Grip Strength

[Carl1174]

Grip strength i think is sometimes overlooked (not so much by members of this forum per se), but it is a crucial part of strength training.

I have always been of the mindset that just lifting heavy weights without straps will be enough to work the grip, but if you have a weakish grip as I do, this can limit the amount of weight that you can lift on the other moves.

We all know of loads of different ways to train the grip specifically, BB holds that kind of thing. I just came across these though, that i thought sounded like fun (fun for us anyway ) and doesnt require very heavy weights so is not taxing on the CNS. So in the interests of the forum I thought Id post it up.

You may have all used them, they may be old hat, but i think for the 'weaker gripped guys' such as my self this is a way that could strengthen the grip, like I say, without using bone crunching amounts of weight.

Plate SPinning
Take a relitively heavy plate (say 25kg/55lbs) and feed it through your hands. 30-45 seconds clockwise then 30-45 seconds counter(anti) clockwise, give a good burn in the forearms and isnt ad boring or time consuming as wrist curls, plus you can get competitive with how many revolutions you can do

Ultra Farmers Walks

Hold two plates together in each hand in a pincer grip (so say two 5kg/10lb plates) the plates will want to slide against each other and fall, but you hold them tight and then walk for 30-60 seconds... Its a lot harder than it seems and MUCH harder than just holding a single 10kg/25lb plate, works the grip well WITHOUT having to load up 5pps and having your arms torn out the sockets trying to hold on to it

Hope this helps

Carl.

[Off Road]

Good post. Anybody else have more grip training exercises they do?

I like hanging from a chin-up bar for time. After it gets too time consuming, you can add weight

[5kgLifter]

Barbell suitcase deadlifts also really tax the grip because you have to keep the barbell level and lift the weight at the side of the body.

In fact, I did a 32.5kg Db suitcase DL thinking it was too light and couldn't weight what it stated it did, but can only do (at last count) around a 22kg Bb suitcase deadlift due to the constant micro movement of the barbell as it is steadied by a single hand.

[Fazc]

I wrote this about a decade ago now, I used to be into Grip Training and Grip Competitions, enjoy.

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There are about four aspects to grip training, (well thats debatable as well, but it'll do)

1. Holding Strength
2. Pinch Strength
3. Crushing Strength
4. Wrist Strength

If you are to compete then you'll have to concentrate on all of these areas at one time or another.

When you're just starting out you wont need all of these and just a steady diet of Farmers Walk will do, but pretty quickly you can build these into your training. 1-2 grip exercises per session wont cut into recovery much and you'll enjoy doing them. When youre more advanced in a full training week you could cover a couple of exercises of each category in any given training week. But like anything you'll build upto that level and enthusiasm.

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Following on from lets look at the types of exercises you can do from each category.

Holding Strength - Static Holds, Thick Bar holds, Thick bar Holds, Farmers Walk (the Daddy IMO) Rolling Thunder, Hangs.

Pinch Strength - Pinch Grips, using blocks of varying widths, thin 1inch to very wide 3inch. Pinching plates.

Crushing Strength - Grippers, Grip machine, crushing cans, newspapers etc

Wrist Strength - PlateCurls, Wrist Curls (both reverse and regular) reverse curl (with varying width bars)

All can be done for multiple singles, for time, for reps, and many can be done with varying widths of bars and apparatus, whatever you prefer. Your individual preferences will vary as you progress and you may opt for rep schemes that are quite different. Bear in mind though for the sake of competition you will have to lift just one heavy attempt per try.

OK, so there we have a basic list of grip exercises, lets say you have trained of a steady diet of some basic grip exercises and are now sufficiently enthused about starting on something a little more advanced. You'll pick one exercise from each category.

1. Farmers Walk
2. 2 Hand Pinch
3. COC Grippers
4. Reverse Curl

Thats a fairly even list of grip exercises, so how to implement them into your routine? Well how well do you recover? If you feel you can handle it, a good schedule is to add two of these exercises to each session. Lets assume you train twice a week, M-W-F.

M - Reverse Curl, Farmers Walk

W - 2 Hand Pinch, Grippers

F - Repeat Monday

M - Repeat Wednesday etc.......

There you have it, work hard and work progressively, add weight to the bar as often as you can and keep form even. Go for it.

When you're more advanced and you feel the need for more variety (possibly tied into competition) you'll learn about many more exercises, you'll probably get many more exercise suggestions from *********, grip training is one area with the list is almost non-exhaustive. By that time you'll know your recovery and will be able to arrange your routine to accomodate.

[Off Road]

Originally Posted by Fazc

you'll know your recovery and will be able to arrange your routine to accomodate.

Grip recovery is something that you never see mentioned, at least not on the mainstream lifting forums. How would grip recovery differ from everything else, or does it follow along the same lines as other lifts/bodyparts?

[Carl1174]

Originally Posted by Off Road

Good post. Anybody else have more grip training exercises they do?

I like hanging from a chin-up bar for time. After it gets too time consuming, you can add weight

With pull ups you can also do them with a towel hanging over the bar, hold on to the towell and do pull ups as normal, that definitely works the forearms more than normal (or seems to at any rate)

Carl.

[storm1507]

I love killing 2 birds w/ one stone....

I take a cheap pair of grippers and do sets of hold while doing LI treadmill work. Try to beat your best mark and it gets tough very fast.

[Fazc]

Originally Posted by Off Road

Grip recovery is something that you never see mentioned, at least not on the mainstream lifting forums. How would grip recovery differ from everything else, or does it follow along the same lines as other lifts/bodyparts?

Yeah, as long as you're bearing in mind that the hands have multiple paths/functions they recover pretty much like anything else. Most people accept that the hands typically recover faster than say quads etc, in my opinion this is because; they're smaller, they have a multitude of functions (you can train wrist strength to hell and still be relatively good to do pinch work etc), hand strength is something most adults have a decently adapted (via DIY or whatever) workload capacity.

This is why I said that something like a Farmers Walk generally covers most things, but if you want to get really serious about it then as long as you split up the various facets of grip training and spread them apart, recovery should be fine.

[Off Road]

Originally Posted by Fazc

as you split up the various facets of grip training and spread them apart, recovery should be fine.

Thanks, that makes sense.

[Fazc]

This is a very chubby Fazc some 10 years ago at one of David Horne's Grip Competitions: