Grip day is everyday.
Chances are that you’re probably not spending one of your days in the gym focused on grip strength or even incorporating exercises to help actively strengthen your grip. HEY, IT’S OKAY. But when you find yourself being unable to get those last three reps in because you’re grip slowly gave out, you may find yourself frustrated and confused.
We use our hands for everything.
They’re important – pretty big deal, yeah? They go from carrying groceries to throwing punches to typing away for hours on end. Grip strength is the unrecognized game changer. There’s a few different types of grip strength: crush, pinch, and support. The crush grip is between your palm and your thumb. When you go to pick up a piece of paper, you use your pinch grip which is the strength between your thumb and fingers. Lastly, the reason why you’re able to hold your mom’s luggage for her is called support grip (and no, this does not include the emotional support of going through TSA with her 5 bags).
Here are some exercises to help get those wrists become wrists of steel.
Dead Hang:
Sounds morbid, but it’s not. Grab a bar with an overhand grip and hang from it for as long as possible. Start by aiming for 15 seconds and then increasing your way up to one minute. Once you get to one minute, you can start mixing up doing overhand vs. underhand.
Barbell Shrug:
Straight barbell, trap bar, dumbbells, you name it. Grab onto it with an overhand grip at shoulder width in front of hips. Keep arms straight, raise your traps, bring shoulders up and return to original position. Add in a pause for three seconds before returning to the original position for an extra challenge.
Pull Up and Chin Up:
These exercises aren’t just for your back, ya know. These two movements are great for building grip strength. Make sure to focus on tempo and reps.
Inverted Row:
Your hands and wrists must be strong enough to support your core in this exercise. Grab a low bar with hands placed at shoulder-width apart, Pull your shoulder blades back and bend elbows, bringing chest to the bar. Pause for 2 seconds and then slowly reverse back to original position.
Wrist Curl:
This exercise is great to target directly under your forearm. Grab a bench and a barbell. Place knees on the ground and use the bench to rest on. Take the barbell underhand, so wrists are facing up. Curl your wrists up towards your body, focus on the muscle-mind connection and release back to initial position.
If ya can’t grip it, ya can’t lift it no matter how strong the rest of you may be. It’s go-time.
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Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, into martial arts, yoga or gym training, we’d love to see you at one ofour gyms in San Diego. Ourpersonal trainersare at the top of their game. And newcomers are welcome to a complimentary personal training session with us.
