Carrying heavy grocery bags or having a fussy child on your lap demands a firm grip along with killer arms. But everyone is not blessed with an empowered grip. Right. Or in general cases, our grip strength gradually reduces with our age. Aging is a biological process. So we can’t stop them. However, we can work on our grips to make them strong and durable.
Whether you are a gentleman, woman, or a sports person, you must have a strong grip to accomplish your day-to-day job. Developing a firm grip is not a one-day plan; therefore, it quickly refers to a minimum time which is three months or 90 days.
Grip strength is the biomarker of your entire health. It has significant benefits in our life. But developing it requires adequate dedication and consistency. Climbers and weight lifters used to perform grip strengthening exercises before doing their dead hang, bouldering, and rock climbing. A firm grip helps them to push their limits.
Apart from that, if you’re on the way to a weight-loss journey, you can’t do a high-intensity workout without a strong grip. Do you know why?
Because a weak grip prevents you from doing over-exercise by causing pain, that’s why to avoid wrist injury and hand pain, you have to do grip strengthening hand exercises to warm up your hand and finger muscles.
Let’s talk about baked science facts:
Journal of Strength & conditioning research has reviewed that hand grip strength is a practical measuring factor o muscular durability and stamina.
On the other hand, grip strength is also linked with the chance of cardiovascular complications, which even cause death. But don’t get panicked because we are here to help you.
In this article, we will mention a few exercises you can perform at home or the gym.
Let’s talk further
Before talking about improving grip strength, let’s define them.
What is grip strength?
Grip strength is the measuring matrix of your forearm muscle strength and durability. Grip strength is different for different people. A healthy person has greater grip strength than a physically weak person. Again, sportspersons and rock climbers have more grip strength than a normal person. If a person has a strong grip, that means he has a good upper extremity and an overall healthy body.
But earlier, we say that everyone is not blessed with strong grips, so they’ve to work on that to strengthen their wrist, fingers, and forearm muscles.
Liana Tobin, the fitness trainer of the National Strength and conditioning association, said that when we perform a workout with heavy weights, grip strength is the common thing that prevents us from doing so. It is because of our smaller forearm muscles that get tired very fast. That’s why before working with weight challenges, we need to work on our forearm muscles and finger joints.
Let’s mention some quick exercises that make your grip strength, like iron
Stress-ball squeeze
Just pick a tennis ball or stress ball, then squish it with your whole hand, including your palm, fingers, and thumb, for 5-7 pulses. Next, repeat the process just using the pointer finger and thumb. Then engage all remaining fingers, and follow the same process. Do this with both hands by repeating the sequence.
Book Pinch
Take two of your book or a copy of the same sizes (A coffee-table book is just the perfect choice for pinching). Squeeze the book with your fingers and thumb for a minimum of 30 seconds, then release and rest for the next 20 seconds.
You can perform it in three to five sets for better results.
You can perform these two exercises at your home or your office desk.
Now we are going to talk about gym exercises to improve grip strength within a short period.
Farmer Carry:
It is a first-line grip strengthening exercise performed by weight lifters. Hold a heavy-weight kettlebell in one hand, keep your arms down by the side, move forward, and walk in a straight line. Don’t let the load fall on the side of the leg. Do this around 30-60 seconds. Then take a rest for the next one minutes, then repeat the process. The complete process is known as farmer’s carry. Do this in 3-5 sets to achieve an effective outcome.
Plate pinch:
For a plat pinching workout, you need to take two weight plates of the same size and hold one in both hands between the thumb and fingers. Stand with arms by their size. Next, squeeze both plates with your whole potential, then relax for 60 minutes. Perform a minimum of 3 set for effective result.
Assisted band pull-up:
For this, take the loop resistance band around a solid bar. And hold loose end under your foot, then place another foot on the top. Then gradually hang from the bar here; you need to engage the core, glute, and lats to accomplish a full pull-up. After doing so, gradually get back to the initial position.
Do this in 3 sets, ten reps/set.
When we are talking about grip strength, it is necessary to mention the effectiveness of using a Grip trainer. If you are at a mid-senior level, you can replace the squeeze ball with a grip trainer to get a faster outcome.
