This week Craig hit up our good friends at Movement FX for some pro tips on building bone crushing grip strength. Hopefully something here for all your grapplers, clinchers, grippers and Popeye impersonators. Enjoy.
When deciding on exercises to improve your functional grip strength it is important to come up with movements that not only work the grip strength in your hands, but also involve the multiple muscles and joints that are also associated with any exercise or movement that grip strength is required. For example if all we did for our grip strength was squeezing hand grip pinchers we may increase our grip significantly but when we went to use this new-found strength in a functional way we would probably fatigue in the other supporting muscles through the body.
So here are our top five exercises to work into your strength training to improve your functional grip strength.
1.Single Hand Plate Farmer’s Walk
A great exercise to develop bone crushing grip strength, pinching the weight plate between the fingers and thumb helps increase your squeezing strength through the hand.
By using one plate at a time instead of one in each hand and focusing on keeping the shoulders square and not leaning towards the weighted side will force your core muscle to engage and is great for trunk stability. This is also a great exercise to strengthen ankles for injury prevention.
A single hand farmers walk is a great exercise to include into a warm up before starting a workout. To perform simply pick an appropriate weighted plate depending on your strength and pinch it between your fingers and thumb stand up straight with shoulders as square as possible and start walking. Start with something like 3 sets of 20 meter walks each hand, resting 1 minute between sets.
2.Varied Grip Chin Ups
Chin ups are a staple part of many strength and conditioning programs and will naturally improve grip strength as you support your body weight and grind out your reps.
To add an even greater focus toward functional grip strength try varying different grips such as using a thicker bar that fingers can barely get around, a towel – or gi jacket if you are a grappler – to wrap over your chin up bar,
Try using the body of a kettlebell hung of a chin up bar if you are really after a challenge .
Different rock climbing holds can also be purchased and also make a great way to vary your chin ups.
Get creative and come up with other ways to vary your grip while performing your chin ups and reap the benefits of improved grip strength as well as working all the pulling muscles through the arms and back.
3.Rope Climbs
There are many variations of rope climbs that can be included in a functional strength and conditioning program, all of which are great for improving grip strength. These including: Legless rope climbs, L sit rope climbs for the more advanced or the leg assisted rope climb for an easier option. Similar to the chin up, rope climbs are a great exercise to not only improve grip strength but increase pulling power through the whole upper body and strengthen core.
Once an athlete has enough strength to perform multiple reps of rope climbs they can become a useful tool to work into conditioning sessions.
4.Deadlifts
The best big multi-joint compound lift for building strength through the entire posterior chain, is also the one exercise that allows the most weight to be transferred through the hands resulting in a massive increase in grip strength.
If performing deadlifts for the first time it would be recommended to seek the guidance of a coach with some experience in powerlifting, as performing deadlifts with poor form can result in serious injuries through the back. Supertraining.tv Deadlift a great resource for tips and technique on the deadlift.
If you are looking for maximum gains on your grip strength while performing deadlifts, stick with a double overhand grip on the bar as you work up in weight. When you can’t physically hold the bar anymore in this fashion, switch to an over-under grip or get out your straps for the last heavier sets.
5.Heavy Kettlebell swings
Working different kettle movements into a strength and conditioning program can be great way to build functional strength throughout the whole body. By simply adding heavy kettkebell swings into a program you will not only get the benefit of building explosive strength through the posterior chain and hips, but will also work your grip strength in a way unlike any other exercise. Your grip not only has to deal with the weight of the kettlebell, but also has to counter the momentum of the bell at the bottom of the swing. This movement will help strengthen ligaments and tendons through the hands, forearms and elbows which in turn will create some amazing grip strength.
Before performing any exercise with a kettlebell, especially a heavy one, we would definitely recommended seeking out some professional coaching.
While we don’t know him personally, we’re big fans of Brett from Mr Minimalism. He’s a lighter framed guy with super clean technique, click here to check out one of his kettlebell swing videos.
So, that’s it! Try using the above in a circuit after your workout or training session, or maybe work one or two of these into your current program and watch your grips strength skyrocket.
Further info and handy links: