(Last Updated on May 11, 2024 by Henry)
Hand Grip Strength Exercises –
Crush it – The fastest way to Build a Powerful Grip?
- Functional strength – Inseparable part of impressive physique. More crush grip strength = The heavier stuff you can lift
- Healthier hands – The stronger your hands are, the less risk there is for injury – Muscles are great for protecting our bodies
- Bigger forearms – You want to look great while you’re getting stronger – The stronger you are the bigger you likely get
- List of fun feats – Deliver stronger handshakes, have nutcracker skills, crush soda cans, rip deck of cards, roll up pans
Learn how to build a powerful foundation of your grip – It’s truly an inseparable part of an impressive physique. Ever heard of the saying “You’re only as strong as your hands are”?
Do you know that feeling, when you walk up to a loaded deadlift bar & you have a weak grip? Yeah, feels like being handicapped. So, what is the very first point of connection between you & the object you want to pick up? Yes, correct, that is your grip.
But how far are you going to take your crush’s grip strength? Crush gripping is the most common & major hand movement. The stronger your crush grip strength gets… The more powerful your ability to grab objects likely will be. This is also the most dominant hand movement that you want to focus on.. & train the most.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a senior citizen who wants to feel safe enough when grabbing handles in a moving bus or train.. or a competitive powerlifter who wants to win a competition. Every one of us needs to exercise crush grip enough to get our daily tasks done. Healthy, strong hands are never a weakness.
The Four Major Hand Movements
- Crushing grip – Grabbing & squeezing an object with your fingers – It’s the most basic hand movement, where you’ll be moving your fingers towards your palm
- Pinching grip – Movement that involves your thumb to pinch grip an object – The idea is to always use your thumb in combination with any of your other 4 fingers
- Supporting grip – Also called static grip, that focuses on holding onto something as long as you can while maintaining it
in the exact same position the whole time - Extending grip – Complex extensor movements, in your wrists & fingers, to adjust your grip position, move opposite directions & provide you with muscle balance
What are the Best Tools to Improve Crush Grip?
The Best Default Choice
There’s one ultimate default choice. Hand grippers will never go out of style no matter who you are. This is the pick you can never go wrong with. There are tons of excellent grippers, with different difficulty levels ranging from Rank Amateur to World Strongest Man.
Always aim for a High-Quality gripper
- Strong spring – Cheap plastic gripper springs tend to snap much more easily – No, you don’t exactly want sharp shards to fly into your face in the middle of your exercise & injure you. That’s the #1 reason to take a bit more expensive route – You want high-quality products to invest smarter & also AVOID INJURIES caused by cheap/faulty devices as much as possible.
- Consistency – You’re buying a hard-to-close, let’s say cheap 100-lb plastic gripper, & a couple of months later you’re closing it for reps like a master, like it’s nothing. It makes you feel like you’re a tough guy & you’ve made a hell of progress – Wrong, the reality is, this gripper spring likely just wore out. To monitor your progress better, the solution is High-Quality Gripper.
The safest road to go with is Captains of Crush grippers – These are deemed as the Gold Standard of hand grippers.
There are eleven (11) different strength levels to choose from.
It’s consistent across the board, well made & will probably last you a lifetime.
Also, other Ironmind-made hand grippers are excellent – Whether they’re smooth Zenith grippers, CoC Left-Turn hand grippers, OR IMTUG utility grippers. They’re perfect complements to Standard CoC grippers.
Besides CoC grippers, one of my favorites is Gillingham grippers – Incredibly beautiful & well made, world-class quality grippers that are affordable & sturdy to get the job done well.
There are many great options to choose from. If you’re serious about grip training, you want to get multiple grippers – For warm-ups, regular training & some for challenge.
How many Hand Grippers Should You Get?
3 Grippers are Great
Ideally, you want the whole set – But in reality, nothing’s really ideal. So, I’d recommend you to get started with at least 3 different hand grippers.
This is great to get you started & it’s probably all you need for a very long time. But of course, the deciding factor here is you. The effort you put in, your personal progress & goals. It can be & likely is very different for everyone.
- Warm-up gripper – Every exercise should start with a proper warm-up set, no matter what
- Regular training gripper – Your main hand gripper to get your workouts ineffectively
- Challenge gripper – For the days when you feel strong, motivated, pumped up & need a challenge
With 3 different hand grippers, you’ll cover most of your crush grip strength training. You always want to start your training, doesn’t matter what exercise we’re talking about, with a proper warm-up set.
It’s the bread & butter, standard drill to get your muscles going & ready for an intense workout. Warm-up sets also serve as a great way to lessen the chances of getting injured.
If you get injured = No workouts for you, for a long time. Always do warm-up sets no matter what!
The best gripper you have should be the regular training gripper – It’s your work-horse that probably gets used the most.
It should be well made across the board so it helps you to be consistent with your training.
For the days, where you feel great & pumped up, you should have at least 1 challenge gripper.
It’s optional to have one, but human nature is always very curious – It’s great to test yourself & your limits from time to time. It’s fun, it’s challenging & heck.. it’s a key to bragging rights! You don’t want to miss out on that one!
What to Avoid when You Train Crush Grip?
Don’t Overdo Your Thing
So, you just got your brand new hand gripper & you’re super excited & motivated to start training. You want to do as many repetitions as you can & work your forearms as intensely as possible to get results quickly.
But is it the smartest choice to approach like that? Yes & No. Keep in mind that your forearms are one of the smallest muscle groups in your whole body.
You can easily get inflammation in your hands if you overdo your thing. Be careful. Do not go for hundreds of repetitions with grippers like some guys out there are doing – There’s a high chance you’re going to injure yourself! It’s not worth it, be reasonable!
Instead of long strenuous workouts, you want to give your hands short yet intense workouts by using hand grippers. Up to 5 sets & up to 15 repetitions in each set would be usually more than enough. If you can do more than that, you need to get a more difficult gripper for yourself.
After a workout, give your hands rest! If you train, train.. if you rest, rest. Do not do something in between. Again, this is a small muscle group & you don’t want to fatigue it too much – No need to work harder, and work smarter – Use short & intense workouts, then give your hands proper rest.
Unless you’re Mr.Special-Case or Wolverine himself, who can recuperate in no time, this is a standard approach to how to progress quickly & not injure yourself at the same time, so you can keep training for years to come. Remember, getting stronger is a marathon, not a race. Longevity is the name of the game.
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Hi Henry,
I really enjoyed reading your article and learning about how to improve your grip. I have a very weak grip due to an increase of pain.
Would hand grippers work with a person who has arthritis or weak muscle conditions. It seems like it is a continuous roller coaster because if your grip is weak it affects your whole arm which then weakens your grip further.
I would love to know what you think, this seems like a great way to increase steady strength and build endurance at a reasonable pace.
Entry level gripper with low resistance can be valuable for rehab. So can be hand therapy stress ball.
Before storming ahead, the course of action is depending on what kind of arthritis are we talking about. Each case is unique & it is advised to get professional medical evaluation. Once you know exactly what you’re up against you can begin exercising.
If we’re talking about osteoarthritis, pain in hands & wrists that has likely been caused by excessive repetitive motions then focusing on achieving more muscle balance can bring positive results.
In that case hand bands are go to tools to build muscle balance. Most people have never worked on hand extensor muscles & it can lead to disaster. Just doing that alone for couple a minutes per day can be enough.
Who knew? My daughter is a pianist and she uses the grippers for finger and arm strength to help her playing. I hope we got a good one, I’m looking at your list of quality ones.
After reading your post, I realized I need them too!
Opening a door, opening a jar are things in our life that we want to be able to continue to do and I think this is very important for quality of life as we get older.
Thanks for posting!
To be frank, muscicians are heavily exposed to different forms of repetitive strain injuriers & most of them don’t even know to pay attention to it.
Years after years playing instrument in same position until their bodies are beat.
Lower back pain is common but also upper back & neck pain. There are guitar & sax players whose backs are killing them after decades of gigs. Torn shoulders of trombone players. Muscle strains around mouth and lips. Drummers with tendonitis, imflammation of certain tendons. Thumb & wrist pain, swelling & tenderness, stiffness & numbness.
In pianist case muscle balance in hands is screaming from distance & bound to happen. Addressing it early on saves you from world of pain.
Great post!
I always wondered how those martial artists in movies break a piece of wood…is that because of grip?
Seriously this video with the guy rolling the pan was incredible! He didn’t squint from pain at all! Like seriously when you train like your grip to be this strong do you stop feeling pain? My hands hurt from just opening a tightly shut bottle cap (or I can’t even open it even with the tricks that I know).
Another question: as a female, if I train my grip, are my hands and arms going to look strange? I assume that practicing grip will also be helpful in practicing pole fitness, am I right?
Nope, as a lady your hands will look about the same after heavy grip training. What will happen for sure is you end up with bunch of more functional strength opening them bottle caps with ease. Men struggle for years to put any mass on their bones, & they have about 20 times more testosterone than you do, so you’re safe to say the least.
For pole fitness you want to focus on training your wrists. Wrist-rollers are fun to use & getting into habit using one will serve you well.
With martial artists it gets even crazier in real life than in movies. They deliberately deaden the nerves in their hands by systematically hitting stuff. Hours upon hours beating fists against sandbag. Every time hands finish healing up a byproduct of that action is it thickens the bones & ligaments. Through-out the years of steady practice eventually you can punch a brick wall without feeling any pain.
Interesting!
The proof is in that video. I never thought our hands could be so strong.
There are times when I lift things and realize how weak my hands are but I never thought Grippers would make them have such strength.
Ironically, this crazy feat is one of the easier of the bunch.
It gets nuts when you see guys who bend handle of steel hammer bought from home depot.
Ripping off the top of a coke can with one hand or bending a horse shoe into S-shape.