block weights. Others who have mastered the blob have massive hands, but few with average hands (7.75") have ever budged this thing. To me, that's much more impressive and I have a lot of respect for the training they went through to lift it.
As for training, I would warm my hands up with max effort attempts on the hex-heads, and a little sledgehammer work. Then, I'd grab the blob and attempt to pull it. At first, it went no where, so I squeezed harder, surpassing what I thought was possible. Soon enough, this impossible beast had a certain feel to it, that it COULD be lifted.
Next, I moved on to assited lifts, where I would use a thumb and one finger from my off hand to pull it up. It first, I needed the whole left hand, but over a few weeks, I was down to just my thumb and ring finger. Once lifted, I'd slowly let go with the left until the beast slipped out of my hands. Soon enough, it felt like I was barely even stabalizing it with my left! But alas, I still couldn't pull it.
After that, I found that squeezing my right thumb and index finger with the left hand applied enough pressure on the thumb to lift it, and this proved to be a much better technique as it taught my right hand what type of pressure would be needed to lift it. Then, there were days when I felt that I was barely holding on with my left, but then it would slip away...
