GRIP STRENGTH

DO NOT FORGET ABOUT YOUR GRIP STRENGTH

There are a lot of goodies that can help improve your performance in terms of grip. Some of those innovations are the grip powders, chalk, and gloves. They might help you in the short run by making it easier for you to do what you intend to do. In the long run though, I would still prefer to do things as your body could naturally do on its own. Those aids would be good once in a while if you were trying to break your weight limits and if your grip strength, or lack of it, is a constraint that holds you back. I would not recommend a daily dependence on external assistance as it would oversimplify the variables involved in your workout. But why would you want to keep your grip development in pace?

BENEFITS

Getting a good solid grip will help you in a whole lot of things. Firstly, it improves your exercise efficiency. Having a better grip can allow you to perform your routine with a higher level of intensity. Having a strong grip will allow you to add weight as well as the constraint of having a weak or slippery grip will be taken care of. Better grip leads to reduced constraints, which means = better workout session.

Secondly, a heightened grip strength improves the durability, endurance, and power of the involved muscles and parts. Allows you to punch harder and longer without hurting yourself (with or without a glove). This allows you to create a more solid fist for punches. This also works when you are using boxing gloves too as you can clench the glove firmly and minimize harm from punches that hit incorrectly. Having involved parts close to each other, a strong grip could be correlated to stronger forearms, wrists, and fingers as well. This will allow you to train better, and to perform better while reducing your risk of injury at the same time.

Finally, an endless amount of mini improvements will be felt throughout your daily exercises. Just a quick list from the top of my head would be : better steering (driving), improved (lighter) feel when playing musical instruments, decreased difficulty when carrying grocery bags, etc.

HOW TO

The cheapest and simplest way to improve grip strength is to workout without chalk and without gloves. This will help your grip to adjust naturally to your workload. Be happy when your palms and fingers get callouses. 

There are a couple of tools can help improve grip strength too. One will be the hand grips. It is easy to sneak them in your life. You can do grips while watching TV. Switch around from building up reps and building up your squeeze time while you watch your favorite shows. There are different resistances for these grips, but the grips on their own are not variable. The downside is that the grip cannot be adjusted. If you really want to build up on your resistance progression, you might have to get tougher ones as you get stronger.

 Another tool will be a stress ball/ squeezy thing. This might not be as tough as the hand grips but they offer stress relief for absolutely anything. They should be good for physical stress, pain, and soreness, and they should also be good for emotional, and spiritual (maybe?) stress as well. Squishing em around will still be considered as an activity and can probably build on some grip as well. Possible substitutes are papers, plastics, and cloth. Please consider the consequences when choosing your substitutes. It might not be good to waste a ton of paper just to improve grip strength. There will be other ways to do it anyways. Try squeezing your palms (like a handshake to your self), it might be more environmentally sound.

As mentioned earlier, the wrists and forearms involve muscles that could be involved with your grip too. Try opening and closing your fist, and compare your twitching muscles and nerves to the ones that move when you twist your wrist or even when you move it up and down. You can add some resistance to those actions by doing them with a dumbbell. Try to feel which motions work best for you, with the weight that is safe and best for you too.

A Good Grip:

+ Improves training efficiency!

+ Improves performance efficiency!

+ Reduces risk of injury!

Clean N' Mean