Grip Strength. The old timers had it and swore by it. Most of them achieved great grip strength due to the demands of their professions. They worked as blacksmiths, butchers, and pounded away at spikes on the railoads. Hard manual labor toughned their hands, wrists, and tendons to the point where they could bend steel with ease. Today, we have replaced those tools of the trade with keyboards and mouses. Today, you go to give a handshake and it feels like there's a dead fish in your hand. Unfortunately these are the signs of the time and technoloigcal advances have eliminated the need for such grip strength and grip endurance. The great thing though is you can still achieve tremendous amounts of grip strength even if you work a desk job, and the best part is you dont have to pound away at a spike for 12 hours a day to achieve it. Here I've listed my favorite grip exercises for beginner's. These exercises are a great way to build a solid foundation in your grip and forearms. Grip Training is fun, but be careful not to over do it. Just with any other muscle in your body, overtraining it is a bad thing and can be easily done with your hand muscles. Slow and steady progression is the key to muscle and might!
Chin-up bar hangs
These are one of the best ways to start to develop your grip strength and endurance. Dr. Ken Leistner, famed trainer and author of The Steel Tip Collection, wrote about his praises for this exercise and with good reason. It WORKS! All you have to do is find a chin-up bar, grab onto it with the palms of your hands facing away from you, as if you were to execute a pull-up, and try to hang the for as long as you can without swinging your body. You maybe asking, wow that doesnt sound to hard...try to hold on for a solid minute. You can achieve gorilla grip strength from doing this exercise. Set timed goals for yourself and try to work up to 30 secs. then a 1 minute, then a 1:30 and so on and so forth....
Pull-ups
Pull-ups are a must! start doing them and you will see results not only in your grip, but your arms and upper back as well. They are a terrific functional movement exercise and can build great bodyweight strength. Make sure you wrap your thumb around your fingers and do not use a hook grip. This will enable you to use all the muscles in your forearm and thumbs. If pull-ups are a challenge for you, I recommend you buying resistance band loops. They come in different resistants and allow you to work up to a decent amount of pull-ups. As you progress you can lower the weight of the resistance bands or cease using them all together. Kipping pull-ups are becoming popular these days especially in the Crossfit circle. I have never been a fan of kipping pull-ups, but what works for someone else may not work for another person. My advice is to use strict form on the way up and down while minizmizing the amount of momentum from your body.
Plate Pinches
One area of the hand which is neglected most often, is the thumb. If you have a weak thumb it will hinder your grip strength and endurance. Plate Pinching is a long time proven exercise used to strength your thumb and other fingers. Edward Aston, George Jowett, and Thomas Inch ( all famous strongman from the early 1900's ) all trained and wrote about plate pinching. Plate pinching works best when the weight plates are solid steel. Stand the weight plate upright, and use your hand like a forcep, keeping all four fingers together, to grasp onto the plate. The outside edge of the plate should be hitting the inside of your palm. Lift the plate up and hold it for as long as possible. A 25lb plate should be a good starting point. If a 25lb plate proves to be too challenging, take two 10lb plates and put them together and pinch lift them in the same manner. You will have to squeeze very hard in order to keep the plates together, thus giving your hands quite a workout.
As a beginner, I would recommend incorporating one to two grip exercises into your workout routine.
I can guarantee you, regardless of your job, age, or whether your an athlete or not, grip training will benefit you in many aspects of your daily life. Whether it is cooking, typing, working on cars, painting, the list goes on and on with the amount of activites grip training can help enhance. I urge you to utilize grip training and in doing so you will see and feel the results.
In part 2, I will cover some slighty more advanced yet basic exercises for the grip.
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