How to Train for Ripping a Phone Book in Half

Have you ever tried to rip a phone book in half? Not easy, is it? Even if you know the technique, you might need some additional strength to pull it off. Here's how to train specifically for this feat of strength!

Method 1

Method 1 of 5:

Preparing Your Body and Mind

Do not start ripping phone books immediately unless you have already used your grip in training, in sports or in your occupation. Football players and grapplers in sport have strong grips and in occupations - carpenters and other laborers have strong grips (and especially at the index finger). You must have knowledge on the workings and limitations of your hand and fingers. Knowledge and experience go hand in hand.
2
Warm up for optimal results.
- Do a general warm-up. Such a general warm-up could include: brisk walking, jogging, cycling, circuit training, or any other invigorating activity such as washing a car. Keep the warm-up time between 10 - 20 minutes.
- Next, do a few specific warm-up exercises. Estimate what phone book thickness you can easily rip and divide a book, at the spine, to those thicknesses and do at least two sub-maximal rips.
3
Think of this stunt like a running event. But not as a quick one––think of it as more of a 100 meter (328.1 ft) sprint than a 10,000 meter (32,808.4 ft) run. The initial tearing of the book is powerful and the force needs to be sustained for several seconds.
- Concentrate on your form and put out a lot of force quickly. There are two methods of applying force. The first method is to accelerate like a rocket launching. The second method is more impacting, like a karate chop breaking a brick or a short plank of wood. This article advocates using the second method and especially when ripping the thicker books. Whatever the case, even with a quick and powerful rip, if you have just moderate strength, your technique has to be perfect and with little room for error. The technique and strategy increase in complexity as the difficulty of performing the task increases; for example, compare ripping several sheets of paper versus ripping a 1,000 page phone book.
- Review the many videos available online on the technique used by various people who have successfully ripped phone books.
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Method 2

Method 2 of 5:

Training for Ripping a Phone Book

1
Strengthen your chest muscles with push-ups, parallel bar dips and bench pressing.
- For bench pressing, keep the reps low but more than five reps. Obviously, the lower pecs come into play and the decline bench presses and parallel bar dips work the lower pecs.
- For push-ups and dips increase the repetitions for added strength. Although the resistance, in a push-up, is the same (your body weight), your maximum bench press for five repetitions would be more if you could do 75 push-ups versus 25 push-ups.
2
Do chin ups or rowing motions for your upper back muscles. Again, keep the reps low for strength. There is a fine line between upper body exercises like dips and chins in terms of muscles used: both these exercises use the chest and upper back muscles.
- Include some curling if doing rowing instead of pull-ups. Absolutely do curls if doing bent over rows, but if doing inverted rows omit curls if your biceps are getting a workout from this row variation.
3
Do pulling movements with a view to improving strength when moving the arms.
- When doing any pulling movement, stop the lift when the upper arm is in line with the body as shown in diagram A. As a cool down set, use a light weight and pull your arms to past your body line as shown in diagram B, for a full-range movement. Muscles can only pull (in this case, the prime mover is the latissimus dorsi or lats or wings) so when the upper arm passes the body line, the lats are out of play. This can be applied to pull-ups, rowing, chin-ups, pull-downs, and any pulling movement. So, if you are doing a rowing movement (or chins) like in diagram B, you are lifting too light, so add some plates (or an extra repetition or two) until the end of your lift is like that shown in diagram A.
- Think about your technique for book ripping and apply your muscles in the angles that they are at their strongest. When doing the initial rip, think of this as a big lat and chest movement primarily instead of an arm movement to impart the maximum strength. Also, add exercises for small muscle groups that are not directly stimulated from doing the multi-joint exercises and which would help to make your book ripping stronger.
4
Use the strongest parts of your chest muscles. In the bench press, the decline variation is stronger than the prone or incline. With the arms (triceps), the partial movement to full extension is very strong. When ripping a phone book, use your chest and arm muscles at their strongest range.
- Note: although the chest muscles are strong in the decline position, the prone position (the flat bench press) has a higher weight lifted because of stability issues (sliding off the bench head first while in the decline position).
Ripping a phone book demands a strong grip, so do two types of grip work: 1) thick bar lifting or pinch gripping and 2) lever bar lifting. To strengthen the grip in all fingers, the simplest way is to use a thick-handled dumbbell or barbell. A normal diameter bar is 1 1/16th inch, so lift with a thicker bar than this. Notice the rotation movements when doing lever bar movements. Besides the basic rotating movement with the weight on your thumb side of your fist, do a variation with the weight on the little finger side of you fist. When doing forearm rotations with the weight on the little finger side, be careful to avoid momentum movements because this variation is prone to momentum taking over the movement.
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Method 3

Method 3 of 5:

Ripping the Phone Book

Sporting goods and weightlifting stores have this item. Apply the chalk on your hands to keep them dry if you are dripping with perspiration or just got through washing your car.
2
Take the proper stance and have the proper "feel" before you start. Stand up, bend your knees slightly and bend over at the waist a bit. Have your back comfortably straight and your lungs inflated (do not hold your breath). Use easy breathing exercises (the general warm-up inflates your ribcage which is the base for your upper body muscles). Breathing exercises correct the posture and prevent slouching.
- Remember to exhale when applying force.
3
Look at your hands and the phone book. Keep your fingers together––there should be no space between them. Your forefingers are supported by the other three fingers on each hand.
- Focus your strength on the initial break and especially with respect to your grip. Gripping the phone book for too long a time will sap your energy, so grip the book hard just prior to the explosive start.
Tweak your technique as needed.
5
Rest between your efforts. In maximum poundage lifting, lifters will do as little as one repetition for a set and take a lengthy rest between sets. The nervous system has to recover before doing another intense effort. Before even attempting to do a rip, gripping the book hard for any length of time is a source of great energy leakage in itself.
- For fitness and exercise - rest a minute or several minutes between efforts and with book thicknesses that are moderately difficult.
- For power - rest as much as 15 - 20 minutes between efforts. Between efforts, stay warm and keep focused.
6
Have a well balanced training program. Include phone book ripping as a grip exercise and short-term diversion. It's not something you'll be able to do long-term, especially since phone books are not always available and they should be recycled.
- Train like you would train any other lift - train intensely, rest several days (or even a couple weeks), train intensely, repeat.
- Have a complete program of: strength training, running, aerobics - if you have a sedentary job, flexibility exercises and some agility exercises.
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Method 4

Method 4 of 5:

Using a Barbell and Lever Bar for Advanced Training

1
Make a thick bar barbell by first deciding on its length. To make a thick barbell, go to a home improvement store and buy two lengths of pipes (the gripping length of pipe would be 1 3/4 inch thick and the longer pipe would be 1 1/8 inch thick).
- Slide the thicker pipe over the 1 ¹⁄₈ inch (2.9 cm) pipe and permanently secure this with two inner, wrench fastened collars.
- Outside of these inner collars are the plates; these plates are kept on by collars that are hand fastened. The hollow (1 1/8 inch) pipe by will bend at about 200# but with a sleeve over it, this device will not bend unless you are superman. If the plates are too snug on the bar, sand the holes of the plates with sandpaper rolled around a dowel. The sleeve can be a size or two (for big hands) thicker than 1 3/4" in diameter.
2
Using your new barbell, do some lifting to determine the space between the inner collars (you do not want your elbows to bump into the 25s or 50s).
- Keep some space between the inner and outer collars (in the space you will load, on each end, your weight plates).
- Have some space between the outer collars and the ends of the pipe. In calculating the amount of space to put on plates on a thick bar, decrease your poundage from a standard grip (1 1/16") by 20%.
3
Use the thick bar for most lifts, except lifts like squats, front squats and bench pressing. Do chin ups or timed holds on a thicker bar. A number of outdoor gyms have bars thicker than 1 1/16" because they are more durable, so you could get your upper back and grip work together. An example of a timed hold: Grasp a thick-bar barbell, stand up, and time the amount you hold it.
- If you must do bench pressing with a thick bar, use a solid, seven feet bar, as the inside bar, instead of a pipe because serious bench pressing should be done with spotting devices and most spotting devices are made for seven feet bars. The grip also gets taxed in pressing movements, so you could do bench pressing with a thick bar for your grip work. Let the sleeve rotate by not making the inside collars tight against the sleeve.
- When cleaning a barbell, having the sleeve rotate, even just a little, makes it easier.
With these timed holds, gradually increase the time of the holds and the amount held. Pinch gripping works the thumb better than thick bar lifting, however, pinch gripping works mostly the grip. Thick bar lifting works the overall grip and other muscles.
5
Use a lever bar to:
- Strengthen grip: Strengthen your grip, at the index finger, and the other fingers too. The position of a lever bar is like using a hammer. The lever bar lifts can be done with motion at the wrist (radial flexing) or static (isometric). A thick, long hollow pipe or a sledgehammer can also be used as a lever bar instead a short, plate loaded lever bar.
- Strengthen forearm rotators: Strengthen your forearm rotators and especially the supinators. Forearm supination work will make the initial break in the phone book easier (making that initial break in the phone book is the difficult part).
- Strengthen biceps: You could also strengthen the biceps and supinators by doing dumbbell curls with unbalanced dumbbell. At the start position have the hand in the neutral position (palms facing the body) and at the top position the palms are facing up.
Strength gains are quite rapid, in the beginning, when doing new exercises and your phone book ripping will be easier. (This effort is suitable when you have just a small supply of phone books to rip.)
As with the thin books, try to get a nice clean rip, when ripping the thick books. Ripping thick books is not just a decision based on your ability to do so, but whether the thick book is within the range of ability of your hand size. Grasping objects that are too big can cause acute pain at the base of the thumb, and it does not reflect a lack of strength.
Have enough rest between sessions and record your rep, set, and poundage scheme. After you are satisfied with your progress with phone book ripping, give it up, and move on to another exercise or stunt. When doing the new stunt, start from a moderate (or moderate/easy) intensity and cycle up from there. Let your mind and body have some much needed rest, at these lower levels.
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Method 5

Method 5 of 5:

Routines for Many or Few Phone Books

If you have a huge supply of phone books, try this fun routine.

1
Divide the books. Instead of ripping a few whole books in a session, divide a dozen or more books at the spine into halves, thirds or quarters. Then rip 25 to 30 times. This will prove to be more fun and extends the ripping opportunities over a longer period of time. Doing it this way allows you to build up a base of strength (and technique) and future workouts will be easier and less reliant on your nerves.
- A good rule to follow is one taken direct from weight training––if you cannot do five repetitions of a lift, you are lifting too heavy. Applied to phone book ripping, if you cannot rip a few books in a session, you should be ripping thinner books.
2
If you don't have a lot of books to rip, try some of the following substitutes:
- Rip phone books as an occasional stunt and lead up to this by practicing on old magazines and newspapers.
- Train your grip (very important), forearm rotators, upper back muscles and chest muscles. The arms get worked from doing the chest and upper back exercises; do not do any arm work unless you are doing a row instead of the the pull-up. Rows do not work the biceps much.
- After training for at least three or four workouts, you will be rearing to go, so go tear those few phone books in half.
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Tips

There are many ways to do thick bar lifting, exercise your creativity and put something together or think of an exercise that you can do with a thick bar. There is not that much new under the sun, so do read about how others have trained to get some ideas.
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In putting together a routine, alternate concentration between different lifts (stunt) or body parts. For example, if your legs are worn out from work or play, simply do a maintenance level of strength and speed work for your legs and concentrate, for a couple months, on flexibility (stretching), a stunt like ripping a phone book, and a version of abdominal work. Let your routines fit your lifestyle, have some variety, be variable in intensity and interesting (and fun).
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A few strongmen can rip phone books without technique and with brute strength; try ripping a book without technique for a greater challenge.
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Warnings

A few people might be capable of calling up great strength and can rip a phone book in half without practice (or might be very strong from lifting weights); however, unless you have been doing grip work, this stunt could hurt your index finger. Practice grip work.
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Always tighten the outside collars. When using a lever bar, use two outside collars. Choose exercises carefully, so that if the collar fails, the plate will not drop on your foot.
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Extra thick grip work might cause intense pain at the base of the thumb. It does not matter if you are grasping a thick bar, a thick phone book or grasping a thick, medium weight item in everyday life. Do not do extra thick grip work unless you have big hands.
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