Most people don’t think about the value of a strong grip until they have to lift or carry something. A strong grip is more than just strong hands. Oddly enough, having a strong grip is helpful in many aspects of life.

In essence, grip strength is closely related to overall strength. However, grip strength can be isolated and trained specifically.

In this article, we will cover how you can develop a strong grip. So that you can climb better, carry further, lift heavier, and practically do everything better with your improved hand coordination.

Whenever you’re ready to take your grip to the next level of strength, keep reading.

On Grip Strength  and a Strong Grip

The truth about grip strength is that it’s hard to get a strong grip without getting healthier, faster, and stronger overall. Deadlifting is great for the hips, glutes, back, and torso, but also incredibly useful for your grip.

Fingertip pushups are great for the triceps, abs, chest, and shoulders, but also incredibly useful for building your forearm and grip strength.

That’s why we suspect grip strength is a great metric for overall wellness, health, and longevity. Almost all useful physical actions that involve the hands require significant amounts of stress and squeezing power.

Because of this, the best way to improve your grip is to perform regular movements. Farmer’s walks, heavy deadlifts are more effective than an hour of pinch gripping, because they are lucrative to the entire body.

Don’t think your grip can’t handle it. Grip muscles are designed to experience long bouts of exertion, as they are primarily slow-twitch fiber consistent. They are also competent movers because you have used them for a variety of tasks for decades on end.

To make them even better, you need to stress them with serious weight and hand strength. Train your grip with heavyweights, high reps, and long sessions.

Now let’s get into the exercise you can use to improve your grip.

Deadlifts, Chinups, Pullups

As mentioned, deadlifts are proven to build a grip. Wide-grip deadlifts are even better as they put pressure on the grip under different angles.

In the same category, we have pull-ups and chin-ups, both of which require a great grip. Any exercise where your grip is used to support an external weight or your own will improve your strength.

However, some more targeted exercises can help turn your hand into a vise.

Dead Hangs

For instance, dead hangs do exactly that. You simply need to hang off something with both of your hands. It’s potentially the greatest expression of grip power. As it happens, you will also stretch your spine, chest, lats, and shoulders.

Try to hang for at least a minute. Progress to one-hand hangs if two-hands is too easy. You can use a bar that is closer to the ground and keep a foot on the floor to support yourself as you transition.

Sledgehammer Exercise

Another great way to build grip strength is to use a sledgehammer. Be careful though. If you have to choose a single sledgehammer exercise for your grip, go bottoms up. Hold the hammer pointing toward the ground, swing it up, and catch it with the head pointing upward.

Hold it like that, then handle it with straight wrists and parallel to the torso, don’t let the sled fall. The lower your grip, the harder your grip will have to work.

Fingertip Pushups

Most people who try pushups on their fingers do it a certain way. They have their fingers straight with their palms dipped down.

They are great, but there’s a better technique for your grip. Simply make a claw with your hand as if you’re trying to grab the floor.

Oddly, you should try to grab the floor. This keeps your hands active, builds resilience, and prevents tensing of your connective tissue. These pushups are not easy, and they can be quite dangerous for beginners.

Don’t leap into them unless you know you can. Start on your knees, go slow. Once you can have your knees all the way back, progress to the full pushup.

Farmers Walks

On average, people no longer carry hay bales and carry water pails. This used to be the case when over a third of people lived on farmland, but even now, we can quickly become more than average by doing some farmers walks regularly.

All you need to do is grab a pair of heavyweights, stand, and walk around. These can be kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, trap bars. You can walk downhill, uphill, and in circles.

You can end your walks with swings or deadlifts. You can do some shrugs. In essence, all you need to do is to carry heavy things with both arms while walking.

Hand Strengtheners

And finally, the most isolated of the movements is making use of grip building mechanisms.

This is potentially the easiest exercise to do because you can do it anywhere at any time. Buy yourself a pair of grip exercisers, and follow the instructions. There are many types, such as socket spinners, vise pressers, so on and so forth.

Vise-Grip

Now that you know how to develop a strong grip, you are well on your way to make your life easier and more enjoyable. Strong hands are not just for exercise, but they are also for fun.

With strong hands, you can climb trees, carry groceries for those who can’t, help somebody when they are hanging by a thread, and win those tug of war games.

If you’d like to know more about health and wellness, check out our categorical articles on the website.