Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I thought this was a cool little article regarding grip strength and how 140,000 people were compared to each other and those with higher grip strengths had a lower mortality from heart attacks and strokes and all cause death and those with decreased strength had higher all cause mortality. I enjoy reading articles like this because they don't have medications tied to them. There is a link below.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance ... 6/abstract

@FRx--the link isn't working.

sorry, try that link again.

It makes sense. If you are active you are probably doing at least part of that with your hands (lifting, physical labor, etc.).

I actually keep a Captain of Crush hand grip strengthener at my desk. I try and do it 3 times a day.

Correlation does not mean causation.

We found a pullup bar at a nearby playground yesterday and Mrs. Ego tried the hanging workout suggested by DSKla in this post...

viewtopic.php?t=6204#p90627

Excellent for grip strength.

fiby41 wrote:Correlation does not mean causation.

Nowhere in the linked study does it say that it does.

Further research is needed to identify determinants of muscular strength and to test whether improvement in strength reduces mortality and cardiovascular disease.

As far as I know, grip strength is often times used as a proxy for overall strength in medical stat studies. It's likely the overall strength or the behaviour resulting in such strength that reduces mortality. Not grip per se.

@henrik: Yes, I read it. Just saying.

I can't find it now, but I remember reading about the correlation between grip strength and cardiovascular disease. IIRC, some of the speculation was that low-level edema, which would hamper grip strength, could also be a sign of heart disease, poor diet, and/or too much time spent sitting. (edema is more common in the legs and feet, so edema in the hands can be a sign that someone is too sedentary)

I hope I'm remembering that correctly. I wish I could remember where I saw the article.

There is a good book entirely about developing hand/grip strength: Mastery of Hand Strength, by John Brookfield.

I like grip strength training.. Often your hand strength is the limiting factor in effective use of overall strength. They are often the link between your body and an object you are trying to move - and for some - especially people who lift weights but don't do lifts that develop hand strength - they are the weakest link. (Thus rendering all the time and effort they spend developing the rest of their muscles mostly worthless)

Hand grip exercises at work are also supposed to relieve stress and lower blood pressure based on some studies. This is just one example, but there are others:

http://www.livestrong.com/article/31084 ... -pressure/

This article does not mean training the grip reduces mortality risk.

I've closed my #2, but only with a deep set...

Hah. No it doesn't. Grip strength is frequently my point of failure so I can understand how the two go, ah, hand in hand.

My vote goes with the folks who says it's clearly correlation, but getting strong generally makes you healthier. And I can say with certainty that someone with a weak grip will not be very strong in a functional sense, even if they find a way to build up lots of other muscles without using their grip.

A lifting example: when you grip a bar fora heavy deadlift, you get a ton of neurological feedback from your hands. Let's say you have really strong legs and a strong back that you've built using mostly straps or mixed grip, but you want to try a double over pull without straps. Your hands are going to tell your brain, "Whoa, this thing feels pretty heavy," and your brain will inhibit muscle action in your legs and back as a protection mechanism. Whereas if your grip feels really solid, it will essentially give the "all clear" to let other muscles join in to their full potential.

If things feel lighter to someone with a strong grip, it's because you can generate more tension and recruit more fibers throughout the body based on the feedback of ease you get from your hands.

As a former gripper junkie, my own personal tastes in what constitutes healthy grip training has changed a lot over the years. Grippers are great, but there are a lot of other facets that need to be addressed if you don't want to constantly be rehabbing hand and elbow injuries.

Remember, grip was just a variable they tested, but it's more of a side effect of a much larger, more complete strength practice.

I don't think anyone has suggested it isn't correlation.

DSKla wrote:As a former gripper junkie, my own personal tastes in what constitutes healthy grip training has changed a lot over the years. Grippers are great, but there are a lot of other facets that need to be addressed if you don't want to constantly be rehabbing hand and elbow injuries.

Please share. What else do you recommend?

I could write a really long post about this, but I'll start with the very basics.

This guy's stuff is good. Yes, it's literally just making circles daily, so people would tend to dismiss it as too simple, but I have personally tried this out and gotten a big improvement in mobility and dexterity of the wrist and hands. This will not build a ton of strength, but it's a perfect daily warm-up. Then paired with the other video, you'll begin to build even more range and strength.
Wrist starts at 6:27 - https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLFB45 ... ode=NORMAL
Fingers start at 2:30 - https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLFB45 ... ode=NORMAL

These are phenomenally effective if you do them right. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-hlWgH3_0NU

I do them both arms at the same time. Make sure on the straight arm ones to keep your elbows locked. I also dislike his range on the extension ones, maybe because he's tight, but you should really fight for the last few milimeters. The objective is a minimum of a 90 degree forearm/hand angle the whole time during the extension part, and the fingers should eventually reach 180 degrees (straight) with the hands. I either do 1 set of 10 in each position, or 1 set of 5 with a hard 5 second pause at end range on the last rep of each position. Daily, or near daily.

Here's some TLC from stretching. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GmMfW2kCkeE

There are two more stretches that can turn in to pushups that I like. Dorsal (pushups), and wrist rock (pushups). Can't find a video of the stretches, but there are pushup videos. The stretch is just the top position, but from the knees with hips bent, no pushup.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkF3CCExnY
The goal here is to internally rotate the shoulder as much as you can, so the pinkies are pointing straight back at your knees or as close to this as possible, then LOCK out your elbows, and lean back into the stretch, maybe sway gently side to side as well.

Wrist rock - can't find a video, but from your knees, make two fists and place the top of your fists on the ground (instead of the palm). Palm sides should face inward (neutral). Lock elbows and rock wrist forward (ulnar deviation), then bend elbows and rock backward (radial deviation).

Between all those mobility and stretch exercises, you should have a very basic prepararedness for grip strength and a way to prevent and rehab injuries.

For strength, I could recommend a few different types of wrist pushup progressions but there's a pay wall between the videos. Gymnastic Bodies Handstand One program has a good progression. This guy has some different but also effective stuff that is way cheaper. https://vimeo.com/awarerelaxedconnected/vod_pages

I've seen tons of different wrist pushup variations, and usually they want money, but if you can catch a quick clip of what it looks like, and understand progression, you basically have it all. For any given wrist pushup, easy: on wall, intermediate: high table, or from knees with hips bent to some degree, int. level 2: from lower surface, or knees with hips straight, advanced: from ground on toes just like a pushup (hips bent, then hips straight).

It's important to go REALLY slow and easy with wrist and finger strengthening. As in, spend some months on the wall developing the motor pattern and keep the reps between 1-5 per set. Less than you think you need.

The prep and pushup work all comes from gymnastics, and it's overlooked by a lot of grip people who just close grippers and fo farmer carries (both of which are great, but limited). If you get to the point that you can do tons of wrist and finger pushup variations from the ground in a full pushup position, you will be crushing most of humanity without ever closing a gripper.

In addition, I like hanging. Hanging is stupid-good for soooooo many things, grip among them. Ido Portal has a great series of videos on hanging. http://www.idoportal.com/blog/hanging
Make aure to explore the rest of the site for more hanging videos. For basic grip strength, just use passive and active hangs, and progress in this order: two hands with feet on ground, two hands free-hanging, one hand with feet on ground, one hand free hanging. Bonus points if you can do all the hangs with a false grip.

Obviously there's a lot more to grip than the stuff I posted here, but I truly feel if you do the stretches and prehab, plus a lot of hanging (daily) and a few wrist pushup variations (1-2 times a week), and you take is slow, you'll be bulletproof in a few years.

I guess the basics turned into a long post anyway, but it's really just the tip of the iceberg, although more than most people will ever need.

Thank you for an exhaustive reply! These all seem like great resources and I'm going to try to incorporate them into my training.