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Having a strong grip super important and functionally relevant regardless of your age, gender, or active endeavors. I mean, even if you’re not an obstacle course racer, hybrid athlete, or powerlifter, you’re definitely going to want to give a firm handshake and be able to twist the lid off a pickle jar (or whatever) independently for decades to come. Plus, who knows – a strong grip could save your butt in a life-or-death situation like hanging onto a tree branch over a flood stage river (lol, hopefully just a hypothetical).

A number of studies have shown that weak grip strength can predict an increased risk of functional limitations, disability, and not living as long. Regardless of your age today, you’re getting older every single day. A stronger grip could improve your quality of life, and that’s the most important thing – but it can also help you pick up heavier weight and the gym and also improve your skills and ability to successfully complete obstacle course (like Spartan Race) obstacles like rigs, monkey bars, rings, farmer carries, the box, rope climb, wall climbs/jumps (especially Road to Sparta) and more.

Grip strength training for the win!

DEAD HANG

Hanging from a bar for as long as possible is a simple yet beastly method to improve grip strength, forearm strength, and pull-ups. When practicing your dead hang, use a forward-facing, closed-grip on the bar and hand until failure. Don’t be floppy, engage shoulders, chest and core. After resting for a few minutes, try to hang again until failure, you’ll likely feel the burn and not last as long. That’s okay! Rest again, and do a third rep until failure. Incorporate a “3-rep dead hang until failure” into your workout (or just whenever) at least a couple times a week.

Ways to Make it Harder:

Dead hang from towels looped over bar.
Dead hang wearing weighted vest
Try it one-armed
Dead hang and do a pull up every 10 seconds, without releasing from bar

FARMER CARRY

To start, you’ll need two dumb bells, kettlebells, or bar plates of the same weight (later on you can incorporate variations). The ideas is to grip a weight in each hand and walk for time or distance, keeping shoulders upright and core engaged. Farmers win the prize for lugging heaving stuff around on the daily and their strength and stamina has been immortalized forever with exercise named in their honor. Farmer’s Carries are a simple and effective exercise that will fire up your grip, get your blood pumping, and strengthen pretty much your entire body. It even calls on mental toughness, because about halfway in, you’ll want to quit!

Incorporate Farmer Carries into your workout several times a week and see gains in your grip and overall strength. You’ll have no problem carrying all the grocery bags inside with one haul! I like to program Farmer Carries between run intervals (without rest) to up the challenge of both exercises.

3 Ways to Make it Harder:

Use awkward, harder-to-carry weight like universal bars, sandbags, or loaded trap bars.
Use different grips: try pinch grip on plates, or loop a hand towel through top of kettlebell to be the handle. Spread your hand wide to grip over one end of a lighter dumbbell. Use “fat grips” or a wrapped towel around the bar or handle of your weight to create a larger circumference to grip.
Carry offset weight. For example, a lighter dumbbell on one side and a heavier on the other. OR just weight on one single side like a suitcase. Or carry one weight overhead and one by side. These these variations really tax grip and also cause core to work in overtime to stabilize.

NO GYM, NO WORRIES!

You can still work on your grip strength at home or in the office with just a few minutes of time. Dead hangs can be done at home with a chin up bar (this is pull up bar I have), and grip strength only limited by your imagination. There are lots of little gadgets around designed to improve grip strength like a Grip Strength Squeezer or Grip Ring Spartan. Heck, at the gym those bar collars are one of the most grip-centric things around and sometimes the hardest part of the lift. Instead of the “clenching in” grip, it’s also a smart idea to work the opposition motion, extending out. Put a rubber band around between your finger tips and first finger joints and then stretch hands outward for a strengthening stretch.

Check out the Home Gym & Obstacle Training Equipment at Spartan. They have kettle bells, sand bells, grip tools, rope and other gear to gear up your strength training.

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Get a grip, seriously! To succeed at obstacle course races (like Spartan) or hybrid fitness events, you need to have good grip strength to maneuver your bodyweight up, over, and across stuff and pick up heavy things for the long haul! Check out these two simple and scalable exercises (with endless variations) that will help you achieve your goals! — *Pin this for later!*

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If you’re not training grip, you’re likely sabotaging any chance getting through a Spartan Race burpee free. Reflect back to your last race and count up the number of obstacles that require a strong and lasting grip. These grip-intensive obstacles include the rig, the monkey bars, the bucket carry, the rope climb, the Tyrolean traverse, Tarzan swing, wall jumps, and, lemme see, nearly everything . . . including shaking hands on the podium!

By adding grip-training exercises to your workout a few times per week, you can achieve lower-arm and grip gains which will increase your strength to handle more weight and more reps — or, basically hold on longer! The muscle guys in the gym swear by grip training maximize strength and size, but don’t worry girls – I work out my grip often and don’t have Popeye-sized forearms, pretty sure you have to be genetically predisposed or questionable supplement enhanced for that to happen.

There are three types of grip including. support grip (hanging and holding), crush grip (clenching and squeezing) and pinch grip (pinching). Training these different grips oven overlaps one another, but here are some basic categories of grip-strength exercises:

Hanging – Try to hang from any surface with shoulders fully extended, in the “deadhang” position until failure. Grab onto a variety of surfaces (safety first) including traditional pull-up bars, fat bars, the ends of towels or functional straps (like GripSling … use code thefitfork20 to save 20%) ropes, tree limbs, rafters, vertical pipes — each provides a different challenge to the grip.

Lifting – Grip is always involved in lifting, unless you are doing legs on a machine. The fatter the bar used in your lifts, the more difficult it will be on your grip. That’s why those chubby monkey bars at Spartan Race are harder than the garden variety playground version. A wider diameter bar redistributes stress from the joints and onto the muscles as the weight is transferred to a larger area of the hand. If your gym has a fat bar, try it. Or, purchase special grips to slide on (check out Fat Gripz), or simply wrap a strap or towel around the bar.

Carrying – Practice carrying objects of different sizes and poundage, your body will have to adjust accommodate the varying loads. Of course, the whole body is involved in toting stuff around, a strong grip can help you hold more and go further. Carries to practice include farmer carry with plates, dumbbells, kettlebells or any other luggable item with a handle. For greater grip gains, try threading a towel through the handle and carry grasping onto the ends of the towel. Also, practice carrying non-handled, heavy objects such as sandbags, pancakes, loaded buckets from the base.

Farmer Carry with a towel for grip training.

Pinching – Improve your pinch grip, and hopefully maintain contact with the Z Wall or Horizontal Climb obstacles, by mastering exercises that require maintaining contact with an item placed between thumb and fingers while leaving palm open. Classic pinch grip exercises include the one hand pinch plate, two hand pinch plate and pinch plate curls.

Pinch Plates exercise for grip strenth. — Example: Pinch Plates

Crushing – Maximize your crush grip strength by squeezing grippers, tennis balls or beer cans. I also think the mobility balls from ACUmobility work pretty well for gripping — save 20% with code AcumobFitFork Look at that grimace below, I’m having my crush grip strength measured.

jennifer-fisher-thefitfork-com-death-grip-fittest-fitfluential

Get a Grip Workout will strengthen your lower arms for better obstacle crushing in Spartan and other obstacle course races.

So, ready to give grip training a try? Work in any of the methods I’ve described above, or try this “Get a Grip Workout” I like to do every week. Use the appropriate poundage for your strength and frame, and progress slowly – these exercises are way harder than they sound, and honestly, the first few sessions you may think nearly impossible (or at least I did). For those who’ve crushed the workout, I’ve added challenge modifications – have fun!

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Tag Archives: grip

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