A dominant question following the revised language in certification rule number four has centered on either kicking guys off the lists, making them re-certify, or somehow tagging each name to give more detail on how the person was certified.

The simple truth is that there are no second-class citizens on our certification lists: If we thought somebody didn't follow the rules, we would not have certified him in the first place, and anyone who has been doing grippers for a while or who has read the book Captains of Crush Grippers: What They Are and How To Close Them knows that the certification rules have evolved over the years, just as they do in any sport.

Our unswerving goal is to preserve the spirit, legacy and tradition that makes Captains of Crush® grippers and certification on them so unique. Not everyone knows that the deep set is only a recent phenomenon or that not everyone uses it even now: Some of the most recent and most prodigious performances on our grippers have not used a deep set, and we predict that a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised to see what they can do on a gripper without using a deep set once they give it a serious try.

We instituted the one-inch rule a little over a year ago in an attempt to stop the trend toward deeper and deeper sets, but it has not worked the way we had hoped, so we felt that we had no choice but to act decisively to correct this situation.

On the other hand, if someone wants to clamp down a gripper, leaving a gap the thickness of a razor blade, and then close it, more power to him. But that's not the way guys started closing IronMind grippers for certification and it's not what we want our certification process to become.

Having said that, we understand that rule changes affect the guys who are sweating bullets on these grippers, and there is no denying that these changes can be disruptive. We apologize for this, but we felt that the sooner we acted the better, and we are here to help anyone who wants some suggestions for how to excel within these guidelines.