Chilean grip enthusiast and podcaster, Francisco Urtubia Zamorano (aka Pancho) interviewed IronMind founder and creator of Captains of Crush grippers Randall Strossen. 

IronMind has been known as Grip Central since 1988 and has led the field in product development, training, and promoting grip strength and its top athletes, along with supporting competitions. 

At the same time, in some online circles, IronMind has played the role of the outside critic as Strossen (who has a Ph.D. in experimental social psychology from Stanford) adopted the persona of TEDS (The Evil Dr. Strossen), as he first tried to debunk and then mocked such widespread online gripper myths as seasoning, the dog leg, and confusion between ratings and calibration, and pointed out the severe limitations of defining gripper difficulty with a single-number index. 

TEDS also coined the term GOPD (gripper obsession personality disorder) to describe the predisposition to overly focus on gripper minutiae rather than attacking grippers for fearsome closes.

Besides a bit of history about the development of Captains of Crush (CoC) grippers, Strossen talks about certification, the evolution of the rules, Richard Sorin, Joe Kinney, the Inch Dumbbell, Warren Tetting, David Horne, CrossFit, Greg Glassman and much more with his unique firsthand perspective and historical roots.

Strossen said of the interview, “I dodged a bullet because I was using my laptop and couldn’t really see what my camera was picking up . . . sorry about the framing. Big thanks to Pancho—I enjoyed our conversation. Keep up the good work!”

Part 1 Gripsport Latino Podast: Randall Strossen interview
 
Part 2 Gripsport Latino Podcast: Randall Strossen interview