A wrist exercise that WON'T make you blind! (Powerball - Grip Trainer)

Member Name: sharrowing

Product:	Powerball - Grip Trainer
Date:	27/04/02 (2727 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, Addictive, Grip-strengthening

Disadvantages: Too noisy for the bus, A little overpriced, Dodgy instruction leaflet

One of my workmates bought one of these into the office. I said "useless fad". He said "no it's really good and golfers use it for grip and it's got a gyroscope and everything". I wasn't convinced.

And he couldn't get it to work very often. You're supposed to whip out the drawstring to give the gyro an intial kick and then using a circular movement of the wrist get it going faster and faster. But it just wasn't playing ball for my mate (excuse the pun).

Then I had a go and I COULD get it to work. It was weird. The movement of your wrist sets up a kind of feedback loop. The more you rock the ball the faster the gyro spins, making it harder to turn. On my first go the damn thing seemed to come alive, like a hand-sized bucking bronco.

Then my mate wanted it back, and he soon got the hang of it. Soon we were competing to get the fastest speeds on the thing (thanks to the handy rev counter on the top), and powerball racing became an office sport. I bought my own, exept mine was the model with a built in dynamo so that it glows bright red when you get it going fast. Of course, office chum was envious!

Powerball is great fun. It's got that strange "one more go" appeal, even though at first it makes your arm muscles really sore! I can't make any claims for it's usefullnes, but I can say that I noticed a definite growth in my forearm musles, and a feeling of increased grip.

The glowing version is a great conversation piece down the pub, and it's great fun watching other people try to get the knack of it.



At £25 quid it's possibly a bit steep for what it is, but when did anyone buy a gadget because it was cheap? It is a very well made piece of kit, even if instruction leaflet is a classic of the badly-translated-from-the-Japanese genre.

My top speed is currently 12009 RPM, but I feel that I've got 15000 in me. Look out for me a
t in the British Powerball team at the 2004 Olympics!

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