Certainly more and more people are expressing interest in hand strength and grip sport with each year and with good reason, grip training is fun! Grip training is fun and very useful. You may never find use for that 500lbs bench press or 800lbs squat but strong hands are useful every day of the week for any activity.
As I have detailed many times on this blog, there are several functions of hand strength. Hand function is dependant on the position the hand is in (function follows form, do not forget) and we label them as crush, support, pinch, extension, as well as bending, levering, and tearing.
7 options certainly do not make training simple, but we can make it easy. I would like to suggest three key drills which combine elements of hand strength for rapid gains. Naturally you only progress as fast as you specialize, so if you have a specific goal it must be trained.
Here is an old clip from 2007 (note the much smaller me) you take a pipe and load a gripper in to the bottom. From there close the gripper and do some simple lever movements. This is both fun and productive. These are very simple and very easy to set up.
I certainly cannot seem to write an article about grip without talking about this movement. In my humble but correct opinion, this is one of the absolute greatest arm drills you will find. Pinch the plate, straight wrist, flexed fingers, now curl.
John Brookfield made block weights famous in the grip community with his book “Mastery of Hand.” Block weights train the pinch grip, are there are hundreds of uses for them. Where to start? For most people a 45lbs dumbbell half will be a good starting point.
So what to do with these three? Pick the one which tests best on a given day and plug it in to your program. Keep it simple and enjoy the ride.
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Great post Adam.
You are always advocating testing. This week I "tested" doing Bear deadlifts and then trashing Vegas like the dirty girl she is for 2 nights.
It did not test well.
LOL I have not drank more than 6 or 7 times in the last year. I had a few last week, it did not test well either…especially the next morning. Remember when you were 21, get wasted, wake up at 5am, stay up for 20 hours like it was nothing? this last weekend was the first time i felt older.
Good post Adam. You put on quite a noticeable amount of weight from that grip/lever video. Love plate curls! Been using a homemade pinch lever block and haven't tried a plate in ages. I'll have to give it a boo this weekend.
Good luck on the upcoming MM1!
Jason
Is there somewhere which sells dumbbells by the half or does one just buy a dumbbell and cut it with a hacksaw?
Yes, cut it in half