Could lack of grip be holding you back?

Scott Laidler

This means that they often have to abandon pulling movements like barbell row and lat-pull down mid set as they just can’t hold on to the bar anymore. This not only compromises training intensity, it can also have a knock on effect of creating an imbalanced physique due to having to overly rely on pushing movements that require less grip strength.

This article will provide a solution to this commonly ignored issue. I'll outline exactly how you can rid yourself of this frustrating problem.

Types of Grip

The crushing Grip:

A vice like grip describing the action of fingers pulling in toward the flat platform of the palm. This is the type of grip a martial artist would need to grasp his opponent for grappling and throws. With this manner of grip the forearm muscles involved are primarily the flexors with secondary stress on the extensors.

The Pinching Grip:

This grip describes the action of holding a weight plate between your thumb and fingers. Whilst this grip has little real world application, expect perhaps pressure point attacks in martial arts, it can contribute to developing additional muscle mass in both the forearm flexors and extensors.

The final type of grip is the most comprehensive grip, involving the fingers, thumb and palm. This grip is somewhat a cross between the previous two. A real world application of this grip would be grasping a steering wheel or climbing a ladder.

Here are the types of strength associated with Grip strength training:

Concentric Strength:

This describes the type of strength used when gripping a small ball for example. Whilst concentric strength is being used, the muscles in the forearm and wrist shorten in response to the squeezing action.

Isometric Strength:

This is when the concentric strength used in a grip is held with no further movement. For example holding someone in a clinch, here the wrist and forearm muscle are no longer continuing to shorten.

Eccentric Strength:

This is where your grasp slowly opens. Examples of this would be striking an opponent with a knife-hand or lowering a barbell after barbell rows.

Now that the basic elements of grip strength are explained, lets take a look at the types of exercises you can do to increase yours.

Suspension:

This is where either your body or equipment is suspended, and you are holding the weight from your wrists. These exercises primarily utilise the pinching grip.

Note that when performing suspension exercises there is inherent risk of falling weight or dropping from your suspension when your grip gives out. So as with all exercise, proceed with caution.

Grip Hangs:

The idea here is simply to hang from a bar using your grip strength, and incrementally increase your hang time as you progress. To Increase the difficulty of this exercise try hanging from a suspended towel wrapped over the bar, or better yet a thick rope.

Towel Hang Bicep Curls:

Wrap a towel around the bar of a dumbbell and hold either side using your isometric grip strength, from there proceed to carry out regular bicep curl movements. This is a fantastic exercise for gaining size in your forearms, your best option for implementation is to incorporate it into your usual biceps routine.

Plate Grip Farmers Walks:

This exercise involves holding a weight plate in a pinching grip in both hands and walking with the plates at your side for 100 metres. This is an excellent exercise for developing your isometric strength. To work more on your crushing strength slot at a towel through the hole in the plate and hold the towel instead of the plate. This exercise could easily be incorporated into your Traps workouts.

One Arm Row (Towel Grip):

As with the towel grip bicep curls, this exercise mimics the exact same movements of a usual one arm row, except that you are gripping a towel at both ends instead of the Dumbbell. Again this exercise is best utilised with inclusion into your regular lat workout.

Crushing / Squeezing exercises

These movements help to build vice-like strength in the hands, whilst establishing significant size in the forearms. The following exercises utilize the thumb, fingers and palm, which make them total grip strengthening movements.

These exercises can be performed out of normal training hours, as they recruit such a small amount of muscle mass they will seldom interfere with your regular resistance program. You could even do these exercising whilst watching the TV.

Ball Squeeze:

Hold a tennis ball or a small rubber ball, grip and crush the ball for 90 seconds as hard as you can, repeat this 3 times, this exercise is great for targeting the forearm in its entirety.

Newspaper Tearing:

This is similar to the huge feats of strength strongmen display when they tear a phone book in half. Simply Take two pieces of newspaper, lay them on top of each other, then fold them in half five times. Begin by tearing these halves into more halves, and even quarters. Start with a few sheets and progress to a entire newspaper.

The Routine

In terms of turning these exercises into a specific routine i would recommend introducing three sets of the suspension exercises to your biceps, lat and trap workout respectively, use a rep range consistent with your training goals and simply replace their traditional counterparts.

The crushing and tearing exercises should be done once or twice per week during training down time. These exercises can be performed anywhere and generally do not interfere with your regular training regime, although you may want to avoid doing them the day before a session that incorporates a number of pulling movements.

Conclusion

As I mentioned a high level of grip strength is essential for a number of athletes and those involved in martial arts, power lifting and bodybuilding specific training. Likewise to the regular resistance trainer this is an area of training that you would do well not to overlook. Increasing your grip strength is going to help you increase your lifts in a number of other exercises from rows, to curls, even to hoisting a barbell over your head to perform a squat. Whilst one can always argue in favour of training wraps they almost circumvent the need for grip strength, this is not really a solution; it's more of distracter from the problem unless you're a serious power lifter. Having good, natural and functional grip strength will go a long way to avoiding injury on exercises like the bench press, and make everyday activities like opening jars and moving furniture a breeze.

About the Author

Scott really doesn’t mess around. He brings an all business approach to his training. Work hard, shut up and get it done. He has a background in Psychology and brings a great focus to all that he does. Check out his articles if you need to get focused or to work harder, shut up and get it done. His site - Project-fitness.co.uk