1. Only as Strong as Your Fingertips
You can have ridiculously big, bulging biceps, rock hard shoulders and a football player sized chest, and it all comes down to nothing if your grip isn't strong. In fact, you're unlikely to get big, strong and ripped without a strong grip, since most of the critical weightlifting and bodyweight exercises like the deadlift and chinup require that you can hold onto a bar. If your grip gives out before the prime mover muscle of the exercise, then you should re-prioritize so you can strengthen that grip.
2. Two Muscles, One Stone
The great thing about strengthening your grip is that you can do it as part of most of the super-hard hitting strength exercises. A hooked grip on the deadlift (with one hand facing towards you and one facing away) will do wonders for your grip as it makes your thighs and glutes into steel. Additionally, if you've always looked at the pull-up bar with dread, you should take another look since the bar will strengthen grip ability even if all you can do is hang from the bar without conquering it.
3. Rip to Grip
One of the most effective, cheapest and least used grip exercise is crumpling up a piece of paper. Simply hold an uncrumpled sheet in your open hand, with your palm facing up. Without moving your arm (that is, only move your hand), crumple up the piece of paper. If you find that to be easy, do it 5 times in a row with 5 different sheets. If it's still too easy, add another sheet of paper. If you can crumple more than 3 sheets of paper at one time, then your grip is already super-human and you can focus on other strength exercises.
4. Back to the Old School
Often, when you want to know how to do something better in fitness and strength training, you just need to ask yourself how did they do it in the old days. When it comes to strengthening the forearm muscles, the answer is pretty simple. Start doing lots of push-ups, but do knuckle push-ups instead of the traditional open hand variety. Lower down slowly to squeeze out more grip training. When you finish, throw a towel over a pull-up bar. Grip the towel and do some towel pull-ups for an incredible forearm workout.
5. As Always, Add Weight
If you really want to take your grip to the next level, you need to treat the muscles of the forearm like any other muscle. Use dumbbells or barbells to do wrist curls and wrist extensions. Use enough weight to challenge you when you do sets of 5 repetitions. Then switch over to the wrist roller, which is a weight attached by a rope to a piece of pipe. Roll the pipe to coil the rope as you hold it out at shoulder height. Finally, turn to grip tools like Gladiator Grip so you can squeeze and release the stress out of your day as you strengthen your grip.
Member Comments