90 deg kinks
With a title like “One Hit Wonders” we could be discussing the “artists” that graced us with “99 Luftballons” or my favorite, “Who Let the Dogs Out?”, but instead we’ll be using the term as it applies to DU training. When I first started training seriously, my DU kink was a joke. Looking back, some of my beginner bends would not have even qualified as a “real” DU bend because the kink was so small, just moving the bar enough to be able to flip it to DO to finish it. As I learned more and more about the different styles of bending, I learned that a bar isn’t truly bent DU unless you can get it to 40 deg. Depending on the rules you are using for a particular bend, some rules require the bar to be bent to 40 deg or greater, others require the bar to be finished to 2″, requiring a “significant” kink DU before flipping to finish.

DU is all about the kink, and as I mentioned mine was crap. So I started training DU kink only, I didn’t worry about finishing these bends, just putting one big hit on whatever I had in my IMPs. At one point I was working DU kink everyday, 10-20 kinks a session usually after my workout. The name “One Hit Wonders” popped in my head one night as I looked down at my pile of kinked steel and realized that I had 20 galvanized 60Ds all past 90 deg with one hit each. I though “Damn those are some one hit wonders right there.” It isn’t really impressive, but it was for me personally as my kink was always weak, and even as I got stronger I was still inconsistent with my technique and would rarely get a 90deg hit more than once or twice per session. So grab some steel and some IMPs and start trying to kink every bar to 90deg in one hit, it’s fun and it works!!!